THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 REICHERT COLLECTION 
 

HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY 
 
Imp. 8vo, cloth, 315. 6d. 
 
 PALESTINE ILLUSTRATED. 
 
 SIR RICHARD TEMPLE, BART., 
 
 M.P., G.C.S.I. 
 
 WITH 32 COLOURED PLATES 
 
 REPRODUCED BY CHROMO-LITHOGRAPHY FROM THE 
 AUTHOR'S ORIGINAL PAINTINGS. 
 
HEROES OF HEBREW 
 HISTORY 
 
 BY 
 
 SAMUEL WILBERFORCE, D.D. 
 
 BISHOP OF WINCHESTER 
 
 . NEW EDITION 
 
 LONDON 
 
 W. H. ALLEN AND CO., 13, WATERLOO PLACE, S.W. 
 1890 
 
i-to 
 
 following sketches, with the exception ot 
 "David the King," have already appeared in the 
 pages of Good Words. They are now republished at 
 the request of many who desire to possess them in a 
 separate form. 
 
 May God's blessing make them useful ! 
 
 S. W 
 
 WINCHESTER HOUSF, 
 Feb., 1870. 
 
 M633166 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 y 
 
 ABRAHAM .,... 
 
 I AGP 
 . 1 
 
 JACOB 
 
 ' 30 
 
 TOSEPH ... ... 
 
 5? 
 
 MOSES ....... 
 
 . 92 
 
 JOSHUA ...,.. 
 
 '3* 
 
 SAMSON THE JUDGE ..... 
 
 . 161 
 
 * SAMUEL THE PROPHET .... 
 
 . 198 
 
 DAVID THE KING ...... 
 
 . 229 
 
 THE MAN OF GOD WHO CAME OUT OF JUDA.H 
 
 . 264 
 
 MICAIAH, THE SON OF IMLA .... 
 
 . 294 
 
 ELIJAH ....... 
 
 . 318 
 
 ELISHA 
 
ABRAHAM. 
 
 T T ERE is the fountain-head of Hebrew hero- 
 life the time when Abram was born in 
 the house of his father Terah. Here we stand 
 amongst the great progenitors of our race. 
 Abram' s birth was but two hundred and eighty 
 years after the flood : a shorter period than has 
 passed since Queen Elizabeth sat under a tree 
 which is still alive in Hatfield Park, and saw 
 the approach of the royal messenger who 
 brought her, instead of the expected warrant to 
 a dungeon and a scaffold, the tidings of her 
 succession to the throne of England. 
 
 Noah lived, according to the reckonings of 
 chronology as probable as any, for sixty-two 
 years after the birth of Abram, and may well 
 
 B 
 
a HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 have repeated in his hearing the wonderful 
 story of that rescued life which the hand of 
 God Himself had shut for safety into the ark 
 of gopher- wood. It may be that by such com- 
 munings was first nourished in the soul ot 
 the patriarch that supreme trust in God's pre- 
 sence with him and care for him which was 
 the warp into which was worked the great 
 spiritual life of the friend of Jehovah and the 
 father of the faithful. He was born to Terah in 
 Ur of the Chaldees, one of the cities of the rich 
 plain of Shinar, into which flowed the first 
 streams of the life of the repeopled world the 
 cradle of the first Babylonish empire of which, 
 through the mists of the long ages, we may 
 dimly see the shadowy form of the great Nimrod, 
 the " mighty hunter before the Lord/' laying the 
 colossal foundations. Thus though himself of 
 the favoured race of Shem, Terah, the father of 
 Abram, lived in the midst of the first Hamitic 
 empire. This dwelling in the tents of Ham gives 
 a certain probability to the stories which Arabian 
 and Jewish traditions have woven round his 
 name. Holy Scripture tells us only, with its 
 
ABRAHAM. $ 
 
 wonted simplicity of narrative, that "Terah 
 dwelt on the other side of the flood " (the cha- 
 racteristic name of "the great river, the river 
 Euphrates") "in old time, and served other 
 gods " (Josh. xxiv. 2). 
 
 But the story grows in other records. Terah 
 is a maker as well as a worshipper of idols. He 
 is high in favour with the mighty Nimrod, and 
 a chief captain in the Hamitic host. Abram, his 
 son, is a believer in the unity of the Godhead ; 
 keeping alive, under the secret visitations of 
 grace, the true tradition of the faith as it had 
 been received from Noah. In the fervour of his 
 spirit he destroys his father's idols, who accuses 
 him to Nimrod. Then the grand drama which 
 was acted generations after in the days of Nebu 
 chadnezzar so gloriously on the plain of Dura by 
 the three descendants of the patriarch is asserted 
 to have been anticipated by their great ancestor, 
 on the plain of Shinar. Abram refuses the offers 
 of the idolaters, and is cast into a burning 
 furnace, from which Jehovah delivers him un- 
 harmed. Some striking differences of narrative 
 seem to contradict the idea of the story being a 
 
4 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY 
 
 mere casting back of later history into a fabulous 
 antiquity. For instead of the constant fidelity of 
 the three Jewish worthies, it is said in the old 
 record of Abram's trial that Haran, Abram's 
 brother, was sitting by and saying in his heart, 
 " If Abram overcomes, 1 am on his side ; and if 
 Nimrod overcomes, 1 am on his/' So when 
 Abram was delivered, they turned to Haran, and 
 demanded, "On whose side art thou?" and, 
 seeing that Abram was safe, he answered, "I 
 am of Abram's." So. they cast him too into 
 the furnace. But his heart not being whole with 
 God, there was no deliverance for him, and so 
 he was consumed. 
 
 These old traditions may or may not hold in 
 solution facts historically true. They may be 
 nothing more than the nimbus glory which 
 streams from great saints and manifests itself to 
 us by lighting up into an encircling crown the 
 floating atoms of the past. But whether they 
 record facts or imaginations, we know that deal- 
 ings of God with his faithful servant not less 
 wonderful than these did mark the life of Abram 
 in that old plain of Shinar. So much the words 
 
ABRAHAM. 5 
 
 of inspiratf on tell us : " The God of glory ap- 
 peared unto our father Abraham when he was in 
 Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charran, and 
 said, Get thee out of thy country and from thy 
 kindred, and come into the land that I shall 
 show thee " (Acts vii. 2, 3). 
 
 Such was the summons, and the obedience of 
 Abram was immediate and complete. The tra- 
 ditions of a life were broken up, he went forth 
 out of Ur of the Chaldees, not knowing whither 
 he went" (Heb. xi. 8). The bitterness of that 
 first parting with kinsmen and relatives and 
 accustomed scenes and the habits of a life was 
 mercifully lessened by his aged father Terah's 
 going forth with him into the unknown land. 
 How the old man was moved to this migration 
 we can but guess. Nahor, the eldest son of the 
 house, was dead : and though Haran, the second 
 brother, remained at Ur, yet it may well be that - 
 Terah saw in the character of Abram that which 
 marked him out as the foremost of his family, 
 and therefore clung to the mysterious fortunes of 
 his youngest son. And so they journeyed, as 
 men journeyed in those days of old, with sons 
 
6 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY 
 
 and daughters, and shepherds, and man-servants 
 and maid-servants, and goods, across the road- 
 less steppes, by the tracks which other travellers 
 had marked upon the great plain. At Charran, 
 in Mesopotamia, the cloudy pillar of God's 
 presence halted, and for a while the migration 
 stayed. There for Terah's lifetime they abode ; 
 understanding, however, as it seems, that this 
 was but a broken halt, and that the more distinct 
 summons of the original command beckoned 
 him yet farther. And so, when Terah's bones 
 were laid in their resting-place, the march again 
 began, and upon a grander scale. As yet, 
 though parted from their early home, the 
 wanderers had not altogether quitted the land 
 of their nativity. That patriarchal realm was 
 bounded by the mighty Euphrates the "great 
 river," "the flood;' 1 the "other side" of which 
 to those ancient men was little less of a partition 
 from all they knew of life than were the waters 
 of the great Atlantic to the adventurous Colum- 
 bus. Right across the flood the mystic summons 
 called the son of Terah, and over it he dutifully 
 sped, and came into the land of Canaan. 
 
ABRAHAM. 7 
 
 This second migration is marked as the turn- 
 ing-point of his life the first great venture of 
 is faith. The former migration had been one of 
 those tribe movements which appertained to the 
 early history of man, when from the East, in 
 which he had been cradled, he moved forward, 
 as the tides of ocean sway under the moon, " to 
 replenish the earth and possess it." Then, his 
 father, Terah, is spoken of as "having taken 
 Abram, and they went forth from Ur of the 
 Chaldees;" but now the patriarch goes forth 
 alone ; now the Voice calls him, and he follows, 
 "The Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out 
 of thy country and from thy kindred, and from 
 thy father's house, unto a land that I will show 
 
 thee So Abram departed as the Lord 
 
 had spoken unto him And Abram was 
 
 seventy and five years old when he departed out 
 ofHaran." 
 
 On the whole face of the replenishing earth 
 such another sight was nowhere to be seen. It 
 was the single grand spectacle of humanity on 
 which angels gazed with wondering joy. He 
 was perhaps then the sole type of that one true 
 
8 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 Man who in the after-ages should spring from 
 his seed to do the Will of God perfectly ; to hear 
 always that voice, and always to follow it. This 
 nobleness, different indeed in measure, but in 
 kind the same, the faith of Abram imparted to 
 Ms soul. He rose above this earth because he 
 believed simply in God. This is the record of 
 the Highest. When Abram was ninety years 
 old and nine, " the Lord appeared and said unto 
 him, Walk before me, and be thou perfect/' 
 This was the one grandeur of his life ; and this 
 was to be for ever commemorated in the new 
 name given to him. "Neither shall thy name 
 be any more Abram " ("father of elevation"), 
 "but thy name shall be Abraham " ("father of a 
 multitude"). This walking before God it was 
 which invested him with that glorious character 
 which the voice of the Lord himself, when 
 speaking to Abimelech, attributed to him. " He 
 is a prophet, and he shall pray for thee, and 
 thou shalt live" (Gen. xx. 7). We never read of 
 Abraham's predicting the future, and yet he was, 
 for the voice of God declared it, " a prophet." 
 It is full of instruction for us to see wherein his 
 
ABRAHAM. 9 
 
 prophetic character consisted. For we shall have 
 poor and unworthy conceptions concerning the 
 mighty office of the prophets of Jehovah so long 
 as we confound them with the tribe of the mere 
 predictors of the future. Such a prescience was 
 indeed often imparted to the prophet to qualify 
 him for his office. But, first, it was the accident, 
 not the essence of his office. In the soothsayer 
 and the oracle priestess, on the contrary, that 
 declaration of the future, real or pretended, by 
 guess or enigma, by dark sign or darker word, 
 was the very central point of the whole ministra- 
 tion. Men came in the hope of having the 
 blinding curtain which hung over the future 
 lifted up for them ; they sought nothing else ; 
 they could receive nothing more. But so it was 
 not with the prophet of Jehovah. He was the 
 witness to man of the living God of righteousness 
 and truth. If he did predict, he did it to shake 
 some ungodly heart with terror, or to build 
 up some faithful soul in hope. Abram, though, 
 so far as we know, he uttered no predictions, was 
 a grand fulfiller of this office. Bvjiis simple 
 obedience and his glorious faith he bore a witness 
 
io HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 to Jehovah such as no other man then living, 
 perhaps as no other mere man through all the 
 generations of the sons of Adam, ever equalled. 
 As, with all belonging to him, he crossed the 
 flood, going he knew not whither, at the bidding 
 of the Voice, how grandly did he mirror back to 
 all times and all ages the faithfulness and truth 
 of Him in whom he so trusted ! Thus in this 
 central characteristic of the prophetic office 
 Abraham ranks high in the goodly fellowship. 
 
 But, again, the prophet of Jehovah differs from 
 the soothsayers in this essential feature of his 
 predictive faculty. The mere oracular utterance 
 declared, or professed to declare, some isolated 
 and disjointed fact, foreseen in itself by some 
 accidental prescience, as the eye may see some 
 solitary star through a chance opening in the 
 cloudy canopy which veils the general heavens. 
 Instead of this, the true prophet's revelation of 
 the future based itself on the present and on the 
 past. On the present, because to him who 
 believes in the righteous government of the all- 
 good and the unchangeable the present is ever 
 full of types of the future, which, until they 
 
ABRAHAM. u 
 
 are fulfilled all remain dark to common eyes, 
 but which are opened to the reading of his 
 instructed gaze ; and on the past, because that 
 past as it lies written in history is but the record 
 of God's dealings heretofore with man ; and it is 
 the ever-unfolding line of God's dealings which 
 is opened to him. The law and the right of the 
 moral government of the mighty King, not the 
 unmeaning triviality of some separate event 
 which an idle or an interested curiosity longs to 
 foreknow, is that which it is given to him to 
 discern. To him therefore the past is the future, 
 as that future lies yet folded up and waiting 
 for its development within the germinating 
 seed ; and to him therefore prophecy is history 
 prolonged. His prediction, whether in word or 
 in act, is the utterance of his spirit, as under 
 the teaching of the Spirit of Jehovah it reaches 
 forth into that yet future development of the 
 truth and right with which it now commerces 
 in God. 
 
 Now, such a gift of prophecy as this was most 
 surely given to Abraham. For Christ has said, 
 " Abraham desired to see my day, and he saw it 
 
iz HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 and was glad." The great insight of his faith 
 reached on so far as that. When he received as 
 simply true the word of God concerning the birth 
 of Isaac against hope believing in hope that he 
 might become the father of many nations not 
 staggering at the promise of God through 
 unbelief, but was strong in faith, giving glory 
 to God, and being fully persuaded that what He 
 had promised He was able to perform, as the 
 God who calleth those things which be not as if 
 they were (Rom. iv. 17 21), then he received 
 the promise of the true Son, in whom all the 
 families of the earth should be blessed. Here 
 we see before our eyes this great insight of the 
 prophet of Jehovah into the typical character 
 of the present ; for in this gift of Isaac beyond 
 the rale of nature he read the gift of the virgin - 
 born ; in the present son of promise, the coming 
 in the fulness of time of the promised seed ; in 
 the son of Sarah, the Son of Mary. It may well 
 be that his eye was opened to read further types 
 which for others lay impenetrably folded up in 
 the blinding present. As he climbed the hill of 
 sacrifice, ready to accomplish that vast venture 
 
ABRAHAM. 13 
 
 of his unquestioning faith, may he not have seen 
 in the child of promise, bearing beside him up 
 the steep the wood of the sin-offering, the figure 
 of the child of far greater promise, of the desire, 
 not of his eyes only, but of all nations, as He too 
 bore up the hill of Calvary the wood on which 
 He was to be offered up, the one sacrifice for sin r 
 (Heb. xi. 1 7 19.) Surely he foresaw the offering 
 of the one sacrifice for sin when he saw the day 
 of Christ and was glad. Nay, may we not 
 gather that even the mighty mystery of the 
 resurrection of the Lord was read by him in 
 the giving back to him of Isaac, from those 
 pregnant words of the Epistle to the Hebrews 
 which tell us that his faith grasped the seem- 
 ingly audacious hope that "God was able to 
 raise Isaac even from the dead ? " 
 
 This prophetic gift, then, we may trace in 
 Abraham. 
 
 But further, it is the prophet's office not only 
 to read, but also to declare the future. This he 
 may do in word or in act. Ezekiel as truly 
 prophesied in act, when, at God's command 
 he portrayed the city of Jerusalem on a hill, and 
 
14 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 laid siege against it, and cast a mount against 
 it, and lay on his right side and then on his left 
 side, as when he uttered the predictive words 
 which foretold the coming judgment. And in 
 act, who was a greater prophet than Abraham ? 
 His whole life was, in the highest sense of the 
 mysterious word, a prophecy. This leaving 
 Charran, this " crossing of the flood/' what else 
 were they but acted prophecies of the mighty 
 truth which shines conspicuously in the Gospel 
 pages, that the man who would inherit the 
 heavenly Canaan must be content to leave father 
 and mother and all that he hath, and to follow 
 houseless and homeless the call of Jesus ? And 
 as it was from the beginning, so it was unto the 
 end. Almost every recorded fact in Abraham's 
 life is full of prophecy. In this high sense he is 
 indeed the father of the faithful ; and the history 
 of all his children is fore-acted in himself. How 
 simply and emphatically was he in act the true 
 forerunner of all who ever since have "died 
 in faith ! " (Heb. xi. 1416.) Thus it was in the 
 point of his history which we had reached. After 
 the signal obedience which was accomplished in 
 
ABRAHAM. 15 
 
 his leaving, at God's call, his home and all 
 that he had, and crossing the Euphrates, to 
 be led on he knew not whither, he is brought to 
 the northern fords of Jordan, and crosses over 
 them into the land of his future inheritance. 
 The district that he entered was the most fertile 
 of that whole valley of abundance. He passed 
 up the valley of the Jabbok into the plain of 
 Moreh. There, when his eye had been filled 
 with . the sense of beauty which is so keenly 
 awakened after a weary journey through a waste, 
 by the sight of abundance and verdure, "the 
 Lord appeared unto Abram and said, Unto thy 
 seed will I give this land " (Gen. xii. 7). There, 
 in the fulness of his grateful trust, Abram 
 built his first altar in the land of promise to the 
 God who had appeared unto him. Perhaps he 
 thought that all his wanderings were over, that 
 thenceforward he might know again in this land 
 of beautiful fertility the sweetnesses of home ; 
 but it was not to be so. He is indeed allowed 
 to halt for a season in the earthly paradise he 
 had entered. The first taste of the good land 
 was to be one of rest after labour, of enjoyment 
 
,6 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 after suffering, of the springing water and the 
 vine and olive, after the droughty, fruitless, 
 barren desert. But the rest was not to last long, 
 or even his faithful energy might have been 
 relaxed ; for " over sweetness breedeth gall, and 
 too much joy, even spiritual, maketh men 
 wanton ; " * and so he tastes and passes on. All 
 that he looks upon shall be his ; but it is not his 
 yet: "the Canaanite was then in the land." 
 The enemy must be cast out before the joy of the 
 faithful can be full. The time of that deliverance 
 is hidden deep in the unrevealed counsels of 
 God. In Abraham's day the iniquity of the 
 Amorites was not yet full : for all his children in 
 faith the mystery of iniquity is not yet accom- 
 plished. Of that day and that hour knoweth no 
 man. But it shall come. Evil shall be driven 
 in upon itself: the seven nations of the wicked 
 shall be driven out. The heir of all things shall 
 possess the earth. And so the rich plain is 
 to be left almost as soon as it has been gained ; 
 and from its luxurious ease the guiding pillar 
 leads him on to the safe but barren upland 
 Hooker. 
 
ABRAHAM. 17 
 
 There he pitches his tent, " on a mountain on the 
 east of Bethel, having Bethel on the west and 
 Hai on the east ; " and there again " he builded 
 an altar unto the Lord, and called on the name 
 of the Lord/* Bethel and Hai, names unknown 
 as yet in any sacred story, famous as they shall 
 thereafter become for God's dealings with his 
 people, for God's revelation to his saints. As yet 
 there was no Bethel, no " house of God ; " it was 
 known only as the district lying near to Luz, a 
 heathen city of the elder Canaanite possession, 
 the dreary dwelling-place of the godless and the 
 idol worshippers. That first altar to Jehovah, 
 as it rose under the hand of Abram, was itself a 
 prophecy of all that was to follow; it foretold 
 God's gracious vision to the wandering outcast 
 from the family of Isaac; and again God's 
 meeting him, as he came back from Padan-aram, 
 and, after the mysterious night wrestling, endow- 
 ing him with the name of Israel that name 
 of mystic significance, whether it be " thou hast 
 contended," * or, as the elders have it, the 
 ' prince with God/' f It prophesied of the time 
 
 * So Gesenius and Rosenmuller. f St. Jerome. 
 
 C 
 
1 8 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 when the ark of the covenant should here be 
 fixed, with Aaron's grandson ministering before 
 it, and when the repentant children of Israel 
 should come here in their extremity to seek 
 succour and direction from their fathers' God 
 (Judges xx. 1 8, 31; xxi. 2). 
 
 Yet even here, at his mountain encampment, 
 the faithful wanderer was not long to halt. To 
 make his act of prophecy perfect, he was to be as 
 destitute of any fixed habitation as is the Be- 
 douin Arab of the wilderness. "Abram jour- 
 neyed, going on still towards the south " (Gen. 
 xii. 9). He was to show that he had "em- 
 braced the promises of God and confessed that 
 he was a stranger and pilgrim on the earth" 
 (Heb. xi. 13). 
 
 Then began those perpetual marches of his 
 consecrated tent wherewith he moved up and 
 down the land which his seed was hereafter to 
 inherit, though not so much was given him in 
 possession as to set his foot upon. And so with 
 some brief, interposed intervals, in which he 
 sojourned in Egypt, or amongst the Philistine 
 lords on the plains which skirted the neighbour- 
 
ABRAHAM. Ig 
 
 ing seaboard, his long after-life was spent upon 
 the rocky ridges and high grassy uplands of the 
 hill country of Canaan ; on which there slept in 
 the sunlight, or fluttered beneath the sweeping 
 breezes of the night, the white folds of the 
 great wanderer's tent. What a sight it was for 
 the watchers of God's angel host, as they marked 
 the man of faith standing well-nigh alone on a 
 rebellious, unbelieving earth, building from post 
 to post his altar to the Lord, confessing His 
 name, doing His Will, interceding for offenders, 
 communing as a man communes with his friend, 
 with the Almighty Jehovah ! 
 
 As those sacred circuits measured out the 
 land, attesting its future possession by the 
 faithful, what a prophecy did they utter of 
 the setting up, on the mountain of the Lord 
 of Hosts, of Messiah's kingdom ! For within 
 those circling folds there was gathered, in seed 
 and promise, all the future Church of Christ. 
 There was the family in covenant with Jehovah ; 
 there, the living faith which from generation 
 to generation joins the soul of man to God 
 There was the only sure knowledge of the 
 
ID HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 one true God; there, the revelation of His 
 Will. There, in the mysterious visitation of 
 the three stranger forms before his tent door, 
 subsiding into the single presence of Jehovah, 
 was already a declaration of the hidden mys- 
 tery of the Trinity in Unity. There, given 
 perhaps already by sacred tradition from Noah 
 there, in vision, in dream, and by voice, 
 vouchsafed to the watching patriarch, was all 
 which should grow, under the prophetic breath- 
 ing of the future, into the lively oracles of God. 
 There, already, faith spread its strong wing, and 
 soared in what were hereafter David's Messianic 
 Psalms, and Isaiah's evangelic predictions. 
 There, in the shadows of the covenant, sealed in 
 circumcision and renewed in burnt-offerings, 
 were the great sacraments of the Gospel Church, 
 waiting only the appointed day of their open 
 manifestation. 
 
 Surely, in no other time or place has the earth 
 ever seen a life like that of the hero patriarch, 
 which God's hand had shut within those enfold- 
 ing curtains. By many a fire of furnace heat 
 that great soul was tempered and annealed to 
 
ABRAHAM. 21 
 
 do and bear without reserve the Will of God 
 When, leaving all behind him, he crossed in 
 simple trust the great river, he would, in man's 
 judgment, have been pronounced already perfect 
 in faith. Yet further trial brought to light an 
 unsuspected weakness even in that great heart, 
 and under a wholly new temptation the faith 
 even of the father of the faithful wavered. A 
 famine drove him into Egypt, which was even 
 then beginning to develop its early heathen 
 civilisation, strongly marked with deep lines of 
 sensual indulgence and despotic power. The 
 tented wanderer shrank as the Arab of the 
 desert shrinks from the crowded city life, and 
 he who through his desert migration and moun- 
 tain wanderings had found ever in those vast 
 solitudes abundant companionship in the pre- 
 sence of his God, felt himself forsaken and alone 
 in the more depressing isolation of being im- 
 mersed in the full busy stream of a life which 
 was separated in every sympathy from his own. 
 In this depression his great heart sank within 
 htm, and he sought to save his life, endangered 
 through the coveted beauty of Sarai, by the 
 
22 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORF. 
 
 denial of his wife. God was better to him 
 than his fears, and delivered him from the 
 danger which he dreaded, and he came up 
 from Egypt enriched by the largess of its king, 
 and safe under the shadow of the Almighty 
 hand. 
 
 To purge away this remaining weakness he 
 was still held by the hand of Love in the furnace 
 heat. It was specially in all that concerned the 
 child of promise that the long discipline and 
 perfecting of his faith lay. There was first the 
 long nine-and-twenty years of waiting from the 
 date of the first promise for this still protracted 
 birth. The slow years of waiting crept on until 
 *o mere nature the gift seemed to be impossible. 
 Then when Isaac had been given there was the 
 casting forth of Ishmael, who it is plain had 
 greatly engaged the affections of the otherwise 
 childless father. The thing was very grievous 
 in Abraham's sight because of his son (Gen. xxi. 
 u). Then, so far as Scripture has recorded his 
 life, there was a lull in the sharp discipline of 
 the great patriarch. The early years of Isaac's 
 life passed peacefully, and he grew up in his 
 
ABRAHAM. 23 
 
 father's tent, a meek and docile son, from child- 
 hood to maturity. But when this one delight of 
 the aged pair, this gift beyond nature, this heir 
 of so many promises, was something more than 
 twenty years of age, once more his father's faith 
 was subjected to the signal trial into which all 
 the lesser ones of his life ran up and found their 
 completion. He is called upon to offer up this 
 beloved son, the one gift of gifts, in sacrifice 
 upon the mountain of Moriah. He hears the 
 voice, and he obeys : slowly up the hill of sacri- 
 fice his patient feet climb ; the victim bearing 
 the wood for the burnt-offering by his side. 
 His faith is tested to the very uttermost. For 
 not until the sacrificial knife is raised to slay 
 his son is that obedient hand stayed. This was 
 the last great act of his discipline. Now at last 
 his noble, single-hearted faith was perfected. So 
 the voice of God proclaimed : " By myself have 
 I sworn, saith the Lord : for because thou hast 
 done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, 
 thine only son, that in blessing I will bless thee, 
 and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as 
 the stars of heaven; .... and in thy seed 
 
z 4 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, 
 because thou hast obeyed my voice " (Gen. xxii. 
 1 6 18). 
 
 The special purpose of the sacred records of 
 the life of Abraham is written plain upon their 
 surface. They are chosen with the one plain 
 purpose of illustrating in this chiefest example 
 the life of faith. They show us its root in the 
 word of Jehovah ; its fruit in simple obedience ; 
 in the grandeur of an unfaltering trust; in the 
 fulness of a life of sacrifice. They show us its 
 nourishment in secret communings with God, its 
 reward in the gift of righteousness, and with 
 that the promised inheritance of the world. 
 
 But whilst the great purpose of the sacred 
 narrative is to show us how this grand faith was 
 formed, perfected, and crowned in Abraham, 
 enough besides this is left on record to exhibit 
 him as a real man and not an imaginary figure. 
 Thus we see him not only in his acts and com- 
 munings as the friend of God, but also on his 
 earthly side, in his intercourse with his im- 
 mediate kindred on earth, with those in whose 
 borders he sojourned or with whom the events 
 
ABRAHAM. 25 
 
 of his life brought him into contact. All of 
 these wear the same character. He is the Great 
 Shiek. Grand, generous, powerful ; when neces- 
 sary, warlike, and always munificent. Thus 
 when increasing riches make the parting of him- 
 self and Lot, his brother's son, necessary for the 
 peace of their retainers, he cedes at once to the 
 younger man the choice of habitation, content 
 himself to take whichever district is abandoned 
 to him. His nephew's greedy selection of the 
 well- watered plain involves him in the calamities 
 which soon after overwhelmed the native chief- 
 tains. One of the many migrations of the more 
 warlike northern tribes broke upon the rich and 
 enervated dwellers in the vale of Sodom ; and 
 the retiring wave of plundering aggression bore 
 back with it, amongst the captives, the kinsman 
 of Abraham. Though Lot's misfortunes had 
 been the fruit of his greed, yet the generous 
 heart of Abraham is at once touched to the 
 quick by the terrible captivity of his brother's 
 son. With Bedouin speed Abraham armed 
 three hundred and eighteen trained men, born 
 in his service, and with three confederate chiefs, 
 
16 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 Aner, Eshcol, and Mamre, attacks the retreat* 
 ing plunderers, routs them completely, rescues 
 his nephew and his goods : and even drives 
 back the emigrating horde into their own 
 distant territory. 
 
 The returning conqueror is met by a twofold 
 greeting; one enveloped in no little mystery; 
 both displaying highly indicative traits of Abra- 
 ham's character. To the king of Sodom's pro- 
 position, that he should yield to him the 
 ransomed captives and retain the recovered 
 goods, Abraham's answer reveals at once his 
 estimate of that evil brood, in the midst of 
 whom Lot from covetousness had so rashly 
 settled, and his jealousy for the honour of his 
 God. " I have lift up mine hand unto the most 
 high God, the possessor of heaven and earth, 
 that I will not take from a thread to a shoe 
 latchet, and that I will not take anything that is 
 thine, lest thou shouldest say, I have made 
 Abram rich" (Gen. xiv. 22, 23). 
 
 The other greeting was from that half-revealed 
 figure which reappears with undiminished 
 mystery in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Who 
 
ABRAHAM. 27 
 
 this Melchizedek was the king of Salem, the 
 priest of the most high God, the king of peace to 
 whom Abram gave tithes of all conjecture has 
 from the earliest Christian time been busy to 
 discover. The older belief rejected as impossible 
 the newest theory that he was a Canaanitish 
 prince, and delighted to see under this garb of 
 mystery the priestly son of Noah, the venerable 
 Shem, transported by the might of his God to 
 bless his great descendant in whom now the 
 whole line of the faithful was embodied. 
 
 The burial of Sarah throws out again into a 
 strong relief the figure of the patriarch as he 
 shows amidst the men around him. His first 
 and only possession of the land of Canaan is the 
 cave of Machpelah, which he purchases of Ephron 
 the Hittite, that he may lay in it the body of the 
 dead wife, who through so many eventful years 
 had been the faithful sharer of his ventures and 
 his wanderings, and whom God himself had 
 changed from being Sarai the quarrelsome, into 
 Sarah the princess. 
 
 The aged man comes with his precious burden 
 to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her. " I am 
 
28 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 a stranger," he says, in a half-deprecating tone, 
 to the children of Heth, " and a sojourner with 
 you: give me a possession of a burying-place 
 amongst you, that I may bury my dead out of my 
 sight." The answer portrays to us, as though it 
 were the event of yesterday, the Hittite view of 
 him who wandered up and down their country 
 the friend of God alone. "Thou art a mighty 
 prince amongst us, in the choice of our sepulchres 
 bury thy dead" (Gen. xxiii. 6). With grand 
 oriental solemnity " the mighty prince amongst 
 them " bows himself down before the children of 
 the land, and declines to share with them in 
 death, as he could not share with them in life, 
 and weighs out to them in shekels of silver, 
 current money with the merchants, the full price 
 of Machpelah's cave. 
 
 Eight-and-thirty years later the stone was 
 rolled from the cavern's mouth, and Isaac and 
 Ishmael bore another honoured corpse into the 
 shelter of that tomb. Abraham was laid beside 
 Sarah his wife. The long toil, the many ventures, 
 the faithful service, the joyful communing with 
 Jehovah these were over. The mighty faith 
 
ABRAHAM. 20 
 
 which God'slove had kindled, which many prayers 
 had fed, which many trials had perfected, haa 
 lasted on even to the end, and " Abraham gave 
 up the ghost and died in a good old age, an old 
 man and full of years, and was gathered to his 
 people." 
 
JACOB, 
 
 / T"^HE life of Isaac succeeds to that of Abraham 
 in the sacred record like the vision of some 
 peaceful lake into which the full waters of a 
 giant river have poured their majestic flow ; and 
 which mirrors motionless back the sky above 
 and the mountains round it. Stillness, instead 
 of wandering, was the new condition of his out- 
 ward life; and the inward answered to it. A 
 calm, meditative, unimpassioned man, conscious 
 of possessing a life given as a marvel, of being 
 the channel of promises which should reach on to 
 the ends of time, his religious character seems 
 to have been summed up in Jacob's words, "The 
 God of my fathers, the God of Abraham, and 
 the fear of Isaac" (Gen. xxxi. 42); he dwelt all 
 
JACOB. 3 r 
 
 his days under the safe shadow of the fear of 
 God. All his life, as often happens, was figured 
 forth in that great act of self-sacrifice .vhich 
 marked his early manhood. For such was his 
 willing ascent of the mountain of Moriah at the 
 bidding of Jehovah, and his unresisting submis- 
 sion to being bound for sacrifice on the wood of 
 the burnt-offering which he had meekly borne 
 up the mountain-side. It is the nature of such 
 a life of early devotion to God to be free from 
 the great crises, trials, and agonies by which 
 later conversions and renewals are effected and 
 brought to perfection. It is one long period 
 of unbroken restfulness, leaving, from the very 
 tranquillity with which it was blessed, little to 
 record for others ; and tending to develop in the 
 man himself a character of peace rather than of 
 strength. These features we may trace in Isaac. 
 He was a quiet, prosperous, religious man. He 
 sowed and " received an hundred fold, and the 
 Lord blessed him; he waxed great, and went 
 forward, and grew until he became very great, 
 for he had possession of flocks, and possession 
 of herds, and great store of servants, and the 
 
3 2 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORIC 
 
 Philistines envied him" (Gen. xxvi. 12 14). 
 In the midst of this envy he was unwarlike and 
 peaceable, trusting in God's protection, and little 
 disposed to self-assertion. Thus, time after time, 
 he yields to the herdsmen of Gerar the wells 
 that he has digged, till they cease to strive for 
 them (Gen. xxvi.). And the same character 
 reappears in his patient acquiescence in the 
 contentions which in later years disturbed his 
 family. This life of calm was for the most part 
 spent in the neighbourhood of that spring ot 
 water which the angel of God had shown to 
 Hagar when she was sent forth with Ishmael 
 from the tent of his father. "Isaac dwelt by 
 the well Lahai-roi." There, it seems, when he 
 was himself sixty years old, and twenty years 
 after his marriage, his twin sons, Esau and 
 Jacob, were born. 
 
 God's prophetic answer in interpreting the 
 struggling of the unborn children had already 
 foretold to Rebekah the great issue of that 
 birth, in the two nations which should spring 
 from it, of w^hich " the one people should be 
 stronger than the other, and the elder should 
 
JACOB. 33 
 
 serve the younger" (Gen. xxv. 23). The different 
 characters of her two sons soon declared them- 
 selves. The calm quietness of Isaac's tent was 
 irksome to her firstborn, Esau. He cared not 
 for the pastures which fed his father's many 
 flocks. The wild grounds of the neighbouring 
 desert, with the excitement of the chase of its 
 game, and of conflicts with its beasts of prey, 
 were more congenial to his spirit ; and into these 
 he cast himself, mingling in them freely with the 
 children of the land, amongst whom he was soon 
 a leader, as he grew up *' a cunning hunter, a 
 man of the field." Closer connection with them 
 naturally followed ; and when he was forty years 
 old he took two wives of that Canaanitish blood 
 with which the family of Abraham had never 
 mingled, and " which were a grief of heart and 
 bitterness of spirit unto Isaac and Rebekah." 
 The touches which sketch his character are 
 few, but they are most expressive. We see 
 before us the bold, wild, impetuous, generous, 
 spirited, popular Arab, full of impulse, unsus- 
 picious, uncontrolled, ready to purchase im- 
 mediate gratification at any price; unable to 
 
 D 
 
34 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 appreciate the distinctive spiritual blessings 
 which belonged to him as the heir of the great 
 father of the faithful. In him, even more plainly 
 than in Ishmael himself, the Arab son of Abra- 
 ham, the distinctive unworldly character of the 
 separated friend of God seemed to have lapsed 
 back into the mere son of the world. And so it 
 is a rise in his position when by another sudden 
 act of his impulsive nature, on Jacob being sent 
 to take a wife of the old stock of the Abrahamic 
 family, he, as though to retrieve the character of 
 his married life, takes a third wife of the family 
 of Ishmael, the son of the bond-servant. This 
 essential worldliness of character was connected, 
 as it so often is, especially in youth, with many 
 attractive qualities. Wherever we meet him 
 there is about him a generous recklessness 
 which, though really compatible of union with 
 the highest reign of thoughtless selfishness, yet 
 wears to one who does not look below the sur- 
 face an aspect of unselfishness which at once 
 wins for him a great amount of sympathy. 
 
 Jacob's character was in almost every respect 
 the opposite of Esau's ; and in youth at least far 
 
JACOB. 35 
 
 less naturally attractive. He was " a plain man, 
 dwelling in tents." Whichever of its disputed 
 meanings we attach to the epithet "plain," it does 
 not greatly alter the aspect of Jacob's character; 
 perhaps the highest is the nearest to the truth ; 
 he was a cultivated as his brother was a rough 
 man ; a man of the tent, as the other was a man 
 of the forest, the hill-side, and the waste. His 
 taste was for the flocks and herds, for domestic 
 cares and pursuits. As the natural result of the 
 common instincts of our nature, he was the 
 mother's, as Esau was the father's favourite. 
 The somewhat inactive character of Isaac de- 
 lighted in the daring of his hunter son, whilst 
 the mother found in her more civilised child a 
 companionship and sympathy which she could 
 never taste in the company of the wild man oi 
 the desert, the husband of Hittite wives whom 
 she abhorred. Though, moreover, in Jacob': 
 early life there is no more mark of godliness 
 than there is about that of Esau, yet there must 
 in the younger son have been always present 
 that substratum of affectionateness of heart 
 ivhich is the special character of his after years, 
 
3 b HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 and which is always so dear to a mother's soul, 
 Jacob's natural character combined remarkably 
 the distinctive features of both his parents. It 
 repeated much of his father's musing, meditative 
 temperament, whilst the stronger passions of his 
 mother's nature stirred its depths to bursts of 
 feeling unknown to Isaac, and whilst there was 
 joined with it the shrewd business powers which 
 seem to have pervaded the family of Laban. 
 His unenterprising home life was in him probably 
 in part the consequence and in part the cause of 
 a certain timidity of nature ; which must have 
 shrunk from very close contact with his rough 
 and daring brother. The visits of Esau to the 
 tent beside the waters of Lahai-roi could have 
 been no time of enjoyment for Jacob. Doubtless 
 they drew closer together the bonds between 
 himself and Rebekah, whilst he felt himself 
 eclipsed in the view of the old patriarch, who 
 ate gladly of his favourite son's venison, and 
 listened with wondering admiration to the stories 
 of the adventures and the risks through which 
 Esau's quiver and his bow had secured the wel- 
 come game. 
 
JACOB. 37 
 
 Thus the mother's influence would be great 
 with Jacob, and it would almost surely tend to 
 evil. Such a man must be sorely tempted to 
 gain by intrigue what natural force secured for 
 his brother and the spirit of intrigue is an inhe- 
 rent attribute of the Arab woman. As the desert 
 nourished the fierce independence of Esau's 
 nature, so would Rebekah nurse the lurking sub- 
 tlety of Jacob's heart. There would be, moreover, 
 a certain aspect of piety about her scheming 
 conduct. Deep in the mother's heart lay the old 
 prophetic utterance, " The elder shall serve the 
 younger; " it was the Will of God that this beloved 
 son, who cowered before his braggart brother, 
 should live to be his lord. She had not learned 
 that deep lesson of faith, the leaving God to work 
 out His Will in His own way. She must help 
 forward its accomplishment. She would possess 
 the mind of Jacob with the same idea. In their 
 after converse, in times of peace and hope, still 
 more, perhaps, when Esau's unwelcome presence 
 drove them into closer and yet more intimate rela- 
 tions, she would fill his heart with visions which 
 belonged to that yet to be accomplished prophecy 
 
3 8 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORT. 
 
 which Isaac perhaps had never heard, perhaps 
 had long since forgotten. The securing the ful- 
 filment of this prediction by any means would 
 by little and little become with Jacob, as with 
 his mother, the ruling idea with which his mind 
 was full. Its first recorded outbreak was when 
 at thirty-two years of age he tempted his hungry 
 brother to sell his birthright for the savoury mess 
 of lentile pottage. Here the opposite characters 
 of the two men stand out in the boldest relief. 
 The impulsive Bedouin hunter, returning half- 
 famished from some unsuccessful chase, saying 
 under the constraining influence of appetite, 
 "What profit shall this birthright do me?" and 
 so for a momentary enjoyment sacrificing the 
 religious and the temporal rights which by patri- 
 archal use belonged to the first-born; acting 
 herein as a "profane person/' as a thorough man 
 of this world, yielding up the future, even the 
 spiritual future, for the immediate and the carnal. 
 Jacob, on the other hand, thoughtful, and given 
 to anticipations of the future ; eager to please the 
 mother whom he loved, seeing an opportunity 
 of securing what she had taught him that God 
 
JACOB. 39 
 
 meant him to possess, and so with a meanness 
 bred of a subtle intellect, of misleading affections, 
 of a timid temper, and of a debased religiousness, 
 tempted his brother to a sin by which he was 
 himself to profit. Here is the cunning hunter, 
 the man of the field outwitted, as he always is, 
 by the polished man dwelling in the tent. 
 
 The next great scene of the two lives, five-and- 
 thirty years later, is when by another act of 
 subtlety he steals away the blessing as he had 
 meanly purchased the birthright of the first- 
 born. Here all the lines are darker. Rebekah.is 
 yet more visibly the tempter. Her son, more timid, 
 perhaps less deceitful than herself, shrinks from 
 the perfidy of abusing the darkened sight of his 
 aged father. But she overbears his resistance. 
 She has now persuaded herself that it is well to 
 lie for God, that the great just God of Truth can 
 be helped in the government of His world by a 
 cunning, devil-born falsehood ; and she succeeds 
 in her plot, and the younger son secures the 
 blessing. 
 
 Here again Esau's character breaks out into 
 most indicative revelations. The wild despair. 
 
40 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 the passionate pleading, the cry for another 
 blessing with no apparent sense of the great- 
 ness of his higher loss, but with a keen percep- 
 tion of the present evil, and so the cry for a 
 temporal if he could not have the spiritual 
 blessing here are the evident utterances of a 
 character all impulse ; venting its sadness in the 
 unspoken thought that when the old man, whose 
 heart it would grieve, was at rest, he would slay 
 his traitor brother, and so wipe away at once the 
 injury and the insult. 
 
 It needed no speaking out of the revengeful 
 purpose to alarm Rebekah. The dark, silent, 
 strong-willed woman used to watch with that 
 keen eastern observance of hers every turn of 
 countenance and tone and manner in her strange 
 wild son of the desert, read it all at a glance. 
 She had gained her point ; Jacob had won both 
 the birthright and the blessing, but she had 
 imperilled his life, and she must save it. 
 
 There is a deep strain of artifice in her next 
 device. She wakes up in the old father's heart 
 its aching remembrance of Esau's unholy mar- 
 riages, in order to exalt her younger born. 
 
JACOB. 41 
 
 Rebekah said unto Isaac, "I am weary of my life 
 because of the daughters of Heth : if Jacob take 
 a wife of the daughters of Heth, such as these 
 which are the daughters of the land, what good 
 shall my life do me ?" (Gen. xxvii. 46.) 
 
 Again she succeeds. Isaac sends away his 
 son from the threatening danger which he knew 
 not of, to find a wife from the daughters of his 
 mother's house. She succeeds, but at what a 
 cost ! She loses the son of her love ; has to 
 bear henceforward a solitary life; has to live 
 alone; to die alone. For those eyes, it seems 
 clear, see the beloved one again no more for ever. 
 She is not mentioned on his return, and the 
 presence of Deborah, her nurse, with the family 
 of Jacob, as they come back from Padan-aram, 
 goes far to prove the previous death of her mis- 
 tress. The busy, scheming head was laid low in 
 the dust, it may be weighed prematurely down 
 by the sorrowful harvest she had sown in deceit- 
 fulness to reap in anguish. 
 
 A new reach of Jacob's life opens with his 
 separation from his mother. The hand of God 
 had taken him into the wilderness there to plead 
 
42 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 with him mightily. It was a long and a bitter 
 pleading. His own old sin returns before him 
 time after time, as if its haunting presence never 
 would leave him. He had sinned by treachery 
 against his near of kin, and the treachery of 
 those near of kin to him embitter all his life. 
 First, there is Laban's great and often-repeated 
 perfidy. As he had consented to his mother's 
 voice, and lied to his blind father to win the 
 elder brother's portion, so his mother's brother 
 lies to him to win for the elder daughter the 
 marriage he offers to the younger. Into this one 
 master fraud were gathered up for him the seeds 
 of all the long sorrows which darkened his after 
 life. From this came the other great deceit 
 which whitened before the time the hairs of his 
 head; when his own elder sons, hating their 
 younger brother, the child of his beloved Rachel, 
 because his own heart was bound up with the life 
 of the lad, sell Joseph into Egypt ; and as he 
 had deceived Isaac with the flesh and the skins 
 of the kid, so they deceived him by dipping in 
 the kid's blood the coat of many colours. Surely 
 God was purging- out of the soul of his servant 
 
JACOB. 43 
 
 this close-clinging evil even by the hotness 
 of the furnace fire. For coincidently with these 
 retributive sorrows God was giving to him an- 
 other and a yet deeper teaching. The griefs and 
 injuries of life, if sent alone, might only have 
 hardened and embittered him. But this inner 
 teaching gave to them their special character 
 and power of moral healing. 
 
 Tnat inner teaching began at once on Jacob's 
 separation from his mother. Half his life was 
 then spent spent amidst the enervating and 
 lowering influences of inaction, and want of 
 responsibility, of timidity, flavoured by a certain 
 natural subtlety which was encouraged by the 
 mother, whose influence over him was supreme. 
 With all these elements of weakness abounding 
 in him, he is cast suddenly forth into the wilder- 
 ness, the perils of which his martial brother 
 loved, but which he had always dreaded. The 
 home-loving, timid, thoughtful man is forced to 
 rely upon and act altogether for himself. On 
 one misty, ill-apprehended belief alone can he at 
 all rest his anxious spirit. There is a future 
 before him. In himself the great promises for 
 
44 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 which Abraham had wandered and Isaac had 
 waited, now surely centred He had the birth- 
 right and the blessing. To that mysterious 
 future his mother's voice, with all her faults, had 
 ever taught him to look forward. Here was the 
 point of difference between himself and Esau. 
 Esau lived for the present, he lived for the future. 
 That dim, uncertain outline ever before his eye 
 gave to life in him a meaning and a depth which 
 it could never have in the clear, bright, dancing, 
 sunlit, but shallow, waters of his brother's object- 
 less being. That worldly spirit lacked utterly 
 the receptive faculty to which higher communi- 
 cations could address themselves. Jacob's soul 
 was ready for them. And they were given to 
 him. As he journeys towards Haran, he lights 
 at eventide upon a certain place. The red sun, 
 like a wearied giant proudly flinging himself to 
 rest, goes down with sudden speed below the 
 wide horizon. The benighted wanderer makes 
 the hasty preparation which alone is possible, 
 and prepares his hard pillow of the desert stones. 
 The bright stars fade away before his weary eyes, 
 and he sleeps. Then the vision wakes. He sees 
 
JACOB. 45 
 
 the mystic ladder joining together earth and 
 heaven; he marks with wonder the ascending 
 and descending angels, and he hears the voice 
 of the personal God ; with him there in the 
 waste as much as in the tent of Isaac ; gathering 
 into shape and form that misty future on which 
 his mind had ever dwelt; and above all, pro- 
 mising to him a perpetual presence and a 
 constant guard. " I am with thee, and will keep 
 thee. I will not leave thee until I have done 
 that which I have spoken to thee of" (Gen. xxviii. 
 15). He awoke with a sense of God's nearness 
 to him, which made the very place " dreadful." 
 The vision of the night-watches had changed 
 everything around him. There was no loneli- 
 ness now in that unpeopled waste : it was full of 
 God. Its monotonous stillness was gone. The 
 morning breeze which swept over him, the leaves 
 which rustled under its breath, the brawling 
 waters of the brook, all re-echoed the voice which 
 still rung in his ears. The track of the sunbeams 
 as it lay broad and bright upon the land, spoke 
 to him of the glorious pathway of light which 
 had joined together the heaven and the earth. 
 
46 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 Everywhere God was around him. Everywhere 
 God was close beside him. The great training 
 of his spirit had begun. That close, perpetual 
 presence of the personal God made life another 
 thing. It was not for him to weave cunning 
 schemes with sharp, dishonourable subtlety in 
 order to bring to pass the purposes of the great 
 God, who had said to his inmost spirit, " / will 
 not leave thee until / have done that which I 
 have spoken to thee of." The answer of Jacob's 
 heart is immediate, though it betrays much 
 remaining darkness. There is the " If God will 
 be with me and bring me again, then the Lord 
 shall be my God." The light of God's verity is 
 breaking through, and manifestly scattering the 
 darkness. 
 
 With this new light, he goes on his journey, 
 and reaches "the people of the east." Then 
 follows his long service with Laban, and his own 
 practical experience of what deceit is. By it all 
 he is driven to rest himself on that mysterious 
 presence which is now shed around his being; 
 and as he communes with that, he sees the stains 
 upon his own life, the weakness of his own heart. 
 
JACOB. 47 
 
 And so the work within advances. For one-and- 
 twenty weary years he labours and toils at 
 Padan-aram : the drought consumes him by day, 
 and the frost by night, until the hand which 
 others saw not seemed through his reading of 
 Laban's altered countenance to beckon him to 
 depart. He sets o"it on his return. Some remains 
 of his old self-trusting subtlety, not yet purged 
 out of his heart, lead to his secret flight, and 
 bring on him at once the threatening pursuit of 
 Laban. From this great danger God's direct 
 interference alone delivers him. The recollec- 
 tions of the long past, God's visitation, God's 
 promises, the revelation of his own feebleness 
 and sin these crowd around him as he retraces 
 his way. He needs them all, for his life is full 
 of peril. He must pass beside the border of the 
 hill country, in which Esau, his injured brother, 
 had grown into a warlike tribe. Now would 
 come, his heart whispered to him, the long- 
 delayed day of reckoning. The more he had 
 learned to see the true character of his own 
 faithless falsehood, the more terrible that dange* 
 must have looked. He prepares for it as best he 
 
4 8 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 may ; but his heart, made tender by discipline, 
 bled for the wife of his love and the children God 
 had given him. But his God had not forgotten 
 His servant. He saw and pitied the weaknesses 
 of His child. At Mahanaim he is met by the 
 angelic host, whose footsteps he had seen upon 
 the heavenly ladder, one-and-twenty years before. 
 But he needs more strength yet, and a greater 
 vision is before him. At the ford Jabbok he 
 sends on before him his wives, his eleven children, 
 and all that he has, and remains himself alone 
 behind doubtless for unwitnessed, undisturbed 
 communion with his God. It was not in vain 
 that he was led to wait for it. " Jacob/' is the 
 mysterious record, "was left alone, and there 
 wrestled a man with him till the breaking of the 
 day," when the unknown stranger said, " Let me 
 go, for the day breaketh." But the mighty one 
 who wrestled with him strengthened him for the 
 unearthly struggle, and the opened and ennobled 
 heart of the long-tried patriarch put forth its last 
 strength in that passionate cry for aid, " I will 
 not let thee go, except thou bless me." The 
 loving discipline of the Almighty had done its 
 
JACOB. 49 
 
 work. Close and yet closer his God had drawn 
 to him i and by that near presence, the work of 
 .purifying his inmost spirit had been mercifully 
 accomplished. A new name, given him by God, 
 sealed his new character; the meanness of the 
 supplanter was gone ; the royal spirit was come. 
 Jacob, " the supplanter/' was turned into Israel, 
 "a prince with God." Though the sorrows 
 which chastised his early sin were not yet 
 exhausted ; though he had yet to bear the shame 
 of Dinah's fall, the grief of his heart at Simeon's 
 and Levi's cruel and treacherous vengeance ; yet 
 from this time a new atmosphere is round about 
 him: he is delivered from Esau; he reaches 
 safely his father's house ; he joins with Esau in 
 the solemn burial of Isaac. Again the mysterious 
 cave at Machpelah is opened; again united 
 brothers bear into its shadows the aged form of 
 another father. Isaac is at rest ; and Esau and 
 Jacob are at peace ; they meet and they part in 
 concord. Each of the brothers had, indeed, 
 received that to which their separate instincts 
 all along had pointed. For the spiritual blessing 
 Esau had never longed. Temporal prosperity 
 
 E 
 
5 o HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 and earthly power were the inheritance which 
 he had connected with the birthright and the 
 blessing; and these had come to him, and he 
 was content. Jacob, even in the darkness of his 
 earlier years, had longed for the spiritual gift 
 which still hung in misty outline before him; 
 and all, and more by far than all, to which that 
 desire had pointed had been vouchsafed to him ; 
 and for it he was well content to have endured 
 those searching, cleansing years of sorrow, the 
 sharp handling of which he had known. The 
 two brothers part to meet no more, but they part 
 in peace. They share between them their father's 
 goods ; the old jealousy and wrath have died out, 
 even of memory : the planter of a new tribe, the 
 nead of the future race of the Edomites, takes his 
 " wives, and his sons, and his daughters, and all 
 the souls of his house; and his cattle, and his 
 beasts, and all his substance which he had got in 
 the land of Canaan, and went into the country 
 from the face of his brother Jacob; for their 
 riches were more than that they might dwell 
 together. . . . Thus dwelt Esau in Mount Seir; 
 Esau is Edom." 
 
JACOB. 51 
 
 But the great patriarch's course was not yet 
 accomplished. Few and evil, as he afterwards, 
 on retrospect, esteemed the days of the years of 
 his pilgrimage, he had yet twenty-five of them 
 to spend. Chequered they still were with many 
 sorrows. The punishment of "the supplanter's" 
 subtlety lasted on after its guilt had been forgiven 
 to the Prince with God. He had yet to weep over 
 the jealous hatred which the offspring of Leah 
 and the handmaidens bore to Rachel's beloved 
 son ; he had yet, when the cruel deceitfulness of 
 the ten brethren, that fruit of Laban's treachery, 
 had sent him the coat of many colours, stained, 
 as he believed, with Joseph's blood, to mourn 
 sadly forth his sorrow when " he refused to be 
 comforted, and said, For I will go down into 
 the grave to my son mourning;" he had yet to 
 part with Benjamin, and say, " If I am bereaved 
 of my children, I am bereaved." 
 
 The especial character of these last years of 
 the patriarch's life is one of deep and lively 
 affectionateness. This is traceable at every 
 turn, and gives its colour to the whole scene. 
 There is an intense humanity about his cha- 
 
S 2 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 racter which wakes up in every heart a filial 
 feeling of reverential love towards the aged 
 man. We see this in the conduct of the great 
 Pharaoh towards his vizier's father. How grand 
 in its simplicity is the inspired record of this 
 remarkable meeting between the old desert chief 
 and the haughty Pharaoh ! The king's question 
 seems to point to the stamp of extreme age as 
 set already on those venerable features " How 
 many are the days of the years of thy life ? " 
 " Few and evil " the old man pronounces them 
 to have been; and then, with the eastern 
 solemnity of age, gives to the Egyptian king 
 the blessing of Jehovah. 
 
 How in point of picturesque interest have the 
 two sons of Isaac now changed their places ! 
 Esau in his youth is a far more attractive cha- 
 racter than Jacob. But who ever dwells on his 
 later years, as we fashion them forth to our- 
 selves in his strongholds on the Mount Seir, 
 the rich, successful, mighty Arab chief, as we 
 rest on those of Jacob ? It is the true, ever self- 
 repeating history of the world's banquet; the 
 best wine is that which is first, and afterwards 
 
JACOB. 53 
 
 that which is worse. The very lands of the two 
 brothers' inheritance seem to catch up and re- 
 peat the mighty truth. The red ranges of the 
 mountains of Edom shine forth gloriously under 
 the blaze of the morning sunshine ; but the calm 
 shadows of evening sleep peacefully on the 
 grassy uplands of Judah. There is a difference 
 deep as eternity between natural attractiveness 
 and the true character of redeemed humanity 
 wrought by however slow degrees in the servant 
 of God by the regenerating, renewing influences 
 of the Holy Ghost. It is best, after all, to be 
 indeed on God's side in His world. Brightly as 
 the morning of the man of the world may glow 
 with all the glorious colours of the molten light, 
 it must end in darkness. Showy and attractive 
 as are youthful frankness, joyousness, and dar- 
 ing, there is a poison which pervades and at last 
 destroys all worldly things which are not sancti- 
 fied by the presence of God ; whilst the path of 
 those who walk with God is like the shining 
 light which shineth ever more and more unto 
 the perfect day. And though we are indeed 
 taught as to Esau himself nothing more in his 
 
54 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 " finding no room for repentance " than that his 
 repentance was too late to bring back to him the 
 blessing of his father's birthright which he had 
 profanely bartered away for the mess of pot- 
 tage, we are in parable instructed that there 
 may come to every one a time when his pro- 
 bation is over; when for him too it is "too late;" 
 when the bitter cry cannot unlive the life which 
 has been spent in sin ; when the heavenly birth- 
 right has been lost, and cannot be re-won. 
 
 "Watch by our father Isaac's pastoral door 
 
 The birthright sold, the blessing lost and won, 
 Tell, Heaven has wrath that can relent no more, 
 
 The grave dark deeds that cannot be undone. 
 We barter life for pottage ; sell true bliss 
 
 For wealth or power, for pleasure or renown ; 
 Thus, Esau-like, our Father's blessing miss, 
 
 Then wash with fruitless tears our faded crown."* 
 
 As Jacob draws nearer to his end, the halo 
 round his withered brow glows with yet brighter 
 colours. The sorrows of the past are a departing 
 vision ; the bitter breaking up of his life from 
 the tent of Isaac, and the companionship of his 
 mother ; the cruel treachery of Laban ; the loss 
 
 * " Christian Year." Second Sunday after Trinity. 
 
JACOB. 55 
 
 of Rachel, the well-beloved wife; the quarrels 
 arid the scandals of his family all, one by one, 
 melt away in the distance. The one remaining 
 and ever-increasing idea of that life is the pre- 
 sence of God with it ; the vision before his going 
 down into Egypt gradually expands over and 
 covers the canvas ; other voices die away ; this 
 only he hears "I am God, the God of thy 
 father ; fear not. I will go down with thee into 
 Egypt" (Gen. xlvi. 3, 4). Seventeen years he 
 spent there in that blessed companionship ; 
 seeing Joseph's greatness and the wonderful 
 multiplication of his seed; and then "the time 
 drew nigh that Israel must die." And round 
 his dying bed the powers of the world to come 
 arrayed themselves, and there fell on him the 
 breath of clear, exalted prophecy. From the 
 shadows of his own coming end, his eye ranged 
 on along the ages until, in prophetic foresight, 
 he saw the Conqueror of death. A stranger 
 himself, tarrying for a season in the land of 
 ancient sovereignties, he speaks of his own, as 
 yet subject, race as royal, and of its rule as 
 universal : " The sceptre shall not depart from 
 
56 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, 
 until Shiloh come, and unto Him shall the 
 gathering of the people be" (Gen. xlix. 10). 
 What more, after such an utterance, could he do 
 than " gather up his feet into the bed, and yield 
 up the ghost, and be gathered unto his people \ n 
 (Gen. xlix. 33.) 
 
JOSEPH. 
 
 narrative of Joseph's life is the connect- 
 ing link in the sacred volume between the 
 story of a single life and the history of a people. 
 In his day the covenant life spread itself into 
 wider circles. In Abraham it was summed up 
 in one man ; when Isaac was born it flowed on 
 into him. In Jacob it enlarged itself into the 
 family ; in the days of Joseph it swelled out into 
 the dimensions of a tribe. Yet though he was 
 mainly instrumental in this development, he was 
 not the head of the tribe, nor was it through 
 his line that the blessing to convey which 
 to all nations Israel was constituted a separate 
 people, came to the family of man. And so it 
 is the history of the man, and not that of the 
 tribal head, which rivets us in the life of Joseph. 
 
5 8 HEROES OF HEBREW III S TOR F. 
 
 He comes before us overshadowed by the 
 great love of his father Jacob. He was the son 
 of Jacob's old age : he was the child of the 
 beloved Rachel. When his history begins Ben- 
 jamin was too young (but one year old), to bear 
 the great weight of that passionate affection. 
 Still to the old man's feelings Joseph was the 
 son of " Rachel my wife." This love for Rachel 
 threw a golden light over the old patriarch's 
 last years. Deep, enduring, absorbing, unselfish 
 love, especially for those parted from us by the 
 dark veil which separates us from the unseen 
 world, exalts humanity. And this is always 
 showing itself in Jacob. The bitter lamentation. 
 for Deborah, and the planting over her grave the 
 terebinth of tears, because she had been Rachel's 
 nurse, and was the last living link left of those 
 maiden days of youth and beauty, is a lively 
 mark of the old man's enduring love : so is the 
 description of her as " My wife, who bare me two 
 sons" (Gen. xliv. 27), as if she alone and her 
 offspring rose up to the true dignity of the 
 family life. So is the pouring out of his heart 
 on that sick bed to which Joseph brought his 
 
JOSEPH. 59 
 
 two sons for their parting blessing. Die old 
 man looks upon their young strength, and the 
 past years, fleet as their wont is before his 
 failing eyes, until the one thought, which was 
 never far distant, rises before him, and as though 
 from that sad day his life of lives was spent, he 
 sums up all in the plaintive utterance, " And as 
 for me, when I came from Padan, Rachel died 
 by me in the land of Canaan in the way, when 
 yet there was but a little way to come unto 
 Ephrath: and I buried her there in the way 
 of Ephrath ; the same is Bethlehem." It was as 
 if again the old deceit looked in on his soul in 
 those thoughts of sadness. For he had been 
 sent to bring his wife from Padan to Canaan, 
 and he came back with her to the border she was 
 not to pass ; came back to enter his father's tent 
 alone, having left Rachel at Bethlehem ; and to 
 find Rebekah laid before her at Mamre. 
 
 Of all this great love Joseph was the natural 
 inheritor, and in the wild Arab family which had 
 grown up round Jacob he was the only one whose 
 personal qualities in any way fitted him for 
 so rich a possession. The discord, the license, 
 
60 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 the sensuality, and the cruelty which so dis- 
 figured the sons of Jacob, were but a reflection 
 of what might have been seen in all the common 
 life of the world around them in still darker 
 colours. No doubt it was a great falling back 
 towards heathendom when it is compared with 
 the family life of Abraham and of Isaac. This 
 was the inevitable consequence of that great 
 curse of Jacob's life, the marriage with Leah 
 palmed on him through Laban's treachery. The 
 sons of that ill-matched union, of the rival 
 sisters and their rival handmaids, had lost from 
 before their eyes that true aspect of the life of 
 the family which had shown so fair in Isaac's 
 tent. To Joseph only was it shown in that 
 strong transferred affection which almost made 
 his dead mother stand as though still alive 
 before him. To him that old man was ever in 
 his tender love as well mother as father. This 
 of itself tended not a little to elevate and purify 
 the young heart of the motherless son. Beyond 
 this, the father's love evidently succeeded in 
 stamping upon the boy the impress of his own 
 spiritual life. The distinguishing feature of 
 
JOSEPH. 6 1 
 
 Jacob's religious character was his enduring 
 sense of God's perpetual presence with him. 
 The lesson of the heavenly ladder dwelt ever in 
 his heart. This stole early into Joseph's inmost 
 spirit with the accesses of his father's love, and 
 we shall find it reappearing at each crisis of his 
 life as the father's grace repeated in the son. 
 
 When at seventeen years old he is suffered 
 to leave that father's side, and begin his own 
 life-work of tending the flocks on the low plains 
 or wild uplands of Canaan, it is with the sons of 
 Zilpah and of Bilhah that he is sent, as being 
 the nearest to himself in age. But his moral 
 sense is already above theirs; God's presence 
 makes their youthful sins intolerable to him, and 
 he brings unto his father the report of their evil 
 doings. Such a course was of itself sufficient to 
 stir up against him the angry passions of such 
 brothers as were at this time the sons of Jacob. 
 Their father's conduct increased the evil. His 
 fondness for Joseph broke out into irritating 
 manifestations of partiality. Whilst they were 
 habited in the ordinary dress of Arab shepherds, 
 for the favourite son was provided the long- 
 
62 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 sleeved tunic, which in that eastern land be* 
 longed to superior rank ; and all Jacob's conduct 
 manifested the same peculiar and distinguishing 
 affection. 
 
 These angry feelings were exasperated by 
 Joseph repeating to them two dreams which he 
 had dreamed. In the first of these, as they 
 bound sheaves together in the field their sheaves 
 gathered round and did obeisance unto his ; in 
 the second the sun and the moon and the eleven 
 stars made obeisance to him. The first of these 
 seemed to foretell that he should be the chiefest 
 of all the family, and that all his brethren should 
 bow down to him. This moved their indignation 
 greatly ; and their wrath knew no bounds when 
 this dream was followed by the second, both 
 because, according to the notions of those days, 
 its repetition of the leading idea marked the 
 fulfilment of the first as certain, and also because 
 it added the new prediction that his father and 
 his mother would unite with his brethren in 
 doing homage to him. Even the loving heart of 
 Jacob was stirred by this, and he reproved with 
 some sharpness what seemed to him the ambi- 
 
JOSEPH. 63 
 
 tious imaginations of his favourite son. The 
 father's words seem to imply that he felt it as 
 some indignity to that memory of the dead 
 mother which as a sacred lamp within a sepul- 
 chre burned evermore in his widowed heart ; and 
 though he could not but " observe the saying,'*' 
 yet he rebuked the dreamer. The brethren saw 
 in it the fulfilment of all the fears which their 
 father's over-partiality, and especially the gift of 
 the vest of honour, had aroused in them. They 
 knew, doubtless, the story of the birthright stolen 
 through Rebekah's craft from the first-born of 
 the last generation : and that craft was still being 
 punished in the hard thoughts which now rose in 
 their minds against both their father and their 
 brother. He who had consented to violate the 
 rights of his own elder brother might easily, they 
 thought, be led to break through the same rights 
 again in another generation to gratify his partial 
 fondness for the son of his old age. So with a nett 
 and an embittered aversion " they hated Joseph 
 yet the more for his dreams and for his words." 
 
 But what sljall we say of the dreams them- 
 selves, and of Joseph's conduct with regard to 
 
64 HEROES OF HEBREW HIS TOR F. 
 
 them ? Are we to take them as direct revela- 
 tions, as one of those visions from God which 
 have, we know, ere now fallen in sleep upon his 
 servants, and ordered and guided their way ? It 
 is not said so in Holy Writ, and there is no such 
 declaration as that God appeared unto Joseph in 
 a dream. We are left, therefore, to gather from 
 the context what their character was; and we 
 cannot settle this without having some idea con- 
 cerning all dreams ; and not concerning dreams 
 only, but concerning those waking visions which 
 visit our own minds and the minds of others ; 
 which seem bred of no suggestion from the 
 immediate present, but arise in them spectre-like 
 and unbidden, the clear air fashioning itself 
 into strange forms, and the heart's silence 
 breaking into words which to the inner con- 
 sciousness seem almost articulate. 
 
 Whence come these, and what are they ? Are 
 they the mere Teachings forth of our own spirit ; 
 prophecies of the future because they are the 
 utterances of our own present capacities and 
 deepest longings; unborn acts stirring in the 
 womb of the imagination, and waiting their 
 
JOSEPH. 65 
 
 time of birth ? Or are they often more than this ? 
 Are they purposes and desires of good or of evil 
 which have been wakened up by the sweeping 
 over the waters of our soul of the breath of the 
 unseen enemy, or of the gusts bred of past 
 passions; or, on the other hand, by the sweet, 
 healing, and enlightening presence of that 
 blessed Spirit which bloweth where it listeth? 
 Who can read the secret of these hidden 
 influences ? Who can separate the voice of his 
 own inner being, as original creation framed it, 
 and as past life has moulded it, from the stirring 
 of its sleeping chords, by the sweep over them 
 of these invisible airs ? 
 
 Here, then, we may come to some clearer idea 
 of the true character of the dreams of Joseph. 
 All those mighty gifts of government which his 
 after life developed, were even now lying seed- 
 like and half fashioned within his soul. Over that 
 soul swept the Spirit of his father's God, ripening 
 for perfection, and half awakening these dormant 
 faculties; and as they were thus stirred, the 
 busy, creative imagination caught their shapes 
 and consequences, and cast them in their coming 
 
 F 
 
66 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 colours upon the receptive half-consciousness of 
 the soul in sleep. To this half-natural fore- 
 reaching of his spirit, the higher Spirit, we may 
 well believe, added for him, whose after life 
 would so greatly need such supports, a clearness 
 of perception not its own, and which, if it was 
 not directly prophetic, savoured of prophecy. 
 
 Whilst, then, we must not class the dreams of 
 Joseph with those visions of Daniel, in which 
 the strong and direct breath of the Divine 
 Spirit swept before his sleeping eyes the course 
 of dynasties and empires and ages ; nor separate 
 them altogether from the inborn prophecies 
 wherewith great minds forecast their own future ; 
 neither can we altogether deny to them the 
 character of being inspirations from the Spirit 
 of God. Only, in so accounting of them, let us 
 duly realise the truth that such a view ought 
 not, in our estimate, so much to divorce the 
 supernatural from Joseph's life as to wed it to 
 our own; that it ought to enable us better to 
 comprehend the unity which exists between the 
 patriarchal dispensation and the Christian; to 
 see how that which afterwards for a stiff-necked 
 
JOSEPH. 67 
 
 generation was fixed and almost congealed into 
 the Urim and the Thummim, floated for those 
 earlier saints, and floats for us, an ever-present, 
 impalpable, but most real Power, round about 
 our bed and our path, acting according to its 
 own spiritual laws upon our own inmost and 
 essential spirits. Have we not ourselves known 
 young hearts which seem so to have bee^ 
 visited ? The youth of after greatness not rarely 
 has upon it some mark of such a presence. The 
 lad is incomprehensible to his fellows. The 
 frivolous, the sensual, the hollow, the sons of 
 Bilhah and Zilpah, feel his very presence to be 
 the sending up of their evil report to the Great 
 Father. They would that he were like them- 
 selves. "Mad" they call him in our schools 
 and colleges ; for he lives apart from full com- 
 panionship with others. If every ,K>W and then 
 he joins with a spasmodic earnestness in their 
 games and recreations, for the most part he 
 keeps aloof from them ; is full of speculation ; 
 wanders objectless over the playground, wonder- 
 ing within himself at the life that is stirring 
 in his breast, wondering whether it so sths 
 
68 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 in others ; trying to track its laws ; dreaming of 
 its development, until the sun, the moon, and the 
 eleven stars, seem to do obeisance to him in 
 some unknown future which spreads out mist- 
 like before him. 
 
 Such then, we may apprehend the dreams of 
 Joseph to have been. His ready divulgence of 
 them agrees exactly with this view. His own 
 soul was full of them ; he craved for sympathy. 
 They prefigured he knew not exactly what. He 
 hardly realised in the vista they opened to his 
 eyes, that his elevation was, to a certain extent, 
 the subjection of the rest ; and so, with none 
 of the pettiness of vanity, and very little of the 
 chastening of prudence, he told them openly, 
 and thus aggravated his brethren's hatred, and 
 drew upon himself what was harder yet to bear 
 the blighting frost of his father's displeasure, 
 nipping the tender buds of his yet half-formed 
 anticipations. 
 
 Neither he nor his father could fathom the 
 depths of his brothers' hatred. In no portion of 
 his life had Jacob been tempted to it, and the 
 loving spirit of his old age knew nothing of such 
 
JOSEPH. 69 
 
 darkness. And so, when the brethren had been 
 some time away feeding their flocks upon the 
 as yet unappropriated plains and uplands, the 
 father fearlessly sends his darling to inquire 
 after their welfare ; and Joseph, unconscious oi 
 the deep grudge he had engendered, undertakes 
 with ready dutifulness the distant mission. He 
 goes first from Hebron to Shechem, seeking 
 them. They were not there. He learns from a 
 wayfarer, as he wanders about searching for 
 them, the direction of their track, and follows 
 them on, some twelve miles north of Samaria, 
 nigh to Dothan. He comes upon them with all 
 the freedom and affection of a brother's heart. 
 But it is only to waken up, by his very aspect, 
 from malicious lips, the evil greeting, " Behold, 
 this dreamer cometh." Then when they saw 
 him afar off, even before he came near unto 
 them, awoke the sinful consultation : " They 
 conspired against him to slay him." There 
 were, indeed, as is the wont of such companies, 
 various degrees of wickedness amongst its 
 members. There were there men in whose tents 
 the "instruments of cruelty" were ready. There 
 
7 o HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 were also the sensual softness of Reuben and 
 Judah's uncertainty of purpose, as well as the 
 ruder violence of more hardened offenders, who 
 would at once " slay him and cast him into some 
 pit, and say some evil beast hath devoured him, 
 and we shall see what will become of his 
 dreams" (Gen. xxxvii. 20). Reuben's counsel 
 to " shed no blood " succeeds, and so they seize 
 him, tear from him the hated vest of honour, 
 cast him into a dry pit, and sit down to eat 
 bread. As they make their meal, the huge 
 forms of the " ships of the desert/' the camels 
 of the merchants' caravan, rise on their sight. 
 A caravan of Ishmaelites is journeying from 
 Gilead through the plain of Dothan to join the 
 great track which passed from Canaan by Gaza 
 into Egypt. At once the uncertain mind of 
 Judah, trembling with horror at the thought of 
 the great sin of leaving Joseph to perish in the 
 pit, and yet not brave enough to propose his ab- 
 solute release, seizes on the thought of a safe 
 compromise, and proposes to sell him to the 
 merchants of Midian. In the absence of Reuben, 
 who had intended privily to release the lad, the 
 
JOSEPH. 71 
 
 sale is effected. The merchants pay for him 
 the usual price, and carry him away. When 
 Reuben, on his return, finds the pit empty and 
 his scheme frustrated, he rent his clothes and 
 cried, "The child is not, and I, whither shall I 
 go ? " Whether from the struggling of a natural 
 pity, or from fear of bringing down with utter 
 grief to the grave the grey-haired man at home, 
 whose life he knew was bound up with the lad's 
 life, he alone enters into all the horror of the 
 tragedy. He does not over-rate the agony which 
 was about to tear that loving heart. 
 
 They dip the vest of honour, with which it 
 had been the old man's delight to clothe Joseph, 
 in the blood of a kid, and with a triumph, which 
 they cannot but give vent to in their very words, 
 they send it to him with the lying message, 
 " This have we found : know now whether it be 
 thy son's coat or no/' Too well the father knew 
 it : too surely did it seem to him that he in- 
 herited afresh the sins of his youth, as he cried, 
 " An evil beast hath devoured him ! Joseph, no 
 doubt, is rent in pieces." Many days he 
 mourned, refusing to be comforted ; and groan- 
 
72 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 ing forth, " I will go down mourning into Sheol, 
 that dark land of shadows, where my son has 
 passed before me." 
 
 Whilst Hebron echoes these groans of a 
 broken heart, Joseph is carried down into 
 Egypt, and finds a ready purchaser in Potiphar, 
 the captain of the executioners of Pharaoh's 
 house. His master's name, when read in the 
 light which the study of hieroglyphics throws 
 upon it, seems to make it clear that the town of 
 On, devoted to the worship of " Ra," the sun, 
 was the spot of Joseph's servitude. Here he 
 wins at once, because " the Lord is with him," 
 the favour and trust of his master, and is em- 
 ployed in an universal oversight of his con- 
 cerns. The sculptures of old Egypt depict his 
 life : there we may see the trusted servant 
 overlooking all, entering with minute care, as a 
 patient scribe, every part of his master's property 
 in its daily administration ; recording the grain, 
 the fish, the linen, the mass of precious metal, 
 which pass through his hands. Under Joseph's 
 administration all things prospered. It was not 
 only that his great gifts of government were 
 
JOSEPH. 73 
 
 used in his master's service. Beyond this, a 
 higher power was prospering all he touched. 
 " From the time that Potiphar made him over- 
 seer in his house and over all that he had, the 
 Lord blessed the Egyptian's house for Joseph's 
 sake ; and the blessing of the Lord was upon all 
 that he had in the house and in the field " (Gen. 
 xxxix. 5). But this life of busy, honest, success- 
 ful labour was not to last. His master's wife, 
 too true to the type of old Egyptian womanhood, 
 as every ancient chronicle depicts it, first tempts 
 him to sin, and then, infuriated at his holy 
 resistance to her evil will, slakes her uttermost 
 vengeance by throwing, through a false accusa- 
 tion, not, as it seems, entirely believed, nor 
 wholly disbelieved, the too faithful slave into the 
 dungeon where the king's prisoners were bound. 
 How grand a display all this is of the power 
 of a living inward sense of God's perpetual 
 presence in ennobling the soul of man ! For 
 what condition could be more open to tempta- 
 tion than that of this Hebrew lad? How 
 natural would it have been for him, when smart- 
 ing under the keen sense of his brethren's per- 
 
74 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 fidious cruelty, and its seeming success, to have 
 cast away all belief in right and truth, and so to 
 have sunk down into the despairing slough of 
 litter godlessness and sensuality! What tempta- 
 tions, too, to such a course must have gathered 
 themselves up against him in the absolute 
 loneliness of his first Egyptian life! Home 
 associations, the voice of love, the watching eye 
 of tender care, the acting up to an already 
 established character what helps are these ! 
 and these seemed to be gone from him alto- 
 gether. How noble to be the same without 
 them, to have no lowering of the standard from 
 the loss of all outward safeguards, no sapping 
 of the foundations of moral responsibility from 
 his loss, as a stranger, a foreigner, and a slave, 
 of the elevating sense of personality, and the 
 preserving love of character ! How grand still 
 to have, like some lustrous diamond gleaming 
 inwardly on his lonely spirit, the talisman of the 
 one thought " How can I do this great wicked- 
 ness and sin against God ! " This thought was 
 strong enough so to quicken his conscience, that 
 it still connected indissolubly this broken dis- 
 
JOSEPH. 75 
 
 connected present with that old past of his 
 younger life, and whilst he moved amidst the 
 new temptations of the house of the Egyptian, 
 he still lived in thought, and love, and faith, in 
 the old tent at Hebron, and saw the fond face 
 of his aged father, and bowed with him anew 
 before the God of Israel. 
 
 This was a safeguard which outward change 
 could not touch; and in the king's dungeon, 
 therefore, Joseph still was what he had been in 
 the house of the captain of the executioners. 
 Great, indeed, at first was the trial of his faith. 
 That he escaped with his life from such an 
 accusation implies, probably, that some doubt of 
 his guilt crossed his master's mind. But it was 
 hard, to bear without discontent and murmur, 
 the dungeon and its cruelty, to have "his feet 
 hurt with fetters, and to be laid in iron " (Ps. cv. 
 1 8), as the reward of faithfulness, chastity, and 
 truth. In such a time the evil one was sure to 
 whisper, "Where is thy father's God, and His 
 remembrance of thee ? Curse thy God and die." 
 But the darker the natural gloom, the brighter 
 shone that ever-present inward memory of the 
 
76 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 God whom he had served at Hebron. He wore 
 the talisman on his heart, and he was safe. 
 Moreover, besides this talisman within the 
 shrine of his own spirit, there was with him 
 an external guardianship which nothing could 
 break through. How magnificent is the sim- 
 plicity of its announcement! "Joseph was 
 there in the prison. But the Lord was with 
 Joseph, and showed him mercy, and gave him 
 favour in the sight of the keeper of the prison. 
 .... And whatsoever they did there, he was 
 the doer of it .... because the Lord was with 
 him, and that which he did the Lord made it to 
 prosper" (Gen. xxxix. 31 33). How long he 
 remained in the prison it is impossible to say 
 with certainty. There and in the house of 
 Potiphar together he spent thirteen years, pro- 
 bably the larger share of them in the prison. 
 Thirteen years of training and perfecting ; 
 thirteen years in which the weeds of vanity 
 and self-exaltation were being killed ; in which 
 faith and hope and tenderness for other suf- 
 ferers were matured ; in which went on the slow 
 ripening of that genius and those gifts of conduct 
 
JOSEPH. 77 
 
 which were soon to be shown forth upon so high 
 a stage of earthly greatness. 
 
 And now, when " the word of the Lord " had 
 indeed "tried him" (Ps. cv. 19), his time came. 
 Two chief officers in Pharaoh's household are 
 put in ward in the prison where Joseph was 
 bound ; and Joseph is set by the captain of the 
 ward specially to attend on these great men. 
 How long the attendance had lasted we know 
 not, but it was long enough to form those kindly 
 relations which ever grew up between Joseph 
 and those round him. Accordingly, as he waits 
 upon them he notices one morning their sad- 
 dened countenances, and with kindly youthful 
 sympathy he asks as to their grief. They 
 answer that they have each dreamed a dream, 
 and they are troubled because there in the 
 dungeon they can consult no interpreter to tell 
 them the meaning of the visions. The Hebrew 
 ^aptive's answer soars at once into a higher 
 sphere " Do not interpretations belong to 
 God?" "May not He" (he suggests), "the 
 mighty Elohim, send you an answer even by my 
 lips ? Tell me the dreams." 
 
78 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 The chief of the cup-bearers tells his dream of 
 restoration to royal favour, the master of the 
 household his dream of coming doom ; and both 
 are fulfilled within three days, on the birthday 
 of the Pharaoh. Joseph's entreaty to the chief 
 officer of the cup-bearers, and the promise it had 
 won of his making mention to Pharaoh of the 
 unrighteous keeping of the Hebrew youth in the 
 dungeon, are both forgotten in the ecstatic joy of 
 the cup-bearer on his restoration to liberty and 
 power, and so two full years pass on with their 
 weary length, and Joseph, now thirty years of 
 age, and still in prison, has spent thirteen since 
 he was stolen away out of the land of the He- 
 brews. But now the days of these sorrows 
 were numbered. Pharaoh's two dreams, and 
 his sore trouble at finding no interpreter, bring 
 back to the remembrance of the chief of the 
 cup-bearers the Hebrew slave of the captain oi 
 the executioners, and his true reading of the two 
 dreams which had been told him in the prison. 
 From him Pharaoh hears of Joseph, and snatch- 
 ing eagerly at the hope so strangely offered him 
 of obtaining an interpreter, he sends for Joseph 
 
JOSEPH. 70 
 
 from the ward. With such hasty preparation as 
 was possible, the young Hebrew stands before 
 the dreaded throne of Egypt, whether, as seems 
 not impossible, the great Sesostris, or before a 
 monarch of another of the ancient dynasties of 
 Egypt, it mattered little then to him. His life 
 was in his hand; nor easier or more lightly 
 might a man cast a cup of water on the ground, 
 than might that life be thrown away by one 
 frown of the despotic king. Yet unawed and 
 untrembling the youth stands up before the 
 king, because the hidden strength was his. " I 
 have heard say of thee," begins the eager mo- 
 narch, " that thou canst understand a dream to 
 interpret it." "It is not in me," answers 
 Joseph ; " God shall give Pharaoh an answer 
 of peace. God," he boldly declared, " God hath 
 showed Pharaoh what He is about to do," and 
 he reads plainly out to him the riddle of the 
 night's visions. The seven coming years of 
 plenty and the seven following years of famine 
 are declared, and the policy of Pharaoh is 
 marked out for him with an unfaltering tongue. 
 Again the question rises, which Joseph's own 
 
8o HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 dreams suggested, whence was this insight he 
 possessed into these four visions, and to what 
 did it amount ? Again it must be said that it is 
 nowhere written of Joseph as it is of Daniel, 
 " God made Daniel to understand all visions and 
 dreams " (Dan. i. 17); and though Joseph with a 
 natural piety attributes all his power to the 
 "Elohim," and though Pharaoh so receives it, 
 and justifies to his courtiers the promotion of 
 Joseph to the highest place by the fact that the 
 Spirit of God is in him ; yet neither do Joseph's 
 words, nor does the effect on Pharaoh indicate 
 that direct revelation of Jehovah's power, which 
 in the case of Daniel bowed down the proud 
 heart of Nebuchadnezzar to the wonderful ac- 
 knowledgment, "Your God is a God of gods 
 and the Lord of lords." Narrow indeed, per- 
 haps almost imperceptible, are the barriers 
 which divide the direct illumination vouchsafed 
 by the Revealer of secrets to Daniel from the 
 more ordinary enlightenment given to the holy, 
 thoughtful son of Jacob ; and it is well to note 
 how the one passes into the other ; as bringing 
 common life more nearly into that august pre- 
 
JOSEPH. hi 
 
 sence with which the heavens are bright, and 
 so adding to it a sacredness and wonder which 
 some would look upon as withheld from or- 
 dinary men, and fenced off within the mystic 
 bounds of immediate inspiration. 
 
 Looking thus at the record of Genesis, may 
 we not see that God who gave all to Joseph 
 gave him, by means which we call natural, 
 however unusually quickened, the intuition to 
 read what would have been illegible to a 
 shallower or less observant or less enlightened 
 mind? His natural gifts had enabled him to 
 gather first from his communion with the state 
 prisoners whom he tended the probable restora- 
 tion of the one, the probable execution of the 
 other ; to know that the birthday festival would 
 almost necessarily bring to its final issue the 
 fortune of each of these great court officials, 
 and so, when the dream of each presented to 
 his eye in airy imagery the shadow of the 
 coming crisis, the heavenly light fell upon its 
 folds, and he was enabled to read it out with 
 an unfaltering clearness. Pharaoh's dreams 
 themselves, though they rise higher out of the 
 
 G 
 
82 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 region of simple naturalness in their conception, 
 possessed the same natural tendency to self- 
 explanation when scanned by one who ever- 
 more associated his thought of God with the 
 events and destinies of national life, who had 
 learned to understand the great truth that the 
 God of Abraham was the Lord of all, ruling 
 as much over the court of Egypt as in the tent 
 of Hebron. Every field would set before him 
 the thin ears or the fruitful : every reedy pas- 
 ture by the river bank, that natural image of the 
 whole power of Egypt, the lean kine or the fat, 
 and the cherished secret of God's holy sove- 
 reignty might link for him the coming event 
 with the prefiguring image. As the counsel 
 founded on the interpretation, so the interpreta- 
 tion itself, was full of natural insight, though 
 quickened doubtless by the powers of a higher 
 light. Joseph's life was full of God, and so the 
 light of God poured into it ; the sinner's life is 
 the shutting out of God, and so his under- 
 standing becomes darkened. 
 
 With this special gift of insight the long trial 
 of the faithful man passed away, and now 
 
JOSEPH. gj 
 
 dawned the day for which he had so long been 
 trained. The Hebrew slave, yesterday a pri- 
 soner in the dungeon, by a change of fortune 
 familiar to Orientals, is to-day Grand Vizier of 
 Egypt, and next only to Pharaoh, its supreme 
 autocrat. In true Eastern fashion, Pharaoh 
 took off his ring (the mystic signet) from his 
 hand, and put it upon Joseph's hand, and 
 arrayed him in vestures of fine linen, and put 
 a gold chain about his neck, and they cried 
 before him, "Bow the knee." Further, he 
 united him, by a marriage with the daughter 
 of the prince-priest of On, to the aristocracy of 
 Egypt. In the name which Joseph gave to her, 
 and in the names of the two sons she bore to 
 him, Joseph testified his resolution, even in that 
 far land, to bind up his family life with the race 
 of Abraham, whilst they speak of his grateful 
 sense of God's care of him in teaching him to 
 forget his sorrows, and in making him fruitful 
 in the land of his captivity. 
 
 And now all his gifts of government are 
 drawn forth into action. He goes during the 
 years of plenty through the land, and stores up 
 
84 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 with careful industry the fruits of the earth 
 whilst it brought forth by handfuls. Then came 
 the years of dearth. Egypt has always been 
 liable to famine. A time of drought at once 
 produced it; and as she was the storehouse of 
 the neighbouring peoples when the same cause 
 exhausted their supplies, they turned to her 
 for help. So it was now. And Joseph, with a 
 wise liberality, opened his stores for them, as 
 well as for Egypt. He would enrich with 
 foreign trade the land which had adopted him, 
 whilst at home he used the opportunity to 
 change and equalise retaining only the ex- 
 emptions of the priestly class the taxation of 
 Egypt. 
 
 But wider consequences were to follow from 
 these years of famine. By Him who in His 
 mysterious sovereignty brings His counsels to 
 pass through the natural acting of secondary 
 causes, they were meant to bring down Jacob 
 and his family to Egypt, and so prevent that 
 mixture of the chosen family with the Canaan- 
 itish blood, which would have been inevitable 
 if for these early centuries they had remained 
 
JOSEPH. 85 
 
 within the land of promise. Already Judah had 
 mingled the holy seed with the evil race; and 
 had they not been walled in within the land of 
 Goshen, the separation of the race from whom 
 Messiah was to spring would have been impos- 
 sible. Fulfilling therefore, without knowing it, 
 the counsels of the Highest, the sons of Jacob 
 came down to purchase corn in Egypt. They 
 present themselves before their brother, but they 
 know him not. More than twenty years had 
 stamped their deep impress of sorrow and of joy 
 on the face once in its youthful beauty so familiar 
 to them. In dress, in language, and in manners 
 he was now an Egyptian. The dreams of his 
 youth in the land of Canaan are fulfilled as they 
 bow before him. He witnesses the late awaking 
 of their long-slumbering consciences, he hears 
 their mutual upbraidings ; yet still, even to him- 
 self, the old imposture is repeated. They tell 
 him, with ambiguous utterance, that "one is 
 not," and yet more plainly still u his brother is 
 dead." The long pent-up affections of his soul 
 are ever ready to break forth as he probes that 
 he may heal their hearts, At length the victory 
 
86 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 is won. Benjamin is with them, and is guarded 
 by them with all the jealous tenderness of a 
 father's care. Then at last he makes himself 
 known to them, and sends for the old man from 
 Canaan, that he may himself be the stay of those 
 last years, which, after their long sadness, blos- 
 somed out again now that the company of 
 Rachel's son seemed to bring her presence 
 back. 
 
 What that summons was to Jacob no words 
 can tell save those which broke forth from that 
 long-suffering heart : " It is enough ; Joseph my 
 son is yet alive ; I will go and see him before I 
 die" (Gen. xlv. 28). Then followed the cheering 
 vision at Beer-sheba, the " Fear not to go down 
 into Egypt. ... I will go down with thee ; and 
 I will also surely bring thee up again; and 
 Joseph shall put his hand upon thine eyes." 
 Safe in that companionship, the old man 
 travelled down to Egypt, and when he came to 
 Goshen the chariot of the Grand Vizier met the 
 cavalcade. If there had been in Joseph's early 
 aspirations something too much of a sense of 
 personal greatness, it was gone now ; there was 
 
JOSEPH. 87 
 
 no boast on his side, no rebuking on his father's. 
 " He presented himself unto him ; and he fell on 
 his neck, and wept on his neck a good while. 
 And Israel said unto Joseph, Now let me die, 
 since I have seen thy face, because thou art 
 yet alive " (Gen. xlvi. 29, 30). Seventeen years 
 longer that life lasted, and Joseph's figure is seen 
 yet again amidst its last shadows upholding and 
 blessed by the departing patriarch. Then he 
 leads the great company, the chariots and horse- 
 men, the servants of Pharaoh, and the elders of 
 the land of Egypt, who go up with him and with 
 his brethren to bury his father, according to his 
 oath, in the cave of the field of Machpelah, 
 "which Abraham bought with the field, for a 
 possession of a burying-place, of Ephron the 
 Hittite before Mamre." 
 
 One more most significant outcoming of the 
 spirit of Joseph yet remains. When the family 
 of Israel had returned to Egypt, to live under 
 the shadow of Joseph, his brethren, whose 
 narrow hearts could not measure the greatness 
 of his love, feared for themselves that the day of 
 long-delayed vengeance might at last be come. 
 
88 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 "Joseph will hate us," groaned their evil mis- 
 giving hearts, " and will certainly requite us all 
 the evil which we did unto him." So they 
 feigned a dying message of their departed father, 
 praying Joseph to forgive them. The distrust 
 grieved him to the heart, and he wept when they 
 spake unto him. Had he not of old bid them 
 " not to be angry with themselves that they had 
 sold him hither, for God did send me to preserve 
 life ; " and had he ceased to see in all that had 
 happened to him the hand of God ? " Fear not/' 
 he said, with a sobbing voice, " fear not : for am 
 
 I in the place of God ? Ye thought evil 
 
 against me ; but God meant it unto good. . . . 
 Fear not : I will nourish you, and your little 
 ones. And he comforted them, and spake kindly 
 unto them " (Gen. 1. 21). 
 
 With such deeds of love his history ends. 
 And so he too passes out of sight, living until 
 he was an hundred and ten years old, seeing 
 Ephraim's children of the third generation, and 
 taking an oath of the children of Israel, " God 
 will surely visit you, and ye shall carry my bones 
 from hence." So he died strong in the hope of 
 
JOSEPH. 89 
 
 Israel ; bound to it by the ever-during bond of 
 faith ; to rise with it at the trumpet's sound from 
 the field of Mamre, though, after the manner of 
 the heathen, "they embalmed him, and he was 
 put in a coffin in Egypt " (Gen. 1. 26). His death 
 was like his life hidden with God ; Egyptian in 
 appearance, Hebrew indeed; accomplished in 
 the town of On, amidst pagan dedications to the 
 sun, but tending to the burying-place of Abra- 
 ham and the resurrection of the heir of all things. 
 Such was Joseph : the link between the wander- 
 ing patriarch and the lawgiver of nations ; 
 touching on the one side the Bedouin fathers ot 
 his race, and on the other the kings and mighty 
 princes of the house of Ephraim. He was one 
 who was, like all great men, far in advance of his 
 age ; as a ruler of men ; as a financier ; as com- 
 bining together an unswerving loyalty to Jehovah 
 with a righteous forbearance towards the de- 
 based forms of worship which he found and 
 could not alter in the land which had adopted 
 him ; in being capable of being at once an 
 Egyptian patriot and a Hebrew hero. In all 
 these relations he was long before his age. The 
 
90 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 old patriarchal character broadens out into the 
 politician and the governor of man. Of no 
 other character preserved in all the ancient 
 sacred record is so much told and nothing to his 
 blame. As we dwell upon his life, it is a Chris- 
 tian character which opens on us. Its breadth, 
 its purity, its justice, its forgiveness of injury, its 
 recognising Abraham's God as the father of all 
 this from first to last is eminently Christian, 
 whilst all is based upon the ever-present sense of 
 God's nearness to him. The motto of the whole 
 life may be found in his simple description of 
 himself" For I fear God ! " 
 
 Once more : his life and his character are en- 
 chased with the deep lines of typical prophecy. 
 As the true brother condemned and cast out by 
 his own, and saving them through the sacrifice 
 of himself; and then as lifted up from the 
 dungeon to the throne ; the son of Israel pro- 
 phesied in act and in character of the great Hope 
 of Israel. As the captive, oppressed, persecuted, 
 and cast into the dungeon, as revealing in it the 
 will of God, as subduing from it the hearts of 
 men, a^ inheriting the riches, the learning, and 
 
JOSEPH. )i 
 
 the power of the Egyptians, as ruling by the in- 
 dwelling Spirit of the Lord, where he had served 
 in the prison as a slave, there are marked upon 
 this history the chiefest lineaments of the Church 
 of Christ, rising from her uttermost persecutions, 
 interpreting the will of God, inheriting the 
 riches of the Gentiles, lifted up from the dunghill 
 to be set amongst the princes, yea, amongst the 
 highest princes of the people. Joseph in the pit 
 and in the prison is the Church in the wilder- 
 ness ; Joseph reigning over Egypt the Church 
 triumphant. For known unto God are all his 
 ways from the beginning of the world. 
 
MOSES. 
 
 " T T shall come to pass that at evening time it 
 shall be light " (Zech. xiv. 7). The working 
 of God in Time is evermore, from generation 
 to generation, the fulfilment of this promise. It 
 is when the hour is darkest, when sorrow is 
 heaviest, when hope is dying, when the clouds 
 are thickest, and the hollow moaning of the 
 voice of despair is beginning to awake upon the 
 dull night breeze it is then that He interferes 
 to whom Time is not, save as the setting wherein 
 He has been pleased to place His work. 
 
 So it was, eminently, when Moses was born 
 to be the deliverer of the children of Israel. The 
 darkness of the clouds which veiled their sky 
 hardly could gather into a deeper blackness 
 
MOSES. 93 
 
 They had long lost the peaceful security of the 
 land of Goshen. There they had multiplied 
 with the unusual increase God had promised to 
 their great forefathers, until they became a 
 terror to the jealous people among whom they 
 tarried. The fame of the great Vizier of their 
 race, before whom Egypt had bowed, had passed 
 away. The internal troubles of the land, the 
 changes of dynasties, and the vicissitudes of 
 events had almost swept away his memory, and 
 long ago another king had arisen who knew not 
 Joseph. What if these Syrian herdsmen were 
 to join with some Arab tribe and subjugate the 
 whole land ? This was the ruling terror, and it 
 must be guarded against with all the subtlety 
 of Egyptian policy. One of these guards was 
 found in depressing them to the rank of slaves ; 
 in breaking up their sense of independence and 
 nationality, and thus bowing the neck betimes. 
 Another resource was to reduce their numbers 
 by the slaughter of their male children. Both 
 were practised. To the eye of sense the old 
 promise seemed dying out. The fertility of 
 which it spoke had brought their doom upon 
 
94 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 them, whilst a slavish heart was rapidly being 
 bred within their bosoms. The leeks and the 
 cucumbers, the flesh-pots and the abundance of 
 their store for these they were growing to long; 
 and their softened, debased spirits bowed to the 
 oppressor's rod, and did, with an abject obedi- 
 ence which their rugged ancestors would have 
 spurned, the foreign tyrant's bidding. 
 
 There is no harder task for any man than to 
 rouse up again into life such an expiring 
 national spirit. Woe to him who attempts it, 
 and wavers or fails in his endeavour the 
 oppressor's utter hatred, and a timid and 
 treacherous abandonment by those whom he has 
 stirred only to bring on them a heavier servitude, 
 is his inevitable end. 
 
 This was to be the work of the son of Amram ; 
 for this he was born of the family of Levi ; for 
 this God's electing purpose had from eternity 
 designated him; for this, in time, God's provi- 
 dence wrought in secret ways to fit, furnish, and 
 perfect His servant. He to whom all things are 
 open, saw that the time was come in which His 
 promise to Abraham should begin to stir towards 
 
MOSES. 95 
 
 its fulfilment. He knew that the character oi 
 the reigning Pharaoh was that which, by the 
 mingling of obstinacy and fear, was tempered to 
 be the passive instrument of His high designs, and 
 so provided in Moses the fit agent of His will. 
 As under Joseph the family had grown into a 
 tribe, so under Moses the tribe was to be raised 
 into a republic. The formation of such a cha- 
 racter as was needful for the fulfilment of the 
 leader's after-work required a long and most 
 varied fashioning we may read it in the lines 
 of the prophet's life. 
 
 Saved from the destruction of the male 
 children of his tribe by an incident familiar to 
 Egyptian life, and a caprice characteristic of an 
 Eastern woman, Moses is brought up as the son 
 of Pharaoh's daughter. For forty years this was 
 his life. In the simple record of his own narra- 
 tive it is compressed into fifteen verses of the 
 second chapter of Exodus. In the great argu- 
 ment of St. Stephen (Acts vii. 20 29) his brief 
 history swells out into striking facts as to which 
 his humility kept him silent. Thus we read, 
 besides the simple and exquisitely pathetic 
 
96 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 record of Exodus, speaking across the chasm of 
 three thousand years in whispered words to 
 which every mother's heart still responds, " She 
 saw the child, and the babe wept, and she had 
 compassion on him/' that he was " exceeding- 
 fair ; " thus we read, too, that " he was learned 
 in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was 
 mighty in words and deeds." 
 
 If we turn from this brief narrative of Holy 
 Writ to what Jewish, Moslem, Heathen, and 
 even Christian legends have recorded of these 
 forty years, the story, keeping the same general 
 outline of fact, expands again marvellously on 
 every side ; tradition, according to its wont, 
 playing halo-like in many-coloured hues around 
 the single point of truth. Thus we are told that 
 on the night of his birth all the idols in Egypt 
 were cast down (Weil, "Bible, Koran, and 
 Talmud," p. 96), and that this portent roused 
 the Egyptian priests to seek to destroy the new- 
 born deliverer, of whose advent and mighty 
 deeds they had been already warned by pro- 
 phetic intimation. "One of the slaves of the 
 daughters of Israel," so ran the warning, " will 
 
MOSES. 0} 
 
 bear a son, who shall hurl thee and thy people 
 unto the lowest abyss " (Weil, 92). Thus again, 
 to the Scripture record of the beauty of his 
 infant countenance, described both in the Acts 
 and in the Epistle to the Hebrews by a word 
 applied to none beside himself in the New 
 Testament, Josephus adds that it was such that 
 those who met him on the road were forced to 
 turn again, leaving their business behind them, 
 that they might gaze upon him, whilst yet 
 beyond this is added the account that the 
 Pharaoh's daughter who looked at him in the 
 ark was cured at once of the plague of leprosy 
 from which she had long suffered, and the single 
 cure is expanded into that of three of the king's 
 daughters. Then when he is rescued, he refuses 
 the milk of the Egyptian nurse his foster-mother 
 had provided. For " shall the lips which are to 
 peak with the Shekinah touch that which is 
 unclean?" (Weil, 101.) 
 
 Who, in Egyptian history, the Pharaoh's 
 daughter was it is not easy to decide, though 
 an ingenious threading together of hieroglyphs 
 and history leads Mr. Osburn to believe that 
 
 II 
 
9 8 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTQRT. 
 
 she may be identified with Thouris, daughter of 
 Sesostris, King of Upper Egypt, married by 
 her father, from ambitious motives, to Siphtha, 
 the infant king of Lower Egypt, in whose name 
 she administered the kingdom. Her going 
 down to the sacred river was to fulfil certain 
 sacred rites which her position required at her 
 hands ; her ready adoption of the beautiful 
 Hebrew infant a natural result of the childless- 
 ness of her enforced wedlock. Thus the " being 
 called the son of Pharaoh's daughter " involved 
 for Moses more than a mere introduction into 
 the royal palace of old Egypt. It was the 
 design of the foster-mother to breed him up as 
 her successor in her royal dignity 
 
 Wilder legends yet paint the Egyptian life 
 and exploits of the future lawgiver. His youth, 
 spent in the midst of dangers from the caprice 
 and jealousy of Pharaoh, grows up into a man- 
 hood of early power, and even glory. Not only 
 is he learned in all the lore of the then centre of 
 the whole world's civilisation, but he becomes at 
 Heliopolis, Oarsiph, the priest of On, and 
 leads successful armies into Ethiopia. 
 
MOSES. 90 
 
 This reach of his life terminates, in sacred 
 history and legendary lore, at about the age of 
 forty years, and with events generally alike, at 
 least in outline. 
 
 He was great, learned, and powerful. There 
 lay before him a future of unlimited earthly 
 splendour. He had the burning aspirations 
 which belong to genius. What would be his 
 course ? All the purposes of God for the family 
 of Abraham, all the mighty promises for man 
 which hung on that election, seemed to tremble 
 on the issue of his choice. If he yielded to the 
 temptations of a worldly ambition and chose 
 the throne of the Pharaohs, Israel would be- 
 come, as other tribes already had become, 
 incorporated with Egypt, the separation of the 
 family of God lost, and the evil world triumph- 
 ant. But so it was not to be. Already, as a 
 typical fulfilment of a yet greater calling, it was 
 to be accomplished in Moses, "Out of Egypt 
 have I called my son." The Spirit of God 
 brooded on the heaving waters of his yet unen- 
 lightened heart. His natural ambition took, 
 under that mysterious moving, a higher tone. 
 
ioo HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 Faith in his fathers' God began to struggle 
 within him for the mastery. Was he, a son of 
 Abraham, the friend of the personal God, to 
 sink down into the defiling superstition of 
 Egyptian idolatry ? Was he to forget the holy 
 seed, and mingle himself altogether with the 
 family of Mizraim ? Was the bond that held 
 him to his princely foster-mother as strong as 
 that which bound him to the seed of Israel ? So 
 the Spirit of the Lord whispered to his inward 
 ear, and he hearkened to it. " He went out 
 unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens." 
 The old hieroglyphics help us to realise the scene. 
 In them we see fixed in yet remaining figures, 
 the hard and bitter labours of the enslaved sons 
 of Jacob toiling in the brick-field beneath their 
 Egyptian overlookers, who are armed with rods 
 of chastisement, and are exacting without pity 
 the exertions which were designed quite as much 
 to bow the spirit and even reduce the numbers 
 of the serfs as to add to the riches of their 
 masters. 
 
 It was a great and noble choice that he was 
 led to make when he " refused to be called the 
 
MOSES. 10 1 
 
 son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to 
 suffer affliction with the people of God than to 
 enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season." 
 
 Herein, doubtless, that divine germ of faith, 
 which was struggling for its birth within his 
 great but as yet unpurged heart, was reaching 
 forth far beyond his own consciousness. Al- 
 ready as it was read by the All-discerning Eye 
 to which all things future are ever present, he 
 was, like another great spirit after him, "count- 
 ing all things but loss that he might win 
 Christ ; " for " he esteemed the reproach of 
 Christ greater riches than the treasures in 
 Egypt ; for he had respect unto the recom- 
 pense of the reward." No treasure cities, with 
 all the countless stores which the magnificence 
 of old kings had heaped up in them, could com- 
 pare, in a soul once touched by God, with the 
 possession of Him as its portion, to whom 
 already, in all its darkness, its every aspiration 
 pointed. Yet in that heart, chaotic strivings 
 still wrought together with an undirected 
 violence. There had been formed within it 
 great volumes of power: he was thoroughly 
 
io2 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 conscious of their presence ; and as he mused 
 upon the debased condition of his people, he felt 
 himself impelled to be their deliverer. The 
 breath of the divine impulse which fell upon him, 
 mingled with, and for the time seemed lost in, 
 the storm of a mere earthly ambition. Uncalled, 
 uncommissioned, unstrengthened, he yields him- 
 self unconsciously indeed to the divine leading, 
 but consciously only to the impulses of his own 
 great heart. The favoured son of the servile race 
 goes out from his palace ease and mingles himself 
 with the sorrows of the oppressed. He has but a 
 doubtful welcome. Slavery is an utterly debas- 
 ing element in human life debasing both to 
 the master and to the slave. Fear, suspicion, 
 jealousy, meanness these are bred, as evil 
 creatures breed in filth and darkness, in the 
 slave's heart. They dare not, they will not 
 understand their champion ; and when he res- 
 cues even by violence a suffering brother from 
 the tyranny of the Copt, and in doing the act 
 of liberation with the inherited vehemence 
 of a son of Levi, slays the Egyptian, he only 
 awakes against himself the murmurs of his 
 
MOSES. 103 
 
 tribe, and is driven by their narrow-hearted 
 and obstinate rejection of their prince to fly 
 from Egypt. 
 
 That flight from Egypt had in it the elements 
 of faith. For it was "by faith he forsook 
 Egypt ; not fearing the wrath of the king, for 
 he endured as seeing Him who is invisible " 
 (Heb. xi. 27). "By faith," beginning to teach 
 him that not by his high place in Egypt, that 
 not by his learning, that not by his power or 
 might or resolution, but that by God's arm, in 
 God's way, at God's time, the deliverance he 
 longed to work, but had so failed in working, 
 should be accomplished. He left the mighty 
 unfulfilled design, which with too great human 
 heat he had sought to accomplish, in the hand 
 of God, and at the leading of His providence 
 abandoned all his high designs to bury himself 
 afar from all the stir of Egypt's life in the life 
 of a wanderer and an exile. He seeks a shelter 
 in the land of Midian amongst the Abrahamic 
 tribes sprung from Keturah, and instead of the 
 busy life of a courtier, a politician, and a tribune 
 of the people, he associates himself to the 
 
104 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 pastoral pursuits of the dwellers on those Sinai- 
 tic ranges, which would support no larger 
 animals than the flocks of their innumerable 
 sheep. The natural sinking of that bounding 
 spirit must have been profound. Hopes sud- 
 denly dashed ; high desires burnt out and 
 choked in the deadness of their own ashes ; the 
 sadness of separation from his brethren ; the 
 aimless uselessness of what he had dreamed of 
 making a more than imperial life all lay heavy 
 on him. The name of his first-born son still 
 mourns on our ear, charged with the record of 
 this utter sorrow. "Zipporah bare him a son, 
 and he called his name Gershom (Banishment^ 
 for he said, I have been a stranger in a strange 
 land" (Exod. ii. 22). 
 
 Yet it was not all sorrow. It was a sharp 
 discipline through which he was passing, but it 
 was the discipline of God. We may even read 
 its progress in the name he gives to his second 
 son. There is a certain tinge of bitterness in 
 the "Banishment" which breathes through the 
 name of Gershom ; but in Eliezer, the second, 
 "My God is an help/' we may measure some- 
 
MOSES. 105 
 
 thing of what he had learned whom God was 
 training. That fiery Levite spirit was being 
 tluly attempered ; that longing to use for the 
 redressing of wrong the arm of flesh was being 
 curbed ; that lofty estimate of what his natural 
 powers, his high attainments, and his pride of 
 place might enable him to accomplish, was 
 being brought down to the far stronger basis of 
 a self-distrusting humility. What a training it 
 was : with the half-stranger wife, unable even 
 to the end to enter with wife-like sympathy into 
 his deepest life and greatest hopes ; following 
 the almost self-guided steps of the flocks of 
 Jethro; mounting with them as the summer 
 heat increased from the lower valleys high up 
 into the roots of the great peaks of that stony 
 range ; listening to the unceasing voice of the 
 crumbling rocks as in that silent air their roar- 
 ing fall echoed through the stillness of the day ; 
 communing with his own heart and with his 
 God; hardly daring to look back at the past, 
 and having before him no revealed future ; his 
 life suddenly shut in by bars as close as those 
 with which the ribs of the mountain closed the 
 
io6 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 ever-narrowing valley ! Had it been his own 
 rash, impetuous zeal which had led to such an 
 issue? Might he not have stirred to fiercer 
 heat the Coptic jealousy and hatred towards 
 Israel ? Might he not by this uncommanded act 
 of violence have put back their deliverance, and 
 checked the present development of the merci- 
 ful purposes of God for them ? Dark thoughts 
 like these, heavy-faced and threatening in their 
 presages, would close in upon him in the waste 
 places of the wilderness, and threaten to bow 
 down utterly his spirit. What a discipline it 
 all was ; what a preparation ; what a strength- 
 ening of the will; what a beating down of self; 
 what a realisation of God ! How in after years, 
 when again he trod the same paths, but with the 
 thousands of Israel to guide instead of the few 
 sheep in the wilderness, must he have looked 
 back on those days ! How would every familiar 
 mountain scene, with its marvellous power of 
 imbibing and returning to us the long-past life, 
 remind him of those years of meditation, prayer, 
 and silence, and again and again amidst the 
 murmuring of the stiff-necked people how imist 
 
MOSES. 107 
 
 it have animated his fainting heart for new acts 
 of faith, patience, and daring ! 
 
 In the midst of this life which had spread its 
 level, unvarying outline over forty years, the call 
 of God suddenly aroused him. For four hundred 
 years that voice had not, it seems, been heard 
 within the chosen family. Since the death-bed 
 of Jacob, prophecy had been dumb. The family 
 of promise grew, multiplied, abounded, but no 
 voice from God visited them, no breath of 
 heavenly inspiration stirred the sleeping chords 
 of their tribal being. In the wilderness of 
 Midian, at the foot of that great mountain of 
 Horeb which was to be hereafter " the mount of 
 God," the old dry river-courses filled again with 
 the heavenly stream; the old voice which had 
 called Abraham, and directed Isaac and com- 
 forted Jacob amidst his many troubles, woke up 
 to give his great commission to Moses. The 
 strange sight of the thorn-tree of the desert, 
 instinct with fire and unconsumed, at once in- 
 vited the curious investigation of the man to 
 whom Egyptian science had opened all the then 
 known secrets of nature. "I will now turn 
 
io8 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is 
 not burnt " (Exod. iii. 3). But as he draws near 
 to gaze, a greater wonder than any which nature 
 could display arrests his inmost spirit. Whether 
 it was then given him to read the riddle of the 
 sign we know not. Whether it was still to him 
 but a burning bush, or whether in the dwarf 
 thorn amidst the forest trees he read the form 
 of suffering Israel, penetrated everywhere by the 
 living fire of their fathers' God, purifying but 
 not consuming the race He was searching with 
 His judgments and upholding in His love 
 whether then or afterwards his eye read that 
 parable of providence, we know not ; but from 
 that bush we know that the voice spake to him, 
 called him by name; bid him put aside in 
 humble adoration the shoes from off his feet, 
 and filled him with such a sense of holy awe 
 that he sank astonished at the manifested pre- 
 sence of the God with whom these forty years 
 he had been walking. He whose educated gaze 
 had known no fear in looking at the strange 
 natural phenomenon of the burning, uncon- 
 thorn, trembled to the centre of his being 
 
MOSES. 103 
 
 at this revelation of the nearness to him of God ; 
 and " he hid his face, for he was afraid to look 
 upon God " (Exod. iii. 6j. 
 
 Then to that awe-struck spirit was given the 
 commission which with mere earthly heat he 
 had reached out his hand to seize some forty 
 years before. Now the sufferings of Israel were 
 accomplished. God had heard their groaning, 
 and looked upon them, and had respect unto 
 them (Exod. ii. 24, 25). What words of wonder 
 embodying, what stores of consolation for all 
 after-generations of suffering humanity, until 
 the last task-master is cast out, until the last son 
 of Abraham is made free of all his inheritance, 
 until Egypt has given up to Canaan the last 
 weeping exile, are those of the deliverer's 
 commission ! " I have surely seen the affliction 
 of my people I have heard their cry, I know 
 their sorrows" (Exod. iii. 7). This was the 
 utterance of his fathers' God to him who long 
 ago had dreamed of delivering his brethren. 
 And now the dream was to be fulfilled. For 
 now had come the moment for which the mani- 
 fold discipline of a life prolonged to eighty years 
 
no HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 had all along been preparing him. He was 
 passing through that great crisis which every 
 life that yields itself consciously to God must in 
 some mode or other experience. With him it 
 was gathered up unto an awful suddenness of 
 act and sharpness of feature. Doubtless he had 
 known from a tradition, which four hundred 
 years could not destroy, the being and the name 
 of the God of Abraham. Doubtless, through his 
 wandering in Midian, his spirit had been learn- 
 ing the secret of communing with its unseen 
 Lord. But all this had been as the twilight to 
 the sunrise. He had heard of his God by the 
 hearing of the ear, but now his eye saw Him 
 the "I Am/' The "I Am," the everlasting, 
 self-existent, Almighty God, stood beside him; 
 called him by his name ; stood beside him a 
 person by a person; manifested Himself by 
 words of wonder, by signs of power, by revealed 
 purposes of love. Moses passed through that 
 awful crisis, and he was another man. The sage 
 learned in all Egyptian lore; the great soul 
 mighty in word and deed ; the deep philosophic 
 intellect furnished with all transmitted wisdom, 
 
MOSES. m 
 
 trained in all school subtleties, practised by 
 the often-handling of great affairs, ripened 
 into mellowness by solitude, nature, and self- 
 converse these remained ; but on them all had 
 passed a mighty change. Just as there settles 
 down upon the mountain's brow the wreath of 
 the morning mist, investing every peak and 
 pinnacle and crag with the glow and the glory 
 of the molten sunlight which has drenched its 
 folds, so on them had settled down the glory 
 of the Lord, transmuting the earthly into the 
 heavenly, raising the intellectual into the spi- 
 ritual, making the man of power into the man 
 of God, the noble philosophic patriot into the 
 prophet of the Lord. His soul's eye had, 
 indeed, seen the King, the Lord of Hosts. He 
 receives at once his commission : and how 
 different now from what it once had been is the 
 voice of that trained heart! Instead of "sup- 
 posing," uncommissioned, that "his- brethren 
 ;vould have understood how that God, by his 
 hand, would deliver them " (Acts vii. 25) ; now, 
 even with the direct commission which inter- 
 preted to him and authorised all the long"- 
 
1 12 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 cherished aspirations of his soul; with the 
 "Come now, therefore, and I will send thee 
 unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my 
 people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt" 
 (Exod. iii. 10) he shrinks back with a humbled 
 sense of his own unfitness for being God's 
 instrument. " Who am I, that I should go unto 
 Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the 
 children of Israel out of Egypt?" The long 
 training had done its work. The heated iron of 
 his natural impetuosity had been hardened in 
 those cold waters of his banishment, and the 
 tempered steel was fitted for the mighty emprise 
 for which God would wield it. The path by 
 which he is led is wonderful even to himself. 
 The name of God has been revealed to him : the 
 promise of God's presence has been made sure ; 
 his bashful self-distrust turns into a growing 
 confidence in his God ; and at last, as one who 
 trembles at the venture, and yet fears still more 
 to disobey, he accepts the high commission., 
 and prepares to be and do and suffer whatso- 
 ever the Heavenly Wisdom shall have ordered 
 for him. 
 
MOSES. ii) 
 
 One other merciful assistance is granted to 
 him before he is called on to endure the last 
 appalling trial of his courage his standing 
 before Pharaoh. Having left his wife, with her 
 children, at his Midianitish home, he sets out 
 from Jethro's house, as forty years before he had 
 come to it, a solitary man. But at the roots of 
 Horeb he meets his elder brother Aaron, the 
 future partner of his mighty cares. What a 
 meeting it was ! The great prophet lawgiver 
 and the great high-priest of the future with 
 that gap of forty years in their lives to bridge 
 over with long histories of the past, with the 
 loving greetings of the present, with so much to 
 tell and so much to hear, with such recitals of 
 the wonders God had wrought already, such 
 hopes from His great promises, such fears from 
 the threatening aspect of the darkened sky, with 
 its canopy of cloud, and all that it might 
 contain for them in the unknown future. So 
 they travel into Egypt, lonely wayfarers, with 
 high resolves, with Egypt's and Israel's and the 
 world's future waiting on their course. 
 
 How simple is all truest greatness ! Here is 
 1 
 
1 1 4 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 the whole record of that pregnant march: 
 " Moses returned into the land of Egypt, and 
 he took the rod of God in his hand " (Exod. iv. 
 20). "The rod of God" what mysteries that 
 name summed up! How did the presence of 
 that rod mingle itself with all the chiefest 
 wonders of the next forty years ; with Pharaoh's 
 chastisement and death, with Egypt's plagues, 
 with Israel's passage through the Red Sea, with 
 the overthrow of Amalek, with the feeding of the 
 multitude throughout the desert march, with the 
 water-springs which the rock of mystery should 
 yield, with the prophet's greatness and his fall, 
 with Israel's entrance into Canaan and the great 
 leader's exclusion from it! Surely here are 
 mysteries connected with that rod greater than 
 all which legend has babbled, though it has 
 well-nigh wearied itself in its stories of that 
 sign and instrument of power ; tracing it up to 
 man's unfallen state in Paradise; recording its 
 creation on the sixth day, its gift by God to 
 Adam; bringing it with Adam through the 
 gates of Eden as he passed a weeping exile 
 under the flaming sword: and then carrying 
 
MOSES. US 
 
 down the mystic gift through Enoch, Shem, 
 Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph, to the house of 
 Pharaoh; and thence carrying it with Jethro, 
 then one of the king's chief magicians, to the 
 wilderness of Midian, and so at last into the 
 hand of Moses. 
 
 Thus he enters Egypt. The first work there is 
 for the brothers to call together the heads of the 
 family of Israel, and announce from God their 
 coming deliverance. The suffering people hear 
 with thankfulness that their God has remembered 
 them, and " believe ; and when they heard that 
 the Lord had visited the children of Israel, and 
 that He had looked upon their affliction, then 
 they bowed their heads and worshipped" (Exod. 
 iv. 31). 
 
 The next message of the prophet-messengers 
 is to Pharaoh himself. Without reserve or fear 
 they speak their summons, "Thus saith the 
 Lord God of Israel, Let my people go." The 
 king's reply is the natural answer of an irritated 
 self-will to such a summons. " Who is the Lord 
 that I should obey his voice?" At once, from 
 those lately stammering lips of the messenger 
 
1 1 6 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORT. 
 
 of the King of kings, the voice of a sovereignty 
 asserting its supremacy far above the throne of 
 the haughty Pharaoh, spake out its warning, 
 " The God of the Hebrews hath met with us, 
 l3t us go, lest He fall upon us with pestilence, 
 or with the sword." And now the strife between 
 Jehovah's messenger and the great earth king 
 was indeed begun. So far as Moses was con- 
 cerned, it would have been ended in an hour, 
 if Pharaoh had dared to drown the prophet's 
 voice in his blood. But such an act was pre- 
 vented by the state of Egypt. It was shaken to 
 the centre by the power of the Canaanitish 
 population which had settled in it. Between 
 these and their brethren across the desert there 
 was such a living sympathy, that every great 
 movement of the one vibrated through the other. 
 Fear of the power of Israel, should it join in one 
 of the many insurrections which had raised and 
 subverted the Mizraim dynasties, had first led to 
 the cruel oppression through which they might 
 be bowed and subdued. To provoke them to 
 immediate rebellion by violence towards their 
 rhief vould have been a dangerous policy. For 
 
MOSES. in 
 
 they mighc be succoured by the Syrian tribes 
 who still, as the seed of Abraham, retained some 
 ties of affinity with the children of the eldest 
 branch of their now wide-spread family. Pha- 
 raoh therefore spared the life of Moses, but 
 sought to alienate the children of Israel from 
 him by making their yoke heavier, so that they 
 might rise against him as having by his inter- 
 ference only increased their sufferings. To a 
 great degree the deep device succeeded. The 
 suffering people groaned to their deliverers, " Ye 
 have made us to be abhorred in the eyes of 
 Pharaoh, and of his servants, to put a sword into 
 their hand to slay us." 
 
 Here was for Moses the first experience of 
 that utter unthankfulness in his brethren which 
 so often in the forty years which followed made 
 his life a burden to him. Yet this time so true 
 was the complaint that he returned unto the 
 Lord and said, "Wherefore hast Thou so evil 
 entreated this people ? Why is it that Thou hast 
 sent me; for since I came to Pharaoh to speak 
 in Thy name he hath done evil to this people, 
 neither hast Thou delivered Thy people at all/ 
 
i j 8 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 To this intercession, as to so many afterwards 
 from the prophet's mouth, the Lord hearkened ; 
 He renewed His promise : He raised the fainting 
 spirit of His faithful servant, and He bared His 
 arm against the persecutor. 
 
 Then began that series of ten plagues by 
 which at the last Egypt and her king were 
 bowed and conquered. They began, as all God's 
 judgments do begin, in the muttered and distant 
 thunder of the voice of warning; they passed 
 next into the crash and peal of instant sentence : 
 this, in its first execution, touched but lightly 
 those who would not be warned ; next it hemmed 
 them round in ever-narrowing circles; until at 
 last, in the death of the first-born, it closed 
 indeed in blackness and desolation upon the 
 very heart of Egypt. 
 
 Never once throughout this awful strife of the 
 great earth king with the unseen Lord did His 
 prophet faint or falter ; contemned at first, then 
 flattered and cajoled; then threatened, and at 
 last driven with violence from the Royal pre- 
 sence, he, with a hand which never shook and 
 with a voice which never trembled, stretched 
 
MOSES. 119 
 
 forth the rod of power and spake the word of 
 judgment. 
 
 But when the conflict was over and the victory 
 won, and Pharaoh and his host drowned in the 
 depth of the sea, the trials of the great mes- 
 senger rather began than ended. To lead forth 
 indeed, as it was given him to do, a mob of 
 slaves, debased as slavery only can debase 
 humanity ; sunk below the dead level of pagan 
 Egyptian civilisation ; to form them into a dar- 
 ing army, a free commonwealth, and a believing 
 Church; to be exposed to all the ready and 
 violent vicissitudes of their dssires, and hopes, 
 and fears, and so to have to suffer their manners 
 in the wilderness ; to have them upbraid him for 
 their very deliverance when their sensual natures 
 lusted after the flesh-pots of Egypt; to have 
 them talk of stoning him when the wells were 
 dry; to have them dispute with him for his 
 command, and rebel against his rule; to have 
 them break their covenant with Jehovah, and 
 turn to the sacred calf of their old Egyptian 
 oppressors all this was such a burden as was 
 never laid on any other. It was at times too 
 
!2o HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 heavy to bear: it was such that even from his 
 deep-enduring, princely heart, when he "heard 
 the people/' in their grovelling sensuality because 
 the heaven-sent manna was not flesh, " weeping 1 
 throughout their families, every man in the door 
 of his tent/' it extorted the passionate cry unto 
 the Lord, "Wherefore hast Thou afflicted Thy 
 servant . . . that Thou layest all the burden of 
 this people upon me ? . . . . Have I begotten all 
 this people that Thou shouldest say unto me, 
 Carry them in thy bosom ?" (Num. xi. 10, 1 1.) 
 
 Yet such had been his training, such was the 
 grace given to him, that but once throughout 
 these weary forty years of daily-renewed trial 
 and vexation did his faith fail. Most full of 
 warning to those less tried by uttermost tempta- 
 tion is the history of that one fall. It suggests 
 to us how the peculiar taint of our fallen nature 
 may linger on, with an unsuspected presence, 
 ready on any unwatchfulness to break out. The 
 ignorant idea of Moses, formed upon the mis- 
 translation of a word, calling him the meekest 
 instead of the most enduring of men, is in direct 
 contradiction of the whole character set before 
 
MOSES. 12. 
 
 us in the Pentateuch. Impetuous ardour, assert- 
 ing itself in even ill-considered action, is evidently 
 the basis of the character of him who set unsent 
 about the task of delivering Israel, who slew the 
 Egyptian, and put to flight the shepherds of 
 Midian. The same character may be traced in 
 his one fall. Under strong temptation his 
 natural heat of spirit for once broke through the 
 long-established control under which it had been 
 brought. This is spoken of as the root of his 
 offence. The ceaseless provocation of the re- 
 bellious people " angered Moses at the waters of 
 strife, so that it went ill with him for their sakes : 
 because they provoked his spirit so that he spake 
 unadvisedly with his lips" (Ps. cvi. 32, 33). 
 When anger ruled his heart, even his firm faith 
 fainted. The people were mad with thirst. 
 God had bidden him speak unto the rock before 
 their eyes, and promised that at his word it 
 should give forth the needful supply of water. 
 But for once he distrusted the command of God. 
 He had known before this that the rod of God 
 could bring forth water from the rock. Merely 
 to speak and call for the hidden springs was a 
 
122 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY 
 
 new and a yet stranger act of power. He looked 
 upon the wild faces of the angry people ; he felt 
 the general murmur rising into a roar of mad- 
 ness; he heard the fierce cry of the leaders, 
 " Wherefore have ye made us to come up out of 
 Egypt into this evil place, where there is no 
 water to drink?" and for once his lion-heart 
 sank within him. "What," unbelief whispered, 
 "what if thou shouldst call, and call in vain?" 
 And so, half doubting, and yet half believing, 
 instead of speaking to the rock, he smote it twice 
 with the rod, the power of which he had already 
 proved. The faithful God would not forsake His 
 servant even in that hour of his weakness. The 
 waters in their deep spring-head obeyed the 
 uncommanded summons, and gushed forth in 
 abundance, and the people drank and were 
 filled. But the sentence of the righteous Lord 
 was spoken, " Because ye believed me not .... 
 therefore ye shall not bring this congregation 
 into the land which I have given them." 
 
 And so he, the greatest of the whole prophetic 
 line, he to whom God spake as He spake to no 
 other he too fell. One only on the whole staJk 
 
JlfOSA'S. 123 
 
 of humanity unfolded into the perfect flower; 
 one only, "the intercessor" for Moses, as Moses 
 interceded for Israel, could say to the Father, 
 "The Prince of this world cometh, and hath 
 NOTHING in me." 
 
 Of that one Righteous Man amongst all the 
 prophets, Moses was the chiefest type. The 
 voice of God Himself declared his pre-eminence 
 over all the prophetic line. "If there be a 
 prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself 
 known unto him in a vision, and will speak 
 unto him in a dream. My servant Moses is not 
 so. ... With him will I speak mouth to mouth, 
 even apparently, and not in dark speeches, and 
 the similitude of the Lord shall he behold" 
 (Num. xii. 6 8). All the deep meaning of this 
 wonderful declaration it is impossible for us to 
 fathom. It was fulfilled when, on the summit of 
 Horeb, the cloud which shrouded the insupport- 
 able brightness of the Divine Presence, and out 
 of which came " the Voice " declaring the name 
 of the Lord, swept solemnly by the longing, 
 shrinking prophet. Then doubtless there was an 
 immediate manifestation to his spirit of all that 
 
124 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 it was possible for fallen man to sustain of the 
 majesty of God. 
 
 So, again, it was, in the long sojourn in the 
 Mount; in that dwelling in the brightness of 
 God's glory which left a lustre on his own coun- 
 tenance ; in those mysterious communings in the 
 separated tent, the entrance to which the pillar 
 of the cloud had closed to all beside him, and 
 where were given to him the separate directions 
 of the law, as on the Mount, had been showed 
 to him the patterns of the tabernacle worship. 
 Language cannot rise above the words of wonder 
 in which these last communings are described 
 "As Moses entered into the tabernacle, the 
 cloudy pillar descended and stood at the door of 
 the tabernacle, and the Lord talked with Moses. 
 And all the people saw the cloudy pillar stand at 
 the tabernacle door ; and all the people rose up 
 and worshipped, every man in his tent door. 
 And the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as 
 a man speaketh to his friend" (Exod. xxxiii. 
 9 n). 
 
 A most fit emblem, moreover, was he of the 
 one great Prophet, in his intercessions for 
 
MOSES. 125 
 
 Israel, intercessions based upon his renuncia- 
 tion of himself for his brethren. In all of these 
 most descriptive lines of his figure, we may 
 trace the forecast shadow of " that Prophet that 
 should come into the world" (John vi. 14), of 
 Him of whom the promise, which waited four- 
 teen hundred years for its accomplishment, 
 spake in the days of Moses to Israel " I will 
 raise them up a Prophet from among their bre- 
 thren, like unto thee, and will put my words 
 in his mouth" (Deut. xviii. 18). In the view 
 of all this greatness, it is the direct record of 
 inspiration, "There arose not a prophet since 
 in Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew 
 face to face " (Deut. xxxiv. 10). 
 
 Here, as in so many other instances, we may 
 note that the highest prophetic gift is not the 
 mere predictive faculty (though that, too, played 
 around the lips of Moses in his blessings and 
 his songs), but the bearing the message of 
 God to man ; the being the witness to the fallen 
 race of the presence, care, righteousness, truth, 
 and love of the Almighty King. 
 
 Such a witness Moses bare for forty years 
 
126 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 throughout the long wanderings of the wilder- 
 ness, to that stiff-necked generation. He gave 
 them Jehovah's law, he instituted for them their 
 appointed worship, he lived before them the 
 prophet lawgiver of Israel, he fulfilled his 
 mission, and then the time came that he should 
 enter on his rest. " Moses was an hundred and 
 twenty years old when he died. His eye was 
 not dim nor his natural force abated" (Deut. 
 xxxiv. 7). What a life it had been, as the old 
 man cast back that clear eye through its tale of 
 years ! That early rescue, that courtly sojourn- 
 ing, that grand mastery of the world's learning; 
 those vast vistas of imperial greatness which 
 had opened before his manhood's prime, to be 
 consciously abandoned ; that burning patriot- 
 zeal, and its hasty, uncommanded outbreak ; 
 those long solitary exiled years ; that growing 
 commerce with his God; that crisis of the 
 revelation to the spirit of Jehovah's personal 
 presence ; the struggle with Pharaoh ; the great 
 deliverance; the people's murmurings and 
 strivings; the ever-renewed, ever -increasing 
 communinsrs with God, w r hich kept his heart 
 
MOSES. 127 
 
 firm and his spirit faithful, amidst all the innu- 
 merable trials and troubles of his " much 
 enduring" life (Num. xii. 3). He looked back 
 upon it all as, a lone and solitary man, his feet 
 began the last ascent of the mountain Abarim. 
 The solitariness in which all great spirits are 
 wrapped, was cast eminently around him. 
 Miriam was long since dead. He had closed 
 the eyes of Aaron when they had climbed to- 
 gether the Hill of Hor. Two only of all who 
 had come with him out of Egypt survived both 
 still young men beside the aged prophet. One 
 wish only of his heart remained to be accom- 
 plished, and that was denied him. He would 
 fain have led the people into the land of their 
 possession. But the word of the Lord had 
 been spoken, " Get thee up into the mount 
 Abarim, and see the land which I have given 
 unto the children of Israel. And when thou 
 hast seen it, thou also shalt be gathered to thy 
 people as Aaron thy brother was gathered. For 
 ye rebelled against my commandment in the 
 desert of Zin, in the strife of the congregation." 
 Meekly was that reverend head bowed to the 
 
128 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 Will of God. One prayer only remained to be 
 breathed up for Israel, "Let the Lord, the God of 
 the spirits of all flesh, set a man over the con- 
 gregation .... that the congregation of the 
 Lord be not as sheep that have no shepherd " 
 (Num. xxvii. 12 17). 
 
 And then began the ascent. Tradition, with 
 its magnifying haze, has gathered round the 
 aged man the weeping people, crowding round 
 him for a last farewell, up to the mountain's 
 base, the senate keeping him yet further com- 
 pany ; the high priest, Eleazar, and Joshua, his 
 successor, still talking with him as the cloud 
 received him out of their sight (Jos. Antiq., 
 Book II. cap. viii. 48). But grander far is the 
 simplicity of the Scripture narrative written in 
 prescience, as Josephus hands down the tradi- 
 tion "Lest men should say because of his 
 extraordinary merit that instead of dying he 
 went to God " (Jos. Antiq., IV. viii. 48). In the 
 record of the Book of Deuteronomy, he mounts 
 alone at God's bidding, and with His sole com- 
 panionship, from the plains of Moab unto the 
 top of Pisgah. 1'hence the Lord showed him 
 
MOSES. 1*9 
 
 ail the land, and said unto him, "This is the 
 land which I sware unto Abraham .... I will 
 give it to thy seed. I have caused thee to see it 
 with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over 
 thither." And now, the last prayer breathed, 
 his work done, the last sight seen on that 
 mountain-top, far above the sounds of earth, the 
 solitary man lies him down, in stillness and in 
 light, to yield up to his Creator and Redeemer 
 the great spirit which he had so richly trained 
 through manifold discipline and unequalled 
 heavenly communings. No hand of man closed 
 those sinking eyelids ; no tool of man dug that 
 unknown grave, or traced over it an earth-born 
 memorial. From first to last, God and he were 
 alone together. " Moses, the servant of the 
 Lord, died there in the land of Moab, according 
 to the word of the Lord. And He buried him in 
 a valley in the land of Moab over against Beth- 
 peor, but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto 
 this day " (Deut. xxxiv. 5, 6). 
 
 Let us sum up his character and life in the 
 words of another grand and ardent soul, sub- 
 dued, like his own, by the marvellous dealing*? 
 
 K 
 
r 3 o HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 with him of the Highest: "This Moses, humble 
 in refusing so great a service ; resigned in un- 
 dertaking, faithful in discharging, unwearied in 
 fulfilling it; vigilant in governing his people; 
 resolute in correcting them, ardent in loving 
 them, and patient in bearing with them; the 
 intercessor for them with the God whom they 
 provoked this Moses such and so great a 
 man we love, we admire, and, so far as may be, 
 imitate" (Aug., Cont. Faust., vol. viii. 162). 
 
JOSHUA. 
 
 Y T was a fearful burden which the death of 
 Moses laid upon the shoulders of Joshua. 
 Surely he must have watched, as no other mem- 
 ber of the great Jewish congregation could have 
 done, the beginning of that solemn ascent of 
 the mountain of Abarim by the aged lawgiver 
 of Israel. For the finger of God had already 
 pointed him out as designed for succession to 
 the perilous office of the leader of the people. 
 " Take thee Joshua," had been the word of the 
 Lord to Moses, " a man in whom is the Spirit, 
 and lay thine hand upon him, and set him before 
 Eleazar the priest, and before all the congrega- 
 tion, and give him a charge in their sight ; and 
 thou shalt put some of thine honour upon him, 
 
> 32 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 <rhat all the congregation of Israel may be 
 obedient." 
 
 That ascent of Abarim told him that the time 
 was come when the long-looked-for burden must 
 fall upon him. The circumstances of his past 
 life had made him able too certainly to presage 
 the toils and sufferings involved in the discharge 
 of that great trust; for, beyond all others, he 
 had been admitted into the closest and most 
 peculiar intimacy with Moses ; and he had seen, 
 therefore, in the unreserve of confidential inter- 
 course, how the great leader's heart had almost 
 broken under the waywardness of his people. 
 He had gone up with his master into "the mount 
 of God " when the tables of the law were to be 
 given (Exod. xxiv. 13). He had seen the great 
 prophet enter into the enshrouding cloud (ver. 
 15). He had met him when he came forth from 
 the glory, bearing in his hands the two tables 
 graven by the very finger of God. His younger 
 ears had caught first the confused sounds which 
 rolled up the mountain side from the tented 
 plain below, and with the interpretation of the 
 uncertain noise most natural to a soldier, he had 
 
JOSHUA. 133 
 
 at once said unto Moses, " There is a noise of 
 war in the camp." He had marked the clouding 
 over of that countenance on which the heavenly 
 radiance glistened, as the sternness of a holy 
 indignation settled on its features. He had seen 
 the righteous anger of the great prophet cast 
 out of his two hands those precious tables of the 
 law, and break them before the eyes of the 
 offending people. Before this he had stood 
 beside the vexed leader when the people were 
 "almost ready to stone him" (Exod. xvii. 4). 
 He had watched the agony of his spirit when he 
 fell down in intercession for them ; he had seen 
 even his natural temper roused and his faith 
 fail beside the waters of strife. 
 
 How could one who had known all this but 
 tremble when the lot of God took him, and 
 handed over to him the terrible charge of such 
 a people ? How could he hope to endure it ? 
 For he had not received the long and varied 
 training which had fitted the great lawgiver 
 to discharge so weighty an office. No know- 
 ledge of men gathered during a life's sojourn- 
 ing at Pharaoh's court; no deep training in 
 
134 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 Egyptian learning; no long, lonely meditative 
 wanderings amidst the grand Sinaitic mountains 
 had been his. He was born a slave at about 
 that darkest time, when Moses fled into Midian. 
 His training had been that of his brother serfs 
 in the brick-kilns, and under the taskmasters of 
 Egypt. How should such an one as he become, 
 in Moses* stead, the leader of his brethren ? 
 
 Yet was there no escape for him. The 
 mantle had fallen upon his shoulder, and where 
 he was bidden there must he go. Through 
 those thirty days of stillness, whilst the camp 
 was full of weeping and mourning for Moses, he 
 could revolve all these deep forebodings in his 
 heart. But the days of inaction soon ran out 
 their little span, and the Voice found him out in 
 his tent, and spake to him the dreaded charge. 
 " Moses my servant is dead ; now therefore arise, 
 go over this Jordan, thou and all this people, 
 unto the land which I do give to them." 
 
 Though all natural misgivings made him shrink 
 back from the charge, yet his high faith accepted 
 it. Already, more than once, he had experienced 
 God's power to aid him in his greatest need. 
 
JOSHUA. 135 
 
 First, when at the earliest battle in which Israel 
 was engaged with the chosen warriors of victo- 
 rious Amalek at Rephidim, to him had been 
 given the command of the untried army of Israel. 
 Again, a second time he had himself known 
 God's power to succour, when he and Caleb 
 alone of all who were sent out to search the land 
 did not, on their return, discourage the hearts of 
 their brethren. The distinctive features of all his 
 after life and character come out with startling 
 clearness in the grand utterance of this, his early 
 counsel : "The land which we passed through to 
 search it is an exceeding good land ; if the Lord 
 d slight in us, then He will bring us into this land, 
 and He will give it us, .... only rebel not ye 
 against the Lord, nor fear ye the people of the 
 land, for they are bread for us : their defence 
 is departed from them, and the Lord is with us : 
 fear them not." But it was to an unwilling 
 audience that these grand words of faith were 
 uttered, and they did but provoke the unbeliev- 
 ing wrath of the clamouring people. More 
 dangerous than all their searchings of Canaan 
 was that undistinguishing fury of the passionate 
 
1 36 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 multitude. "All the congregation bade stone 
 them with stones/* But even then, when the 
 furious uproar of the people had swelled to its 
 highest and most threatening tide, God inter- 
 fered for His faithful ones ; and " the glory of 
 the Lord appeared in the tabernacle of the 
 congregation before all the children of Israel " 
 (Num. xiv. 10). 
 
 On these past deliverances in that hour of 
 dread his spirit rested and stirred up its energies 
 for the new venture of a life. Moreover the 
 voice of God spake with loving warning and 
 fatherly encouragement to those natural mis- 
 givings : " There shall not any man be able to 
 stand before thee all the days of thy life ; as I 
 was with Moses, so I will be with thee ; I will 
 not fail thee nor forsake thee .... Only be thou 
 strong and very courageous, that thou mayest 
 observe to do according to all the law which 
 
 Moses my servant commanded thee This 
 
 book of the law shall not depart out of thy 
 mouth, but thou shalt meditate therein day and 
 night, that thou mayest observe to do according 
 to all that is written therein. . . Have not 1 
 
JOSHUA. 137 
 
 commanded thee ? be strong and of good 
 courage; ba not afraid, neither be thou dis- 
 mayed; for the Lord thy God is with thee 
 whithersoever thou goest " (Josh. i. 5 9). 
 
 All the after life of Joshua is the carrying out 
 with a remarkable simplicity of unquestioning 
 faith this first charge of his God. His obedience 
 is immediate. The days of waiting are passed. 
 There is no more sign of doubt or of misgiving. 
 At once he assumes in all its breadth the office 
 so committed to his hands, and as God's vice- 
 gerent " commands the officers of the people " 
 (Josh. i. 10). 
 
 The first command was one which showed his 
 great faith, and tested severely the obedience of 
 the people. The river Jordan lay between the 
 camp and the land of their promised inheritance, 
 and it must be passed over by them at the very 
 outset of their march. But how could this be 
 accomplished ? Even if it were possible, with 
 difficulty and risk, to transport over it a chosen 
 handful of warriors, how could he possibly carry 
 over the mixed multitude the women and the 
 children, and the flocks and the herds r Even 
 
138 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 over the fords of Jordan, under the most favour- 
 able circumstances of the river, this would have 
 been almost impossible ; and at this season of 
 the year, when, from the melting of the snow 
 upon the highlands, Jordan was greatly flooded 
 (for Jordan overfloweth all his banks all the time 
 of harvest), it was more than ever impossible 
 (Josh. iii. 15). Yet, down to these threatening 
 floods, on the hopeless errand of passing over 
 them, all the people are ordered to march 
 Surely, it must have been a sore strain upon the 
 simple faith of the young commander to issue 
 such an order. But his faith was strong, and he 
 commanded, and was obeyed. And then, as the 
 first reward of such a holy confidence, the old 
 promises on which his heart rested were made 
 clearer and far more explicit than they had 
 been before. " This day will I begin/' the Lord 
 his God promises, " to magnify thee in the sight 
 of all Israel, that they may know that as I was 
 with Moses, so I will be with thee " (Josh. iii. 7). 
 Then followed the stupendous miracle : when the 
 soles of the priests' feet who bare the ark of God 
 touched the water's brim,, the upper flow of the 
 
JOSHUA. 139 
 
 river was arrested and stood in a heap, leaving 
 bare the river-bed. Into it the priests advanced 
 until they reached its centre, and there they 
 halted with the ark, which stood as a barrier 
 to the descending waters, heaping them up as a 
 liquid wall suddenly congealed in their fiercest 
 sweep, leaving below a broad passage for the 
 whole multitude to pass. From the river bed 
 Joshua commanded one chosen man of every tribe 
 to bear upon his shoulder a stone, to form on the 
 bank a pillar of memorial ; whilst he placed 
 another, also of twelve stones, in the bed itself, 
 where the priests' feet had stood on the dry land. 
 The river past, he stood at last with all the 
 people in the true land of promise ; and his first 
 act on taking actual possession of the long- 
 pledged inheritance was to renew the covenant 
 of Israel with the God of Abraham by circum- 
 cising all who, in the license of the desert's 
 wanderings, had grown up without passing 
 through the appointed rite of initiation. Next 
 they kept the passover: and then, as marking 
 that the desert was indeed left for ever, the 
 manna ceased, " and they did eat of the old corn 
 
/40 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORF. 
 
 of the land on the morrow after the passover" 
 (Josh. v. u). The next act was to invest 
 Jericho, the great city of the valley of Jordan, 
 and the key to all the passes which led up into 
 the highlands of the land of promise. It was 
 the greatest city of the Canaanitish race beauti- 
 ful in situation, girt on one side by a grand 
 palm-tree forest; golden on another with the 
 waving grain of " the barley harvest ; " backed 
 by the swelling hills which bounded it upon the 
 west, and looking across the rich valley to the 
 striking mountain range of Gilead. It was an 
 emporium of the old world's wealth, and rich in 
 wedges of gold, in shekels of silver, and in 
 Babylonish garments. Its walls and its colossal 
 gates could easily resist all assaults which any 
 instruments of war then known could make upon 
 them. It was " high and fenced up to heaven." 
 It was too as all great gatherings of the 
 world's pomp, and wealth, and luxury unpurged 
 by the fear of God must ever be, perhaps beyond 
 them all mighty in wickedness a great fester- 
 ing sore of heathen abomination. Against this 
 city, Joshua, with his men of war, set them- 
 
JOSHUA. 14, 
 
 selves. But it was not to be taken by their 
 might. For seven days the ark of God is borne 
 in solemn procession round it, and on the 
 seventh, at the mysterious summons of the blast 
 of the priestly trumpets, the mighty walls crum- 
 ble and fall flat ; the Israelites march in upon 
 the city in the first spasm of amazement and 
 terror which smote its inhabitants, and possess 
 it thoroughly. Then at God's command, they 
 destroy from off the face of the earth it and all 
 that dwelt in it, except the household of Rahab. 
 These two marvels, both directly connected 
 with the ark of Jehovah's presence, which had 
 taken, as the symbol and instrument of His 
 power, the place of the rod of Moses, were, of 
 course designed at once to fill the heart of the 
 Canaanites with that terror which is the fore- 
 runner of defeat, and to encourage the people of 
 God to march on to all their after-dangers strong 
 in their sense of His resistless strength. But 
 there was yet another and, if possible, a still 
 more difficult, lesson which this baring of the 
 arm of God was meant to teach Joshua and them. 
 The march of Israel was not to be a mere 
 
142 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 successful invasion. Joshua was not to be the 
 general of a horde of earthly heroes who, to win 
 for themselves a possession, were sweeping with 
 fire and sword over the land of a weaker people. 
 Unless every such imagination could be rooted 
 out of their hearts, their very success would have 
 been their utter ruin. With them, more even 
 than with any other such invaders, this must 
 have been the evil consequence of such a con- 
 quest. For that extermination of the Canaanites, 
 of which they were to be the instruments, must 
 have brutalised the executors of the sentence, 
 unless they kept always clear before their eyes 
 the reality of their terrible commission. Joshua 
 could not have preserved that simplicity and 
 gentleness which, side by side with a soldier's 
 boldest daring, make up his character, unless all 
 mere earthly feelings had been wholly over- 
 powered by the sense that, as directly as the 
 earthquake or the pestilence, he was God's 
 simple instrument in sweeping from the earth a 
 long-tried, long-endured, but incurably abomi- 
 nable race. These miraculous interferences 
 were to teach him from the first that he was 
 
JOSHUA. 143 
 
 not as other " scourges of God " have been the 
 wielder of natural strength against natural 
 weakness the head of a race of men of larger 
 stature, of braver natures, with habits unen- 
 feebled by luxury and vice who burst in their 
 might, like the hurricane amidst the decaying 
 trees of the sheltered forest, upon the soft 
 slumbers of a worn-out people. This was the 
 master truth of all Joshua's victories. He did 
 not come as the leader of the Gauls or the Goths 
 fell upon the degenerate Romans, who, before 
 they yielded, trembled at the vast size and 
 Titanic limbs of their strange invaders. The 
 Israelites were the race of smaller stature. 
 They were but lately slaves in Egypt ; they had 
 to confront the great and mighty sons of Anak ; 
 they were the unwarlike tribe ; the people 
 whose borders they invaded were men used to 
 war and delighting in it. Though the Canaan- 
 ites of the plain might have become effeminate 
 and feeble, the Amorites and the other moun- 
 taineers were brave, hardy, daring, as well as 
 vast in giant stature. Joshua's conquest was 
 the victory of the weak over the strong, of the 
 
144- HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 unwarlike over warriors ; of the desert wanderers 
 over horses and horsemen and chariots of iron. 
 This was the lesson Joshua had from the first to 
 learn. This great truth, as a talisman for his 
 own safety, sunk into his spirit as he gazed on 
 those heaped-up streams of Jordan and stood 
 unshaken amidst the dust and din and terror c f 
 the falling walls of Jericho. He moved amidst 
 these scenes of blood as an avenging angel 
 might hover over them a doer of the Will of the 
 Holy One, untainted by human passion, and full, 
 even in his most unswerving zeal for God, of a 
 terrible gentleness. We read this character in 
 his fatherly sympathy with the offending Achan, 
 even whilst he condemned to be burnt with fire 
 the great transgressor, who had brought him- 
 self and his under the ban of God. We read it 
 in his faithful keeping of his oath to the men of 
 Gibeon, when, because he had not asked counsel 
 of the Lord, he had been deceived by their fraud, 
 This it is all important, in dwelling on the 
 history of the Book of Judges, to remember. 
 For only in the spirit in which Joshua wrought 
 them can we read aright his mighty deeds : and 
 
JOSHUA. 145 
 
 so read, they are rich in instruction which we 
 most deeply need. We who live in these later 
 days can see that the whole history of man 
 hung upon the issue of those battles in the 
 plain of Jericho and on the hills of Beth Horon. 
 What other conflicts have ever decided so much 
 for humanity? Joshua stood on those fields of 
 blood the very world-hero, bearing with him all 
 its destinies. If Israel had been subdued by the 
 Canaanites, if the separated seed had been 
 mingled with the heathen, if it had learned their 
 ways, if the worship of Moab and Chemosh and 
 Moloch and Astarte had superseded the worship 
 of Jehovah, how had all the grand designs of 
 redemption been frustrated in their develop- 
 ment ! The cry of Joshua after the flight at Ai 
 would have been the despairing utterance of the 
 race of men, " And what wilt Thou do unto Thy 
 great name?" more almost in Joshua's history 
 than anywhere besides, may the troubled soul 
 perplexed and harassed by the sight, on this 
 sin-defiled earth, of wars, battles, slaughters, 
 pestilences, earthquakes, miseries, and treasons 
 rest itself, though it be with the deep sob of 
 
 I- 
 
i 4 6 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 a present broken-heartedness, in the conviction 
 that God has a plan for this world ; that in the 
 end it does prevail ; thai the Baalim of heathen 
 power must fall before Him, and that His King- 
 dom shall stand for ever and ever in its truth 
 and righteousness and love. 
 
 But it was not only by these displays of God's 
 might fighting their battles that the soul of 
 Joshua was strengthened for his special work. 
 This manifestation he shared with all the people 
 who had eyes to read the dealings of Jehovah 
 with them. But beyond others he had to bear 
 the burden and heat of the day : he had to issue 
 the fearful orders for extermination : he had to 
 see them carried unflinchingly out to the utmost 
 letter: on him pressed the whole brunt of temp- 
 tation ; and so to him were vouchsafed aids 
 which others shared not. That same communi- 
 cation to his inmost spirit in the utter solitari- 
 ness of his individual life which had been given 
 to Abraham in his call, to Jacob in his desert 
 wanderings, to Moses in the Wilderness of 
 Sinai, was granted also to Joshua in his need. 
 It was when he was " by Jericho ; " whilst his 
 
JOSHUA. .47 
 
 eye was measuring those walls which fenced it 
 up to heaven, whilst, it may be in the slant 
 beams of the setting sun, he gazed with admira- 
 tion at the grand proportions of its royal towers 
 as they rose high in the golden light above, of 
 its long fringe of majestic palm trees, of its 
 glory and its wealth ; and thought with awe 
 upon the sentence which it was his destiny to 
 execute upon every living thing within it then 
 it was that " there stood a man over against him 
 with his sword drawn in his hand/* Soldier- 
 like, the captain - general demanded of him, 
 " Art thou for us or for our adversaries ?" The 
 challenge woke at once the voice of Majesty. 
 " Nay," not as thou cleemest am I : prepare thy 
 soul for God's unlooked-for visitation: "As 
 Captain of the Host of the Lord am I come : " 
 not as mingling with these earthly hosts ; but as 
 thy fellow in a higher order ; as the Mighty 
 ONE in heavenly places of whom thou art here 
 and now on earth the type and shadow : as Him 
 whom all the angels worship, as the uncreated 
 Angel of the Covenant, as the Captain of the 
 heavenly host of God have I come to thee. The 
 
i.|8 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 soul of Joshua owned at once the presence of his 
 God; "he fell on his face to the earth and did 
 worship/' and cried, " What saith my Lord unto 
 His servant ?" And then came the answer 
 which the minister of Moses would read so 
 readily in all the wide extent of its mysterious 
 significance, the " Loose thy shoe from off thy 
 foot, for the place where thou standest is holy." 
 That burning bush of which his great master 
 had so often told him in their solemn commun- 
 ings, must have risen before his eyes ; and there 
 was renewed unto him, with all the added awe 
 of such a personal appearance, the earlier 
 promise, "As I was with Moses, so also I will 
 be with THEE." Yes, and far even beyond this ; 
 in his soul, as in the souls of the mighty ones 
 before him to whom it had been granted thus to 
 commune with the unapproachable Lord, there 
 lay ever after resting on his spirit the shadow 
 of that mighty intercourse hushing all lower 
 sounds into an awe-stricken silence. 
 
 So strengthened from on high, he passed 
 through those scenes of blood which were 
 appointed for him, as the sun's ray streams 
 
JOSHUA. 149 
 
 untainted through polluted elements, until his 
 mighty work of conquest was accomplished. 
 Thus was he nerved for every battle. Under 
 this influence he dared, when in the going down 
 to Beth Horon the failing light seemed to 
 threaten incompleteness to the decisive battle 
 with the mighty Amorites, to raise his voice of 
 high command above the eddies of the battle- 
 field of Azekah, and in the name of the God of 
 the armies of heaven to bid the sun stand still 
 upon Gibeon and the moon in the valley of 
 Ajalon. So he fought and so he conquered, 
 until as the Eastern province had been before, 
 so Western and Northern and Southern Canaan 
 were all subdued by Israel and meted out by 
 Joshua to its several tribes as the lot of God 
 directed. 
 
 And now the ancient promise had been 
 fulfilled : the solitary, childless patriarch who 
 had listened to The Voice which spake at Ur of 
 the Chaldees had grown by regular gradations 
 into a family, a tribe, a horde, and now a 
 nation. The inheritance of the heathen was 
 theirs : wells they digged not, vineyards they 
 
150 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY 
 
 planted not, cities they builded not all these 
 were theirs. Over the old strongholds of the 
 mighty giant chieftains waved the banners of 
 the House of Jacob. The brave single-hearted 
 soldier had been enabled to finish thoroughly 
 his mission. "And the Lord gave unto Israel 
 all the land which He sware to give to their 
 fathers, and they possessed it and dwelt therein 
 .... there failed not ought of any good thing 
 which the Lord had spoken unto the House of 
 Israel ; all came to pass " (Josh. xxi. 45^ 
 
 Then, his work done, the great general retired 
 to the lot which at the express command of God 
 the grateful people had given him, and there he 
 built on Mount Ephraim the city of Timnath 
 Serah. There he dwelt in peace for some 
 eighteen years of rest. We of this generation 
 can understand perhaps more perfectly than 
 most, how in those last years the grey hairs of 
 the old conqueror and national deliverer were 
 esteemed ; how, long after his victories were all 
 accomplished, his countrymen still felt safe in 
 the enjoyment of their days of peace from the 
 consciousness that the great chieftain yet lived 
 
JOSHUA. 151 
 
 amongst them; how they hung with admiring 
 confidence on him who in his own person set 
 ever before them the visible token of their 
 God's past blessings to them. For to us, too, 
 has it been given in the long years of peace 
 which bitter war had bought, to look with ever- 
 deepening admiration upon 
 
 "The statesman warrior, moderate, resolute, 
 Whole in himself a common good ; 
 * * * * * 
 
 Great in council and great in war, 
 
 Foremost captain of his time. 
 
 Rich in saving common sense, 
 
 And as the greatest only are, 
 
 In his simplicity sublime. 
 
 O good gray head which all men knew, 
 
 O voice from which their omens all men drew, 
 
 O iron nerve to true occasion true." * 
 
 Yet the time came when Joshua too was to be 
 gathered to his fathers. But before he passed 
 away, one last solemn duty was yet to be dis- 
 charged. He called together the heads of the 
 people whom his arm had formed into a national 
 life, left them his last charge, and bound them 
 with his parting words to an everlasting cove- 
 
 TENNYSON, " Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington." 
 
i 5 2 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 nant of faithfulness to the God who had done 
 such great things for them. How grand a 
 gathering it was ! There stood the victor in an 
 hundred battles, now "old and stricken in age;" 
 for it was already " a long time after that the 
 Lord had given rest unto Israel from all their 
 enemies/' Before him was gathered all Israel, 
 "their elders, their heads, their judges, and their 
 officers/' and he opened that mouth from which 
 such words of might, and trust, and prayer had 
 issued in the days of their troubles, and he 
 spake to them what all felt to be his last counsels 
 and commandments. 
 
 The words were still, as the great soldier's 
 words had always been, instinct with the brief, 
 stern eloquence of truth and action. " Cleave 
 unto the Lord your God." " The Lord your God 
 is He that hath fought for you " " Be ye very 
 courageous to keep and to do all that is written 
 in the book of the law of Moses : turn not aside 
 therefrom to the right or to the left." "Put 
 away the strange gods which are among you, 
 and incline your heart unto the Lord God of 
 Israel." "Take good heed unto yourselves that 
 
JOSHUA. 153 
 
 ye love the Lord your God." " Ye know in all 
 your hearts and in all your souls that not one 
 good thing hath failed of all the good things 
 which the Lord God spake concerning you : all 
 are come to pass." And then the voice died out 
 upon their ears with that which woke a sob from 
 many a rough breast, and dimmed many an eye 
 with unbidden tears. Hard old soldiers who, in 
 the fierceness of the Amorite battle, had looked 
 at the spear-head which the then mighty arm 
 had lifted and been strong, and heard that voice 
 in its full volume and been nerved by it in the 
 death struggle ; who had seen the giant Anakim 
 fall before him, and gained from his aspect 
 courage themselves to play the man, they 
 sobbed at the sorrowful parting when the falter- 
 ing voice of the old hero spake of his own de- 
 parture from amongst them. " Behold this 
 day I am going the way of all the earth." 
 
 Though his name is not written in the roll of 
 the prophets, yet on him too rested the great 
 Divine Indwelling. The mighty warrior, the 
 true counsellor, the just divider, the strong and 
 patient ruler ; he too had partaken largely of the 
 
i 5 4 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 sevenfold gifts; he too left upon his people the 
 mark of a great character and of more than 
 earthly power. It is a grand record, as of 
 the trumpet's tongue when, dirge-like, it subdues 
 its louder utterance only to witness more by 
 its suppressed power, "After these things 
 Joshua, the servant of the Lord, died, being an 
 hundred and ten years old, and they buried him 
 in the border of his inheritance in Timnath 
 Serah: and Israel served the Lord all the days 
 of Joshua, and of the elders that overlived 
 Joshua." 
 
 As on the dark sky, when some flashing 
 meteor has swept across it with a path of fire, 
 there remains still after that glory has departed 
 a lingering line of light, so was it with this 
 mighty man, glorious in life, and leaving even 
 after he was gone the record of his abundant 
 faithfulness still to hold for a season heavenward 
 the too wandering eyes of Israel. 
 
 One other aspect remains to be glanced at of 
 this mighty general. In more various points 
 and with a closer similarity of outline than 
 belongs, perhaps, to any other figure in the Old 
 
JOSHUA. 155 
 
 Testament, is Joshua the type of Christ. His 
 very name begins the great intimation. Changed 
 by Moses doubtless at the mouth of the Lord 
 from Oshea, "welfare/' to Jehoshua, or Jesus, 
 " God the Saviour ; " it pointed him out as the 
 figure in the earthly of the heavenly deliverer. 
 Joshua moreover is pre-eminently one of the peo- 
 ple whom he delivers ; he has worked with them 
 in the brick-kilns of Egypt, he knows their hearts ; 
 in all their afflictions he has been afflicted; and so 
 Jesus stooped to be made in all points like unto 
 His brethren, that, having been Himself tried 
 with all temptations, He might know how to 
 succour them that are tempted. 
 
 When Joshua has entered on his leadership, 
 prophetic acts, full of typical significance, begin 
 with a wonderful minuteness to repeat them- 
 selves. He and not the great lawgiver is to 
 bring the people into Canaan : Moses must 
 depart to secure his every word of promise being 
 fulfilled to Israel, as the law must pass away and 
 be fulfilled before the spiritual Israel could enter 
 on their kingdom. At the river Jordan Joshua is 
 shown by God to Israel as their appointed leader; 
 
156 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 there God began to magnify him. As Jesus 
 comes up from the river Jordan the heavens 
 open, the Holy Ghost descends, and the voice 
 of God declares, "This is my beloved Son, in 
 whom I am well pleased." At Jordan's waters 
 He too is declared to be given as a leader and a 
 commander to the people. From Jordan's bed 
 Joshua took twelve stones to be for evermore a 
 witness to the people of their great deliverance ; 
 from His baptism in Jordan Jesus began to call 
 His twelve Apostles the foundation-stones of that 
 church which witnesses to every generation of 
 the redemption of the sons of Abraham by 
 Christ. Twelve stones Joshua buried under the 
 returning waters of Jordan ; and over the first 
 twelve Jesus let the stream of death flow as over 
 others ; whilst they were repeated in their office 
 of witnesses to Him by all the enduring 
 succession of His earthly ministers with whom 
 He is, even unto the end of the world. As soon 
 as the chosen people, soiled by their long travel 
 in the wilderness, enter the land of promise, 
 Joshua renews in their circumcision the covenant 
 of Jehovah's peace ; and Jesus grants to all who 
 
JOSHUA. 157 
 
 pass the Jordan with Him the true circumcision 
 of the Spirit. The Captain of the Host, as God 
 reveals Himself to Joshua, is ever with the great 
 earthly warrior of the people ; and in the Man 
 Christ Jesus dwells " the fulness of the Godhead 
 bodily." The mighty walls of Jericho fall low 
 as Joshua marches his appointed circuits around 
 them, compassing them seven times with the 
 ark of God's presence; and as Jesus accom- 
 plished His course the world citadel falls low ; 
 for unto the sevenfold gifts of the Holy Spirit 
 yields the will of man ; and the kingdoms of this 
 world become the kingdoms of the Lord and of 
 His Christ. Joshua leads the people of God into 
 the promised land, but they must fight for their 
 possession; and Jesus, though He brings His 
 own into the spiritual Canaan of His church, has 
 come not to bring peace, but a sword. Not one 
 of His can sit down and dream his life away; 
 each one has life's battle, earnest, hard, severe, 
 to fight. As Joshua said of old to the children 
 of Joseph, so to each one of His speaks our 
 Captain, pointing to the hill of light and the 
 everlasting inheritance, "Thou art a great 
 
158 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY*. 
 
 people, and hast great power; thou shalt not 
 have one lot only, for the mountain shall be 
 thine." When his work was over Joshua 
 mounted the hill of Ephraim and dwelt in his 
 own possession, not falling to him as to others 
 of his brethren by the lot, but as his own right 
 yielded to him as the conqueror of all ; and even 
 so went up the Captain of our salvation to the 
 heaven in which He was before, His own by 
 right, His own by conquest. For "this Man 
 after He had offered one sacrifice for sins, for 
 ever sat down on the right hand of God ; from 
 henceforth expecting till His enemies be made 
 His footstool" (Heb. x. 12, 13]. Before Joshua 
 departed, he called to him on that mountain of 
 Timnath Serah which he was about to leave, 
 all the heads of the tribes, and with the chant of 
 a prophetic voice set before them all the grand 
 future, which, if they clave steadfastly to God, 
 should certainly be theirs; and so before He 
 ascended into the heavens did the great Captain 
 of God's spiritual army appoint to meet upon a 
 mountain top in Galilee the heads of all the 
 tribes into which His church should multiply, 
 
JOSHUA. 159 
 
 and there looking with them over the far out- 
 stretched dominions of the earth, did He utter to 
 them, Joshua like, the words of wonder which 
 rung for ever in their ears, "All power is given 
 unto me in heaven and on earth ; go ye therefore 
 and evangelize all nations" (Matt, xxviii. 18, 19). 
 Yea, and yet again after a higher sort than 
 belongs to this present world was Joshua but the 
 type of Jesus. For it is He who for each one who 
 follows Him, the true Captain of their Salvation, 
 divides the cold waters of death, setting against 
 their utmost flood even when that Jordan over- 
 floweth his banks, as he doth all the harvest time, 
 the ark of the body which He took of us, and in 
 which God dwelleth evermore ; so making a way 
 for His ransomed to pass over. It is He who 
 hath gone before to prepare amongst the many 
 mansions of His Father's house the place which 
 the golden lot marks out for us ; it is He who 
 hath trodden down all our enemies; it is He 
 who hath built the golden city upon the " twelve 
 foundation-stones, which bear the names of the 
 twelve Apostles of the Lamb;" it is He at 
 whose trumpet sound, when the seven days of 
 
160 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 the great week are accomplished, the walls of 
 Babylon shall fall. It is He who goeth forth 
 conquering and to conquer, until all His enemies 
 are put under His feet ; and so the last type of 
 this life of wonders shall be fulfilled; and the 
 true Joshua from the exceeding high mountain 
 of His Timnath Serah shall look around Him on 
 the tribes of God and see them all at peace ; the 
 prayer-promise which was breathed in time 
 fulfilled in eternity: "Father, I will that those 
 whom Thou hast given Me be with Me where I 
 am, that they may behold My glory which I had 
 with THEE before the world was." 
 
THE JUDGE. 
 last words of the great captain upon 
 
 the slopes of Timnath Serah die out dirge- 
 like in a tone of solemn sadness. The clarion 
 note of his exulting praise ends in that utter- 
 most foreboding, " lest ye deny your God." It 
 was the shadow of the future which lay dark and 
 heavy on that prophetic heart. For when " the 
 generation which had seen the great works of 
 the Lord had been gathered unto their fathers, 
 another generation arose after them which knew 
 not the Lord, and did evil in His sight. They for- 
 sook Jehovah, and served Baal and Ashtaroth." 
 Then were the days of gloom and darkness. 
 Enemies rose against them on every side. The 
 eld mountain fastnesses of the giant brood 
 
 M 
 
162 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 frowned, again like gathering thunder-clouds 
 upon the habitations of Israel. The dark hosts 
 of Philistia from their sea-coast dwellings, 
 swarmed up even to the mountain slopes of 
 Judah, and spoiled all the labours of the sons 
 of Jacob. The strength of the separated race 
 seemed to have spent itself in the act of in- 
 vasion, and to have left them weak before the 
 children of those whom they had subdued and 
 dispossessed. And so in one sense it was ; but 
 not as the fruit of the natural wearing out of 
 their energy. It was but the fulfilment of the 
 voice of Joshua's departing warning. It was 
 that "the anger of the Lord was hot against 
 Israel, and He delivered them into the hands of 
 spoilers that spoiled them." 
 
 Their peculiar sin was a direct and emphatic 
 contradiction of the very purpose for which they 
 were severed from the nations around them. 
 Abraham had been called, Isaac blessed, Jacob 
 guarded, Israel multiplied, that there might be 
 one man, one family, one tribe, one people to 
 bear witness amidst the ever-multiplying poly- 
 theism to the indivisible unity of the Godhead 
 
SAMSON THE JUDGE. 163 
 
 For the bearing of this witness it was above all 
 things needful, not only that they should wor 
 ship Jehovah, but that they should worship none 
 other with Him. This was the sin of poly- 
 theism : it for ever multiplied its altars. Fron. 
 the deep of his own inner self-consciousness, 
 from the play of his own imagination, from the 
 shadows cast by outward things upon his spirit, 
 fallen man developed his gods, until, not only 
 every high hill and every dark forest, but every 
 desire of his heart and every appetite of his 
 senses was embodied in some deity, who re- 
 peated in gigantic proportions the sins which 
 were his own defilement. Against this vast 
 system of abominable idolatry, Abraham's 
 solitary wanderings and his altars to Jehovah, 
 Jacob's sufferings and visions, Joseph's captivity 
 and advancement, the forty years of Moses 
 amidst the mountain - chain of Midian, the 
 thunders of Sinai, and the sword of Joshua, 
 had all borne alike their various witness. To 
 maintain this witness and to hand it on, Israel 
 had been planted in the goodly land which, to 
 make room for them, had vomited forth its old 
 
tU HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 inhabitants. The adoption, therefore, by them 
 of the Baalim and the Ashtaroth into their 
 system of worship was a breach of their God- 
 given charter a yielding up of their title-deed 
 to the land of their inheritance. Every moun- 
 tain and valley, every rock and river lifted up to 
 heaven their voices against this new pollution, 
 and cried to Jehovah for deliverance from it. 
 The cry was answered by the avenging bands 
 of the Ammonite from his sloping hill-side, of 
 Jhe Amorite from his mountain fortress, and of 
 the Philistine from his sea-girt plain. As the 
 hands of Israel dropped Jehovah's banner their 
 strength departed from them, and they became 
 weak before their enemies. Internal disorgani- 
 zation, too, enfeebled them. Under their theo- 
 cracy the heads and elders of the several tribes 
 administered the earthly kingdom : they judged 
 between man and man as the high priest judged 
 between them and God, and so the separate 
 families were held In unity, and the divided 
 tribes felt flowing through them the blood of 
 a common life. But justice and rule soon 
 withered and died out beneath the sensual 
 
SAMSON THE JUDGE. 165 
 
 worship of the Baalim, and the disunited 
 people fainted with the feebleness of internal 
 estrangedness and ever-multiplying isolation. 
 Then came the heathen forth as the bees of 
 the forest from their hiding-places, and chased 
 at will each lonely and defenceless wanderer. 
 Then, at last, in their low estate they turned 
 again to their God and wept before Him, and 
 cast aside their idols and their Baalim. And 
 their fathers' God hearkened to their cry and 
 turned to them again. 
 
 But as the utterly relaxed sinews of their 
 national existence were insufficient for the strain 
 involved in rousing them again to make head 
 against their enemies, the baring of God's arm 
 called forth some unusual instrument through 
 whom its power could act. Some one must be 
 raised up with a might which rose above the 
 withered strength of their ordinary institutions 
 who could breathe into their fainting hearts a 
 new resolution, and gather into unity some at 
 least of their disunited tribes. This was the 
 judge's office. The choice of God marked him 
 out. The hand of God separated him. The 
 
1 66 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 might of God strengthened him. He was 
 raised up to do a special work, and he did it. 
 He and his work must never be separated in 
 our view, or we shall be sorely perplexed as we 
 gaze upon him, and perhaps test and try to 
 class him as though he were living and moving 
 amongst ourselves. We shall never understand 
 him by such a process ; for God's witnesses and 
 special instruments are never exempted from the 
 influence of the circumstances which surround 
 them. Through these circumstances God fashions 
 and trains them. If it were not so they would be 
 exceptional cases outside our sympathies, and 
 could not be examples or instructors for us. 
 The necessary effect of these circumstances is 
 to imprint upon each one of them a specific and 
 distinctive character. Whilst a strong common 
 form of life thrown around men is a protection 
 to the weak, it tends to diminish the strength 
 of the strong. In the deep dark forest there is 
 an almost unbroken uniformity in height and 
 shape amidst its countless multitudes of trees. 
 All are drawn up to the average size. But the 
 mighty giants of the earth are found apart from 
 
SAMSON THE JUDGE. 167 
 
 their brethren; striking their own deep roots 
 where they will, and flinging freely their vast 
 branches to wrestle with every storm, and be 
 nourished by every breeze. 
 
 Such were the judges of Israel ; and we should 
 therefore expect to find in them a certain eccen- 
 tricity of act and character ; the fruit of their 
 largely developed individuality. So, in fact, 
 they stand out before us ; figures grand and 
 majestic, but not of what we rightly consider a 
 Christian aspect. There is upon every one of 
 them, inasmuch as he was "a saviour" of his 
 brethren, a shadowy outline of the one true 
 Saviour of his people, but these lines which are 
 so clear and true in him are broken, involved, 
 indeterminate, confused, in them. As we trace 
 them on the shifting misty medium on which we 
 see the true image cast, to be distorted, even as it 
 is repeated, they oftentimes perplex and turn u. 
 giddy as we gaze, unless we continually correct 
 their strange and imperfect proportions by look- 
 ing off from them to Him, the true type, whose 
 perfectness redresses for us their manifold im- 
 perfections. 
 
1 68 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 We, from the clear sunlight of Christendom, 
 look back upon these judges, as men may look 
 from a sunny bank over an intermediate valley 
 on some ranges of distant mountains, amidst 
 which, under their cloud canopy storms are 
 breaking and sunlight is playing: whilst the 
 separate hill masses seem like mighty giants 
 at their sports or in their rest, on whom in their 
 vastness we gaze with eager interest and rapt 
 amazement. 
 
 In no one of the whole catalogue of the judges 
 are all these distinguishing features marked with 
 such startling clearness as in the Nazarite son 
 of Manoah. Dark beyond all former pre- 
 cedent were the days in which he was born. 
 East of the Jordan, the Ammonite had mightily 
 oppressed Israel, until, in the time of Samson's 
 youth, the Spirit of the Lord had fallen upon 
 Jephthah, and raised him up for the deliverance 
 of his people. In the west a yet heavier yoke 
 had still longer bowed the people of Jehovah. 
 For forty years they had groaned under the 
 oppression of the Philistines, and the only fruit 
 of attempted resistance had been to make the 
 
SAMSON THE JUDGE. 169 
 
 rod of the oppressor heavier, and the chains 
 wherewith he bound them more galling-. In 
 their despair they took the ark of God into the 
 battle-field, and took it there in vain. The 
 battle was lost ; the sons of the High Priest fell 
 amongst the slain ; the old man himself watch- 
 ing eagerly for the return of his Levite offspring, 
 and more even than for them for Jehovah's ark, 
 fell helpless from his seat at the announcement 
 of the overthrow, and broke his neck. The curse 
 had eaten out that evil progeny, and seemed 
 through them to prophecy from the holy place 
 a like destruction to the rebellious people round 
 them. The infidel host carried off in triumph the 
 captive ark, the great symbol of the covenant, 
 the great instrument of worship. And still 
 there was no voice, nor any that answered to 
 their cry. It seemed as if, wearied out with 
 their often - repeated iniquities, Jehovah had 
 turned away for ever from His people. Not 
 till the ark was placed as in triumphant sub- 
 jection to the idol Dagon did the old power 
 even begin to stir. Then the idol fell maimed 
 ttnd helpless on his temple's floor before the 
 
1 7 o HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 mysterious symbol of Jehovah's presence. Then 
 unon the great cities of Philistia, wherever the 
 ark rested, there were plagues, until the terrified 
 heathen sent back their ark to their oppressed 
 serfs. And now the same power began to stir in 
 another quarter. 
 
 The portents which preceded Samson's birth 
 pointed to him as a coming deliverer. We can 
 picture to ourselves his wild and wayward youth. 
 As self-consciousness dawned upon him, he 
 found himself a Nazarite. Even before he was 
 born the bond was upon his coming life. The 
 angel messenger from God who had promised 
 his birth to the barren household, had, in the 
 might of a divine command, ordered that it 
 should be so. As reason opened on that wilful 
 soul, the story of his strange life was told him. 
 With its earliest stirring was bound up the 
 keeping of the mysterious vow. The growth of 
 his unshorn locks, the abstinence from the 
 familiar grape, the massive strength of his young 
 frame, all severed him from others of his age- 
 all stamped upon him a separated character. 
 How must the father and the mother of the God- 
 
SAMSON THE JUDGE. 1 7 1 
 
 given, impulsive, solitary boy have gazed with 
 something of an awe-struck wonder upon his 
 moody youth ! how must they have trembled at 
 the dark violence of his passion, stirred often 
 almost to madness, like the waves of the deep 
 rock-bound lake, when the roar of the whirlwind 
 lashes suddenly its surges into storm ! 
 
 Was this the promised blessing? Could this 
 be he who should deliver Israel ? Yet at times 
 that youth would be woke up to what seemed a 
 promise for the future. He kept his Nazarite 
 vow. With all his moody wilfulness, to that 
 one bond he bowed. And when the rising fame 
 of Jephthah's * exploits found its way into 
 Manoah's household, that dark spirit would stir 
 as though the like influence were waking up it 
 too to reach forward to do like acts of valour for 
 his people ; and they would look on, and wonder, 
 and hope; for then "the Spirit of the Lord 
 began to move him at times in the camp of Dan, 
 between Zorah and Eshtaol" (Judges xiii. 25). 
 
 All along this history we can trace the broker, 
 outline of his typical character, as the image oi 
 The True Man is forecast upon this uncertain 
 
lyi HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 mist-blurred mirror. There was the angelic 
 heralding to the childless parents of the coming 
 birth of Israel's deliverer ; there was the mystery 
 which lay broad upon his youth, as "the child 
 grew and the Lord blessed him ; " there was the 
 consciousness in that mother's heart of her 
 guardianship of such a chosen life; there were 
 those movings of the Spirit, which, with the 
 promises "she kept within her heart," gilded 
 with a light from Heaven the ordinary appear- 
 ance of his up-growth. 
 
 The years rolled on. The boyhood and youth 
 of Samson, with their strange fantastic promises 
 and disappointments, had passed, and he was a 
 man. " Surely now at last," the longing parents 
 would say one to another, " surely now at last we 
 shall see some fulfilment of the words of Him 
 'whose name is secret* (Judges xiii. 18), as to the 
 Nazarite boy ; surely now at last he will ' begin 
 to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philis- 
 tines/" The mother's brooding nature would 
 instinctively move her to deal with Samson as a 
 greater than Manoah's wife dealt with her 
 greater Son, when, with longings which well- 
 
SAMSON THE JUDGE. 1 73 
 
 nigh swelled into reproach, she said unto Him, 
 "They have no wine." But his hour was not 
 yet come. What a strange mockery of their 
 hopes must the first act of his manhood have 
 seemed to them ! " He went down to Timnath, 
 and saw a woman in Timnath of the daughters 
 of the Philistines ; and he came up and told his 
 father and his mother ; and said, I have seen a 
 woman in Timnath, of the daughters of the 
 Philistines, now therefore get her for me to wife " 
 (Judges xiv. i, 2). Used as they were to his 
 wilfulness, this was beyond all the precedents of 
 his youth. With eager entreaty they besought 
 him to give up the misplaced alliance " Is there 
 never a woman amongst the daughters of thy bre- 
 thren, or among all the people, that thou goest 
 to take a wife of the uncircumcised Philistines ?" 
 But they spake in vain. His only answer was, 
 " Get her for me, for she pleaseth me well." 
 
 Yet the strange choice was really the pro- 
 vidential overruling of what in itself was faulty 
 for the fulfilment of God's secret purposes. 
 Samson's vocation was altogether peculiar. He 
 was not to be the commander of an army. The 
 
174 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 depression of years had so utterly degraded 
 Israel that her sons were not fit for such an 
 enrolment. Neither was he to break the yoke of 
 Philistia. His wild, wayward, sensual nature 
 forbad that honour being his. He was but " to 
 begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the 
 Philistines." He was to show by supernatural 
 strength and individual daring that the power of 
 God, if it were but called out, would abundantly 
 suffice to overcome the Philistines; and yet 
 that the might which at one time enabled him 
 single-handed to scatter the hosts of the uncir- 
 cumcised ebbed utterly away so soon as he 
 departed from his God. This was the lesson 
 Israel needed, and only thus could it be taught 
 them. If the alternations of wonderful success 
 and bitter casting down which marked his single 
 course had befallen the armies of Israel, there 
 could have been no recovery of their spirit of 
 self-reliance, or of confidence in their God. But 
 in Samson the great scene with its most tragic 
 conclusion could be acted out before their eyes ; 
 and whilst his success elevated their hopes and 
 roused their confidence, his casting down taught 
 
SAMSON THE JUDGE. 175 
 
 them its most needed lesson of warning, and yet 
 left their rising spirit unshattered. He was as it 
 were the embodiment of the chosen people; 
 they could see themselves in him. His Nazarite 
 condition represented faithfully their covenant 
 state ; his clinging amidst all his aberrations to 
 that vow ; his under voice of confidence in God ; 
 his perception that he had a vocation ; a mission 
 from Jehovah : his unshrinking daring in carry- 
 ing it out by the matchless might with which the 
 Most High had strengthened him ; his well-nigh 
 incredible success so long as he clave to this ; 
 all this was to teach them that if they would 
 cast off their Baalim and return unto their God, 
 and cleave to Him, they would break in Jehovah's 
 might the yoke of Philistia. His yielding to the 
 voice of sensual appetite, with all the misery it 
 brought upon him, was to show them in an 
 example acted before their eyes that if they 
 yielded to the sensuality, which was the great 
 inducement to their idol worship, and joined 
 themselves to the sins of the nations round, they 
 too, like their hero in the arms of Delilah, would 
 be snared, and blinded, and destroyed. 
 
176 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 This then was to be Samson's service; thus 
 was he to begin to deliver Israel out of the hands 
 of the Philistines. He was not to break their 
 yoke, but he was to show the trembling people 
 that before the faithful man their strength 
 withered and faded; and thus he was to keep 
 alive in fainting hearts the hope of Israel. They 
 were to see in him the tide of prophetic power 
 ebb and flow as he claimed or denied his true 
 relation to Jehovah. But to make this possible 
 it was essential that he should have such rela- 
 tions with the oppressing heathen as would lead 
 to their perfidy, and cruelty, and contempt, 
 venting themselves upon him personally so as to 
 embroil him with them, and thus make it natural 
 for him in maintaining his own personal rights 
 to avenge the oppression of Israel. For no 
 single man could make war upon a nation. In 
 this sense only Samson's wild choice of a 
 daughter of Philistia for a wife, because she 
 pleased him well, was " of the Lord." The act 
 was a forbidden one. The motives which led 
 Samson on to it were wilful and sensual ; but his 
 fault was to be overruled for the carrying out o/ 
 
SAMSON THE JUDGE. 1 7 7 
 
 the purposes of God. His father and his mother 
 saw but the evil of the heathen marriage, and so 
 resisted it whilst they could, and then, according 
 to their wont, yielded to the stronger will of 
 their imperious son. They go down to Timnath 
 with him to get for him the Philistine damsel to 
 wife. By the vineyards of the city a young lion 
 springs upon him with that roar which shakes 
 the forest; but alone, single-handed, and un- 
 armed, he seizes it and tears it asunder, as if 
 it were a kid, and does not even tell his parents 
 of the feat 
 
 Here again how strangely does the typical 
 character of all his acts of greatness float before 
 us ! His first recorded work of superhuman 
 strength, yet wrought as man, alone and un- 
 armed, as he goes down to begin his life-long 
 fray with the Philistines, is this overcoming of 
 the lion. And He, too, the One True Man, as 
 man, immediately before the opening of his 
 ministry, is driven of the Spirit into the wilder- 
 ness to be tempted of the devil ; to meet as man, 
 alone left for the time even by the bands of 
 angels who, when the conflict was over, returned 
 
 X 
 
178 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 to minister to Him the roaring lion who seeketh 
 whom he may devour; to meet him and to 
 overcome him in the might of the indwelling 
 Spirit. 
 
 When Samson and his parents come to Tim- 
 nath the damsel is formally demanded and 
 betrothed to him as his wife; in due time he 
 goes down again to claim his bride. The 
 marriage festival is celebrated with great pre- 
 paration and display, thirty Philistine children 
 of the bride-chamber attending to do honour to 
 their friend. 
 
 Again the strange similitude looks out upon 
 us from the marriage banquet. For as it was at 
 a marriage in Cana of Galilee, where first the 
 power of the Son of Mary was miraculously 
 manifested, so from the Timnath marriage feast 
 came first the display of Samson's might against 
 Philistia. Amongst the entertainments of the 
 festival, according to the common usage of 
 Eastern and even of Grecian feasting, Samson 
 puts forth a riddle to the assembled guests. 
 Philistian guile extracts dishonestly the answer 
 by threatening to burn with fire the household of 
 
SAMSON THE JUDGE. 179 
 
 the bride unless she entices for them his secret 
 from her betrothed. That hero heart of his, so 
 strong against man's violence, so weak before 
 woman's art, melts under her tears, and she 
 gains and betrays his secret. Then there fell on 
 him, as when the lion roared against him by the 
 vineyard of Timnath, the burst of a divine wrath. 
 He saw the perfidy, the darkness, the godless 
 injustice with which Philistia was oppressing 
 Israel, and he goes down to Askelon and slays 
 thirty of its chosen men, and brings their spoils 
 to pay the wager which had been so basely won. 
 This Philistian perfidy had brought the mar- 
 riage festival to an untimely end, and Samson 
 returns in wrath without his betrothed wife into 
 the land of Dan. By degrees, however, his 
 anger cools, and he goes down again to Timnath 
 to claim his wife. He is met by a new instance 
 of Philistian faithlessness. For he finds his wife 
 given to his companion, whom he hath used as 
 his friend. This new insult he avenged by turn- 
 ing three hundred of the jackals, who even to 
 this day infest in numbers the neighbourhood of 
 Gaza, tied tail to tail, with a lighted firebrand 
 
1 8o HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 between each, into the standing corn of the 
 Philistines, who, when they had ascertained the 
 cause of their loss, came up with savage violence 
 and burned with fire the house and family of 
 Samson's bride. The language of the author- 
 ized version would suggest that Samson con- 
 sidered even that an insufficient punishment for 
 his Timnite father-in-law's treachery. But the 
 original language implies the very opposite. It 
 suggests that his soul revolted from this abo- 
 minable barbarity; and that he resolved to 
 punish wholesale : " If ye do such things I will 
 not cease until I have been revenged on you/' 
 would be the truer rendering. Then he smote 
 them hip and thigh with a great slaughter. 
 
 It was after this act of heroism that he appears 
 to have openly assumed the judge's office. He 
 \vent down and dwelt in the cleft of the rock 
 Etam, and there the people of Judah came to him 
 for judgment. Yet his hold on his countrymen 
 was as yet small. His acts of vengeance on the 
 Philistine people stirred up, as he doubtless 
 expected they would, the bitter anger of those 
 national enemies. They gathered their troops 
 
SAMSON THE JUDGE. 1 8 1 
 
 together and invaded the territory of Judah to 
 seize the person of the terrible Danite. The con- 
 duct of the men of Judah exhibits in the strongest 
 light their utter national degradation. Instead 
 of gathering around their judge, and even if their 
 unarmed and undisciplined multitude could not 
 stand in battle against the hosts of Philistia, yet 
 seeking to strengthen his heroic heart by their 
 sympathy, whilst they watched for what their 
 God would do for them by his hands, they 
 resolved to purchase an ignominious peace by 
 the base surrender of their champion. 
 
 Again there breaks out upon us the recurring 
 prophecy of act. For so it was generations 
 after, in their children's days, when the Mighty 
 One came unto His own and His own received 
 Him not ; when the evil murmur was whispered, 
 "If we let him thus alone .... the Romans 
 shall come and take away both our place and 
 nation" (John xii. 48). "Knowest thou not," 
 said the three thousand men of Judah to Sam- 
 son, when they came to him at the rock of Etam, 
 " that the Philistines rule over us ? Wherefore 
 hast thou done this? We have come down tf 
 
1 82 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 bind thee, and deliver thee into the hands of the 
 Philistines." Out of the ages comes forth as 
 the accursed echo of that voice of faithless fear : 
 " We have no king but Caesar." And like acts 
 followed in each case : " When they had bound 
 Jesus they led Him away, and delivered Him to 
 Pontius Pilate the governor." Even so did the 
 men of Judah bind at Etam their Nazarite 
 champion with two new cords, and brought him 
 up from the rock. Both of the betrayed suffered 
 themselves to be bound, because in those bonds 
 they read the present Will of God and the road 
 to a future and more complete victory ; and the 
 bonds of each were indeed the loosing of the 
 prisoner's chains. So it was in the spirit world 
 with the Captain of our salvation. So it was 
 amidst the dark hosts of Philistia with the hero 
 judge of Israel. " For when the Philistines " in 
 triumph " shouted against " their captive enemy, 
 " the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, 
 and the cords that were upon his arms became 
 as flax which was burnt with fire, and his bands 
 loosed from off his hands ; and he found a new 
 jawbone of an ass, and put forth his hand and 
 
SAMSOX THE JUDGE. 183 
 
 took it, and slew a thousand men therewith" 
 (Judges xv. 15). 
 
 Then in the moment of his triumph came to 
 him to teach him his weakness without his God 
 the sore thirst under which his mighty strength 
 fainted. It was the time of wheat harvest, and 
 as single-handed he fought the battle and 
 destroyed the army of the alien, the sun of 
 Judea poured down its scorching midday rays 
 upon him until it seemed that he whom the 
 Philistine hosts could not subdue would perish 
 in the agony of drought. He cried unto the 
 Lord in a prayer which witnesses in its every 
 word to his deep sense of his being in these acts 
 no mere pursuer of personal vengeance, but in 
 very deed an instrument in the hand of Jehovah 
 for the rescuing of His people. "Thou hast 
 given this great deliverance into the hand of thy 
 servant, and now shall I die for thirst and fall 
 into the hand of the uncircumcised ? " He did 
 not cry In fain, for in the rock at Lehi He who 
 bringeth water out of the great deeps opened its 
 fresh springs, and when the thirst-bound hero 
 had drunk, his spirit came again and he revived ; 
 
,8+ HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 and in grateful remembrance he named the 
 spring, which for years afterwards distilled its 
 freshness from the rock of Lehi, " the spring of 
 him that cried." As we read of this extremity, 
 this prayer, and this deliverance, can we forget 
 an agony in the dark strife of the Captain of our 
 salvation far more terrible, a prayer far more 
 mysterious, and a succour yet more wonderful, 
 when "there appeared an Angel from Heaven 
 strengthening Him ? " So over and over again, 
 as we look deeper into the record, does the 
 Nazarite judge prefigure the true King of Israel. 
 Great at this time was the glory of Manoah's 
 son. Terrified by the utter failure of their last 
 attempt, the Philistines withdrew themselves 
 into their own borders. Samson judged his 
 people, and though the heathen yoke yet dis- 
 honoured Judah, it was little more than an 
 empty token of subjection whilst Samson was at 
 hand to avenge upon their trembling hosts any 
 act of aggression or of wrong. For twenty 
 years it seems that this long pause lasted, and 
 then the last and greatest of the judges falls 
 before the temptations of the flesh, and ends in 
 
SAMSON THE JUDGE. 1 8 s 
 
 shame and ruin his life of bright but fitful 
 splendour. It is a dark and miserable history, 
 to be told in a few mournful words, to be stored 
 up by all for closest self-application in their 
 heart of hearts. The mighty man " who had 
 burst the fetters of his foes could not break the 
 cords of his own lusts" (St. Ambrose). He 
 yields himself up to the enticements of the evil 
 and treacherous Delilah. The lords of Philistia 
 seized greedily on the hope which this weakness 
 of their great enemy suggested to them. They 
 promised the woman large rewards if she 
 could win from Samson the knowledge of the 
 hidden abode of his great strength, which, 
 according to popular belief, they supposed to 
 rest in the possession of some amulet or charm, 
 of which if they could rob him, they might 
 afterwards securely bind and oppress him who 
 had been their scourge and was still their terror. 
 With the perfidy of her class, she uses all her 
 harlot wiles to draw from him the coveted secret 
 At three different visits he deceives her with 
 fabled inventions. Once the sleeping giant is 
 bound by her with undried thongs; once with 
 
1 86 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 new cords ; once the Nazarite locks are woven 
 together by her into one; and each time he is 
 startled from slumber by the sudden cry, "Philis- 
 tines upon thee, Samson ! " Each time the awak- 
 ening man manifests in a moment his unabated 
 might, and his enemies, whom the cruel traitress 
 kept hidden by her in the dark ambush of 
 her chamber, dared not show their unsuspected 
 presence. Then the attempt would be treated as 
 an idle jest, such as frequent those chambers of 
 iniquity. For evermore has existed the deadly 
 conjunction which our own Milton's words of 
 matchless strength have in almost a syllable 
 so abundantly depicted 
 
 " Lust hard by hate," 
 
 and so his suspicions would be lulled to sleep, 
 and it would seem to be but a woman's curiosity 
 in one of its unmeaning sports with her victim. 
 
 But his last revelation, though it concealed the 
 truth, had come dangerously near to its sacred 
 secrecy. He had dared to sport with those 
 seven mysterious locks upon his head, which 
 were the outward sign, the mysterious sacra- 
 
SAMSON THE JUDGE. 187 
 
 inent, of his strength. This free and dangerous 
 handling of the veil drawn over the hidden 
 secret on which depended the indwelling of the 
 power of Jehovah foreboded all that followed ; 
 and it needed but another wearisome solicitation, 
 another passionate entreaty, another sportive 
 guile, to draw from him all the truth, and place 
 him helpless in the cruel hands of the deceiver. 
 This time she saw that he had told her all his 
 heart, and she sent with triumphant expectation 
 for the lords of her evil people. Then as Sam- 
 son slumbered in the sleep of sin, the razor 
 passed upon his head. The Nazarite locks were 
 shorn, the birth vow was broken, his separate 
 state was ended, the special presence of Jehovah 
 had departed from him, he had become as 
 another man. Then again the cry rang through 
 the chamber of sin, "Philistines upon thee, 
 Samson," and he rose with his dishonoured 
 head, saying to himself, " I will go away, as 
 time upon time." He had come from long 
 familiarity with its accesses to deem of the 
 strength vouchsafed to him as if it belonged to 
 himself. But he knew not that Jehovah was 
 
1 88 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 departed from him. Then from their secret 
 hiding-place rose up the ambush of his enemies ; 
 the dark forms cast themselves upon him, to be 
 received at first with his accustomed scorn. 
 Then came the fierce death-like struggle: the 
 mighty man accustomed to his strength could 
 not believe that it was gone, and yet it was in 
 very deed departed, and he is overmastered, 
 bound with fetters of brass, his eyes put out 
 that last terrible security taken against any 
 return of his might and he is led away a captive 
 to Gaza. There he is cast into the dungeon and 
 forced to do the hardest work of the meanest 
 drudges, to grind corn in the mill. 
 
 What must have been the thoughts of that 
 great self-willed heart ; what the agony of that 
 mighty spirit ; what the pangs of that rebellious 
 body ! How must the caged eagle have beaten 
 its mighty wings against the cruel bars of its 
 narrow cage ! how must Israel's deliverer have 
 groaned under the insults of the Philistines I 
 how must Jehovah's champion have abhorred 
 the triumphs of the infidels ! 
 
 Doubtless in that prison the work of God 
 
SAMSON THE JUDGE. 1 89 
 
 which he had so often counteracted was wrought 
 indeed with him. Doubtless, in those lonely 
 hours of darkness, with no familiar voice to 
 cheer their blackness, with no sound of kindness 
 to mingle with their gloom, conscience would 
 arouse itself in all its might ; doubtless he who 
 needed so severe a discipline of love for his 
 perfecting, had grace given him to yield himself 
 to all its cleansing, purifying power ; for his 
 name, by the hand of God the Holy Ghost, has 
 been engraven in the golden catalogue of the 
 faithful; doubtless he, beyond all others, now 
 that his earthly strength had departed from him 
 was, in the higher sense of the great words, 
 " out of weakness made strong." 
 
 The days, the weeks, the months, perhaps the 
 years, passed on passed in the slowly achieved 
 conquest of his will to the Will of God and 
 down in the dark hold of the heathen dungeon, 
 in his blindness and his squalidness, angels 
 visited the lonely man, nay, the God who had 
 made his Nazarite strength so strong was with 
 him in the prison. 
 
 At last the day of his deliverance dawned. 
 
igo HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORF. 
 
 The great feast of Dagon, the chiefest of the 
 idols of Philistia, was come. He was the god of 
 natural power of all the life-giving forces, of 
 which water is the instrument; his fish-like 
 body, with the head and arms of man, embodied 
 this idea of his rule. Sacrifices were this day 
 to be offered to him ; and amongst the chiefest 
 of his honours, the great judge of Israel the 
 warrior who had been filled with all Jehovah's 
 strength was to be led forth to do the idol 
 honour and exalt by his feats the delight 
 of assembled Philistia in their hideous, mis- 
 shapen God. The vast hall is full from end to 
 end of Philistia's nobles ; the flat roof crowded 
 by the swarming multitude. Amidst the taunts 
 and triumphs of a brutalized heathendom, the 
 eyeless captive is led in. He is guided to 
 the central columns, that all may the better 
 gaze upon this living trophy of their triumphant 
 god. 
 
 Amidst all that thronging garrulous crowd he 
 is alone with his God. Blindness, sorrow, 
 captivity, and loneliness have done their work 
 upon the solitary man. All his great soul is 
 
SAJfSOtf THE JUDGE. 191 
 
 turned inward. He scarcely hears or sees 
 anything around him. His thoughts are with 
 the past ; with the days of his Nazarite youth ; 
 with his early associations ; with his witness 
 for his God ; with his wanderings from Him. 
 What is there yet that he can do, what is there 
 that he can suffer, for that Lord ? There is but 
 one last offering he can make ; it is the offering 
 of himself: he is again in outward form a 
 dedicated Nazarite. Has the God in whom, he 
 now has learned, was all his early strength has 
 He come to him again ? Will Jehovah accept 
 even from one stained as he has been the 
 offering of his all ? He puts forth out of his 
 deep heart the cry for one more gift of strength 
 whereby the cruel sacrifice of his own eyesight 
 may be avenged, whereby the enemies of Israel 
 may be humbled, wherewith Jehovah may yet 
 triumph over Dagon. He prays his last prayer ; 
 offers to his God his life ; grasps with those 
 arms of iron the massive central columns which 
 support the wide-spanned roof, and bows himself 
 with all his might. There is a shaking of the 
 pillars; a cry of terror upon this side and on 
 
1 92 HEROES OF HEBREW HlSTORl*. 
 
 that a wild rush beginning, and on it all settles 
 down, with one loud crash mingling like the 
 deep thunder with the cries of the dying, the 
 vast proportions of the crumbling building. At 
 last Jehovah has triumphed. Dagon has fallen 
 before the God of Israel. The Hebrew judge 
 has indeed wrought the destruction of the 
 Philistines ; the eyeless captive has done more 
 than Samson in his might. " The dead which 
 he slew at his death were more than they which 
 he slew in his life." 
 
 Once again, for the last time, from amongst 
 the dark shadows of his fall and ruin, which 
 seemed for ever to shut out the glory of his 
 prophetic character, the typical similitude is 
 seen to re-awaken, and the hero judge bowing 
 willingly his soul to death that Jehovah may be 
 magnified and Israel delivered, foreshadows to 
 us the offering of himself by the Great Judge of 
 all unto the pains of death, that through death 
 He might destroy him that had the power of 
 death, that is, the devil, and deliver them who 
 through fear of death were all their lifetime 
 subject to bondage; and as the body of the 
 
DAMSON THE JUDGE. 193 
 
 Lord was not left in the grave of the wicked, so 
 is it expressly written for us, that the body of 
 the Nazarite judge remained not with the 
 uncircumcised amongst whom he fell, but that 
 profiting, no doubt, by the first terror of that 
 great overthrow in the temple of Dagon, "his 
 brethren and all the house of his father came 
 down and took him and brought him up and 
 buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol, in the 
 burying place of Manoah his father " (Judges 
 xvi. 31). 
 
 As we look back upon this history with its 
 intensely dramatic character, its wild lights, its 
 strange incidents, its glories and its shame, 
 gathering themselves round the hero chief, who 
 evermore fills the foreground of the picture, we 
 can scarcely resist the conclusion that the 
 Hercules of pagan story was but the Samson of 
 the inspired record distorted and robbed, by the 
 thick vapours of the heathendom, of the moral 
 teaching which breathes everywhere from the 
 history of Manoah's son. There is the same 
 exaltation of personal strength to an heroic 
 nobleness, there is the same slaughter of the 
 
 o 
 
i 9 4 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 lion, the same single-handed scattering of his 
 enemies, the same subjection of the hero's 
 strength to the weakness of his own lusts, the 
 same bowing down of his might before the 
 witchery of woman's wiles, the same deceived 
 end and premature death at the hands of the 
 enchantress. But in Hercules man's appetites 
 are deified, in Samson they show in undisguised 
 harshness all the cruelty of their murderous 
 outlines as the mighty man in his moral 
 weakness allows himself to be cast down upon 
 their rugged pinnacles. 
 
 This lesson, which lies upon the surface of 
 this wonderful history, none can fail to read. 
 The Nazarite separated to do the Will of God, 
 strong against every foe so long as his vow, 
 talisman-like, endures with him unrenounced; 
 but falling through the weakness of the flesh ; 
 then led on deliberately to tamper with the very 
 condition of his separation ; then, partly by half 
 consent, and partly by the fraud of the enemy, 
 stripped of the very sign of his relationship to 
 God; finding, too late, that God has departed 
 from him, and with God the strength which, in 
 
SAMSON THE JUDGE. 195 
 
 his self-confidence, he supposed would still be 
 with him as at other times ; then bound by the 
 enemies with whom he had tampered, cast into 
 their dungeon a blinded, manacled slave, or led 
 forth to be the sport of their bitter and tri- 
 umphant hatred all this is the story of each 
 Christian castaway, seen through so transparent 
 a veil that we cannot fail to mark in it the 
 typical outline of a baptism into Christ, with all 
 its separating power, with all its spiritual might 
 sacrificed for the lusts of the flesh, abandoned 
 at last even in profession, and leaving one of the 
 mighty ones in the prison-house of darkness, 
 blinded, manacled, and utterly enslaved, the 
 sport and mock of those evil enemies who crowd 
 around their accursed chief in the dungeons of 
 the lost. 
 
 But this is not the only lesson of this startling 
 chapter in the book of inspiration. The ever 
 self-repeating action of humanity and the many- 
 cidedness of God's Word every facet of the 
 mighty whole darting forth its own separate 
 gleam of light upon the mystery of being 
 make it read to us perhaps a deeper moral still 
 
/96 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 We may see in it how those who for the highest 
 purpose have been endowed with the highest 
 gifts, on whose intellectual powers that mighty 
 spirit of God's strength has rested, that they may 
 work some deliverance for His people, may idly 
 throw away, first, their noble trust, and then, 
 at last, themselves. Samson's gifts of bodily 
 strength, which were the consequence in him of 
 the Spirit of God exalting the ordinary powers 
 of man's muscles and sinews into the heroic 
 might of the Nazarite deliverer, are a type of the 
 quickening of the higher gifts of intellectual 
 power by the informing Spirit into a grander 
 reach of exertions than the merely natural mind 
 could have attained. The employment of these 
 jit the mere bidding of the selfish will, for sport, 
 for gain, for the gratification of a vain daring, 
 for the pleasure of unbridled speculation, is the 
 fulfilment in a higher sphere of the casting away 
 of the sensual, wayward judge of the tribe of 
 Dan. His end is a type of the yet greater fall of 
 these worse abusers of higher gifts. They, too, 
 when they have sold their Nazarite locks at the 
 bidding of the enchantress, when they have 
 
SAMSON THE JUDGE. 197 
 
 trifled with the gifts of the Holy Ghost, which 
 were theirs in the Church of the redeemed, hear 
 from the lips of that goddess of unsanctified 
 reason, on whose lap they are dreaming, the 
 startling cry of "Philistines are upon thee, 
 Samson ! " and in that crisis such men find, as 
 he did, their strength departed. They are bound 
 with the cords of doubts, plunged, often blind- 
 fold, into the dungeon of despair, to grind out 
 for the world all her baser problems, to feed her 
 godless company of scoffers. Happy were it for 
 such if even by the sacrifice of a life they could 
 pull down the temples of unbelieving thought 
 upon the crowd of blasphemous imaginations 
 which cling to and throng around them. 
 
SAMUEL THE PROPHET, 
 
 XT WHILST the troubled life of the Danite 
 judge was running out its wild course, 
 another Nazarite from the womb was growing up 
 in Israel under other influences and with a far 
 different destiny before him. He, too, was given 
 to a long barren mother, in answer to the cry 
 of her half-broken heart. Deep sorrow had, 
 through the grace of God, wrought in her its true 
 work, and brought her to cast herself, with all 
 her cares and oppressions, at His feet. In every 
 sense of the words, Samuel was given to hei 
 prayers. Given in his natural life; given, too, 
 as St. Augustine was given to the prayers of 
 Monica, and as so many saints besides have one 
 by one been given, in his spiritual life, to tne cry 
 
SAMUEL THE PROPHET. 190 
 
 of her heart to her God. She herself practised 
 the abstinence from wine and strong drink which 
 formed so large a part of the Nazarite vow, and 
 she devoted the child for whom she prayed, 
 not only to bear from his birth the ordinary 
 obligations of a Nazarite, but also to render 
 to the Lord a life-long service. Accordingly, 
 when he is three years old, she brings him up to 
 the sanctuary at Shiloh, and leaves that precious 
 life with the high priest Eli. There that holy 
 childhood grew on, fed by the special dews of the 
 blessed Spirit. Every opening faculty of his 
 young heart was thus from the first consecrated 
 to God, whilst with childish blamelessness, 
 girded with a linen ephod, he ministered in the 
 sanctuary by day, and lay down within its 
 precincts to sleep at night. 
 
 Great and pregnant with mighty issues was the 
 life which was being thus guarded. In him the 
 line of the judges was to end, in him the myste- 
 rious catalogue of the prophets was to begin. 
 It was a great crisis in the dealings of God with 
 His people. They were to be recalled to Him, 
 to be roused out of their apathy and spiritual 
 
zoo HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 deadness, to be consecrated anew to Him. They 
 were to be delivered from the yoke of their 
 oppressing enemies ; their national life was to be 
 developed ; they were to be consolidated into a 
 kingdom, instead of being held loosely together 
 as a congeries of tribes. 
 
 To meet the needs which this new development 
 of national life must create, the prophetic office 
 was called into being. The throne of the King 
 of Israel was to have beside it this special 
 honour, that one should be ever near who could 
 speak the utterances of Israel's God. For 
 reproof, for direction, for counsel, that voice 
 could ever be awoke. To Saul, to David, to 
 Solomon, to Rehoboam, to Hezekiah, to the 
 founder of the northern kingdom, and to his 
 successors, we hear it from time to time speaking 
 its solemn, its alarming, its consoling accents. 
 It is ever present as a real abiding power to the 
 kingdom's end; dying out, at last, in the sad 
 wail of Jeremiah's lamentations. 
 
 For this office in its earliest, and, in some 
 respects, never equalled strength, Samuel's youth 
 was training within that shelter of the tabernacle 
 
SAMUEL THE PROPHET. 201 
 
 at Shiloh. Those were dark days with Israel. 
 The tribes had, one and all, wandered far from 
 Jehovah, and yielded themselves up to the 
 abominations and impurities of the heathendom 
 around them. They chose new gods ; then was 
 war in their gates. And in those wars they were 
 continually worsted; until the Philistines had 
 brought them so utterly into subjection that they 
 had almost ceased to rebel against the yoke of 
 their oppressors. Samson in the west, and 
 Gideon in the east, had indeed, in some measure, 
 rebelled against this evil domination, and whis- 
 pered some hopes to the downcast heart of 
 Israel. But they had wrought no enduring 
 deliverance for their people. To work such an 
 emancipation far more was needed than the mere 
 overthrow of their enemies. Israel's subjection 
 was the fruit of Israel's sin ; and the heart of the 
 people must be brought back to Jehovah before 
 they could break the heathen yoke asunder. 
 But whence was this deliverance to come ? 
 It could not come from the mass of the degraded 
 people, nor could it spring from the line of the 
 priests. For it was then, as with the people so 
 
202 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 with the priests. They, indeed, as being set 
 apart to witness for Jehovah, were sunk into a 
 debasement greater than that of the ordinary 
 Israelites around them. Nothing can be darke? 
 than the figures portrayed for us by the hand of 
 Revelation as constituting the very heart of the 
 priesthood. The high priest's office, and that, 
 as it seems, of the judge of Israel, was now in 
 the hands of Eli, of the house of Ithamar. How 
 it had travelled to that branch of Aaron's family 
 is nowhere distinctly stated, though there is a 
 shadowy revelation of the youth of Eli as having 
 been marked by martial prowess, which, it 
 seems probable, had secured for him the judge's 
 office. In it he had grown old and feeble. 
 God's honour was really dear to the heart of the 
 ancient man ; and the loss of the ark of the 
 covenant broke down his spirit as not even the 
 destruction of his two sons could do. But his 
 rule was lax and feeble ; feeblest and most lax 
 where, above all others, it should have been 
 strong over his own sons, who bore the priestly 
 office, and shared the trust and duties of his 
 judgeship. Utter godless worldliness in its two 
 
SAMUEL THE PROPHET. 203 
 
 terrible outbreaks of grasping avaricious oppres- 
 sion and flagitious all-sacrificing lust, defaced h. 
 them the priestly character; whilst a supersti- 
 tious valuing of the mere externals of their 
 covenanted service alone lingered on amongst 
 them, witnessing, by its dark presence, against 
 those who had put out the light which once those 
 outward instruments were the divinely fashioned 
 channels to convey to Israel. 
 
 To purge out such evils judgment must begin 
 at the house of God. Nor would one act of 
 judgment, however terrible, suffice. The violent 
 death of the high priest, the fall of his two sons 
 in battle, the desecration of Shiloh, and the 
 captivity of the ark these startling judgments 
 would help perhaps to stir the sleeping heart of 
 Israel. But beyond these the deep degradation 
 of the priesthood had made it needful that the 
 new office of the prophet should stand beside 
 the priest as well as beside the king. The dim 
 outlines of such an approaching dispensation 
 may be traced in the coming of the man of God 
 to Eli with that fearful denunciation whose 
 burning letters of fire have witnessed now in 
 
204 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 God's volume for nearly four thousand years to 
 His separated ministers in every age of what 
 must be the end of using for themselves the 
 mighty trust for others committed by the Lord's 
 election to the keeping of His priests (i Sam. ii. 
 27 36). But it was in Samuel first that this new 
 ministry was embodied, and the great features 
 of his life are the history of its fulfilment. We 
 see the outlines of the great office beginning to 
 fashion themselves forth even at that tender age 
 when distinct self-consciousness first reveals itself 
 tremblingly within him. The child Samuel 
 ministering in his linen ephod, clothed with the 
 long garment of honourable proportions which 
 his saintly mother brought him year by year 
 when with his Levitical father she journeyed 
 from Ramah to offer the appointed sacrifice 
 comes forth first before us from that shrouding 
 which ever hangs so thick around a holy child- 
 hood as supernaturally called by God to this 
 prophetic office. How that " uncovering of the 
 ear " was wrought we are not distinctly told ; 
 but the whole narrative forbids the supposition 
 that it was upon the mind alone of Samuel that 
 
SAMUEL THE PROPHET. 205 
 
 the voice of the Almighty fell. Into all the 
 mystery of that secret visitation which in the 
 dim shadowy light of the sacred precincts, 
 through which the rays of the seven-branched 
 lamp scarcely struggled, we may not safely 
 gaze, but the words " the Lord came, and stood, 
 and called" d Sam. iii. 10) must not be weak- 
 ened or explained away. There was, it is plain, 
 an act upon the part of God antecedent to the 
 impression made on Samuel; and the voice 
 which spoke was doubtless real, as through the 
 still silence of the holy tent its mysterious 
 accents fell upon his watching ear, and syllabled 
 out to his trembling soul the singleness of his 
 own name. 
 
 So the long silence of God to His people was 
 broken. That Word of God which was so 
 " precious " from its rarity began again to sound 
 in Israel, and the " open vision " which the 
 mists of idol-worship had veiled revealed to the 
 holy child its sacred proportions. At once the 
 special character of the new office is declared 
 by the prophetic youth being sent to the high 
 priest himself with the message of the Lord 
 
zob HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 Those young lips utter the tremendous doom, 
 declaring by the natural feebleness of the instru- 
 ment how entirely it is the voice of another 
 which speaks through them ; and so the old 
 man receives the words. To him plainly they 
 are not Samuel's ; his dim eyes can trace " the 
 Presence " being now restored to Israel, and his 
 saddened utterance is that of one who felt 
 through all his frame Jehovah's nearness when 
 he said, " It is the Lord ; let Him do what 
 seemeth Him good" (i Sam. iii. 18). How does 
 the startling sight of the lad of twelve years old 
 (for so his age has been reckoned), standing 
 with such a word of prophecy before the mar- 
 velling chief priest, point on to Him, the one 
 true Prophet, in whom all the lines of God's 
 dealings with man converge, of whose days u all 
 the prophets from Samuel, and those that follow 
 after, have foretold," as He too, coming forth 
 from His holy home at Nazareth, was found at 
 twelve years old sitting in the Temple in the 
 midst of the astonished doctors of the law, both 
 hearing them and asking them questions ! 
 When next the prophetic power rested upon 
 
SAMUEL THE PROPHET. 207 
 
 Samuel we know not ; but that it did again and 
 again reveal itself is most distinctly stated in the 
 words, "Samuel grew, and the Lord was with 
 him, and did let none of his words fall to the 
 ground. And all Israel, from Dan even to 
 Beersheba, knew that Samuel was established 
 to be a prophet of the Lord. And the Lord 
 appeared again in Shiloh : for the Lord revealed 
 Himself to Samuel in Shiloh by the word of the 
 Lord" (i Sam. iii. 19 21). 
 
 Such had been his childhood and his youth, 
 when the storm of predicted judgment fell upon 
 his people. Roused at last to resistance by 
 intolerable oppression, Israel went out to battle 
 against the Philistines. But though " the word 
 of Samuel came to all Israel." it is not written 
 that they took any counsel of the Lord through 
 him. Their insurrection was but the natural 
 outbreak of the oppressed against the oppressor, 
 There had been no putting away of their idols, 
 no turning to their fathers' God, no seeking, as 
 it seems, of His direction ; and so, when " they 
 joined battle Israel was smitten before the Phi- 
 listines/' Then came another exhibition of that 
 
2o8 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 spiritual blindness with which the evil lives of 
 their priests had done so much to darken their 
 souls. They had seen abominable iniquity so 
 ostentatiously united with the performance of all 
 the outward acts of their enjoined worship, so 
 abundant around the very doors of the tabernacle 
 (i Sam. ii. 22) itself, that they had grown to trust 
 in the visible tokens of the invisible presence, 
 instead of believing in the Lord their God. " Let 
 us fetch/' was the cry of this dark superstition, 
 "the ark of the covenant of the Lord out of 
 Shiloh unto us, that when it cometh among us, 
 IT may save us out of the hand of our enemies." 
 This was a form of misbelief into which the dark 
 hosts of infidel Philistia could enter, and they 
 too trembled at the coming of the ark. But they 
 trembled needlessly. Israel must be taught its 
 lesson by the hands of the heathen. The people 
 of Jehovah must know that not in the priesthood, 
 or in sacrifice, or in the shrine of Shiloh, or in 
 the ark itself, but in the living God was their 
 defence against their enemies ; and so, as before, 
 " Israel was smitten, and there was a very great 
 slaughter, and the ark of God was taken, and the 
 
SAMUEL THE PROPHET. 200 
 
 two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were 
 slain/* Then was Ichabod indeed written on Shi- 
 loh, and upon every door-post in Israel. Then 
 indeed did Philistia triumph. For twenty years, as 
 it seems, from this decisive victory she held her 
 cruel heathen sway over the people of Jehovah. 
 
 Where Samuel was during this interval, we 
 know not. It was doubtless needful for him to 
 be thus for a season withdrawn from action and 
 observation. His holy childhood and his pro- 
 phetic youth needed calm, silence, introspection, 
 and secret communion with God, to mature the 
 great strength of his after life. Like St. Paul in 
 Arabia, like a greater than St. Paul at Nazareth 
 after that communing in the temple, he was 
 hidden away by God; hidden, it would seem, 
 like the son of Mary when He left Jerusalem with 
 her for almost twenty years before He was mani- 
 fested to Israel. 
 
 Those twenty years of Samuel's hidden life 
 were a weary time for Israel. Throughout their 
 span Philistia asserted and cemented her domi- 
 nion over the chosen people. This was probably 
 the season of Samson's single-handed acts of 
 
 p 
 
zio HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 heroic bravery, ending with his mighty destruc- 
 tion of his enemies under the crashing ruins of 
 the Dagon house at Gaza. Samson's deeds of 
 heroism must have stirred many hearts in Israel 
 and aroused the sunken spirits of her sons. But 
 they needed a deeper awakening yet before they 
 could break the yoke of the heathen. There 
 must be a turning of their hearts to God before 
 He would bare His arm for their deliverance. 
 For such a return to Him the sorrows of theso 
 twenty years had been preparing their souls. 
 The ark abode in Kirjath Jearim. The time was 
 long ; for it was twenty years, and all the house 
 of Israel lamented after the Lord. For such a 
 time the prophet had been kept in that still 
 shelter of the hand of the Almighty. Now he 
 suddenly appears again in Israel. His words 
 catch the tone of that lamenting penitence which 
 had at last begun to stir the national heart. 
 u If ye do return unto the Lord with all your 
 hearts, then put away the strange gods and 
 Ashtaroth from among you, and prepare your 
 hearts unto the Lord and serve Him only, and 
 He will deliver you out of the hand of the 
 
SAMUEL THE PROPHET. 211 
 
 Philistines." And they answered to his call, and 
 put away the strange gods. And He gathered 
 them at Mizpeh for a searching national humilia- 
 tion. Then in the absence of the ark, and with 
 Shiloh desolate, and the great priestly office in 
 abeyance, the Prophet, under the leading of the 
 Spirit, himself offered a burnt-offering, and made 
 intercession for his people ; and God accepted 
 them. To the wild, passionate Samson it had 
 been given " to begin to deliver Israel out of the 
 hands of the Philistines." But the strong man 
 had lacked that turning of the heart to God with 
 which the new Nazarite opened his commission. 
 He was to effect what the other had begun ; to 
 him was given the far greater charge of beating 
 down Philistia, and at once he set about fulfilling 
 it. Even as he offered the sacrifice the fierce cry 
 of a coming multitude mingled wildly with his 
 prayer ; the weeping penitents looked up to see 
 the great Prophet in the long mantle, which 
 from his holy childhood had ever been his garb, 
 standing with his long Nazarite locks floating on 
 the hill-side breeze, in the energy of supplica- 
 tion ; " crying unto the Lord " before the altar of 
 
jkz HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 burnt-offering, whilst on the other side they could 
 already note the dark hosts of Philistia marching 
 on with all the confidence bred by accustomed 
 rictory to the dreaded encounter. Then in his 
 prophetic power Samuel poured down upon the 
 astonished assailants the ancient might of Israel, 
 when loud above all the din of the battle broke 
 forth on every side of heaven the pealing answer 
 of Jehovah's thunder. A panic terror fell upon 
 the uncircumcised, and they were utterly discom- 
 fited, and slain with such a slaughter that they 
 were " subdued and came no more unto the coast 
 of Israel ; and the hand of the Lord was against 
 the Philistine all the days of Samuel." 
 
 The wearied land rested and breathed again 
 with ease under the great deliverance. The 
 cities which the Philistines had taken from 
 Israel were delivered out of the hands of the 
 heathen ; the neighbouring Amorite tribes made 
 peace with the conquerors, and " Samuel judged 
 Israel all the days of his life. He went from 
 year to year in circuit to Bethel, and Gilgal, and 
 Mizpeh, and judged Israel in all those places, 
 and his return was to Ramah, for there was his 
 
SAMUEL THE PROPHET. 213 
 
 house, and there he judged Israel, and there he 
 built an altar unto the Lord." Such he was in 
 his official life as judge over Israel ; of an incor- 
 ruptible purity, of unwearied diligence, of undis- 
 puted power, of life-long continuance. 
 
 But there was another side to this great 
 character. In him the temporal administration 
 of the judge, noble as it was, is cast wholly into 
 the shade by the brightness of his prophetic 
 office. This was, as we have seen, a new admi- 
 nistration of the One Spirit. So new was it 
 that St. Peter dates from Samuel the rise of 
 the prophetic utterances which announced the 
 coming of Messiah's kingdom of grace. "Yea, 
 and all the prophets, from Samuel and those 
 that follow after, have likewise foretold of these 
 days " (Acts iii. 24). 
 
 This novelty of the office would of itself make 
 its first administration as a new development 
 of the working of the Spirit of God a matter 
 of the deepest interest. But beside this, two 
 circumstances of the life of Samuel tend to 
 aggravate its grandeur and bring out all its 
 variety of aspect. The first was, that for him 
 
214 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 it was appointed to guide the difficult transition 
 of Israel's political organization from a divinely 
 ruled republic into a regularly constituted 
 monarchy. He was the last of the judges, and 
 under his rule their long line, which through 
 four hundred and fifty years had been God's gift 
 to His people, passed into that of the anointed 
 kings of Israel. 
 
 The second cause of the greatness of Samuel's 
 prophetic administration is to be found in the 
 character of Saul, by whom he stood as an ex- 
 ternal conscience ; as a director, and revealer, 
 and speaker of the Will of God to one of the 
 most wayward of men. It was not without a 
 struggle of his human will and a shock to his 
 natural affections that Samuel heard the first 
 cry of the people for a king. There was in 
 it ingratitude to him ; there was rebellion 
 against the order of deliverers which God had 
 already given them ; there was an earthly crav- 
 ing to be like unto the nations round about 
 them. "The thing displeased Samuel:" but 
 his refuge was near, and he "prayed unto the 
 Lord." " Hearken," was the answer, " unto 
 
SAMUEL THE PROPHET. 215 
 
 their voice, for they have not rejected thee, but 
 they have rejected me." Their sin was an im- 
 patient forestalling of what it was the Will of 
 God that they should have in His way and at 
 His time. How grandly does the great pro- 
 phet's form stand out when seen against the 
 background of the restless people's earthly 
 clamouring ! In him all natural indignation 
 dies out at once. The Voice has spoken to him, 
 and it is enough. His faith accepts without the 
 shadow of a struggle what he now knows to be 
 "the Will of God." At once he proceeds to 
 prepare the chosen of the Lord for his vocation, 
 and then to anoint him king, and to secure to 
 him the undivided following of the people. 
 Hero-like, he is free from every taint of jealousy. 
 He exalts to the uttermost the new monarch. 
 " See ye," he says to all the people, " him whom 
 the Lord hath chosen, that there is none like him 
 among all the people" (i Sam. x. 24); and 
 the people, catching the enthusiasm from him, 
 " shouted and said, God save the King." 
 
 All the attributes of the young king tended to 
 kindle such a passion of loyalty. Commanding 
 
1 1 6 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORF. 
 
 in stature, eminent in personal beauty, brave and 
 successful when first tried on the field of battle, 
 his bearing was ennobled by a most gracious 
 and winning modesty. Doubtless the prophet's 
 eye looked on to a reign of holy obedience to 
 Jehovah's Will ; to the earthly monarchy being 
 indeed the true reflection upon earth of the 
 heavenly King ; to the consolidation of the tribes 
 of Israel ; to the subjugation of all their enemies ; 
 to their establishment, as a true world-kingdom 
 amongst the nations of the earth, bearing Jeho- 
 vah's name and upheld by His might. But, alas ! 
 beneath those flowery meadows and graceful 
 uplands there were already struggling volcanic 
 fires which wanted opportunity alone to burst 
 forth with destructive vehemence. The real 
 temper of the young monarch was too soon 
 shown. The relation between the king and the 
 prophet, as it was established by God, was, that 
 prophetic utterances were to be received by the 
 ruler of His people as coming directly from His 
 own mouth. Early in Saul's reign his obedience 
 to such " a word " was tried with some severity. 
 In the third year of his reign his gallant son 
 
SAMUEL THE PROPHET. 117 
 
 Jonathan smote the garrison of the Philistines 
 on the hill of Geba. Forthwith the whole might 
 of their old oppressors was put forth for one 
 great effort, to reimpose upon their escaping 
 victims the detested yoke of the uncircumcised. 
 
 The Philistines gathered themselves together 
 to fight with Israel, thirty thousand chariots and 
 six thousand horsemen, "a people as the sand 
 that is on the sea-shore in multitude." The 
 scarcely recovered courage of the men of Israel 
 fainted at the sight. The greater number hid 
 themselves away from the terrible enemy "in 
 caves, and in thickets, and in rocks, and in high 
 places, and in pits ; " even the few less faint- 
 hearted men who still kept the field "followed 
 Saul trembling." It seemed to the eye of sense 
 that there was madness in waiting, as the 
 prophet had bid him do, seven days in Gilgal, 
 until he came down and offered sacrifice, and 
 showed him what he should do (i Sam. x. 8). 
 That waiting appeared simply ruinous. Day by 
 day the enemy grew bolder; day by day hi* 
 own troops more down-hearted and demoralised. 
 The winds of danger told sorely upon the ill- 
 
2i 8 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 cemented mass, and like the sands under the 
 blast of the desert, they were scattered from him. 
 Still for seven days he waited, fretting under 
 the command, and with a growing impatience at 
 its unreasonable requirement. The seventh day 
 came, and the prophet still tarried ; longer the 
 rising wilfulness of the king's nature could not 
 submit, and disobediently he himself offered the 
 sacrifice. His disobedience was his sin. The 
 ark of God was not in its place : the prophetic 
 commission superseded the priestly. Samuel 
 himself offered not as a priest, which he was not, 
 but as a prophet. The king's sin was not an 
 intrusion of himself into the priestly office, it was 
 a simple sin of wilful disobedience, under strong 
 temptation, to the word of Jehovah, spoken by the 
 mouth of His prophet. No sooner has he offered 
 than Samuel appears. Saul goes out to seek the 
 prophet's blessing; but that blessing is turned 
 into reproofs, which the excuses of the wayward 
 king cannot turn aside " Thou hast done fool- 
 ishly: thou hast not kept the commandment of 
 the Lord thy God. Thy kingdom shall not con- 
 tinue : the Lord hath sought him a man after his 
 
SAMUEL THE PROPHET. tig 
 
 own heart, and commanded him to be captain 
 over His people, because thou hast not kept that 
 which the Lord commanded thee" (i Sam. xiii. 14). 
 Here is the first voice of the thunder of coming 
 judgment ; distant, undefined, as from an almost 
 unclouded sky; capable of being averted. It leads 
 to no separation between him and the prophet. 
 Samuel goes up to Gibeah of Benjamin with the 
 king. The Spirit of God has been grieved, but 
 it does not leave him. He strengthens himself on 
 his throne. Years pass on, and bring with them 
 victories and power. "He took the kingdom 
 over Israel, and fought against all his enemies on 
 every side, and whithersoever he turned he vexed 
 them." Once or twice the wilful temper of his soul 
 breaks forth ; but on the whole he fights bravely 
 the battle of Israel, and prospers in his ways. 
 
 Fourteen years have passed away, when again 
 the discipline of his life gathers itself up into a 
 special trial. The great prophet's voice brings 
 him a new commission from his God, and 
 preludes it by a note of very special warning. 
 " The Lord sent me to anoint thee to be king 
 over his people ; now therefore hearken thou unto 
 
Z2o HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 the voice of the Lord/' That tone of adjuration 
 surely tells all. It speaks the prophet's judgment 
 of his character ; it tells of prayers and inter- 
 cession, of days of watching and nights of grief, 
 for one he loved so well, as he saw growing on 
 that darkening countenance the deepening lines 
 of wilfulness. The prophet sees that this will be 
 a crisis in that life-history, with which, by God's 
 own hand, his own has been so strangely inter- 
 twined. He gives the king the charge of God 
 to " smite Amalek, to destroy them utterly, and 
 spare none." To go forth on this campaign 
 suited well the martial and violent temper of 
 Saul, and he readily obeyed. The assault was 
 perfectly successful. But the wilful heart of the 
 conqueror could not obey entirely. He could 
 not resist the temptation to bring back in 
 triumph the captive king of Amalek, or to spare 
 the flocks and herds which might enrich Israel. 
 The sentence of God was not long delayed. As 
 he returned with his victorious troops, the 
 prophet met him. That sorrow-stricken coun- 
 tenance, around which hung the long Nazarite 
 locks, now whitened by the snows of ninety 
 
SAMUEL THE PROPHET. 22, 
 
 years, pale and worn with the long night's un- 
 broken, but ungranted, intercession, as in grief 
 for the offender he had cried unto the Lord all 
 night, might have told all. But he was bidden 
 to speak it out, and so he meets the king in the 
 triumph of his return with a reproof, sterner far 
 than when fourteen years before he had chidden 
 his early disobedience. Now the thunder-cloud, 
 then distant and well - nigh undiscernible, 
 darkens the whole sky, and peals over the 
 sinner's head. " Stay," is the sad and terrible 
 voice as it breaks through the cobweb films of 
 self-deception and excuse, " and I will tell THEE 
 
 what the Lord hath said to me this night 
 
 The Lord sent thee .... and said, Go and 
 utterly destroy the sinners the Amalekites. 
 Wherefore then didst thou not obey the voice ot 
 the Lord, but didst fly upon the spoil ? " Then 
 comes again, with trembling dishonesty, out of 
 that once strong man's mouth, the poor excuse, 
 " The people .... took of the spoil to sacrifice 
 unto the Lord thy God in Gilgal" the very 
 utterance of dark superstition and mean equivo- 
 cation. And forthwith, like the darting down ot 
 
222 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 the brightness of the lightning's flash, the pro- 
 phet's voice gathers itself up into one of those 
 magnificent utterances which, belonging to 
 another and a later dispensation, antedate the 
 coming revelation, and are evidently launched 
 forth from the open "ark of the testimony" of the 
 Highest "Hath the Lord as great delight in 
 burnt-offerings and in sacrifices as in obeying 
 the voice of the Lord ? Behold, to obey is better 
 than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of 
 rams. Because THOU hast rejected the word of 
 the Lord, He hath also rejected THEE from being 
 king." And now judgment as is its terrible wont 
 gathered round him in contracting circles. 
 The doom was irreversible. "The Strength of 
 Israel is not a man . . . that He should repent." 
 It was a fearful meeting it was followed by an 
 almost life-long parting. " Samuel came no more 
 to see Saul until the day of his death." Once 
 only in life, some seventeen years later, the king, 
 when too far hardened in his wilfulness for in- 
 struction or reproof, saw again that face, to sink 
 at Naioth under its prophetic power. But still 
 upon the hill of Ramah, whpre the prophet 
 
SAMUEL THE PROPHET. 223 
 
 dwelt, the cry of mourning" intercession ceased 
 not : " Nevertheless Samuel mourned for Saul." 
 The judgments of the God that heareth prayer 
 seem to have been stayed by that mighty suppli- 
 cation of him who is classed by the Word of God 
 with Moses, as the greatest of human interces- 
 sors. And so, with faithful love, the prophet 
 cried unto his God, until the voice which in his 
 childhood had spoken to him the transference of 
 the priesthood of Eli, now told him of the re- 
 moval of God's anointing from Saul to David in 
 these fearful tones : " How long wilt thou mourn 
 for Saul, seeing I have rejected him from reign- 
 ing over Israel ? Fill thine horn with oil, and go 
 unto Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided 
 me a king among his sons." 
 
 At the peril of his life from the anger of the 
 king, Samuel goes, and guided against his 
 natural judgment to David, pours on his head 
 the anointing oil, and the Spirit of the Lord 
 owns the commanded act, and comes from that 
 day forward upon David. Then the cloud 
 settles darker and darker upon the rejected 
 king. The Spirit of the Lord had departed from 
 
224 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY 
 
 him, and an evil spirit from the Lord troubled 
 him. That self-willed heart was haunted by 
 the gloomy delusions which usher in despair. 
 Reason trembled on her seat of rule ; whilst 
 passion and hatred led madness on, and seated 
 her instead upon the throne of inward mastery. 
 For years the awful conflict lasted ; gleams of 
 light there were, but evermore the darkness 
 deepened, and its evil, half-discerned figures 
 thronged him in wilder and multiplied com- 
 panionship, and gathered closer around him. 
 Upon David, his preferred successor, all the hatred 
 of his soul concentrated its venom. How must 
 the ever-during " mourning " of the prophet have 
 grown sadder in its tones as he saw the utter 
 wreck of that early brightened life ! Happy was 
 it for him that he lived not to see its bitter end 
 upon the mountains of Gilboa. But he had set 
 for all time the great example of the office of the 
 prophet of the Lord, when called to stand in 
 God's name not only by the side of His willing 
 and obedient servant, but also amidst the deep 
 shadows which settled on the wilful king. 
 
 Nor was it only the lineaments of this great 
 
SAMUEL THE PROPHET 225 
 
 model and example which this first of the pro- 
 phets left for after times. With that prescient eye 
 which belonged to one employed to conduct the 
 nation and the Church of Israel through a great 
 transition in its history, he foresaw the need of 
 providing a new system of training for those who 
 should be his successors in the prophetic office. 
 For this end he formed into fixed societies the 
 sharers of the mysterious gift, which was plainly 
 capable of cultivation and enlargement. 
 
 As at every leading crisis of the dealings of 
 God with man, unusual operations of the Spirit 
 marked the time of Samuel. They were not con- 
 fined to him, though his is far the most con- 
 spicuous figure on the canvas. " There was the 
 company of the prophets, and Samuel standing as 
 appointed over them" (i Sam. xix. 20). These 
 companies of the prophets eminently foreshadow 
 that Church which the greater than Samuel 
 should form. In it, as amongst them, the gift is 
 diffused throughout the whole body; is capable 
 of increase ; breaks out in one and in another 
 in separate manifestations, but is still the work- 
 ing of the One Spirit ; abounds when sought by 
 
 Q 
 
226 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 all as one, and by each as a part of the whole, but 
 dies out in separation, and languishes in each who 
 is becoming estranged from the common body. 
 Therefore were they gathered by the great Seer, 
 from his insight into the future, into tHese com- 
 munions. From these came the spiritual succes- 
 sions which gave Gad and Nathan and Samuel's 
 own grandson Heman to the Church of Israel. 
 
 Thus he provided for the time when he no 
 longer could uphold in person the new insti- 
 tution. For he too was bowed by age and must 
 sleep with his fathers. Peacefully and gradually 
 the change passed over him. It was the 
 due end of his even and consistent life. It 
 was a grand parting between him and Israel 
 when he laid down the active exercise of the 
 judge's office to hand it over to the king they 
 had desired. Equable progression from the 
 beginning to the end was the special character- 
 istic of the life of Samuel. No sudden develop- 
 ment of military prowess lifted him from com- 
 mon life into the judge's office. The Nazaritc 
 vow was marked on him by promise even before 
 he was born ; the morning dew of grace glistened 
 
SAMUEL THE PROPHET. 227 
 
 on him from his birth ; his childhood was open 
 to special visitations of God's grace in the still- 
 ness of the sanctuary and amidst the sanctities 
 of Shiloh. Of the life which followed this he 
 could speak without contradiction or dispute : 
 " I am old and grey-headed .... and I have 
 walked before you from my childhood to this 
 day. Behold, here I am, witness against me 
 before the Lord, and before His anointed." The 
 death was like the life ; it was the gathering up 
 of the feet into the bed, the calmest lying down 
 to die ; the whole inspired record of it is the three 
 solemn words, "And Samuel died." So giveth 
 He His beloved rest. He was buried in his own 
 house at Ramah : there he was born ; thither 
 probably he withdrew at the desecration ol 
 Shiloh ; thence he judged Israel ; there he lay 
 down and died. Around him were the lamenta- 
 tions of his people. It is written with express- 
 ness of emphasis, "ALL the Israelites were 
 gathered together, and lamented him and buried 
 him." All had known him, the tall figure, 
 mantle-clad, the long white locks, the reverend 
 countenance they should see them no more; 
 
2z8 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 no more hear that voice of wise counsel and of 
 brave rebuke. Another mighty one had passed 
 away ; one who, like Moses and Joshua, had in- 
 augurated a new dispensation ; he, too, was gone 
 the great prophet, the gifted seer, the upright 
 judge, the inspired hero, he had passed away : 
 the very heart of the nation sighed out its loving, 
 weeping requiem. All Israel, with a mighty 
 lamentation, mourned for Samuel. 
 
 Who amongst them all mourned as that son of 
 Jesse on whose head he had, at God's command, 
 poured the anointing oil ? Heavy thoughts were 
 in that mighty heart when David passed again 
 rrom under the shadow of Samuel's dwelling- 
 place at Ramah into the cold bare world which 
 had no resting-place for him, as he " arose and 
 went down to the wilderness of Paran." Doubt- 
 less in its waste places he heard ag'ain, in loving 
 memory, the echoes of the prevailing "cry" of 
 him who was so great amongst those who "called 
 upon the name of the Lord." Doubtless his 
 own discipline was perfected in this new sorrow, 
 and he learned in losing Samuel to lean more 
 simply and alone on Samuel's God. 
 
DAVID THE KING 
 
 A MONGST all the noble creations of Greek 
 
 poetry there is no single figure more 
 
 vividly portrayed than is that of Saul the son 
 
 of Kish, as he stands before us in the inspired 
 
 records of Israel. 
 
 Every line of his character is as fresh as if he 
 lived yesterday ; there is the grand hero-like 
 beauty of his early manhood, the lofty stature, 
 the strong arm, the unflinching nerves, the quick 
 eagle-eye of the successful general, the gene- 
 rosity to unworthy opponents, which makes suc- 
 cess so graceful and imperial command so easy 
 to endure. 
 
 To this bright morning succeeds the over- 
 r.louded noonday ; the mists gather earliest and 
 
2 3 o HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 thickest round these heights of unexpected royal 
 elevation to which the Benjamite commoner 
 was raised. Through the ingenuous evenness of 
 his youthful countenance, the strong lines of 
 growing self-will begin to break with volcanic 
 violence. Year by year they develop and they 
 darken, until they fix themselves in an aspect of 
 habitual gloom. The green valley, the wavy 
 corn-field, the sunlit stream are left behind us ; 
 we are in the gorges of the mountains, and its 
 hard rocks frown morosely on us. 
 
 Still for a season the clouds open, and rays 
 of light dart down which for the moment make 
 these wild fastnesses seem glad. But these soon 
 pass away. The clouds lower and thicken and 
 blacken. The night, with its terrors, comes 
 before its time ; in its darkness the storm which 
 has so long been gathering breaks with a 
 sudden crash; and we gaze with breathless 
 awe upon its fury. 
 
 From that day of evil omen, when, the last word 
 of warning spoken, Samuel turned away from the 
 self-willed king, to come no more to see him to 
 the day of his death (i Sam. xv. 35) ; that dark- 
 
DAVID THE KING. 23 > 
 
 ness began to settle down upon him. The " evil 
 spirit from God," with fewer intermissions, and 
 with a wilder vehemence, stirred his darkening 
 soul to phrensy. The madness which was latent 
 in his constitution openly declared itself, and 
 its thick shadow was by degrees drawn like a 
 darkening pall over his life. Deeds of violence 
 multiplied in his hands. The blood-thirsty 
 hatred which madly alternated with a parental 
 love for the son of Jesse, the charmer away ol 
 his own gloom, increased upon him with the 
 violence of convulsive spasms. At one moment 
 he saw before him his " son David," and " loved 
 him greatly" (xvi. 21: xxiv. 16) : at the next 
 moment the deliverer of his people could but 
 see in him the abhorred successor to his throne, 
 whom, in his jealousy and fury, he would pin 
 with his lance to the wall. Then came the cruel 
 slaughter of the priests of God, with all their 
 families; and the murder of the Gibeonites, to 
 whom the faith of Israel had been plighted. 
 Over this life of violence the heavens above him 
 blackened ; around it the keen-sighted vultures 
 gathered. God answered him no more. The 
 
z 3 2 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 terrible silence which precedes the lightning's 
 flash had fallen on him. He groans out his 
 agony in the despairing cry, "God is departed 
 from me, and answereth me no more, neither by 
 prophets nor by dreams." As God departed, his 
 enemies multiplied in increasing swarms around 
 him. Again the Philistines came up and filled 
 the land ; the tide of invasion swept over the 
 plain of Esdraelon up to the hills of Shunem 
 Higher up the range, clinging to their mountain 
 ramparts, were encamped the trembling hosts of 
 Israel. At such a moment that blank dead 
 silence of the spirit-world around him became 
 too terrible for the endurance of the dark-souled 
 king; and rather than bear longer its stifling 
 horror, he went to one of the tribe of necro- 
 mancers whom his own severe rule had well- 
 nigh terminated. There, in the gloomy cavern 
 of Endor, the Evil One was suffered, in the like- 
 ness of the dead prophet of his youth, to chant 
 back to him the despairing utterances of his 
 dark soul. The hollow voice of the fiend 
 claimed his own. "To-morrow shalt thou and 
 thy sons be with me." Then died out the spirit 
 
DAVID THE KING. ^33 
 
 of the wretched man, and his giant form fell 
 prostrate on the earth. To raise him up, to force 
 him to take the food he needed, was his servants' 
 work. But to them it was not given to soothe 
 the convulsive struggles of that broken heart. 
 
 The morrow came ; the hosts of the Philistines 
 swept up the mountain's side; the great captain's 
 heart was already dead ; his old skill in arms 
 had departed from him, and the heathen tri- 
 umphed. "The men of Israel fled before the 
 Philistines, and fell down slain in Mount Gilboa ; 
 and the Philistines followed hard upon Saul and 
 upon his sons : and the battle went sore against 
 Saul, and the archers hit him, and he was sore 
 wounded of the archers." Then came the black 
 ending of that life, once of such brilliant promise, 
 since of such varied incident. He falls upon his 
 sword, and, still lingering on in the death - 
 anguish, is slain at his own desire by the young 
 man, the Amalekite, who hastens to Ziklag with 
 the royal crown and bracelet, to gain from David 
 the gifts and the promotions for which his 
 greedy soul longed; but which turned for him 
 into the stern sentence, "How wast thou not 
 
234 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 afraid to stretch out thy hand against the Lord's 
 anointed ? Thy blood be upon thy head. Go near, 
 and fall upon him" (2 Sam. i. 14, 15). At so 
 dark a time for Israel the long-promised crown 
 passed to David. Protracted in its duration, 
 and most various in its features, had been the 
 discipline by which he had been trained, not for 
 this succession only ; but for the higher dignity 
 of being the prophet-king who should above all 
 others be the type of Him who should deliver 
 not Israel only, but humanity from its enemies, 
 and who should sit for ever on the throne ol 
 David. 
 
 For it was needed for this higher office that 
 the character of David should gather into 
 itself so far as might be all the various work- 
 ings of the heart of man. This is the special 
 attribute of the life and character of the royal 
 son of Jesse. It was thoroughly and intensely 
 human. In this lies the first great contrast 
 between him and his predecessor. There is a 
 hard, narrow separateness of soul marked in 
 every line of the character of Saul ; he is a way- 
 ward, wilful, self-determined man, well-nigh 
 
DAVID THE KING. 235 
 
 incapable of any real sympathy with others ; 
 parted almost as widely from his loving son 
 Jonathan as he is from David, whom he hates 
 is a rival. Such an one could learn little of the 
 workings of that human heart which is so im- 
 measurable in the multitude and compass of its 
 tones. Deep as were his sorrows ; he never 
 knew the grace of contrition. Thus, his dark 
 heart is full of sullenness and suspicion, inviting 
 the entrance of the Evil One, who came at his 
 bidding, and closed with yet sterner bars all the 
 avenues to his soul. In every one of these par- 
 ticulars David is the most complete contrast to 
 Saul. Whose soul does not answer, as the image 
 in the glass to the countenance bent upon it, to 
 every one of his Psalms ? How endless in their 
 variety, how vast in their compass are the notes 
 drawn out of that most human soul by the breath 
 of the Spirit of God ! In our seasons of joy how 
 naturally does our praise and thanksgiving 
 break forth in the words of his songs of glad- 
 someness ! In times of terror how do we fly with 
 him to the strong fortress of the name of his 
 God! In our bitter anguish, in what other words 
 
236 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 can we pour forth our woe as we can in his ? In 
 that saddest of all hours, when the sense of sin 
 presses us into the very mire, where can we find 
 such words of heart-broken confession as in the 
 5 1 st of his Psalms ? More by far than any other 
 saint in the Old Testament does he stand out 
 before us as the type of Him " who hath suf- 
 fered being tried, that He might know how to 
 succour them that are tried." 
 
 The second most distinctly marked point of con- 
 trast between the two characters is this : the one 
 ever drew nigh to God, the just, the righteous, the 
 almighty, the all- living God, in whom he lived 
 and moved and had his being ; the other, with 
 all his better impulses and occasional illapses 
 even of the spirit of prophecy, never knew God. 
 A dark, unloving, superstitious fear, which bred 
 neither humiliation, nor trust, nor true obedience, 
 filled the one heart ; a loving, trusting, delight 
 in God, the true parent of humility, self-distrust, 
 and obedience, possessed the other. The two 
 different natures utter repeatedly the deep secret 
 of the diversity of their inner being. Thus, when 
 Saul had broken the commandment of God, 
 
DA VID THE KING. 237 
 
 delivered to him by Samuel, the slavishness 
 of his religion comes out in the words, " I said 
 the Philistines will come down now upon me to 
 Gilgal : and I have not entreated the face of the 
 Lord. I forced myself therefore and offered a 
 burnt-offering." Here again the lack of all true 
 contrition breaks forth in the utterance, " I have 
 sinned : yet honour me now, I pray thee, before 
 the elders of my people." In what sharp con- 
 trast with these stand the parallel utterances 
 of David's heart after his great sin ! " Thou 
 desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: 
 thou delightest not in burnt-offering. The 
 sacrifices of God are a broken spirit : a broken 
 and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not de- 
 spise " (Psalm li. 1 6, 17). And again, instead of 
 thinking of the judgment of the " elders of his 
 people," what a vision is given us of the un- 
 divided singleness with which his eye looks 
 straight up to God in those marvellous words 
 which have ever since set the tone of every 
 penitent's return to God ! "Against Thee, Thee 
 only have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy 
 sight. I acknowledge my transgression, and my 
 
238 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 sin is ever before me. Wash me throughly 
 from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin " 
 (Psalm li. 2 4\ This was the central point of 
 that character which made him the man after 
 God's own heart. Here again the great image of 
 the One Only Man who was ever perfectly after 
 the heart of God, is prefigured in his progenitor 
 after the flesh. In the outlines, blurred in David 
 by sin, we can see, as in some broken mirror, the 
 image of one who came not to do His own will, 
 but the will of Him that sent Him. 
 
 The history of David's life is the record of his 
 education in this high grace by the hand of God 
 It began in his earliest years. Separated by dis- 
 parity of years from his seven brothers, whilst 
 they lived in the world, he, according to the 
 simple use of that early age, kept his father's 
 sheep, upon the hill pastures near to Bethlehem. 
 There, doubtless, the angels of God met him ; 
 they who, in after time, revealed to shepherds 
 like himself abiding upon those grassy uplands 
 of Bethlehem, keeping watch over their flocks by 
 night the good tidings of great joy, that in the 
 city of David was born a Saviour which is Christ 
 
DAVID THE KING. 239 
 
 the Lord. They bent their gaze upon this chosen 
 youth, fair even to their eyes, u ruddy, and 
 withal of a beautiful countenance, and goodly to 
 look on/' as he wandered apart from men with 
 his flock, communing with nature, drinking in 
 the soft dews of prophetic inspiration, and 
 breathing out the holy utterance of his untainted 
 heart unto the God of Israel. Little did he dream 
 of the future for which he was preparing. He 
 had no desire to change that favoured portion for 
 any other. God had set him there to keep those 
 sheep in the wilderness. For God he kept them ; 
 with God he communed as he changed their 
 pasture, beat off the lion and the bear, and led 
 them to the water's side. His own charge drew up 
 his thoughts to the Almighty One, who deigned 
 to be his shepherd, who kept him from want, who 
 made him to lie down in these green pastures, 
 who led him beside the still waters, who made 
 him fear no evil, because the Mightiest was with 
 him, even though he walked through the valley 
 of the shadow of death (Psalm xxiii.). Nor 
 was there anything dreamy or enervating in his 
 shepherd's life. Its solitariness braced up his 
 
i 4 o HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 spirit, and its dangers formed within him the 
 habit of ready action based on simple trust in 
 his God. When the lion and the bear came 
 torth against his wilderness flock, and took a 
 lamb for which he was accountable out of the 
 fold, he went out after him and caught him by his 
 beard, and smote him, and slew him. It was to 
 him but a natural act; he knew that he did it 
 not in his own might, but in the strength of that 
 Lord who " delivered him out of the paw of the 
 lion and out of the paw of the bear ; " and in 
 that presence the accidents of great and small, 
 and the outside terrors before which his natural 
 spirit would have quailed, vanished like the 
 wreath of mist in the brightness of the sunshine. 
 So was his faith nurtured. Then there brake 
 in upon it that sudden transition with which the 
 East has ever been familiar, which carried him 
 direct into the court of Saul. The moody mad- 
 ness of the wilful king had already increased 
 upon him into fits which made his courtiers 
 counsel him to seek the soothing of his troubled 
 spirit by the calming influence of minstrelsy 
 He consents j and David is brought before him 
 
DAVID THE KING. zi 
 
 He stands before the king, "cunning in play- 
 ing, mighty and valiant, prudent in matters, a 
 comely person, and one with whom the Lord 
 is : " and when the fit falls upon the king, David 
 takes his harp, and plays with his hand, and the 
 distraught soul owns his power. Saul was re- 
 freshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed 
 from him. Then the inspired minstrel leaves the 
 melancholy court, and wanders again, rejoicing 
 in his recovered liberty, upon the mountain- 
 side, waking its echoes by the song of praise 
 which he so well loved. 
 
 But this is not to last. War breaks out with 
 the Philistines. The elder sons of Jesse follow 
 Saul in the camp. To them the youngest is sent 
 down by their old father, to carry them supplies, 
 and to learn their estate. His journey was so 
 ordered by his God that it brought him to the 
 tent just as all Israel was trembling before the 
 threatenings of the giant of Gath. 
 
 In those early wars the issues of the greatest 
 battles, which were but a series of personal con- 
 flicts, turned often on the single strength and 
 prowess of such a champion. For days the 
 
 R 
 
242 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 mail-clad giant insulted with his threatening 
 taunts the hosts and God of Israel. The king 
 offered noble rewards to any who would meet and 
 overcome him in battle. But of all the chosen 
 warriors of Israel not one was found to venture 
 on the unequal fray ; and so the champion of 
 the uncircumcised waxed daily bolder in his 
 insults and his boasts. As David passes through 
 the hosts, he hears the whispers of the trem- 
 bling soldiery, and at last sees the Philistine 
 giant as he stalks forth on his march of de- 
 fiance. The heart of the young hero shudders 
 as he hears those words of blasphemy The 
 trusting heart of God's servant could see no 
 ground for fearing one who came forth to defy 
 Jehovah. And he, with the naturalness of his 
 character, at once speaks out his thoughts; 
 and in the same simple energy of courage with 
 which he had risen against the lion and the bear, 
 he is ready to go forth against the champion 
 of the uncircumcised. The rumour that one was 
 found ready to take up the challenge is soon 
 brought to Saul. He sends at once for the dar- 
 ing warrior, and finds, when he is ushered into 
 
DA VID THE KING. 243 
 
 his presence, that it is the minstrel youth whose 
 harp erewhile had brought him rest. It was 
 a strange interview ; the warrior-king, himself 
 well-nigh of giant stature, could not stand before 
 the Philistine ; and what in such an encounter 
 could this young stripling do ? To the self- 
 confident man of this world, David's simple faith 
 was well-nigh inconceivable ; and the ever-read} 
 discouragement of the voice of the flesh rises 
 unbidden to those wilful lips. "Thou art not 
 able to go against this Philistine." And when 
 convinced, it may be by David's bearing, that 
 the Highest had indeed inspired the venture 
 still the king would encompass him in armour 
 before he trusts the mighty issue to his hands. 
 David tries and rejects the armour. "I cannot 
 go in these:" and strong only in Jehovah's 
 might he goes forth, with nothing save his 
 shepherd's equipment, against the champion of 
 Philistia. Then the mighty arm of flesh is beaten 
 down by unseen hands before Jehovah's servant, 
 and David is brought back again to court, no 
 longer as the mere minister to Saul's necessity, 
 as one whose sweet minstrelsy can charm to 
 
244 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 rest the troubled soul, and drive away the evil 
 spirit, but to be " set over the men of war." Still 
 the contrast between these two men holds con- 
 sistently out to the end. " This day," says David 
 to the uncircumcised champion, "this day will 
 the Lord deliver thee into mine hand .... for 
 the battle is the Lord's, and He will give you 
 into our hands." In God, from first to last, is 
 all his confidence. Saul, on the other hand, true 
 to his original discouragement of the boldness 
 bred by the divine afflatus falling on the hero 
 heart true to his seeking, when he doubtfully 
 committed to David's hand the championship of 
 Israel, to secure the defence of the royal armour 
 for the stripling enquires eagerly of Abner, the 
 captain of the host, whose son is this youth ; not 
 from any want of recognition of David, but to 
 ascertain whether his coming of any warrior 
 lineage may justify some hope of a prosperous 
 issue of the unequal conflict. 
 
 This mighty act of daring, for which a daily 
 walk of faith in lesser instances had been prepar- 
 ing him, was the turning-point in David's life. 
 He was now "set over the men of war; " he "was 
 
DAVID THE KING. 145 
 
 accepted in the sight of all the people ; " the 
 hand which had led him to the mountain sheep- 
 folds now beckoned him on to the forefront oi 
 the nation. 
 
 Here is a new stage reached in his life's 
 discipline. The affections of the king's son are 
 set upon him, and his courtly life is brightened 
 by the sunshine of that pure, disinterested love 
 which has embalmed for all time the name oJ 
 Jonathan. Need enough had he of such solace 
 in the life he had to lead in that troubled court 
 The bitter jealousy of Saul's nature soon woke 
 up against him, with all that intensity of hate 
 which only jealousy can breed. Whether he had 
 heard of that anointing by Samuel at Bethlehem, 
 which must have brought back to him, with 
 an indescribable bitterness of heart, his own 
 anointing in the land of Zuph, we know not. 
 But such knowledge was not needed to wake up 
 this bitter envy. The prophet had distinctly 
 told him in the day of his sin, that the Lord had 
 rent the kingdom from him, and had given it to 
 a neighbour that was better than he. And in 
 David he could read the marks of such a man ; 
 
z 4 6 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 for this young man was not only hymned in the 
 triumphal songs of the daughters of Israel, and 
 Beloved by his own son, but accepted in the sight 
 of all the people, and even of his own servants. 
 Saul looked upon him and trembled. How 
 strange was the destiny which had brought this 
 dangerous rival into his presence ! What evil 
 might it not work against himself! And so his 
 dark heart began at once to lay schemes for the 
 destruction of his rival. In the paroxysms of his 
 madness this deep-seated hatred led him to seek 
 to slay, with his own hand, the minstrel who was 
 charming him to rest. Such attempts, indeed, at 
 personal violence passed away with the fit of 
 madness which provoked them. But down in 
 that once heroic soul, which sin had sunk into 
 the baseness of cowardice, a yet deeper malignity 
 was forming. " Saul was afraid of David because 
 the Lord was with him, and was departed from 
 Saul" (i Sam. xviii. 12). This coward hatred 
 of his sunken spirit vented itself first in plots 
 to slay his fancied enemy by the hand of the 
 Philistines, and then in undisguised attempts 
 upon the life which seemed to threaten his 
 
DAVID THE KING. 247 
 
 sovereignty. By these last David is driven first 
 from the court, and at length from the land of 
 Israel. There gathers round him unbidden a 
 band of outcasts, who, in their wild lawlessness, 
 own the control of his master spirit : and thus is 
 reached yet another stage in his manifold train- 
 ing For now was forced upon him a friendly 
 intercourse with Moab, and some of the tribes of 
 Philistines. Slayer as he was of Goliath, yet as 
 the enemy of Saul, they esteemed him the friend 
 of Philistia, and Achish, the king of Gath, gave 
 him royal shelter, expecting, doubtless, the 
 succour of his heroic band in future conflicts 
 with Israel. So he sojourned amongst the un- 
 circumcised, to be called, like his greater son, in 
 the fulness of time, up out of his Egypt. Mean- 
 while, this tarrying in Philistia was another in- 
 strument of his training, for it nurtured that 
 largeness of sympathy which he needed when he 
 was the king of Israel. Provision for this had 
 already been made in his descent from the 
 Moabitish Ruth, but, in no way, probably, but 
 by thus being forced to tarry with the Moabites 
 and Philistines, could the shepherd of the hill- 
 
248 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 country of Bethlehem have practically learned the 
 lesson which fitted him for his wider after-mission. 
 A mighty training, too, lay in that wild outlaw 
 life for the knowledge and government of men. 
 Nothing but the completest personal supremacy 
 could hold such unruly elements under any 
 species of command ; and David, the unwilling 
 head of such a following, learned in mastering 
 them the secret of governing men, and knitting 
 together their discordant hearts into an har- 
 monious unity. By little and little that band 
 had swollen in number ; whilst names, great in 
 after-history, began to be found in it. The 
 prophet Gad, afterwards "the king's seer/' had 
 joined him at the cave of Adullam, and declared 
 to him the oracles of God ; shortly after, on the 
 slaughter of the priests by Saul, Abiathar escaped, 
 and "fled to David to Keilah, with the ephod 
 in his hand." Thenceforward the life of Abia- 
 thar was intertwined with that of David, and "he 
 was afflicted in all wherein David was afflicted." 
 His brethren, too, and all his father's house, no 
 longer safe from Saul's increasing violence, 
 came down to him. His aged father and his 
 
DA VID THE KING 249 
 
 mother he lodged, till he knew what God might 
 do for him, with the king of Moab, upon 
 whose hospitality, through Ruth, his mother, 
 Jesse had hereditary claims. His brothers and 
 his nephews, those hard, doughty sons oi 
 Zeruiah, joined his band, and, unshielded by 
 that inward communing with God, which kept 
 amidst such rudenesses the heart of David 
 tender, learned there that familiarity with deeds 
 of violence and blood which stained so deeply 
 their after-lives. Great in that rugged band 
 must have been the power of that passionate 
 tenderness with which the heroic heart of David 
 overflowed. Who can hear, even now over the 
 chasm of three thousand years, the voice of 
 longing, out of the dry and desert cave of 
 Adullam, for the water, which, from the well of 
 Bethlehem, had slaked his young thirst, without 
 understanding how the three worthies came to 
 break through the host of the Philistines to 
 draw the water out of the well for their beloved 
 chief; or without feeling how more than ever 
 they would have loved and followed him, when 
 David " would not drink of it, but poured it out 
 
250 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 unto the Lord, because it was to him as the 
 blood of these men that have put their lives in 
 jeopardy?" (i Chron. xi. 17.) 
 
 A hard and restless life it was, to be hunted 
 as a partridge on the mountain ; so hard that at 
 last it drove the chief into settling reluctantly 
 his band across the borders of Israel, amongst 
 the heathen people. A long waiting it was 
 for the promise. Seven years had completed 
 their tale since the anointing-oil was poured 
 upon his head; and he was still an outlaw. 
 
 Still upon his soul was the bitterness of having 
 been "driven out from abiding in the inheritance 
 of the Lord " (i Sam. xxvi. 19), of being parted 
 from all the covenanted acts of worship, and being 
 bidden to "Go and serve other gods/' What an 
 unveiling have we of the bitterness of his soul ; 
 what an insight into his secret strength, in that 
 Psalm which he poured out in the dark recesses 
 of the Adullam cave, when, with a spirit over- 
 whelmed with shame, he " cried unto the Lord 
 with his voice : Thou art my refuge, and my por- 
 tion in the land of the living; attend unto my cry, 
 for I am brought very low ; deliver me from my 
 
DA VID THE KING. 25 1 
 
 persecutors. Bring my soul out of prison that I 
 may praise Thy name." For a year and four 
 months he had been living in that town of Zik- 
 lag, which Achish, the son of Maoch, king of 
 Gath, had given to him. Thither, on one of those 
 many days of sadness, came a man out of the 
 camp from Saul, with his clothes rent and earth 
 upon his head. He came with the news of 
 Israel's overthrow of the death of Saul, and his 
 beloved Jonathan ; and to bear to him, as the 
 designated king, the bracelet and crown of his 
 predecessor. The messenger was an Amalekite, 
 and he boasted to the exiled chief, in all the 
 greedy expectancy with which his heathen 
 heart craved for a royal largess, that his hand 
 had ended the life of the wilful king. But he 
 had misjudged utterly the temper of the son 
 of Jesse. With the same unshaken reverence 
 of devotion to the anointed of the Lord which 
 had prevented him from avenging himself upon 
 his persecutor, which had made his conscience 
 smite him when he had but cut off the fringe of 
 the king's garment, he now repudiates utterly 
 the alleged deed of blood, and sentenced to 
 
2 S z HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 instant execution the self-confessed murderer of 
 the king ; and then there breathed upon him the 
 spirit of prophecy, and in a Psalm of lamentation 
 he wept the end of Saul, and of Jonathan his son. 
 
 But other duties were now immediately 
 before him. He enquired of the Lord, and the 
 Lord said, "Go up to Hebron/' Thither he 
 repaired. Then came the men of Judah up to 
 Hebron, the holy city of their tribe, where 
 the patriarchs were buried, and anointed him 
 king over the House of Judah. 
 
 Years of war followed with the adherents of 
 the old dynasty. But David waxed stronger 
 and stronger, and the House of Saul weaker 
 and weaker, until the time came for fulfilling 
 God's promise to him ; and after this disputed 
 reign of seven years and six months, when 
 David was thirty-seven years old, " all the tribes 
 of Israel came to him in Hebron, and anointed 
 him king over Israel, and he reigned thirty and 
 three years over all Israel and Judah." 
 
 Then was seen the fruit of all that long and hard 
 discipline by which his royal heart had secretly 
 been trained. In every respect, he was a great 
 
DAVID THE KING. 253 
 
 king in war, in administration, in magnificence, 
 in external prosperity. He was not like Saul, 
 the ruler of a set of tribes ; the kingdom was 
 established in his hand. He begins by sub- 
 duing the citadel of Jebus, and constituting 
 Jerusalem, the city of David, a true, national 
 metropolis. He brings up the ark, and sets it 
 in his place. He establishes regulated forms of 
 worship ; he gathers together the company of 
 singers, and of those skilled in all instruments 
 of music, to exalt the praises of Jehovah, and 
 from his throne of empire, under the inspiration 
 of the Spirit of his God, he pours forth his 
 sacred lyrics, to be sung by grateful hearts 
 before the ark of the everlasting covenant. 
 We can almost hear the creaking of the gates 
 of the old fortress of Jebus, as their hinges 
 swung sullenly open to admit the ark of the 
 living God ; we can almost hear that glad shout 
 of the rejoicing king : " Lift up your heads, O 
 ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, 
 and the King of Glory shall come in. ... Who 
 is this King of Glory ? The Lord of Hosts ; He 
 is the King of Glory " 
 
254 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 All this, moreover, was no formal recognition 
 of the nation's God, but the real pouring forth 
 of David's very heart before Him who had ever 
 been his refuge. How grand is the humility ol 
 the noble utterance with which he rebuked 
 the pride of Michal's heart, who, the true 
 laughter of her father, could not bear to see 
 her husband humble himself before her God 
 in the sight of all his people ! " It was before 
 the Lord which chose me. ... to appoint me 
 ruler over the people of the Lord, over Israel : 
 therefore will I play before the Lord. . . And 
 I will yet be more vile than thus, and will be 
 base in mine own sight" (2 Sam. vi. 21). 
 
 In the like temper it was that he longed to 
 build a house for God. As soon as the Lord 
 had given him rest round about from all his 
 enemies, the king said unto Nathan the Prophet, 
 "See, now, I dwell in a house of cedar, but 
 the ark of God dwelleth within curtains." But 
 the great offering was not to be accepted from 
 his hand. His son was to build the house. If 
 there had been anything of self-will in David's 
 purpose, this refusal might have chafed him 
 
DAVID THE KING. 255 
 
 But no ! he at once accepted the word of 
 God as right, and humbly prepares materials 
 for him at whose hands God would deign to 
 accept the offering. "Who am I," he said, as 
 he poured out his full breast before the Lord, 
 "Who am I, O Lord God, and what is my 
 house, that thou hast brought me hitherto. . . . 
 and what can David say more unto Thee ? 
 For THOU, Lord God, knowest Thy servant" 
 '2 Sam. vii. 18 20). 
 
 Great indeed must have been the effect upon 
 his people of the king's loving devotion to 
 his God! We may easily conceive what a 
 change it was from the dark shadows cast on 
 every side by the throne of Saul ; from the dull 
 torpor of the absent ark, and unvisited taber- 
 nacle ; from the silence of the voice of praise, 
 and the dumbness of Jehovah's utterance ; from 
 the " God has departed from me, and answereth 
 not." He did indeed by psalm, by song, and by 
 example, wake up at once the nation's heart 
 to praise their God. With this burst of interna! 
 religious life broke forth the power of Israel 
 against her hereditary enemies. The king 
 
256 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 himself was " a mighty man, a man of war " 
 (2 San', xviii. 8), and round about him were the 
 comrades in arms, who had learned with him, 
 in the experience of his years of exile, all the 
 hard secrets of the camp : " They that be with 
 him are valiant men/' These "chief of the 
 mighty men strengthened themselves with him 
 in his kingdom" (i Chron. xi. 10). Under them 
 the army was now thoroughly organized ; so that 
 " David waxed greater and greater, for the Lord 
 was with him/' Around him, on every side, 
 sped on the wave of conquest, sweeping over 
 the Philistines, the Moabites, the Syrians, the 
 Edomites, and Ammonites, until the promise 
 of God was fulfilled, and he and Israel had 
 rest from all their enemies round about them. 
 
 Within his kingdom, too, his throne was 
 exalted, for " the Lord preserved him wherever 
 he went, and he reigned over all Israel, and exe- 
 cuted judgment and justice unto all his people/' 
 How calm, bright, and glorious a mid-day of 
 sunshine had that stormy, cloud-canopied morn- 
 ing ushered in at last ! Surely, if the story ended 
 here, every eye could see in it the parable and 
 
DAVID THE KING 257 
 
 promise of the setting up, through persecution 
 and martyrdom, of the kingdom of the Prince 
 of Peace, the Son of David. 
 
 But here ends abruptly the typical resem- 
 blance, up to this point so startling in its exact- 
 ness. One deadly element of future woe 
 mingled itself with the establishment of the 
 kingdom of David. His family was formed 
 and governed on the model of the Eastern kings. 
 Though the monarchs of Israel had been com- 
 manded not greatly to multiply wives, yet poly- 
 gamy had never been absolutely forbidden, and 
 David practised it freely. 
 
 Thus, when his throne had been thoroughly 
 established, he brought into his family the 
 curse of the Harem. An utter lack of discipline 
 amongst his children was one of its first-fruits ; 
 and it brought yet deeper ill than even that ; for 
 it poisoned all the springs of family life and 
 tainted it with ever-recurring impurity: working 
 in him and in all around him its universal fruits 
 of impurity, jealousy, hatred, incest, and blood. 
 
 David's own great sin, written with such plain- 
 ness in tne sacred record, opens this dark and 
 
 S 
 
258 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 dismal chapter of his history. Acts, which in 
 the established Eastern life of the heathendom 
 are too common for any special notice, are 
 written down in the inspired record of the life 
 of one who had known the living God with their 
 own true names in the black entries of the cata- 
 logue of crime, as adultery and murder. 
 
 There is no more terrible, there is no more in- 
 structive portion of the word of God, than this 
 whole record. The long death-sleep of that once 
 living soul ; its awakening under the prophet's 
 voice ; its deep repentance ; its free forgiveness ; 
 its long, heavy, repeated, almost incessant chas- 
 tisement, speak to every ear which is not alto- 
 gether deaf, lessons of the holiness and truth, 
 of the severity and love, of the justice and 
 mercy of the Lord our God, which is borne per- 
 haps with equal force in no other record of His 
 ways with man. All David's after life is clouded 
 by these chastisements. The sword never more 
 departed from his house. The murder of his 
 guilty first-born, Amnon ; the treason of Absa- 
 lom, and his miserable end; the rebellion of 
 Adonijah, who had inherited all that partial love 
 
DA VID THE KING. 259 
 
 which had been so largely given to Absalom, 
 his elder brother; and who, like Absalom, was 
 a " very goodly man ; " whom his father " had 
 never displeased at any time/' even " by saying, 
 Why hast thou done so?" One after another, even 
 to his life's end, these waves of sorrow broke 
 over the mourning king, and woke from that 
 harp, which of old had poured forth with such 
 exuberance its joyful jubilations, the dirges of 
 an almost broken heart. His flight from Absa- 
 lom sets the full cup of his sadness most visibly 
 before us. 
 
 How deeply stirred was that loving spirit 
 when the messenger came to David from 
 Hebron, saying, " The hearts of the men of 
 Israel are after Absalom ! " How did the mes- 
 sage wake up within him the echo of the old 
 sentence, "The sword shall never depart from 
 thy house ! " More, as it seems, to prevent the 
 deeds of blood and crime which he dreads for 
 Absalom than from love of his own life, the king 
 resolves to quit Jerusalem before the troops, 
 headed by their unnatural leader, can approach 
 to assault it. "Let us flee," says that brave old 
 
zoo HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 voice, "make speed to depart, lest Absalom 
 overtake us suddenly and bring evil upon us 
 and smite the city with the edge of the sword. 
 So the king went forth and all the people with 
 him." And what a departing it was ! The 
 very love and faithfulness of the rest lent a 
 deeper note of tragedy to Absalom's unnatural 
 treason. To Ittai the Gittite, the king says, 
 " Return to thy place .... for thou art a 
 stranger and an exile. Whereas thou earnest 
 but yesterday, should I this day make thee go 
 up and down with us ?" But the faithful retainer 
 would not quit him against whom his own son 
 conspired. "As the Lord liveth, and as my lord 
 the king liveth," is his answer, " surely in what 
 place my lord the king shall be, whether in death 
 or life, there also shall thy servant be." So he 
 followed the king, and so did all the people, till 
 all the country wept with a loud voice ; so passed 
 the king over the brook Kidron, and he went up 
 by the ascent of Olivet, and wept as he went up, 
 and had his head covered, and he went barefoot. 
 Whose eye cannot see here the almost strange 
 manifestations which break forth in all these 
 
DAVID THE KING. 261 
 
 old passages of sacred history setting before us 
 the One towards whom they were ever bearing 
 on the race of man, and showing us darkly in a 
 mirror all that was appointed for Him ? For did 
 not He too, because He was bearing the sinner's 
 burden, go forth with His faithful followers over 
 that same brook Kidron, which washed His feet 
 as it had done His father David's ? Did not the 
 faithful disciples and the weeping women cross 
 it with Him, and with Him climb the ascent of 
 Olivet r and was there not, to set against Ittai's 
 passionate boast of loyalty, the loud promises of 
 Peter r and was there not the treachery of Judas 
 to repeat the wickedness of Absalom ? and in the 
 great central figure, too, was there not the utter- 
 most submission to the Will of God, when David 
 sent back into the city the ark of the covenant, in 
 that voice, " If I shall find favour in the eyes of 
 the Lord, He will bring me again, and show me 
 both it and His habitation. But if He thus say, 
 I have no delight in thee, behold, here am I, let 
 Him do to me as seemeth good unto Him?" 
 Are not those words in very deed a prophecy 
 of that true Son's utterance when Peter, Zadok 
 
6z HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 like, rendered uncommanded service, "Put up 
 thy sword into the sheath; the cup which my 
 Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?" 
 And but once again, may we not see in the 
 turning back upon himself to his own destruc- 
 tion of the worldly-wise sagacity of the counsel 
 of Achitophel, a mysterious adumbration of the 
 way in which the spiritual master of all wicked 
 devices brought upon himself the bruising of 
 the head when he sought to wreak his hatred 
 on the woman's seed ? 
 
 So the great king fled from Absalom fled 
 only to return with his heart well-nigh broken 
 by the life-long sorrow of his bitter grief for the 
 " young man " who had been cut unrepentant 
 down in the midst of his accumulated crimes of 
 actual treason and meditated parricide. 
 
 Never, it would seem, during the eight years 
 which his life yet lasted was this heavy shadow 
 removed from his soul; for amongst his "last 
 words " he breatnes out, as from the bottom of a 
 bruised heart, the lamenting cry, " Although my 
 aouse be not so with God." Grey as an autumn 
 evening ends the life of the great saint ; of the 
 
DA VID THE KING. 263 
 
 man of love, of passion, of fervour, of inspired 
 insight, of a woman's tenderness, and a hero's 
 daring, and, above all, of a faith in God, so strong 
 and deep that nothing in heaven, or earth, or hell 
 could part him from his Lord. Grey it was as the 
 autumn evening when, amidst the thickening 
 mists and darkening shadows, he said to his 
 beloved Solomon, "I go the way of all the 
 earth/' and then laid down his reverend head 
 and slept with his fathers ; but bright as the 
 beauty of the morning shall be that resurrection 
 day when he shall rise up after the likeness of 
 his Son, and of his Saviour, and be satisfied with 
 uever-ending joy. 
 
THE MAN OF GOD WHO CAME OUT 
 OF JUDAH. 
 
 T T was a high day in that old town of Bethel. 
 The great king of the ten tribes, the founder 
 of the fresh dynasty which was to rival, if not 
 to eclipse, the house of David, was present in 
 this border town of his new dominion. To it, 
 around his person, were gathered the chiefs of 
 the families and the elders of the tribes. He 
 was himself in person and in mind a born king 
 of men. And those natural gifts had been im- 
 proved to the uttermost by administrative ex- 
 perience, by foreign travel, and by his having 
 drunk deep into the highest antiquities of the 
 old world in its native Egyptian soil. Strange 
 and wayward had been the vicissitudes of his 
 life. He was of a stock which might have 
 
THE PROPHET FROM JUDAH. 265 
 
 been suspected of hereditary hostility to the 
 house of David from the return by Solomon 
 upon the head of his old father, whom we know 
 better as Shimei than as Nebat,* of the curses 
 which he had heaped upon the great king in the 
 time of his adversity. But he was yet of tender 
 years when he was left fatherless, and had spent 
 his youth in the house of his widowed mother, 
 Zeruah, in Zereda of Ephraim. There he grew 
 up strong, energetic, and diligent. He early 
 attracted the attention of Solomon, and shared 
 in his magnificent patronage. When that wise 
 king, in the accomplishment of his vast archi- 
 tectural designs, was restoring the " Millo," 
 which was, as it seems, the highest part of the 
 old Jebusite fortress, which was now the city of 
 David, Jeroboam was, amongst others, employed 
 by him. The difficulty of the process evidently 
 tested to the utmost all the engineering power 
 which the king could command ; and, as he 
 watched the accomplishment of his purpose, 
 and saw the breaches in the old wall repaired, 
 
 St. Jerome identified Nebat with Shimei. 'Quest Heb.. 
 2 Reg. xvi., App. viii., vol. ii., p. 31.) 
 
266 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 he noted in Jeroboam the faculties he loved to 
 possess in a servant ; he observed with pride his 
 strength, his daring, and his untiring industry ; 
 and when the work of the Millo was finished he 
 promoted his favourite to be ruler over all the 
 charge of the house of Joseph to be, that is, his 
 chief officer in collecting the taxes and imposts 
 due from the powerful tribe of Ephraim. 
 
 Promotion kindled the burning ambition of 
 the young Benjamite. His charge over the 
 house of Joseph made him feel the full amount 
 of change from early vigour to a palsied feeble- 
 ness which was passing upon the reign of the 
 uxorious king, whose magnificence could not be 
 supported except by imposts, the severity of 
 which tried the loyalty of his people, and 
 alienated them from the son of David. The 
 transformation, too, of the nation under his 
 influence from being a purely agricultural into 
 a mercantile community, with the sudden 
 enrichment of new families, and the free inter- 
 course with foreigners which such a change 
 entailed, was very unwelcome to the lovers of 
 old customs, and generally offensive to the 
 
THE PROPHET FROM JUDAH. 267 
 
 landowners. Even in the time of King David, 
 the fickle temper of the people had more 
 than once displayed itself; and a far less 
 general discontent, when carefully cultivated 
 by Absalom, had threatened his father's throne. 
 The ill-humours of the time suggested to Jero- 
 boam the possibility of a more successful revolt 
 He multiplied his chariots and horses, and set 
 himself at the head of a numerous band of fol- 
 lowers. Nor was it without a higher sanction 
 than his own ambitious longings that he thus 
 began to " lift up his hand " against his master. 
 He was meant by God to be the instrument of 
 Solomon's chastisement when the heart of the 
 aged king was " turned from the Lord God of 
 Israel, which had appeared to him twice " 
 (i Kings xi. 9). Most unlocked for by Jero- 
 boam must have been the granting to him of 
 this high commission. He was not a man given 
 to consort with prophets, or to listen to their 
 words. But as he goes forth from Jerusalem 
 pondering in his solitary walk his schemes of 
 rebellion, Ahijah the Shilonite, the prophet of 
 the Lord, meets him, and by sign and by word 
 
268 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 tells him that God will, for their sins, rend from 
 the house of David in the time of the king's son 
 ten of the twelve tribes, and give them as a 
 kingdom to him. Into what a flame must such 
 an announcement have stirred up his spirit ! 
 What a clear reading of all his secret desires 
 did the prophet's words imply! "Thou shalt 
 reign according to all thy soul desireth, and 
 shalt be king over Israel." In that furious 
 turbulence of his spirit it was hard for him to 
 wait for the death of Solomon ; and some 
 indications of what was filling his soul would, 
 in act or deed or preparation, find their vent. 
 These were soon brought to the jealous ears of 
 the old king, who, with something of his early 
 vigour, sought to slay the threatening insur- 
 gent. Egypt was the natural protector of one 
 in such peril Egypt, the common home of 
 expatriated leaders, the land which welcomed 
 to its palaces all who would be the willing 
 instruments of its crafty policy against border- 
 ing peoples. To Egypt Jeroboam fled, as 
 Hadad of the seed royal of Edom had done 
 before him. Like Hadad, if we may trust the 
 
THE PROPHET FROM JUDAH. 269 
 
 Septuagint, he was welcomed at the court of the 
 Egyptian king, and given in marriage an Egyp- 
 tian princess, sister of the queen, and of the wife 
 of Hadad. In all this there was a large promise 
 for the future ; but there was much to stir up for 
 the present the bitter waters of his soul. He 
 was an exile at a foreign court ; all the inevit- 
 able degradations of such a life chafed his im- 
 perious spirit. Time, too, was passing, and the 
 old king lingered on still upon the throne he 
 longed to seize. Such a life must have deepened 
 all the hard lines of his stern character. Amidst 
 the busy throngs of the Egyptian capital, through 
 the gorgeous palaces of the Pharaohs, he moved 
 as a shadow, with his heart afar off on the 
 mountains of Canaan, buried in his own 
 thoughts, forecasting his future reign, and 
 weaving the dark threads of his lifelong con- 
 spiracy. Faith in the God of Israel, in the 
 high sense of the word faith, his after history 
 shows that he had none. The prophet's words 
 were to him but as the promise of the Weird 
 Sisters to the dark-souled Scottish chieftain, 
 chanting back to him with a certain external 
 
i 7 o HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 authority the dreams of his own heart, and 
 breeding within him a more confident resolu- 
 tion and more fixed purposes of daring. Instead 
 of yielding himself submissively, like David, 
 through his long years of adversity, and waiting 
 to be the simple instrument of God's Will, his 
 ambitious longings were even already a rebel- 
 lion against God and a grieving of His Spirit ; 
 whilst the influence of the Egyptian mythology 
 and creature worship, in the midst of which he 
 found himself, obliterated any deep lines of 
 exclusive faith in Jehovah, and prepared the 
 way for his great after fall. 
 
 But at last the forty long years of the reign of 
 Solomon were over, and news came down into 
 Egypt that " he slept with his fathers, and was 
 buried in the city of David his father." The 
 dark heart of Jeroboam laughed with the 
 gloomy joy of gratified ambition at the long- 
 expected tidings, and he returned back to the. 
 old dwelling-place of Zereda, in the Mount 
 of Ephraim, from which the jealousy of the 
 old king had hunted him. Here he began to 
 practise his former arts, and gathered round him 
 
THE PROPHET FROM JUDAH. 271 
 
 all the tribe of Ephraim. The stupid obstinacy 
 of Rehoboam helped forward mightily his pro- 
 jects. The oppressive tribute which Solomon 
 had raised had shaken his great authority, and 
 the dissatisfied tribes clamoured round the 
 throne of the young king for a release from 
 their burdens. Their reasonable cry was met 
 with insult and threats, and the alienated 
 tribes as one man looked abroad for another 
 ruler. Then was the time of Jeroboam's 
 triumph. He had put himself at the head of 
 those who most eagerly demanded a reform of 
 the abuses of the late reign. This gave him at 
 once the position of a leader. His name was in 
 all mouths. Stories of his exile, of his great- 
 ness in Egypt, of his return to his own people, 
 of the magnificence of his life upon the Mount 
 of Ephraim, of his wisdom, his strength, and his 
 daring, ran through the ten revolted tribes; 
 whispers as to the prophetic voice which long 
 ago had destined him for the throne, seemed to 
 add a Divine sanction to his usurpation. He 
 was the very man they needed as their chief. 
 We may see the working of his crafty hand in 
 
ij2 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 the great act of rebellion which consummated 
 the revolt when the old chief of the tribute who 
 had stood high amongst the princes of the wise 
 Solomon was, as the king's representative, 
 deliberately stoned to death by all Israel. 
 After this act of rebellion return to the house 
 of David was impossible, and all Israel made 
 Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, their king. 
 
 Jeroboam soon showed that, however ready 
 he might be to listen to the voice of prophecy 
 when it promised him a throne, yet it was mere 
 earthly ambition, and not the doing of God's 
 will, which had been throughout his motive. 
 When the promise of the kingdom had been 
 made him there was joined to it a solemn 
 charge to try his faithfulness. " It shall be," 
 the prophet's word had said, " that if thou wilt 
 hearken unto all that I command thee, and wilt 
 walk in my ways, and do that which is right in 
 my sight, to keep my statutes and my command- 
 ments as David my servant did, that I will be 
 with thee and build thee a sure house, as I built 
 for David, and will give Israel unto thee " 
 (i Kings xii. 38). It may well be that at the 
 
THE PROPHET FROM JUDAH. ^^ i 
 
 time visions of future service to God mingled 
 themselves with the dreams of his young ambi- 
 tion. But the choking thorns had strangled the 
 faint upgrowth of the better seed ; and as soon 
 as he had won the throne he set himself to keep 
 it by his own subtlety, and not by obeying 
 the God of Israel. The heart of the success- 
 ful conspirator was darkened with the fear 
 that if God's altar at Jerusalem continued to 
 be the central point of the national worship, and 
 was frequented yearly at the great feasts by all 
 the males of his kingdom, the throne of Judah 
 would supplant their unmatured affections to 
 the throne of Samaria. " Then shall the heart of 
 this people turn again unto their lord, even unto 
 Rehoboam, king of Judah, and they shall kill 
 me and go again unto Rehoboam " (i Kings 
 xii. 27). So much political craft his Egyptian 
 sojourning had taught him. It had taught hin> 
 also a remedy. His mind had shaken off the 
 narrow trammels of the Jewish theology. The 
 great impersonal Deity could, as he had come 
 to think, be worshipped acceptably, not at one 
 altar only, or only under one form. It was 
 
 T 
 
1 7- HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 necessary to the strength and permanence of 
 his dynasty that the new kingdom should have 
 its own feature of national worship. If he could 
 not impart to it all the hereditary sanctity of the 
 altar at Jerusalem, he would at least emulate 
 the splendour of the Jewish temple and exceed 
 the gorgeousness of its ceremonial. He would 
 interest in the service of the new sanctuary 
 the great mass of his people. Instead of the 
 sacerdotal exclusiveness which limited in Judah 
 all the prizes of the priesthood to a single 
 tribe, his enlarged mind would communicate 
 them to all, and so enlist all in the maintenance 
 of his new religious establishment. With the 
 most engaging liberality he made priests of the 
 lowest of the people. His keen eye discerned the 
 sensuous tendency of his people, and he resolved 
 boldly to reproduce amongst them the sacred em- 
 blems of the unseen God, which he had seen so 
 deeply reverenced in Egypt, and he set up there- 
 fore at Dan and at Bethel the golden calves 
 which should present sacramentally to his peoole 
 the great Jehovah who had brought them up 
 from Egypt. This was the very central point of 
 
THE PROPHET FROM JUDAH. ^75 
 
 his policy, and he devoted to its perfect esta- 
 blishment every resource he could command 
 Bethel, no doubt, was chosen not only from its 
 proximity to the dangerous border of the southern 
 kingdom, but also from the holy associations 
 which hung around it and made it so pre- 
 eminently a hallowed spot. There the king had 
 now gathered a crowd of obsequious worshippers. 
 Tenderness for his people's needs was one great 
 motive he assigned for the spiritual revolution 
 he inaugurated. " It is too much for you to go 
 up to Jerusalem : behold thy gods, O Israel, 
 which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt" 
 (i Kings xii. 28). He was anxious to provide 
 for them at a less cost than the journey to Jeru- 
 salem the full satisfaction of their religious 
 desires. Nothing should be wanting which the 
 king could command to make that supply suffi- 
 cient. He made a house of high places ; he 
 multiplied beyond precedent the crowd of sacri- 
 ficing priests since as these were no longer 
 limited to the tribe of Levi, he could fill abun- 
 dantly their ranks. He appointed two great 
 days of festival to rival those which were kept 
 
2 7 6 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 in the old capital. On the fifteenth day of the 
 eighth month, " the day which he had devised 
 out of his own heart " as an ordained feast for 
 the children of Israel, all the magnificent ritual 
 of the new temple was complete, and the great 
 national worship was to be commenced. To add 
 to the magnificent impressiveness of the scene, 
 which was to remove from his people's minds 
 any lingering recollections of the great Solo- 
 mon's dedication festival of the temple on the 
 mount Moriah, the king came down from his 
 distant capital to attend the festival, and take 
 part with his own royal hand in the service of 
 inauguration to offer upon the altar and to 
 burn incense. It was impossible to overrate the 
 importance of this occasion to himself and to his 
 dynasty. If by that day's successful ceremonial 
 he could thoroughly engraft upon the religious 
 feelings of the people the new worship, his 
 throne was safe for himself, and for his children 
 after him. The dark heart of the long-practised 
 conspirator concentrated its utmost energies to 
 make this turning-point of all his long-laid and 
 happily-accomplished schemes thoroughly sue- 
 
THE PROPHET FROM JUDAH. 277 
 
 cessful. He had provided so far as the most 
 anxious foresight would enable him against 
 any possible failure, and now the crisis of the 
 great experiment was come, and in the sight of 
 all his people, "the king stood by the altar to 
 burn incense." 
 
 We may picture to ourselves the whole scene : 
 the band of supple courtiers ; the new priest- 
 hood fiercely zealous in the assertion of their 
 spiritual pre-eminence ; the assenting crowd ; 
 pleased with their monarch's care ; rejoicing in 
 the bright promise of an external worship 
 which met the longings of their carnal hearts ; 
 flattered with the distinction of rivalling or sur- 
 passing the worship of Jerusalem; with only 
 here and there one whose grave, saddened 
 countenance spoke of the inward struggle 
 between the conflicting fears, on the one side, 
 of dishonouring their fathers' jealous God, and, 
 on the other, of incurring instant destruction 
 if they opposed their fierce and strong-willed 
 monarch. And now the king raises his arm to 
 burn incense on the altar ; when suddenly one 
 unbidden presence intrudes itself within the 
 
278 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 inmost circle of his attendants. The garb of the 
 stranger bespeaks him a prophet of Jehovah. 
 The marks of travel are upon him ; he has 
 come from far; come, it may be, to take part 
 in this grand service of initiation. One gaze, 
 at least, rested full upon him. One master- 
 eye was bent upon him, and sought to read in 
 his countenance his unspoken message. What 
 was the first emotion which throbbed through 
 the dark heart of the anxious king when that 
 unlooked-for figure first broke upon its con- 
 sciousness ? Had he come for good or for evil ; 
 to bless or to curse ? Once before, with the same 
 unbidden and unlooked-for suddenness such a 
 form had stood beside him as he walked of old 
 out of the highway of the city, had taken up the 
 thread of his inmost thoughts, and forecast for 
 him the strange future of his life. And now, with 
 what message had this stranger come to-day ? 
 Was it the very same prophet, or one of the same 
 prophetic line? What would be the burden of 
 his prophecy ? Self-flattery would whisper that 
 it need not be unmitigably hostile. There was 
 of necessity a certain rivalry between the pro- 
 
THE PROPHET FROM JUDAH. 279 
 
 phetic order and the Levitical priesthood. The 
 monarchy of the house of David had finally 
 superseded the long line of prophetic rule ; and 
 the temple at Jerusalem had been a vast exalta- 
 tion of the family of Aaron and of the house of 
 Levi. Jeroboam's new temple and new hier- 
 archy were the heaviest blow yet struck against 
 the old Aaronic supremacy. Could it have been 
 accepted ? Might it be that prophetic lips would 
 sanction his bold attempt to localise in his new 
 kingdom and swell into hallowing devotion the 
 waning worship of the distant tribes before this 
 new altar to their fathers' God ? 
 
 With these mingled other thoughts. Let 
 his message be what it might, could he be mad 
 enough to dare the monarch to his face ? And 
 yet could such an one, indeed, approve ? And if 
 he did not approve, why was he there, except he 
 was sent by Israel's God to blast in the very 
 agony of its birth the just-developed worship ? 
 We may see the eyes of the two men meet, and 
 we can almost hear the deep hush which spread 
 itself as a silence of hearts over the thronging 
 mass around. What could come of it ? Which 
 
>fto HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 would yield ? Which wing would beat the other 
 down ? What would be the issue ? 
 
 There was no sign of fear upon that prophet's 
 brow. He stood as though he had already fore- 
 cast within his heart all the scene before him, 
 and was ready for its utmost need. And so, 
 indeed, he was. When the divine afflatus had 
 breathed upon him in peaceful Judah, it may be 
 that the first impulse of his startled spirit had 
 been to shrink aside from so infinite a daring. 
 Jeroboam's strength of purpose, his unscrupu- 
 lous employment of any means to reach his end, 
 and his unflinching daring, were well known in 
 Judah, and he was hated and feared as the de- 
 spoiler of the house of David, and the divider of 
 their nation's unity. To withstand such a man 
 in the very central point of all his policy ; to do 
 it openly, publicly, without protection, in the 
 sight of all his people, was indeed to cast his 
 own life away upon an utterly hopeless hazard. 
 But if human weakness had shuddered, God's 
 strength had triumphed, and the messenger of 
 Jehovah had girded himself to do the mighty 
 bidding. As he walked forth alone along his 
 
THE PROPHET FROM JUDAH. 2 8 1 
 
 appointed path, what tossing waves of conflict- 
 ing emotions must have risen and surged within 
 his soul ! Even as he paced the streets of Jeru- 
 salem, the engrossing strife within had made 
 him feel himself so utterly alone, that its crowded 
 thoroughfares were to him as a desert. And 
 now he had left behind him the outskirts of the 
 chosen city; he had passed beyond the terraced 
 vineyards with their walls and watch-towers, 
 and was making his way along the high moun- 
 tain ridge which formed the track to Bethel. 
 From time to time he exchanged the white lime- 
 stone path and the grey willow-like olive trees 
 for the far distant views which that high ridge 
 presented to his eye. He saw the border hills 
 of Moab, girdled by the rich Jordan valley, 
 where of old the threatening walls of Jericho 
 had fallen at God's bidding before the trumpet 
 blast of the circling host ; and he thought upon 
 the ancient charge, "Only be thou strong and 
 very courageous/' and built up his own spirit in 
 the faithfulness of his God ; or he looked upon 
 his left and saw the blue sea brightly speckled 
 with the ships of Tarshish, and swelling in its 
 
282 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 might under the breath of God; and he saw 
 before him the outstretched rod of his prophet 
 ancestor, and those waves at his command part- 
 ing themselves asunder and standing as a wall 
 on this side and on that, and his heart knew that 
 he was safe in His hands who had divided the 
 sea, whose waves roared and made the waters ol 
 the great deep to be a way for His ransomed to 
 pass over. And now he was drawing near to 
 Bethel ; and as he thought upon his message, 
 and there rose before his eyes all the abomina- 
 tion he was commissioned to rebuke, his soul 
 burned within him from very jealousy for the 
 honour of the Lord God of Israel. Was it not 
 enough that, in distant Dan, where the Holy 
 Land was passing into the unblessed forests 
 of Bashan, the accursed altar should be raised, 
 and the image of Israel's old sins be renewed, 
 but must its presence pollute also the sacred 
 grounds of Bethel, and insult the memories 
 of Abraham and of Jacob ? Must the very 
 spot where, as he first trod the soil of the 
 Land of Promise, Abraham had builded an 
 altar unto the Lord and called upon the name 
 
THE PROPHET FROM JUDAH. 183 
 
 of the Lord, see this forbidden worship rise to 
 provoke Jehovah's wrath ? Must the stones 
 which Jacob had taken to be his pillow, when 
 the great vision of God's nearness to him had 
 been permitted to fill his wondering soul, be 
 now builded into an altar to the calf of Egypt ? 
 Must the oak of weeping, which marked the 
 grave of one of the great patriarch's household, 
 now wave its branches over these unhallowed 
 rites ? The very trees of the forest which 
 clothed the hill-side, as it stretched from Bethel 
 to Ai, seemed, as they swayed under the breeze 
 of the morning, to be uttering God's sentence on 
 such daring unfaithfulness, and to lift up to the 
 full comprehension of his message and the reso- 
 lute determination to deliver it all the great soul 
 of God's appointed messenger. With such 
 thoughts burning within him, his feet trod the 
 crowded thoroughfare ; he passed through it as 
 men pass through a city of the plague he must 
 touch nothing in it lest its pollution pass on 
 him ; he might not eat its bread or drink its 
 water : by open sign as well as by spoken word, 
 its guilt and desolation must be declared. And 
 
284 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 so with the foot of a resolute speed, he passed 
 along its streets, trod the courts of the novel 
 temple, passed through the self-opening circle of 
 the idol- worshippers, and stood in threatening 
 silence in the very presence of the haughty king. 
 But the silence was not long. Deliberately, 
 and as one speaking in the ears of all, a sen- 
 tence terrible to listen to, the denunciation was 
 spoken. To the king, as though he were un- 
 worthy to receive it, no word was uttered. To 
 the altar he addressed his words ; upon the altar, 
 the instrument and the witness of the monarch's 
 sin, fell the terrible sentence. " He cried against 
 the altar, in the word of the Lord, O altar, 
 altar, upon thee shall a prince of the house 
 of Judah offer the priests of the high places 
 which burn incense upon thee. This is the sign 
 which the Lord hath spoken : Behold, the altar 
 shall be rent, and the ashes that are upon it 
 shall be poured out." The pealing of the 
 thunder-cloud could not have broken forth with 
 a more startling burst. Every device of the 
 cunning subtilty of the usurper was crushed 
 beneath it. His scheme for a new national wor- 
 
THE PROPHET FROM JUDAH. 285 
 
 ship at the very moment of its perfecting fell 
 helpless to the ground; here where he had 
 hoped to raise a barrier against the weakening 
 of his dynasty by any possible return of the bre- 
 thren of the separation to Judah, here a Prince 
 of the house of Judah should stand and burn the 
 bodies of the priests of his new institution, to the 
 power of whom he looked as the prolongers of 
 the majesty of his royal race. Here on the very 
 altar whereon he would consecrate his line, here 
 should be the uttermost abomination of Hinnom, 
 even the burning of the bones of the dead. 
 
 No wonder that his wrath broke forth sharp, 
 sudden, undisguised, unflinching. He might as 
 soon abdicate his hardly won dominion as endure 
 this intolerable ignominy. No sooner did he 
 hear the words than he stretched forth with 
 eager energy the hand which was about to burn 
 the incense, and cried out, as though fearing the 
 possible escape of the messenger of evil, " Lay 
 hold on him/' It was the action of a moment ; 
 but even as it was wrought, it was avenged. 
 His hand which he had put forth against God's 
 messenger dried up, so that he could not pull it in 
 
286 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 again to him ; and the altar of incense that too 
 quivered beneath the word of power so that it rent 
 asunder, and the ashes on it were poured forth. 
 
 The strife was over. God had, beyond all 
 contradiction, put forth His might. The broken 
 altar, the withered arm these were the abiding 
 tokens of the fray. The strong man of the earth 
 had lifted up himself against the unearthly 
 power, and it had shivered him to powder. 
 
 Calm, serene, unmoved, stood yet beside the 
 altar the prophet of Jehovah : and as the trem- 
 bling king entreats the prayer of God's servant 
 for the healing of the arm which his word had 
 withered, that stern strength in which his fea- 
 tures had been set melted into mercy, and he 
 besought the Lord, and the king's hand was 
 restored to him again, and became as it was 
 before. Humbled by the judgment, softened by 
 the mercy, it seems for the moment as if that 
 hard heart was yielding itself up to Grace as if 
 the hero daring of the man of God had rent, not 
 only the altar-stones, but the harder rock of a 
 rebellious spirit. "Come home with me," is now 
 his utterance to the man of God, " and refresh 
 
THE PROPHET FROM JUDAH. 2 8 7 
 
 thyself; and I will give thee a reward." Yet 
 even this condescension is withheld. Those 
 meats of the idol-worshipper were to be no food 
 for the servant of the jealous God ; Jeroboam's 
 gold no guerdon for Jehovah's messenger. 
 "The man of God said unto the king, If thou wilt 
 give me half thine house, I will not go in with 
 thee. Neither will I eat bread nor drink water 
 in this place ; for so was it charged me by the 
 word of the Lord, Eat no bread nor drink water, 
 nor turn again by the way that thou earnest." 
 
 And so they parted : the king humbled, foiled, 
 subdued ; the fifteenth day of the eighth month 
 " the month which he had devised in his own 
 heart" marked as the day of his humiliation 
 instead of his success ; the great feast which was 
 to have cemented the loyalty of Israel to his 
 throne, having proved the first great shock to its 
 stability. The prophet still, as ever, calm, deter- 
 mined, triumphant ; spurning reward as he had 
 laughed at threatening ; and at God's command, 
 turning from the guilty town by another way 
 from that which had borne him thither. 
 
 How different were his thoughts as he left the 
 
288 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 town from those with which he had entered it ! 
 The great burden which had been laid upon his 
 soul had been lifted off. He had entered the 
 town with a full sense of all that was before him 
 He had cast himself into that eager and excited 
 crowd of worshippers, knowing all the risk he 
 ran : but not knowing what the Lord who sent 
 him had appointed for him : he had obeyed sim- 
 ply, and he was victorious. He had been faithful 
 unto death, and his Lord had stood by him and 
 saved him. 
 
 What did that countenance speak as he left 
 the evil town ? Was it all thankfulness ? Was 
 there that sinking of the spirit which so besets 
 humanity when it has accomplished a struggle 
 which has tried it to the very uttermost ? Or was 
 there something of human triumph in the flushed 
 cheek and bounding tread of him who had passed 
 in through those gates pale that morning in the 
 energy of subdued earnestness ? It seems pro 
 bable that these conflicting emotions were strug- 
 gling within him. Struggling dangerously 
 foreboding, it maybe, to the watchful eye of some 
 guardian spirit all that followed. 
 
THE PROPHET FROM JUDAH. 289 
 
 What an unutterable sadness there is about 
 that future! What lessons of self distrust, of 
 the need of continual watchfulness, of the need 
 of perseverance, woven in colours of blood into 
 the bright web of his noble daring and high- 
 souled triumphs ! 
 
 He leaves the city, and as the first dangerous 
 sign of yielding to temptation, he sits down to 
 rest beneath a wayside tree, instead of pressing 
 forward at any cost from the idols' home. But 
 for that rest he might have triumphed to the end. 
 For but for that the tempter, the old prophet of 
 Bethel, would not have overtaken him and plied 
 him with the falsehood which led to his signal 
 downfall. 
 
 It is not difficult to trace the inducements 
 which led to the utterance of that lie. The old 
 prophet was one of those whose souls had 
 once been visited by the visions of the Most 
 High. But they seem to have vanished from 
 him. Probably a life of worldly compliance 
 had, as it is wont to do, dulled the receptive ear 
 and made dumb the prophetic voice. His con- 
 tinued residence at Bethel, now that it had 
 
 u 
 
zgo HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 become the House of Idols instead of being the 
 House of God, was an actual instance and for 
 the future an unlimited promise of compliance 
 with evil. In such an one, painfully conscious 
 of the fading away of the prophetic power, there 
 would of necessity be a craving for acknowledg- 
 ment by a brother in the great company of the 
 prophets, even for the satisfaction of his own 
 uneasy conscience. Moreover, for his credit 
 sake with others, he would desire to have the 
 brotherhood avowed. The town was ringing 
 with the fame of the nameless prophet his calm 
 courage, his unflinching utterance, the super- 
 natural confirmation of his words, the yielding 
 of the king, the high-minded rejection of the 
 proffered present, the utter condemnation con- 
 veyed with such a terrible energy of expression 
 in the refusal, on the command of God, to eat or 
 drink within the accursed city all invested the 
 prophet-messenger with a marvellous halo of 
 sanctity. That such an one should make no 
 acknowledgment of the old prophet could not 
 but lessen his already waning influence. What 
 might it not effect in raising his reputation 
 
THE PROPHET FROM JUDAH. 291 
 
 amongst his townsmen if the prophet who had 
 rejected the hospitality of Jeroboam should be 
 known to have been his guest? And so his 
 scheme was laid : feigning, as such men learn 
 to feign, what once had been real to him ; utterly 
 careless, as such old triflers with the voice of 
 God evermore become, of the sin, and shame, 
 and ruin which he might bring upon his victim, 
 he sets out to overtake him and to bring him 
 back. That halt under the way-side oak enabled 
 him to fulfil his purpose. Doubtless the charge 
 to return by another way from that which had 
 borne him to Bethel conveyed to the awakened 
 conscience of the prophet the charge to hasten 
 far away from the sinful place, and so that halt- 
 ing was a tempting of God. Doubtless when 
 the lie was uttered which was to lure him back, 
 his conscience stirred within and warned him. 
 But the temptation came in so seductive a 
 shape for old prophets counselling ease to 
 kill the self-denying zeal of younger spirits, 
 are ever Satan's chosen instruments of evil- 
 it appealed with such an urgency of entreaty to 
 his lower nature, for 'he was weary and faint, 
 
292 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 and the mid-day sun was hot and scorching, 
 and Judea so distant, and present rest and 
 refreshment were so needful, and he was in the 
 unguardedness of spirit which is too often bred 
 of recent success, and with something of the 
 dangerous triumph of a great temptation 
 mastered, and therefore of the right to some 
 little self-allowance earned ; and so he faltered 
 and he fell. He who had received his own 
 command direct from God, suffered it to be 
 overborne by the word of a man, and he re- 
 turned and ate of the forbidden bread and drank 
 of the forbidden water. And even at the mo- 
 ment the voice of condemnation wakes against 
 him, and the sentencer is sentenced, and the 
 judge is judged. 
 
 Another man he set out upon that second 
 return. No doubt the voice of judgment had 
 woke up again his slumbering conscience. No 
 doubt his very setting out from Bethel bespoke 
 his reawakened faithfulness he was in God's 
 hands. Let Him do as seemed Him good. 
 Bowed, humble, penitent, ashamed, he tracked 
 the new path appointed for him. Its course led 
 
THE PROPHET FROM JUDAH. 293 
 
 him by the mouth of the woody defiles which 
 ran up from the Jordan valley to the central 
 ridge the wonted haunt of the wild beasts 
 which breed there in the jungles of the river. 
 From one of them comes the terrible roar, and 
 the whirlwind spring of the avenger of his dis- 
 obedience. To stamp unmistakably upon the 
 whole act the character of judgment, the lion 
 spares the beast which was his natural prey, 
 and as though witnessing against the man of 
 Judah, couches beside his lifeless form 
 
 Surely we must read in such a spectacle tne 
 glory and the risk of being the servant of the 
 jealous God. The broken life, the dishonoured 
 end, the strange sepulchre, the place amongst 
 the catalogue of heroes, but the hero's name 
 withheld, the escutcheon taken down, and the 
 banner removed, all speak alike the undying 
 lesson of not fainting in the battle, of not 
 coming short in the trial ; all echo the mingled 
 threat and promise of the grand apocalyptic 
 words, "Be thou faithful UNTO DEATH, and I 
 will give thee the crown of lite." 
 
MICAIAH, THE SON OF IMLA. 
 
 T T is strictly in accordance with that system 
 of correlation which is implied in the very 
 notion of the government of the earth and all 
 that .dwell on it by an ever-present, ever-acting 
 personal God, that great sins should call forth 
 marked interference, and that great sinners 
 should be met by great witnesses of God sent 
 to withstand their evil deeds. All nature is full 
 of material types of such a system of moral 
 proportions. The vast plains of Africa abound 
 with the large carnivora, and with countless 
 tribes of all the larger ruminating animals. In 
 the wild northern expanse of waters the huge 
 cetacea have their home : as round the tops of 
 the chiefest mountain-peaks may ever be seen 
 
MICAIAH, THE SON OF IMLA. 295 
 
 the wide-winged flight of the great vultures 
 and the sweep of the imperial eagles. The 
 very rocks tell the same tale in their shadowy 
 pictures of the melancholy wastes of those 
 primaeval times which followed first upon the 
 chaos, and which stand before us full of the 
 hideous and terrible tribe of Saurian monsters. 
 This graduated scale in nature marks on the 
 material world the impress of the same hand 
 which, in His government of man, proportions 
 the instruments of moral resistance to the in- 
 struments of sin. 
 
 It is not, therefore, in any sense surprising 
 that, to meet so great a criminal as Ahab, other 
 prophets of the Lord beside Elijah should from 
 time to time have been raised up in Israel. For 
 Ahab was indeed great in all the powers and 
 proportions of his evil character. His influence 
 over Jehoshaphat the king of Judah exhibits 
 in striking colours his commanding nature. 
 Scarcely any other king of Judah receives such 
 commendation in the sacred record as is be- 
 stowed on Jehoshaphat, the son of Asa. He 
 fortified his kingdom with widely-diffused gar- 
 
296 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 risons. He furnished it with cities of store, to 
 equalise in bad times the supply of food to its 
 working classes: he established a system of 
 national religious education, sending a royal 
 commission, who "went about through all the 
 cities of Judah and taught the people." He 
 provided in it for the administration of justice; 
 setting "judges in all the fenced cities/' and 
 giving them the remarkable charge, "Take 
 heed what ye do ; for ye judge not for man, but 
 for the Lord, who is with you in the judgment ; 
 wherefore now let the fear of the Lord be before 
 you: take heed and do it, for there is no 
 iniquity with the Lord our God, nor respect 
 of persons, nor taking of gifts. Deal courage- 
 ously, and the Lord shall be with the good" 
 (2 Chron. xix. 5 n). But, above all, he was a 
 great reformer in religion ; he " took away the 
 high places and the groves out of Judah," which 
 his father Asa, even in the first heat of his 
 zealous restoration of the worship of Jehovah, 
 had not dared to do. And in this great work he 
 laboured by a personal progress through his 
 kingdom, " for he went out through the people 
 
MICAIAH, THE SON OF IMLA. 297 
 
 from Beersheba to Mount Ephraim, and brought 
 them back unto the Lord God of their fathers " 
 (2 Chron. xix. 4). Moreover, when trouble came 
 upon the land from their heathen enemies, and 
 the Moabites and the Ammonites came in "a 
 great multitude " to invade Judah, he set his 
 people the example of trusting, not to the wise 
 military preparations he had so judiciously 
 made, but to the arm of Jehovah. "He set 
 himself to seek the Lord, and proclaimed a fast 
 throughout all Judah." And such was his 
 influence with his people for good, that at his 
 call " they came out of all the cities to seek the 
 Lord/' And then, when God's prophet brought 
 them a message of encouragement, "Jehosha- 
 phat bowed his head with his face to the ground: 
 and all Judah and all the inhabitants of Jeru- 
 salem fell before the Lord, worshipping the 
 Lord." With the watchful wisdom which sought 
 to seize on all favourable opportunities to pro- 
 mote the service of the Lord, he used this 
 softening of their hearts to restore amongst 
 them, with their own assent, and not as forcing 
 it on them, that ritual of public thanksgiving 
 
298 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 which his great progenitor David had delighted 
 to establish for the honour of his God. For, 
 "when he had consulted with the people, he 
 appointed singers unto the Lord, and that 
 should praise the beauty of holiness " (2 Chron. 
 
 XX. 2l). 
 
 Such were his outward works. There was, 
 moreover, behind them what gave them their 
 deepest value, a true, earnest, personal faith in 
 his God. " He sought to the Lord God of his 
 fathers, and walked after His commandments, 
 and not after the ways of Israel." Yea, so 
 thoroughly did he so, that he is found worthy 
 of the high praise, " He walked in the first ways 
 of his father David, and his heart was lifted up 
 in the ways of the Lord " (2 Chron. xvii. 3, 4, 6). 
 Temporal prosperity followed largely on this 
 devoted faithfulness. "He waxed great ex- 
 ceedingly. He built in Judah palaces : the men 
 of war, mighty men, were in Jerusalem : and 
 the fear of the Lord fell upon all the kingdoms 
 of the lands that were round about Judah, so 
 that they made no war on Jehoshaphat : and he 
 had riches and honour in abundance." Such a 
 
MICAIAH. THE SON OF IMLA. 299 
 
 man as this we might have expected to find 
 visibly counteracting the influence and designs 
 of the king of Israel, who had wholly sold 
 himself to work iniquity, even though Jehosha- 
 phat's wiser policy might have kept him from 
 renewing with Ahab the war which, through 
 all their days, had lasted "between Asa and 
 Baasha, king of Israel." Yet, it would seem 
 certain that he would in nothing mix himself up 
 with the enemy of the God in whom he so sin- 
 cerely trusted; and that he would use all his 
 endeavours to keep his own family and his 
 people free from the infection which familiar 
 communications with the idolatrous court and 
 nation would be so sure to spread amongst 
 them. What a proof, then, of Ahab's power 
 over others is given us in the startling contra- 
 diction of all such expectations which the actual 
 facts exhibit! For, in immediate connection 
 with the inspired statement of Jehoshaphat's 
 abundant riches and honour, stands, in God's 
 Word, the solemn note of condemnation, " And 
 he joined affinity with Ahab/' To such a degree 
 did this power extend, which the naturally 
 
joo HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 stronger mind exerted over the weaker, that it 
 was not wholly swept away even by such words 
 of terrible threatening as reached the king of 
 Judah from the mouth of Jehu, the son of 
 Hanani the seer, when, after the greatest perils 
 of death, he "returned to his house in peace 
 at Jerusalem," to hear, instead of the welcome 
 which had so often greeted him from sacred lips, 
 the startling reproach, " Shouldest thou help 
 the ungodly, and love them that hate the Lord ? 
 therefore is wrath upon thee from the Lord." 
 
 Terrible in its consequences, even towards so 
 favoured a servant of God, was the wrath 
 kindled against him by this fellowship with the 
 evil house of Ahab. It cost him the overthrow 
 of that army he had formed so carefully, and 
 with such success ; it led to his navy being scat- 
 tered, and his great "works broken of the 
 Lord ; " and it brought the sword, which followed 
 the seed of Omri to destroy them, into his own 
 house. For, first, that sword, in the hand of 
 his own son Jehoram, cruelly and treacherously 
 devoured all his younger children; then the 
 Lord smote the murderer of his brethren with 
 
MICA1AH, THE SON OF IMLA. 301 
 
 an incurable disease, of which he died miserably 
 in his prime, leaving behind an evil name ; 
 "departing without being desired," and being 
 borne to his lonely grave without honours ; for 
 "his people made no burning for him like the 
 burning of his fathers, and they buried him not 
 in the sepulchres of the kings/' But this was 
 not all, for the wrath reached on in the next 
 generation to Jehoram's sons, with consequences 
 of destruction, which are told with fearful plain- 
 ness in the words of inspiration. "Ahaziah 
 walked in the ways of the house of Ahab, for 
 his mother was his counsellor to do wickedly. 
 Wherefore he did evil in the sight of the Lord 
 like the house of Ahab, for they were his coun- 
 sellors after the death of his father to his de- 
 struction. And the destruction of Ahaziah was 
 of God by coming to Joram ; for when he was 
 come, he went out with Jehoram against Jehu, 
 the son of Nimshi, whom the Lord had appointed 
 to cut off the house of Ahab. And it came to 
 pass that when Jehu was executing judgment 
 upon the house of Ahab, and found the princes 
 of Judah, he slew them. And he sought Ahaziah, 
 
302 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 and they caught him (for he was hid in Samaria), 
 and brought him to Jehu, and when they had 
 slain him, they buried him." And even yet the 
 sword ate on. For when Athaliah, the mother 
 of Ahaziah, and his evil counsellor, saw that her 
 son was dead, with the wild vengeance which 
 lay ready to be aroused in the proud dark heart 
 of the daughter of the Zidonian Jezebel, she 
 arose, and with fiend-like cruelty destroyed, so 
 far as she could, all the seed royal of the house of 
 Judah. So far reaching in its issues of iniquity, 
 so terribly remembered in its consequences ot 
 punishment, was the sinful subjugation of Jeho- 
 shaphat to the imperious will of Ahab. 
 
 It was not, we may readily conceive, without 
 many resistances, though all too weak to stand 
 the strong strain of temptation, without self- 
 deceptions, ever ready to blind half-willing eyes, 
 and remorse, bitter, but too late to be effectual, 
 that Jehoshaphat yielded to the great but wicked 
 king of Israel. 
 
 It is in the record of a signal example of this 
 moral trial and failure of the good but over- 
 mastered king that Micaiah, the son of Imla, 
 
MICAIAH, THE SON OF IMLA. 303 
 
 first comes by name before us. The scene 
 exhibits him as the witness for Jehovah, in one 
 peculiar trial of his faithfulness, to which we 
 have no record of Elijah's exposure, and without 
 seeing which we cannot estimate at its full 
 height the severe testing in those evil days of 
 those who bore unflinchingly the burden of the 
 Lord. We must have before us the whole scene, 
 with what we know of the relation to each other 
 of the kings of Israel and of Judah, to enter fully 
 into the nobleness of Micaiah's grand bearing of 
 his witness. 
 
 Jehoshaphat had been persuaded to go down 
 and visit Ahab in that city of Samaria where, 
 in open defiance of the God of Israel, he 
 had set up for the worship of the court the 
 statue of the obscene and abominable Baal. To 
 come in friendly guise as the guest of such a 
 court was of itself offence enough in one who 
 feared the Lord. But according to its law of 
 accursed fruitfulness sin ever follows sin; and 
 one point of right yielded, is but the harbinger 
 of the yielding of another; and so the king o* 
 Judah next consents on the enticement of his 
 
3 o4 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 royal host to join him in a confederate attack 
 upon the king of Syria. So far the evil influence 
 triumphed unrebuked. Then succeeded one of 
 those hesitating impulses bred of his better 
 nature. As principal he would undertake no 
 war without inquiry at the word of the Lord, nor 
 engage in battle without " seeking the Lord God 
 of his fathers." And so before the expedition 
 was actually undertaken, he said to his royal 
 compeer, " Inquire, I pray thee, at the word of the 
 Lord to-day." It was easy for the king of Israel 
 to yield a seeming compliance to what he doubt- 
 less deemed the hereditary weakness of his new 
 ally : and with all the accidents of royal estate 
 the two kings sat in a void place near to the 
 gate of Samaria, " either of them on their throne, 
 clothed with their robes," to hold solemn consul- 
 tation with the oracles of God. The summons of 
 the king brought at once before them four hun- 
 dred prophets to declare the bidding of the Lord. 
 A far larger number doubtless Samaria could 
 easily have furnished, even after the destruction 
 of the priests of Baal upon the mount of Carmel. 
 For under its evil kings Israel had imported into 
 
MICAIAH, THE SON OF IMLA. 305 
 
 the Holy Land all the idolatries of the heathen 
 round them, and with each false god came an 
 attendant troop of priests, and diviners, and 
 soothsayers, and magicians. With such as these 
 Elijah had contended in the solemn lists of the 
 mountain of decision, and had triumphed over 
 them openly. But it was not these idol-prophets 
 whom Ahab would have called to remove the 
 scruples of the good king of Judah. We may be 
 sure that the four hundred who this day with 
 one mouth declared good unto the king spake 
 as spake Zedekiah, the son of Chenaanah, in the 
 name of the Lord, whose word Jehoshaphat 
 required. But he was not satisfied with the 
 loud voice of the consenting chorus. So spake 
 not at the court of Jerusalem the aged Hanani ; 
 nor with such semi-heathen tumults of utterance 
 did his fathers' God reveal His Will through 
 Jehu, the son of Hanani, and Jehaziel, the son of 
 Zechariah. As one perplexed by the din of 
 this artificial consent rather than convinced by 
 its deceitful voice, the king of Judah asked, " Is 
 there not here a prophet of the Lord beside, that 
 we might inquire of him?*' Ahab's keen dis- 
 
 x 
 
3 o6 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 cernment read at once, in all its causes and 
 meaning, the secret dissatisfaction of the heart 
 he desired to win, and he knew where to find 
 the prophet, for whom, through all that surging 
 number, the troubled glance of Jehoshaphat had 
 searched in vain. But that man, for reasons 
 of his own, Ahab would not willingly produce. 
 " There is yet one man by whom we may in- 
 quire of the Lord ; but I hate him, for he never 
 prophesieth good of me, but always evil. The 
 same is Micaiah, the son of Imla." Jehoshaphat's 
 courteous disclaimer of such treason for the pro- 
 phet, "Let not the king say so," was an irre- 
 sistible demand of his presence ; and an officer 
 is sent to fetch him quickly. Then begins in all 
 its severity the faithful prophet's trial. The 
 officer who brings him tells him, as they hasten 
 through the streets, the outline of all that has 
 passed in that open space where in hushed ex- 
 pectancy the crowd await his arrival ; he hears 
 of the gathered company, the royal presences, 
 the momentous issue, the concurring oracles, 
 and that "the words of the prophets declare 
 good unto the king with one assent; " and he is 
 
MICAIAH, THE SON OF IMLA. 307 
 
 urged with friendly importunity, " Let thy word 
 therefore, I pray thee, be like one of theirs, and 
 speak that which is good." 
 
 From Ahab's words it is plain that this was 
 not the first time these two men had met and 
 measured their strength together. "He never 
 prophesieth good concerning me, but always 
 evil." What a sore, proud, revengeful, and yet 
 crouching spirit the words betray ! How gladly, 
 but for the trembling of his spirit under an over- 
 mastering eye, would he have rid himself of those 
 fearless, detested prophesyings ! How plainly 
 does the "I dare not" wait upon the "I would" 
 of the conscience-stricken tyrant ! How did he 
 detest this intrusive prophet as such men ever do 
 hate fearless reprovers ! How far pleasanter to 
 hear those voices prophesying good things with 
 that glad accord ! If only it were possible quite 
 thoroughly to believe them ! And now the king 
 of Judah had uttered in outspoken syllables the 
 voice which was murmuring already its dull, 
 hollow sound to the sleepy conscience of the evil 
 king; and he sends for this dark, unwelcome 
 sayer of sad truths. When these prophecies of 
 
3o8 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY 
 
 evil had been spoken by Micaiah the Bible does 
 not tell us ; but we have in this case no reason 
 to distrust the statement of Josephus, that one 
 instance of them is to be found in Holy Writ, 
 although the prophet's name is not there re- 
 corded. It was, Josephus tells us, the son of 
 Imla who administered to Ahab in his hour of 
 victory over Benhadad that reproof from God, 
 which must have been so inexpressibly galling 
 to the proud and prosperous king. 
 
 There had been on that occasion a certain 
 magnificence of triumph about his conduct. 
 There was, first, the entire success of his arms 
 against the mighty Syrian monarch, and then 
 the seeming magnanimity of dismissing him in 
 safety. And now the first was rudely wrested 
 from him by the open declaration before his glit- 
 tering staff that not his valour but God's judg- 
 ment had subdued Benhadad; and then, for 
 the second, his noble magnanimity is changed 
 into his having disloyally allowed the escape of 
 a great criminal committed by another to his 
 keeping ; and all this angry irritation is aggra- 
 vated by his own sentence being unawares 
 
MICAIAH, THE SON OF IMLA. 309 
 
 extorted from his unconscious lips : " So shall 
 thy judgment be; thyself hast decided it." 
 The severity of that sentence must have burned 
 in its fiery sharpness into the very fibres of that 
 angry and excited soul : " Because thou hast let 
 go out of thy hand a man whom I appointed to 
 utter destruction, therefore thy life shall go for his 
 life, and thy people for his people/' No wonder 
 that the proud king "went to his house heavy 
 and displeased/' We can hear the echo of his 
 growl of rage in the fierce outbreak to the king 
 of Judah : " I hate him, for he never prophesieth 
 good concerning me, but always evil/' 
 
 With this scene before us, we can have no 
 difficulty in believing further, what Josephus 
 asserts, that the king's hatred had broken fort , 
 in its natural expression by casting Micaiah into 
 a dungeon ; sooner or later under such a king 
 the usual home of Jehovah's fearless witnesses. 
 This account agrees entirely with the fact that 
 Ahab knew, as he evidently did, where the pro- 
 phet was ; and was able to send at once for 
 him, and command his presence, when " the 
 king called an officer, and said, Hasten hither 
 
3 1 o HEROES OF HEBRE W HIS TOR r. 
 
 Micaiah, the son of Imla." What a dungeon 
 was in those hard old days, we read in the book 
 of Jeremiah : " In the dungeon there was no 
 water, but mire ; so Jeremiah sunk in the mire " 
 (Jer. xxxviii. 6). From some such dark and 
 dreary tenement the prophet was drawn forth 
 to stand before these kings. It seems as if his 
 estate had touched the heart of the officer who 
 brought him, and who, for very pity, besought 
 him, "Let thy word, I pray thee, be like the 
 word of one of them." 
 
 This was the special point of his trial. li 
 was comparatively easy to stand against the pro- 
 phets of Baal. In such an encounter, Jehovah 
 was evidently with His faithful servant. It 
 was the sham god against the true ; it was 
 the spirit of devils against the Spirit of the 
 Lord. There was no room for choice : there was 
 scarcely place for fear. Against such as these, 
 though gathered against him by hundreds, 
 Elijah had stood single-handed, and had tri- 
 umphed openly. But Micaiah' s trial was far 
 subtler of approach, and so the more difficult to 
 resist. These men professed themselves to be, 
 
MICAIAH, THE SON OF IMLA . 311 
 
 even as he was, prophets of Jehovah. In His 
 holy name they uttered their predictions. 
 Probably as to many, if not all of them, there 
 had been a time when the true voice visited 
 them. In that peculiar dispensation the pro- 
 phetic gift was the one only feature of the great 
 Mosaic institutes of worship and communion 
 with God, which remained to them. Altar, 
 sacrifice, high priest, Urim and Thummim, the 
 very law itself, all were gone. There was left 
 but these men on whom fell the afflatus of 
 the Spirit, from whom yet breathed, now in 
 whispers, and anon in thunders, the oracles of 
 Jehovah. No one could foretell on whom the 
 gift would fall. There were schools for those 
 who sought the office, but not all of them were 
 taken ; whilst at His own will the free Spirit fell 
 as upon Amos, who was neither a prophet nor 
 the son of a prophet, but " a gatherer of syca- 
 more fruit, a herdsman of Tekoah." 
 
 This gift, like all God's gifts, could, it seems 
 plain, be turned by the receiver into evil. He 
 might trifle with it ; he might dumb its utter- 
 ances through fear of man ; he might pervert 
 
3 1 2 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 them for gifts and rewards. And as he thus 
 trifled with the great power which had rested on 
 him, he drove away its presence ; and as the 
 Holy One withdrew Himself, the evil one came 
 near, "and entered in and dwelt there." He 
 became a false prophet, a prophet of lies. It 
 may be that in the several utterances of the 
 Spirit within him, he was at most but dimly con- 
 scious of the awful change which had passed 
 upon him. The crisis of his moral trial had been 
 accomplished when first, for fear or for gain, he 
 tampered consciously with the truth; when he 
 "divined for money/' Now he was the victim 
 of what then he chose. We read not so much 
 of the false prophets prophesying consciously 
 a lie as of their seeing lying visions, and so 
 uttering deceits. As of old the vision spread 
 itself before them in a dream, an ecstasy, or 
 an inspiration, and what they saw they spoke. 
 But it was a vision painted for them by the evil 
 one; it was an inspiration bred of the low 
 vapours of their own hearts, of their covetous- 
 ness, their worldliness, or their greed. The 
 next step in their evil course was the endea- 
 
MICAIAH, THE SON OF IMLA. 313 
 
 vouring by excitement, or even by forbidden 
 arts of magic, to recall the ebbing- power of pro- 
 phecy. This darkening of the evil soul which 
 once had known the light, is what Micah so 
 awfully portrays, " Concerning the prophets that 
 make my people err, that bite with their teeth, 
 and cry, Peace. Therefore night shall be unto 
 you, that ye shall not have a vision ; and it shall 
 be dark unto you, that ye shall not divine ; and 
 the sun shall go down over the prophets, and the 
 day shall be dark over them " (Micah iii. 5, 6). 
 
 Yet it was only by the event that the false- 
 hood of such prophecies could be determined, 
 and he, therefore, who resolutely withstood them, 
 took upon himself the risk of withstanding the 
 true word of God. What it was which led Je- 
 hoshaphat, in distrust of those now gathered 
 round him, to desire " a prophet of the Lord 
 besides," we know not certainly. It may have 
 been, as has been already suggested, the excite- 
 ment of these professed possessors of Jehovah's 
 Spirit. It may have been that he had heard of 
 Micaiah in the dungeon, and that his heart 
 turned sadly to the record of his father's sin in 
 
314 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 putting the seer into a prison house, and of the 
 disease and death which, as God's chastisement, 
 avenged that idle rage against the instrument of 
 God's rebuke, and so, that the very fact of 
 Micaiah's imprisonment for a faithful utterance, 
 awoke within his soul an irresistible desire to 
 test by such a witness the truth or hollowness of 
 this consenting band of soothsayers. Great must 
 have been the rage of these prophets of lies at 
 this emphatic declaration of the king of Judah's 
 distrust, eager their readiness to turn on him 
 who was thus preferred before them. 
 
 Amongst this crew the single prophet stood. 
 To him the dull stillness of the dungeon was 
 suddenly exchanged for the eager interrogations 
 of the king, the angry taunts of the prophets, 
 the deep, expectant hum of the people. Instead 
 of the darkened light and dreary outlines of the 
 pit, in which he had been fed with " the bread 
 of affliction and the water of affliction," there was 
 the eastern sun, in all its glory, pouring down its 
 rays on the splendour of the thrones of the two 
 royally apparelled monarchs, and on the living 
 sea of faces which filled the void space of Sa- 
 
MICAIAH, THE SON OF IMLA. 315 
 
 maria. A feeble spirit might have been utterly 
 dashed by the mere suddenness of the change a 
 weaker heart might have fainted under the 
 heaviness of the burden laid so singly upon his 
 solitary strength. But it was not so with him. 
 Jehovah stood beside him, and he was not alone ; 
 he saw " the Lord sitting upon His throne, and 
 all the host of heaven standing by Him on His 
 right hand and on His left ; " and the sun in its 
 glory paled beneath that keener light, and the 
 crowned kings, the crowding multitude, and the 
 cursing and smiting prophets were as though 
 they were not when set beside that grander 
 company. Then the Spirit of the Lord fell on 
 him, and found its utterance through him. This 
 loud consenting chant of coming triumph was 
 but the baseness of" a mercenary lie. These 
 prophets had prophesied for hire ; and in coun- 
 selling in Jehovah's name their counsel of deceit, 
 had opened their hearts, and prostrated their 
 intellects to the lying spirit. Their leader in 
 iniquity, who had made him " horns of iron " for 
 the misleading of his prince, and who had 
 smitten God's true prophet on the cheek, should 
 
3 ib HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 fly in vain from chamber to chamber from the 
 avenging sword ; the monarch on his throne of 
 pride should be lured on to a defeat of ignominy 
 and to a death of violence he should come no 
 more to his fathers 5 hill-crowning city in peace. 
 Such was the word of Jehovah. Most bravely 
 was it spoken ; calmly, in the face of uttermost 
 danger; resolutely, against all seeming impro- 
 babilities. The great warrior should be beaten 
 down; the confederate kings should be over- 
 thrown ; Israel, which had been taught to trust 
 their own successful monarch as an unfailing 
 conqueror, should be scattered upon the hill as 
 sheep that have not a shepherd ; nay, even the 
 awful sentence of the great Elijah, should as it 
 seemed be brought to nought ; for how if Ahab 
 fell at Ramoth Gilead, three days' journey from 
 Samaria could the dogs lick his blood in the 
 vineyard of Naboth, hard beside his palace 
 home? Yet so the message was, and it was 
 spoken out ; a warning not to be listened to, but 
 a prophecy to be fulfilled. 
 
 Yet a few hours more, and all was accomplished 
 From that void space in the entrance of Samaria, 
 
MICAIAH, THE SON OF IMLA. 317 
 
 the royal train rolled grandly back to the ivory 
 house of Ahab ; the company of prophets, whose 
 voice of counsel had succeeded, swept triumph- 
 antly away ; the gathered crowd melted and dis- 
 persed. The one man with whom was Jehovah's 
 presence was led back dishonoured, smitten, and 
 reviled, to eat the prison's bread and drink its 
 water. The still night drew on, and all was 
 hushed; the stars looked coldly down upon the 
 silent square ; angel bands guarded the dungeon 
 prisoner ; and he too, the day's tumult over, slept 
 the sleep of peace. But the decree had gone 
 forth, and "the watchers" were fulfilling it ; and 
 but a few days later on Gilead's mountains a 
 king miserably dying, and an army slaughtered, 
 scattered, and fugitive, attested the reality of 
 Micaiah's mission and the verity of his words, 
 "If thou return at all in peace, the Lord hath 
 not sent me. 
 
ELIJAH. 
 
 rise at all critical times of the world's 
 history, of men eminently suited for the 
 work they have to do, is a result, and therefore a 
 proof, of the two great truths (i.) That whilst 
 the race of men, like other races of animals, is 
 physically subject to the ordinary law of inherited 
 life, yet that every soul is a separate creation, 
 gifted, apart from all others, with its destined 
 individuality; (2.) That the whole race is subject 
 to a continually-acting superintending Provi- 
 dence. For, if there were no such individual 
 differences, if all men, like the lower animals, 
 were but passive representatives of the same 
 idea, as any one honey-bee is like every other 
 honey-bee, gathers the same honey, makes the 
 
ELIJAH. 319 
 
 same cell in which to store it, there could be no 
 true kings of men. There might be in a man 
 some instinctive power of gathering others round 
 him, as there is a clustering of the swarm around 
 its queen bee, but there could be no true kingship ; 
 no power in one man of directing or fashioning 
 his generation by the intellectual, moral, or 
 spiritual power which, as it is, his individuality 
 enables him to exert over others. And again, if 
 there were no superintending Providence govern- 
 ing the affairs of men, there would be no security 
 for the right man appearing at the right time. 
 Blind nature, not administered by a God, might 
 produce a great poet when a great general was 
 wanted ; give a wonderful financier to a horde of 
 savages, and set down upon the Stock Exchange 
 the gallant, brave, and frank gentleman who 
 could have wielded as a single soul a motley 
 clan of Highlanders. 
 
 Now, instead of this unseasonableness of pro- 
 duction, the world's history shows that the man 
 the age needed has continually been given to the 
 age. And, as we might expect, from the relation 
 of the people of Israel to all other nations, this 
 
320 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 which profane history exhibits in its measure) is 
 seen as in a pattern type in the history of the 
 chosen people. Nowhere is this more distinctly 
 traceable than in the life of the great prophet 
 Elijah. 
 
 Sixty-five years had passed since the ten tribes 
 had revolted from the house of David, and 
 Jeroboam had mounted the vacant throne and 
 reigned over them " according to all that his soul 
 desired." Chequered years they had been: 
 marked on the whole by much temporal pros- 
 perity, but clouded ever deeper and deeper with 
 the dark shadows of spiritual evil. Jeroboam's 
 reign began with all the vigour of a new dynasty ; 
 but ended in loss, disgrace, and untimely death. 
 Abijah, the son of Rehoboam, though he "walked 
 in all the sins of his father which he had done 
 before him," and though "his heart was not 
 perfect with the Lord his God," was yet as to 
 power of mind and personal prowess a very dif- 
 ferent man from the feeble, boasting Rehoboam. 
 He "set his battle in array with an army of 
 valiant men of war ; " he routed the force of the 
 ten tribes. He "waxed mighty;" and he was 
 
ELIJAH. 32, 
 
 wise in discourse as well as strong of arm ; for 
 "his ways and his sayings" were "written in the 
 story of the prophet Iddo." He was the scourge 
 of the usurper through all Jeroboam's later days. 
 " Neither/' is the sacred record of his chastise- 
 ment, " did Jeroboam recover strength again in 
 the days of Abijah ; and the Lord struck him, 
 and he died" (2 Chron. xiii. 20). The short reign 
 of his son Nadab reached to but two uneventful 
 years ; that of Baasha, the son of Ahijah, who 
 succeeded to the throne of the master against 
 whom he had conspired, and whom he had 
 smitten, lasted for twenty-four years, and was, 
 through his "might," a time of military glory 
 for the ten tribes. Baasha's provocations of the 
 God who had "exalted him out of the dust, 
 and made him a prince over Israel," brought 
 extermination on his house and his supporters. 
 His son was murdered after a feeble two 
 years' reign, and the throne given by the army 
 to Omri, the captain of the host. During his 
 twelve years' reign, Omri bought the far-famed 
 hill of Shemer, and built on it the city of Sa- 
 maria; setting up there the throne of his dynasty. 
 
 Y 
 
322 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 There his son Ahab reigned after him for two- 
 and- twenty years. 
 
 Ahab was what the world would call a great 
 king. Its historians might describe him as 
 taking up and carrying further the wise policy 
 of the mighty Solomon. Instead of allowing 
 his people to remain a mere agricultural or 
 pastoral race, hemmed in by the narrow limits of 
 their mountainous country, cultivating for them- 
 selves alone its rich valleys, and feeding only for 
 themselves their cattle upon the upland slopes, 
 he carried on the project which the wise king 
 had formed, and had begun to accomplish, of 
 making them a commercial people, and enriching 
 them with the traffic of the earth. As Solomon 
 had married the daughter of Pharaoh and formed 
 a commercial treaty with Egypt, so did Ahab 
 ally himself with the king of the Zidonians, 
 intending, no doubt, to share with that queenly 
 city the merchandise of the world. He made also 
 for himself streets in the great trading capital of 
 Damascus. Magnificence reigned throughout 
 his days in Samaria ; art was encouraged, and 
 the increasing population better and more safely 
 
ELIJAH. 323 
 
 housed. In the book of the Chronicles of the 
 kings of Israel is written the catalogue of the 
 cities which he built, and the record of the ivory 
 house which the success of his distant commerce 
 enabled him to make. He was, too, successful 
 in war, as well as great in the arts of peace. 
 Twice he overthrew signally the forces of Ben- 
 hadad ; and recovered the cities which the forces 
 of Syria had taken from his warlike predecessor, 
 Baasha; and he fell as other brave men have 
 fallen, in battle, heading an aggressive and 
 invading army against the enemies of Israel. 
 
 But this worldly success was accompanied by 
 an amount of wickedness unknown before even to 
 the evil kings of the separated tribes. His 
 father, Omri, the founder of the dynasty, had 
 done so much " worse than all that were before 
 him," that two hundred years afterwards the 
 prophet Micah (vi. 1 6) set it before Israel as their 
 special sin that " the statutes of Omri are kept." 
 But worse even than that of Omri was the 
 course of Ahab. " He did evil in the sight of 
 the Lord above all that were before him ; and as 
 if it was a light thing for him to walk in the bins 
 
324 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 of Jeroboam, he went and served Baal, and 
 worshipped him ; and he raised up an altar for 
 Baal, in the house of Baal which he had built in 
 Samaria ; and did more to provoke the Lord God 
 of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel 
 that were before him" (i Kings xvi. 30 33). 
 
 This introduction of the worship of Baal was 
 a new and separate kind of sin from the iniquity 
 of Jeroboam. His golden calves, abominable as 
 they were, had themselves been intended to 
 signify to a sensuous generation a local and 
 special presence of their fathers' God. They 
 were the instruments of a forbidden mode of 
 worshipping Him ; but still they were meant for 
 His worship. What the temple at Jerusalem, 
 with its altars, and its courts, and its sacrifice, 
 was to the two tribes as God's special resting- 
 rlace, that the golden calves of Bethel and of 
 Dan, with their adapted ritual and their imitated 
 priesthood, were to be to the ten. But to wor- 
 ship Baal was to introduce not only new rites, 
 but a new god ; to provoke Jehovah, not only 
 by drawing nigh to Him with a self-invented and 
 forbidden ritual, but audaciously to set up 
 
ELIJAH. 32 s 
 
 against Him another god. In Baal and in 
 Ashtoreth, the great Phoenician male and female 
 deities, were gathered up for the more polished 
 tribes surrounding Israel the worship of the 
 heathendom. Baal was, under different forms 
 and appellations, the god of natural power, the 
 god of light, the god of increase. Ashtoreth 
 was the female corresponding deity. In many 
 of these temples, in that of Baal-Peor especially, 
 and generally in those of Ashtoreth, the rites of 
 worship were defiled by the wildest sensual 
 license ; and all that could pollute and degrade 
 humanity was practised in honour of these devil 
 gods. It was this which Ahab had imported 
 into Israel. 
 
 Nor was the establishment of this hideous 
 worship all his sin. The Zidonian sharer of his 
 bed and of his throne, whose very presence was 
 a crime against the God of Israel, was not only 
 zealous for the heathen god whose name her 
 father bore, but, as a true daughter of Eth-Baal, 
 was fierce against the rival honour of Jehovah. 
 The great gift of prophecy, as though unwilling 
 to withdraw itself, yet lingered with retiring 
 
526 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 footsteps amongst the separated tribes. God's 
 grace, through the ministry of the prophets of 
 the Lord, had still kept faithful to Him amidst 
 the growing apostacy, seven thousand who were 
 secretly faithful, whose knees had not bowed to 
 73aal, and whose mouth had not kissed him. 
 Against these prophets Jezebel had raged. It 
 was not enough for her to maintain as her 
 opposing spiritual army four hundred and fifty 
 prophets of Baal and four hundred prophets of 
 the grove, and to feed them as the chaplains of 
 her house of idols at her own royal table, but 
 beyond this she must exterminate the prophets 
 of the God whom she hated. In her, as in other 
 women of her class, under the painted cheek 
 and tired head there lay concealed the cruel 
 soul of the murderess; she "cut off" the 
 prophets of the Lord, and would have destroyed 
 them all if the courage of one who " feared the 
 Lord greatly " had not, at the risk of his own 
 life, hid the remnant in unsuspected caves, and 
 fed them there with bread and water till the 
 bloody days were passed. 
 
 In the full darkness of these evil days, the 
 
ELIJAH. 327 
 
 bright light of Elijah's prophetic ministry breaks 
 upon us in the sacred record with the startling 
 suddenness of a meteor's blaze in the blackness 
 of the night. Fatherless and motherless, with 
 no record of his earlier days, with no hint of his 
 training, he stands singly forth in a loneliness 
 which is itself terrible. He is "Elijah the Tish- 
 bite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead." 
 From the recesses of that mountain land, nursed 
 amidst its distant fastnesses, nourished by the 
 bracing winds which swept over its lofty plateau ; 
 practised, as were all the Gadites by their border 
 situation, and the frequent assaults of .their 
 neighbours, in all the resources, physical and 
 intellectual, of the ever-watchful, ever-active 
 Bedouin, he, a child of the desert, is, untracked, 
 unexpected, and unwelcomed, suddenly, in the 
 midst of the civilisation of Samaria and its 
 court. At his first appearing, he is the stern 
 threatener of judgment on the wicked king in the 
 very height of his prosperity. He " said unto 
 Ahab, As the Lord God of Israel liveth, before 
 whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain 
 these years, but according to my word." And 
 
3 2g HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 the judgment announced, the prophet disap- 
 peared. It is like the flash of the lightning, 
 sharp as a blazing sword in its sudden vividness ; 
 but not tarrying for a moment ; revealing every 
 thing, and gone as it reveals it. This first 
 message is a sample of his whole ministry. To 
 him was committed a dispensation of severity 
 and judgment. All his meetings with the king 
 bear the same impress. When the threatened 
 judgment had run its course, and God's com- 
 mand to him is, " Go, show thyself unto Ahab," 
 even in releasing the kingdom from its plague 
 there is the same tone of severe rebuke. " Art 
 thou he that troubleth Israel?" asks the king, 
 with the peremptory challenge of one used, even 
 in receiving favours, "to an absolute submis- 
 sion." The prophet who stands before the Lord 
 answers him in words which must have broken 
 with a strange ruggedness upon ears used only 
 to courtly flattery, " I have not troubled Israel, 
 but thou and thy father's house." 
 
 Once again the prophet and the monarch 
 meet ; and again it is with the suddenness, and 
 almost with the crash of the thunder-bolt, that 
 
ELIJAH. 329 
 
 the presence of the man of God breaks upon the 
 king's sight. Ahab has just triumphed signally in 
 his wickedness. The obstinacy of Naboth had 
 been overcome by his murder, and the king's 
 heaviness of heart at being refused the vine- 
 yard which he coveted had been washed away in 
 the blood of his liegeman. He rises up to take 
 possession : he enters the longed-for fields : it 
 is his own : his heart swells with the triumph. 
 But what is that dark, threatening form, almost 
 like the dead man's spirit? whose that voice 
 heard before, and once heard never to be for 
 gotten ? The proud countenance of the earth 
 king drops before the higher majesty. "Thus 
 saith the Lord," is the terrible utterance, " Hast 
 thou killed and also taken possession ? In the 
 place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth 
 shall dogs lick thy blood, even thine." Ahab's 
 answer, which comes back almost like the stifled 
 growl of a crouching beast of prey, " Hast thou 
 found me, O mine enemy?" only wakes up agair 
 the severe and unalterable sentence, "I have 
 found thee, because thou hast sold thyself to 
 work evil in the sight of the Lord. Behold, T 
 
33 o HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 will bring evil upon thee, and will take away thy 
 posterity, and make thy house like the house of 
 Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, and like the house 
 of Baasha, the son of Ahijah, for the provoca- 
 tion wherewith thou hast provoked me to anger, 
 and made Israel to sin ; and the dogs shall eat 
 Jezebel by the wall of Jezreel." For the time 
 even that proud heart was humbled by the awful- 
 ness of the message, and the terrible severity of 
 the messenger. And so they parted to meet no 
 more. 
 
 Once again we read of the man of God standing 
 in the presence of a king of Israel : and still it 
 is with a like burden of threatening and of woe. 
 Ahaziah had mounted his father's throne; and 
 with his father's crown inherited his father's sins. 
 " He did evil in the sight of the Lord, and walked 
 in the way of his father, and in the way of his 
 mother." He falls down through a lattice, and, 
 suffering from consequent illness, sends to Baal 
 Ekron to inquire concerning the issue of his sick- 
 ness. God intercepts the message, and sends to 
 answer it the man who was his father's terror. 
 
 Ths messengers return, not with the flattering 
 
ELIJAH. 331 
 
 ambiguities with which, oracle -like, we may 
 suppose that the priests of Baal would have 
 allayed the fears and kindled the hopes of the 
 heir of him who had made the worship of their 
 god the religion of his court and people, but as 
 men overawed and forced against their will to 
 do the bidding of a mightier than themselves. 
 They return with the strange tidings of their 
 being met by one before whose imperious voice 
 even the king's message had died in their 
 mouths ; by " a man who said unto us, Go turn 
 again unto the king that sent you, and say unto 
 him, Thus saith the Lord, Is it not because there 
 is not a God in Israel that thou sendest to inquire 
 of Baal-Zebub, the god of Ekron? Therefore 
 thou shalt not come down from that bed on 
 which thou art gone up, but shalt surely die " 
 (2 Kings i. 6). Hereditary impulses of hatred 
 and terror seize on the diseased king, and he 
 asks eagerly of the messenger the lineaments of 
 this daring interrupter of the royal embassy. 
 The reply, that he was " a hairy man, and girt 
 with a girdle of leather about his loins," is 
 answer enough. It may well be that the Zido- 
 
332 HEROES OF HEPREW HISTORY 
 
 nian queen had stamped upon the imagination 
 of her son those detested features ; it may be that 
 his words of doom, which waited twelve years 
 for their accomplishment, kept alive within her 
 breast a deadly hatred for their utterer. For 
 three, perhaps four, years he had vanished from 
 sight. Perchance he was dead ; perhaps hidden 
 amongst the mountains of Gilead, or buried in 
 the caverns of Horeb. And now again, with a 
 suddenness startling as of old, he stood beside 
 them, again denouncing evil on the seed of Ahab. 
 This time, at least, he shall not escape ; and the 
 captain of fifty with his fifty is sent to secure the 
 lonely wanderer. The very number speaks the 
 awe with which his wild strength and terrible 
 vigour had impressed the court ; and as it seems 
 not in vain : for on the captain of fifty and his 
 fifty, and on a second like company, the destroy- 
 ing fire falls from heaven. The third messenger, 
 in humble guise, implores for himself and for his 
 men mercy of the man of God, and is spared ; 
 and with them, on God's bidding, free and fear- 
 less, the prophet of the wilderness strides into 
 the king's chamber, speaks again his sentence of 
 
ELIJAH. 333 
 
 dismay, and leaves it at his own will unfettered 
 and unharmed. 
 
 There was no other meeting between the man 
 of God and the house of Ahab : though, just 
 before, or at this time, Jehoram, king of Judah, 
 who had married Ahab's daughter and learned 
 the customs of that evil house, received his fear- 
 ful sentence in a " writing " couched in the stern 
 sentences of the prophet of Gilead, "With a 
 great plague will the Lord smite thy people, and 
 thy children, and thy wives, and all thy goods " 
 (2 Chron. xxi. 14). 
 
 Nor is it only with the royal house that the 
 ministry of Elijah is thus marked as a dispensa- 
 tion of vengeance. By the priests of Jehovah's 
 rival in His people's worship he is known as an 
 unsparing avenger. 
 
 There is no dramatic record sublimer in its 
 grand simplicity than the meeting of Israel and 
 Elijah on the Mount Carmel. The World-God 
 of nature and of strength is challenged before 
 the assembled people to a trial with Jehovah. 
 On Baal's side are the majesty of the crowned 
 king, with his guards, his chariots, and his 
 
334 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 horses ; the proud display of Jezebel's court and 
 following, ready to maintain the cause of the 
 heathen queen ; her four hundred and fifty 
 prophets of Baal, and her four hundred of Ash- 
 toreth, with all their pomp of dress and elaborate 
 ritual and innumerable victims and intensity of 
 sensual devotion. Around them are the multitude 
 of the people, the gathering of all Israel in ranks 
 upon the mountain-side, watching with eager 
 curiosity for that which is for ever to decide their 
 halting opinion. In the midst of these cohorts 
 of world prophets gazed on with fear by the 
 excited crowd, alone, silent, unmoved, obscure, 
 like the dark mountain brow, wreathed with the 
 thunder cloud stands the prophet of Jehovah, 
 with his rough and scanty clothing, his massive 
 limbs, his untrimmed hair, as though witnessing 
 for, and communing with, the invisible God, 
 before whom their fathers had bowed. Through- 
 out all the laborious preparations of the Baal 
 prophets he is sternly silent, until he breaks 
 in with awful irony upon their ineffectual incan- 
 tations. And then when his turn is come, 
 deliberately, and with careful accuracy, he builds 
 
ELIJAH. 33; 
 
 up, as though with parabolic significance of 
 what he knew to be his mission, Jehovah's long- 
 mined altar, and then that deep voice is heard 
 by every ear, whilst it shakes every conscience, 
 commercing with the Almighty. The fire of 
 heaven attests its servant's truth; and with 
 unsparing hand the prophet of the dispensation 
 of severity himself, as it seems, puts to death 
 the whole licentious crew who served in the 
 polluted temples of Baal and of Ashtoreth. 
 
 But though Elijah's ministry was one of terror 
 and severity, and though the aspect, garb, and 
 habits of the prophet where all moulded into 
 fitness for this special call, we shall altogether 
 err if we picture him to ourselves as nothing 
 more than a rock of the wilderness a hard and 
 obdurate avenger of iniquity. Such never are 
 Jehovah's witnesses. Such never can, whatever 
 terror they may strike, reach down into the 
 depths of a nation's heart. It is in the union of 
 these dark lineaments of massive strength and 
 awful severity, with all the tenderness of a 
 human heart, that the power of such a character 
 consists. 
 
336 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 And these are eminently combined in Elijah, 
 What can be more touching than the almost 
 woman's cry which breaks from that great soul 
 over the dead son of the widow of Zarephath, 
 " O Lord my God, hast Thou also brought evil 
 upon the widow with whom I sojourn by slaying 
 her son?" Is it not enough that I dwell a 
 lonely man upon this populous earth, that no 
 home voices ever break in on the stillness of my 
 spirit's solitude, that no son ever clasps my 
 knees, but that, for ever companionless, I bear 
 Thy awful message; but must it be that my 
 presence inflicts this loneliness on others ? Is 
 it not enough that I speak Thy threatenings to 
 the obdurate ? Must my dwelling in a house 
 darken it with the shadow of death ? 
 
 What an insight have we here into the deep 
 tender sympathies of the prophet of severity ! 
 
 How, again, does the same inner human 
 heart reveal itself when he is driven of the 
 Spirit into the wilderness of Sinai; when he 
 sits down under the juniper tree and requests 
 that he may die ; when, the triumphs of Mount 
 Carmel accomplished, the majesty of Jehovah 
 
ELIJAH. 337 
 
 avenged, the repentance of the people awakened, 
 when he, the doer of these mighty works, finds 
 out that he is not better than his fathers, cries 
 for release from the long-borne burden of his 
 loneliness " I, even I, only am left ! " What a 
 relief it is, as we gaze on the stern rugged 
 features of his giant daring, to see melt like the 
 mists of the rising sun over the rock of the 
 wilderness this haze of human gentleness 
 around the otherwise almost Titanic features 
 of nis greatness ! 
 
 It was doubtless by this matchless combina- 
 tion of the sternness of his prophetic dispensa- 
 tion with the inner tenderness of his spirit, that 
 the wisdom of God fitted him for his peculiar 
 work amongst the separated tribes. For that 
 ministry he was moulded in the form of strength 
 which stands before us at every turn of his 
 mission ; for that he was trained in the rocky 
 mountain heights of his native Gilead ; for that 
 the rough sheep-skin mantle and the rude 
 leathern girdle were the fittest dress; for that 
 the long Nazarite locks of this ( as the original 
 has it) Lord of Hair hung down on his broad 
 
338 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 shoulders; for that this mighty solitary, spirit 
 was taught to know a woman's clinging grasp 
 and her heart-broken cry for sympathy and 
 fellowship; for that in all the majesty of his 
 strength he was lured into the silence of the 
 desert and taught by the hurricane, the lightning, 
 and the earthquake, that not in might, but 
 in weakness ; not in action, but in waiting ; 
 not in the battle cry or the shout of victory, 
 but in the still small voice of childlike submission 
 was manifest, the power, the presence, and the 
 greatness of Jehovah. 
 
 What his mission was it may perhaps spe- 
 cially, at this day, be most profitable for us to 
 trace. For amongst the ten tribes separated 
 through their fathers' rebellion from the temple 
 and its covenanted services at Jerusalem, all the 
 various offices of the priesthood were gathered 
 into the single person of the prophet. For this 
 reason, as we might expect, it is in the ministry 
 of the ten tribes, and not of the two, that the pro- 
 phetic office finds its grandest development. 
 Judah can nowhere show such men of God as 
 Elijah and Elisha. And for what was this perfect 
 
ELIJAH. 339 
 
 instrument thus fashioned by the Spirit of the 
 Lord ? It was not to bring back the ten tribes 
 to unity with the two. It does not seem that 
 it was immediately to recall them to worship at 
 Jerusalem. This might have lain behind as a 
 hidden purpose of God's further mercy if the first 
 call of prophecy had been received. But that 
 first call was to an immediate purification of the 
 life in which they found themselves, not to an 
 exchange of it for another. That state was 
 indeed the fruit of a past rebellion and an 
 earlier sin ; but it had grown to be their 
 normal state, and as such, God accepted it. 
 What he did call on them to do was to purify 
 their existing state from the giant corruptions 
 which had grown up within it. The Baal 
 prophets must be slain ; Baal worship must 
 be rooted out; Jeroboam's golden calves must 
 be ground into powder; Jehovah must be 
 worshipped in sincerity and truth ; and then He 
 would open for them His further will. This, then, 
 is the echo of Elijah's voice : Cast away the 
 present sin, purify the system in which thou art 
 from Baal and from Ashtoreth, from world 
 
340 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 worship, sensuality, and pride. Fall thou on 
 this thy Carmel upon thy face, and let thy soul 
 cry out, " The Lord, He is the God! The Lord, 
 He is the God ! " and thy spirit's drought shall 
 leave thee, showers of grace refresh thee, heaven 
 be open to thee. Live in this present life with 
 God, and He, when it is His will, in His own time, 
 will lead thee in other paths which thou knowest 
 not, and set before thee, when thou hast been 
 fitted to dwell within them, larger rooms of 
 more perfect service. 
 
ELISBA. 
 
 "NT O two men are linked together more closely 
 **" in Scripture history than Elijah and Elisha, 
 and no two are in character and the circumstances 
 of their lives more sharply opposed to each other 
 Elijah stands before us suddenly, without one 
 note of preparation, in the fulness of the pro- 
 phetic office as " the Tishbite, of the inhabitants 
 of Gilead ; " startling Ahab in his pride of power 
 as though called by the king's sins out of the 
 earth on which he stood ; and denouncing judg- 
 ment on him in the name of " the Lord God of 
 Israel before whom I stand." We have no hint 
 of the training for the prophet's office which 
 preceded this its sudden development, though 
 we may conjecture that his frame was hardened 
 
342 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 on the mountain ranges of Gilead, and his spirit 
 attuned by solitary musings to the notes of 
 power and judgment which marked all his pro- 
 phetic utterances. 
 
 Elisha, on the contrary, comes before us with 
 a touch of circumstance which almost reveals to 
 us the history of his youth. He is " Elisha the 
 son of Shaphat, of Abel-meholah." Instead of 
 the child of the desert, full of the wild strength 
 bred of lonely wanderings amidst the ranges of 
 Gilead, we have the child of a peaceful, wealthy 
 agricultural home in the rich valley of the Jordan. 
 His call to the prophet's office finds him full of 
 the employments which belonged to such a life. 
 Elijah's homeward course from the marvels which 
 had surrounded him at Horeb was ordered for 
 him by the divine voice through the plain of 
 Jordan. As he passes up it he reaches one of 
 its pleasantest scenes, where the wood-tangled 
 banks of Jordan, and the stern acacia groves 
 open out into the rich arable plain, and the 
 laughing brightness of a river-bordered meadow. 
 He is at Abel-meholah, the "meadow of the 
 dance," well known to the dark-eyed daughters 
 
ELISHA. 34.3 
 
 of Judah and its jocund sons in festal seasons 
 of rejoicing. There, on his father's lands, Elisha 
 is superintending the ploughing of the fertile 
 soil. The dark, awful form of the elder prophet 
 rises suddenly on his view, and overshadows 
 his soul with the mystery of a spirit's presence. 
 He does not ask the errand on which the great 
 messenger was bound; he does not venture to 
 disturb the stride of that silent figure even with 
 the congenial offer of an hospitable reception. 
 But as Elijah passes by, still, as it seems, 
 speechless, and as one borne onward by some 
 divine impulse, he pauses for a moment, and the 
 young man finds cast upon his own shoulders 
 the well-known sheepskin mantle of the mighty 
 Tishbite. Jehovah's call even in the doing of 
 that simple act subdues his whole spirit, and he 
 leaves the oxen and runs after the prophet, say- 
 ing, " Let me, I pray thee, kiss my father and 
 my mother, and I will follow thee." Elijah, 
 with that deep knowledge of the springs of 
 human conduct which is bred in solitary spirits 
 by the introverted gaze so familiar to their souls, 
 does but fix the hook in the already captive will 
 
344 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 of him whom he has mystically summoned, by 
 the seeming disavowal of his act in the words, 
 "Go back again, for what have I done unto 
 thee ? " Elisha's soul felt what he had done, 
 and with no half-reverted, half-longing gaze 
 after the sweetness of the home life which he 
 knew was lost to him, but with the determina- 
 tion of a settled purpose which needed not to 
 fly from enticements which he had already in 
 his strong will subdued, he returns back from 
 the departing prophet, slays for a parting feast 
 of consecration the oxen whom he should guide 
 no more along the furrows of the familiar plain, 
 and then, having bid adieu to his father and his 
 mother, arises, and goes after Elijah, and minis- 
 ters to him. 
 
 Doubtless he forecast all, and it may be more 
 than all, that 'this ministering implied; for it 
 was not as a mere attendant servant, such as 
 afterwards Gehazi was to himself, but as his 
 fellow, and as his successor in his prophetic 
 ministry, that Elisha was called by Elijah to 
 leave all and to follow him. So the divine 
 command had run, "Elisha the son of Shaphat, 
 
ELISHA. 345 
 
 of Abel-meholah, shalt thou anoint to be pro- 
 pnet in thy roomj " and so Elisha doubtless 
 understood it. It needed no small share of 
 courage and devotion to accept at his hands the 
 fearful trust of such an office in degenerate 
 Israel. What a life had Elijah's been ! How 
 must it have shown to Elisha in the very aspect 
 of him who now stood before him, and mysti- 
 cally claimed his life's companionship ! As that 
 awful figure passed on its lonely way, what im- 
 pression must have rested on the mind of the 
 home-loving, happy son of Abel-meholah ! In 
 Elijah he saw what it was in Ahab's days to be the 
 prophet of Jehovah. He followed with his gaze 
 the houseless, homeless, saddened, solitary man, 
 with his grand, deep, capacious brow, even at 
 this moment darkened with the thunder of 
 Horeb, with his uncombed Nazarite locks fall- 
 ing thick upon his shoulders, with his half-clad, 
 great limbs exhibiting the gaunt strength of one 
 conversant with hungry, droughty marches, with 
 toilsome days and sleepless nights, with the 
 defiant stride of one whose life was ever in his 
 hand, threatened alike by the impulsive violence 
 
346 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 of Ahab, and the more dangerous, revengeful 
 hatred of his Zidonian queen, and by the ca- 
 pricious impulses of a perverse people. But 
 Jehovah's call brought with it Jehovah's 
 strength, and he arose and ministered unto 
 Elijah. So definite was Elisha's commission; 
 so different even in its distinctness from 
 the dark mystery which hangs around the 
 unknown summons which had first compelled 
 Elijah to bow his iron neck to the prophetic 
 yoke. 
 
 Moreover, whereas Elijah's training is as 
 untraceable as his call, we have at least the 
 outline history of that of Elisha. He was known 
 afterwards to one of the servants of Jehosha- 
 phat the king of Israel as " the son of Shaphat 
 which poured water on the hands of Elijah." 
 For seven years at least the companionship and 
 the training seems to have lasted ; seven years 
 which would stamp deeply on the receptive 
 nature of the younger man many of the great 
 outlines of the prophetic character of his master 
 and his friend. And when at last he heard the 
 fearful warning, "Knowest thou not that the 
 
ELI SNA. 347 
 
 Lord will take thy master from thy head to- 
 day ? " and felt that he was henceforth to beai 
 alone all the heavy burden of the prophet's 
 office, we know as to Elisha the accompani- 
 ments as well as the fact of the full accom- 
 plishment of his call. The Spirit of God has 
 recorded for us those unresting journeyings 
 between Gilgal, Bethel, and Jericho, which 
 preceded the ascent of the great Tishbite into 
 heaven ; the last communings of the departing 
 prophet with his successor; the permission, 
 " Ask what I shall do for thee before I be taken 
 away from thee/' in which, as though conscious 
 of his approaching audience with the mighty 
 Lord of all, he offers to send back from the 
 heavenly treasury whatever his faithful follower 
 might know himself to need ; the " hard thing " 
 which Elisha' s craving soul desired the double 
 portion the eldest son's inheritance of his 
 master's spirit ; the doubtful grant of the bold 
 petition, confirmed by the open vision of the 
 ascension granted to his wondering eyes; the 
 assumption of his master's mantle by the 
 widowed successor; and the miraculous open- 
 
348 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 ing of his ministry, by the smiting and dividing 
 with it of the Jordan waters. 
 
 This diversity in the providential training of 
 the two prophets in some degree prepares us for 
 the broad distinction stamped from the very first 
 upon their prophetic course. Elijah's had been 
 a dispensation of judgment; Elisha's was a 
 dispensation of gentleness. Elijah enter? on 
 his office with the denunciation of the fearful 
 drought, which for three years and six months 
 consumed the land of Israel ; Elisha opens his 
 by healing at Jericho the spring of waters which 
 were naught, and in their flow made the land 
 barren : " So the waters were healed unto this 
 day/' says the sacred historian; and still 
 tradition, reaching from Josephus to the reports 
 of our latest oriental travellers, prolongs unto 
 the present time the "this day" of the Bible 
 chronicler. For still, above the present town 
 breaks forth, on its north-western side, the 
 healed spring, belting the arid plain with a 
 band of verdure, and perpetuating to all time 
 the remembrance of this pervading feature of 
 Elisha's miracles. Such in character, with 
 
ELISHA. 349 
 
 exceptions which shall be noticed presently, 
 they were throughout. Thus, to run rapidly 
 through them, he delivers the kings of Israel, 
 Judah, and Edom from the destruction which lay 
 before them in their campaign against Moab ; 
 he multiplies the supply of oil from the single 
 barrel, which was the sole remaining property 
 of the widow of the son of the prophets, whose 
 two sons were about to be sold for debt; he 
 obtains for the childless " great woman of 
 Shunem" the coveted gift of a son, and, many 
 years afterwards, miraculously restores him to 
 life when the fatal stroke of the summer's sun 
 had brought him to the grave ; he heals the 
 poisoned food, which threatened at Gilgal the 
 lives of the company of the sons of the prophets; 
 he multiplies the ears of corn to feed a needy 
 crowd ; he heals the leprosy of Naaman ; he 
 recovers the borrowed axe-head lost in the 
 waters of the Jordan; and, finally, the very 
 touch of his bones, in the tomb in which his 
 body had been honourably laid, brings back its 
 life to the corpse which had been thrust hastily 
 deside his mouldering remains. It is not pos- 
 
350 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 sible to mistake the character of this series of 
 miracles. From first to last they bear upon 
 them all the attributes of visitations of mercy. 
 They are the very opposite of the judicial 
 inflictions with which, through Elijah, the 
 power of God broke forth to punish evil and 
 to overawe the guilty. 
 
 Yet, as in the severe course of Elijah there is 
 one touching scene of tenderness in the bringing 
 back to life the son of the afflicted widow ; so, as 
 though to make the contrast complete, in the 
 midst of the long list of Elisha's miracles of mercy 
 there occur two miracles of startling judgment, 
 absolutely needful, probably, in the evil days on 
 which he was cast, for the assertion of his true 
 prophetic character, and so for his fulfilment of 
 the work which he was set to do. The first of 
 them belongs to the early part of his career. 
 Going, at the beginning of his long ministry, from 
 Jericho to Mount Carmel, he passes through the 
 town of Bethel ; there, pre-eminently, the pecu- 
 liar sin of Samaria had become inveterate, and 
 had poisoned all the springs of reverence for 
 Jehovah and His messengers. As he treads the 
 
ELISHA. 351 
 
 hot ascent skirting the forest depths which had 
 grown rankly over ruined Ai, the children of 
 the idol worshippers, encouraged by their 
 fathers' sin, if not by their fathers' actual 
 presence, mocked the new representative of 
 Jehovah's Majesty. They had trembled, it 
 would seem, before the personal presence of the 
 great Nazarite, and they ridiculed the smaller 
 stature and more ordinary aspect of Elisha. 
 " Go up, thou hair-cropped one, go up," was the 
 taunt of those who might have seen with some- 
 thing of awe in Elijah the likeness of their 
 mighty Samson. But the message of the Lord 
 was not to be despised, and there fell upon the 
 prophet the inspiration of judgment ; and the 
 curse which he pronounced on them, in the 
 name of the Lord, was forthwith executed on the 
 mockers by the savage denizens of the neigh- 
 ouring wood. 
 
 The other miracle of judgment seems dictated 
 by a like necessity of protecting the ministry 
 committed to him from falling into a dangerous 
 contempt. It was the binding on Gehazi and 
 his seed the leprosy of Naaman the Syrian. 
 
352 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 Great had been Gehazi's sin ; it had dishonoured 
 the God of Israel, in the person of his prophet, 
 by representing him to the Syrian stranger as 
 taking rewards for the exercise of his super- 
 human power; it was, too, an absolute setting 
 at nought the divine insight granted to his 
 master in the attempt to palm off upon him 
 a simple falsehood. Again, it was essential to 
 vindicate God's honour that the punishment 
 should be sharp, immediate, and patent to all. 
 There was the same necessity as that which 
 dictated the interruption of the gifts of life and 
 healing, which signalised the apostolic miracles 
 by the sudden destruction of Ananias and 
 Sapphira, when they, too, in their day, lied in 
 the person of St. Peter unto God the Holy Ghost. 
 It was a note like that utterance of St. Peter 
 against Simon Magus, " Thy money perish with 
 thee." 
 
 But it was not only in the exercise of his 
 miraculous gifts and the character of his miracles 
 that this especial character of gentleness hung 
 round the second great prophet of separated 
 Israel, and distinguished him from his mighty 
 
ELISHA. 353 
 
 predecessor. There is the same difference 
 running through the whole recorded stream of 
 his life. There is in Elisha no retiring into 
 unknown and undiscoverable solitudes ; there is 
 none of that lightning-like presence and dis- 
 appearance which marks everywhere Elijah's 
 course. Elisha never dwelt in the lonely caverns 
 of the range of Horeb ; he is never fed by ravens 
 in the bed of the mountain brook Cherith. His 
 very garb bespeaks the difference between him- 
 self and the wild son of the mountains of Gilead. 
 Instead of the scanty girdle and the sheepskin 
 mantle, he wears the ordinary dress of those 
 around him, so that, like them, in extreme sorrow 
 he can " take hold of his own clothes and rend 
 them in two pieces " (2 Kings ii. 12). He is the 
 prophet of society, as Elijah was the prophet 
 of solitude. He tarries with the sons of the 
 prophets in their several haunts ; he dwells in 
 Jericho; nay, we find from incidental notices 
 that he was possessed of a house of his own. 
 For when, at his bidding, Naaman, the Syrian 
 leper, is sent to him for the cure which the king 
 of Israel had despairingly pronounced himseli 
 
 A A 
 
354 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 unable to procure, the great stranger comes 
 " with his horses and his chariot, and stands at 
 the door of the house of Elisha " (2 Kings v. 9). 
 Another passage, too, suggests an inference as 
 to the size of his dwelling, which seems to imply 
 that the inheritance of the son of Shaphat had 
 not been abandoned by the prophet Elisha, for 
 we read that " Elisha sat in his house, and the 
 elders sat with him" (2 Kings vi. 32). Nor was 
 it only the elders whom his mansion was capa- 
 cious enough to receive, for we find the king of 
 Israel visiting him in it; and the direction, 
 "Open the window eastward/' marks, from its 
 possessing such an instrument almost of luxury, 
 the character of the dwelling-place. From these 
 passing incidents, we may with certainty infer 
 that, whilst Elijah was in the habits of his life 
 the counterpart of the Arab of the desert, Elisha 
 was the example of the civilised denizen of the 
 town. And as he lives he dies. For him no 
 fiery chariot waits. Like ordinary men he is 
 " sick of the sickness whereof he dies." Round 
 his death-bed friends gather ; the king hears of 
 his illness, and visits the departing prophet; 
 
ELISHA, 355 
 
 the slow progresses of gradual decay accomplish 
 their work ; he gathers up his feet into his bed, 
 and dies ; and his honoured body is interred in 
 a marked and well-known tomb. 
 
 Without, indeed, a far more perfect knowledge 
 than we possess of all the particulars of their 
 own lives, and of what was passing round them, 
 we may be unable accurately to ascertain all the 
 reasons which required this striking diversity ; 
 yet some of the causes, perhaps, we may discover. 
 The first great cause, doubtless, was one which 
 may be traced everywhere, when we search deep 
 enough to read the laws which are revealed 
 concerning the hidden counsels of God in His 
 dealing with His creatures. It is that law 
 which Elijah, the prophet of visible power, so 
 greatly needed to learn, and which he was taught 
 in so marvellous a manner, when he stood alone 
 with God on Horeb, when "behold, the Lord 
 passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the 
 mountains and brake in pieces the rocks before 
 the Lord ; but the Lord was not in the wind : 
 and after the wind, an earthquake ; but the Lord 
 was not in the earthquake : and after the earth- 
 
35 b HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 quake, a fire ; but the Lord was not in the fire : 
 and after the fire, a still small voice" (i Kings 
 xix. n, 12). The crashing of the earthquake 
 proclaims God's coming, but His presence 
 is in the still small voice. It is the ever- 
 recurring lesson, "Not by power, nor by 
 might; but by my Spirit, saith the Lord." 
 Elijah's mission was the mighty earthquake, 
 Elisha's the still small voice. The one broke up 
 the fallow ground and prepared the earth for the 
 seed, yea, and sowed it often broadcast ; but the 
 other gathered in the harvest. 
 
 In many respects, moreover, we can see that 
 the circumstances of the two differed widely, and 
 required a corresponding difference in the Wit- 
 ness of Jehovah. Elijah had to defy in open fight, 
 and make head against a great and successful 
 king. Ahab and Jezebel, in their several spheres, 
 were persons of strong will, of powerful minds, 
 and of wide-spread popularity. They were the 
 rocks which were to be broken in pieces before 
 the Lord. Elijah's ministry, therefore, was of the 
 temper of the whirlwind. Elisha lives, compara- 
 tively speaking, in the calm. Persecution was 
 
ELISHA. 357 
 
 over. There was no more hiding of the Lord's 
 prophets by fifties in the cave, to save them from 
 the death to which a cruel queen had doomed 
 them ; and though the worship of Baal lingered 
 on in the land, yet that heathen "lord of 
 strength " had after the solemn trial on Mount 
 Carmel, and the execution of his priests, been 
 forced to retire into the groves, for the celebra- 
 tion of his rites, instead of openly proclaiming 
 in the acknowledged worship of the court his 
 triumph over Jehovah. To cope with such 
 altered circumstances, Elisha's character was 
 fitter than Elijah's. He could associate with the 
 leaders of his own people; could influence 
 society as only one who lives in the midst of it 
 can ; he could offer to " speak " for an applicant 
 "to the king or to the captain of the host" 
 (2 Kings iv, 13). He could visit Damascus not 
 as the Bedouin of the desert, entering it 
 suddenly, flashing out a word of fire, and 
 then again leaving it as he came to find his 
 safety amidst the untracked sands of the waste, 
 before men had sufficiently recovered from the 
 shock of his denunciations, to lay hands upon 
 
558 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 him ; but as some great foreign potentate, on 
 whom the general in chief would wait in 
 solemn visitation, bringing with him "a pre- 
 sent, even every good thing in Damascus, forty 
 Camels' burden " (2 Kings viii. 9), and to whom, 
 as the representative of his sovereign, he could 
 say with the reverential tone in which Oriental 
 suppleness allowed the king of men to address 
 the messenger of God, "THY SON Benhadad, 
 king of Syria, hath sent me to thee, saying, Shall 
 I recover of this disease ? " (2 Kings viii. 9.) 
 
 Again, the schools of the sons of the prophets 
 with whom lingered the true faith, and on whose 
 safety and earnestness its maintenance mainly 
 depended, needed for their support an Elisha 
 rather than an Elijah. They required one who 
 could live amongst them and raise their own 
 habitual life, by the calm example and holy 
 influence which distils dew-like round the man of 
 God, in his ordinary life of devotion and obe- 
 dience; and which could not have been given 
 to them by the earthquake visitations of the 
 terrible Nazarite. 
 
 We must not, however, associate any idea of 
 
ELISHA. 359 
 
 weakness with Elisha's character On the 
 contrary, though there were more dramatic inci- 
 dents of outward danger, and therefore more 
 startling displays of courage and of strength in 
 the career of his master ; and though his desert 
 life and wild ministry was of necessity fuller of 
 picturesque lights and deep shadows, than that 
 of the child of civilisation and society, yet Elisha's 
 was really the more perilous life to lead. The 
 double portion of the Tishbite's spirit was needed 
 by him quite as much to uphold Jehovah's wit- 
 ness in the greater temptations to which his 
 easier life exposed him, as it was to enable him 
 to work the larger abundance of miracles which 
 were requisite as credentials of the prophetic 
 character in one living as an ordinary man 
 amongst his fellow-men. It was comparatively 
 natural for those who only saw Elijah suddenly 
 emerge from his unknown dwelling-place, and 
 by some terrible denunciations strike dismay into 
 the heart of Ahab, and then retire again into the 
 trackless haunt from which he had issued, to 
 believe that he was the messenger of Him who 
 had spoken to their fathers from the thick dark- 
 
3 6o HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 ness amidst the thunders and the fires of Sinai. 
 But to force upon them the conviction that one 
 who lived amongst them, apparently just as 
 they lived, was yet as truly Jehovah's witness, 
 needed that perpetual display of more than 
 human power which was so exceptionally 
 exuberant in Elisha's ministry. And so for 
 the inner life of his own soul greater visita- 
 tions of the Divine Spirit were doubtless 
 needed amidst the temptations of the court 
 and the camp, and the town residence of Jericho 
 and the country sojourning of Dothan, than 
 when, as with Elijah, God and the soul were 
 brought so awfully alone together, in the desti- 
 tution of all outer things, amidst the savage 
 scenes of the wilderness. But with all this 
 difference there is no trace of weakness in the 
 outline of Elisha's life and ministry. On the 
 contrary, the sacred narrative seems studiously 
 to record instances in which humanity, in all its 
 strength, of fire, of tenderness, and of daring, 
 breaks out amidst the tamer features which 
 surround the more civilised man. Thus as 
 examples : In the record of Elisha's great 
 
ELISHA. 36* 
 
 parallel miracle to that of Elijah, in raising 
 to life the widow's son, there is a depth of 
 tenderness which is not reached in the former 
 history, touching as it is. The " great woman " 
 of Shunem receives from the hot harvest field, 
 with the cry of " My head, my head ! " the son 
 so marvellously given to her longing embrace. 
 The boy sits upon her knees till noon, and then 
 dies (2 Kings iv.). The bereaved Shunammite, 
 with all an Eastern mother's love and inward 
 resolution, speaks no word of sorrow; calmly 
 tells her husband it shall be well, and mounts 
 her ass, whilst with an eagerness which, for the 
 first time, speaks an inward agony and purpose 
 that will carry her through any toil, she bids her 
 servant, " Drive and go forward ; slack not thy 
 riding for me except I bid thee." In the heat of 
 her spirit she comes to the man of God to Mount 
 Carmel. He, accustomed to her coming " at the 
 new moon and the sabbath," as he worships 
 amidst the shadows of the mountains, marks her 
 distant approach, and waits for her until she 
 comes to him on the hill-side, when she " caught 
 him by the feet." Then comes that answer of 
 
362 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 Elisha, which goes straight to every heart, as he 
 reproached the servant who would have " thrust 
 her away : " " Let her alone, for her soul is vexed 
 within her, and the Lord hath hid it from me 
 and hath not told me." 
 
 Again, what inward fire reveals itself as 
 underlying the level outward crust of that calm 
 character, in his words to the elders of Israel 
 when King Jehoram sent to seize him, "See 
 how this son of a murderer hath sent to take 
 away my head !" (2 Kings vi. 32.) 
 
 Again, what holy daring is there in his answer 
 to Jehoram when he came in his extremity of 
 distress from the forces of Moab to seek counsel 
 of the prophet of the Lord, "What have I to 
 do with thee ? Get thee to the prophets of thy 
 father, and to the prophets of thy mother. As 
 the Lord of hosts liveth before whom I stand, 
 if it were not that I regarded the presence of 
 Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, I would not 
 look to thee or see thee" (2 Kings iii. 13, 14). 
 
 It is well to note these indications of vast 
 moral strength and purpose in Elisha, not only 
 that we may form a true estimate of his actual 
 
ELISHA. 363 
 
 character, but also to prepare us for considering 
 the last reason to be here mentioned why one so 
 different from Elijah may have been chosen as 
 is successor. 
 
 From first to last, all holy Scripture is full of 
 Christ. In direct prediction, in type, in example, 
 He is ever re-appearing. It is the perpetual 
 presence of this one master-figure, the marvel 
 that throughout the ten thousand mysterious 
 characters which are inscribed upon that still 
 unrolling scroll the same image e'ver recurs, 
 which, to the eye of faith, makes up the mighty 
 wholeness of the prophetic record. 
 
 One great instance of such acted prediction 
 appears in the succession of Elisha to Elijah. 
 Our Master's own express words have, in a 
 manner, identified the prophet of Gilead with the 
 Baptist. The resemblance is most striking : the 
 desert home, the austere fare, the awakening 
 message, the sinking of each great heart under 
 the overwhelming pressure of disappointment 
 and rejection, the cry of Elijah under the juniper 
 tree of the wilderness echoed in the message of 
 John from the dungeon, the scantiness of Elijah's 
 
364 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 compared with Elisha's miracles, set side by side 
 with the fact that John did no miracles ; the one 
 rebuking Ahab, the other Herod ; the persecu- 
 tion of Elijah by the king of Israel, stirred up by 
 his queen, driving him, as it were, for refuge to 
 the fiery chariot, that of John by Herod, stirred 
 up by his brother Philip's wife, ending John's 
 sufferings under the sword of the executioner, 
 and sending him to his rest. Then, too, the un- 
 finished work of each, left to be accomplished by 
 his successor, stamp on each alike the marked 
 description of " forerunner/' Nor when we turn 
 from Elijah to Elisha can we fail to see the figure 
 of the Son of man mysteriously veiled beneath 
 the outward aspect of the second prophet. For 
 in Elisha's life in contrast with Elijah's is the 
 very counterpart of that which tested and con- 
 demned the wilful unbelief of the scribes and 
 Pharisees. "John came neither eating nor 
 drinking, and they say, He hath a devil; the 
 Son of man came eating and drinking, and they 
 say, Behold a man gluttonous and a wine- 
 bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners." 
 Again, the solitary child of the desert was the 
 
LISHA. 365 
 
 forerunner of Him who sat at the Pharisee's 
 table and lived in the house of Mary and of 
 Martha. Again, there is the same contrast 
 between the moral characteristics as between 
 the accidents recorded of the forerunner and 
 the follower in the history of the prophets of 
 Israel, and in the records of the evangelists. 
 There is the almost unrelieved severity of holi- 
 ness of the one ; there is its entire compassion- 
 ateness in the other. In both cases the biting 
 blasts of the desert proclaim their rude contrast 
 to the soft breezes of Abel-meholah. There is 
 the " Let her alone " of the prophet, when the 
 servant would thrust away the woman who 
 caught him by the feet ; there is the "Let her 
 alone" of the Lord when Mary anointed His feet 
 and wiped them with her hair (John xii. 3 7). 
 There is the weeping for the evils coming on the 
 chosen people when Elisha read in Hazael's face 
 the future woe, and when the Lord looked sadly 
 on to the flight of the Roman eagle to Jerusalem. 
 There are the sons of the prophets looking up in 
 all things to their master ; there are the twelve 
 hanging on the Master's words, and St. John 
 
3*>6 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. 
 
 leaning on his breast. There is in the pitiful- 
 ness of Elisha a faint human copy of the all- 
 embracing tenderness which breathed in those 
 words of wonder, "Come unto me, all ye that 
 labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you 
 rest." 
 
 Again, the resemblance between the special 
 miracles of our blessed Lord and those of Elisha 
 is most marked. For Elisha feeds with the few 
 ears of corn the hungry multitude ; he cleanses 
 the leper ; he raises the dead to life ; he multi- 
 plies the oil for the widow of the sons of the 
 prophets, and says, " Go sell the oil and pay the 
 debt," as our Lord puts forth His power to enable 
 Peter to pay the tribute money. Nay, even in 
 the last recorded miracle wrought at his tomb, 
 when the dead man about to be buried is, by 
 reason of the sudden incursion of the invading 
 bands of Moabites, thrust with precipitation into 
 Elisha' s tomb, and on touching the prophet's 
 bones rises and stands upon his feet, we have in 
 the far back ages a wonderful picture of every 
 Christian man's death and rising again. For 
 does not that caverned grave speak of tha new 
 
ELISHA. 367 
 
 tomb hewn in the rock wherein He lay who by 
 death overcame death : who by lying in the 
 grave brought into it for every one ot us the 
 light of heaven and the companionship of angels ? 
 Does it not speak of that reviving and standing 
 on his feet which shall befall every one who by 
 ^aith does indeed touch the Lord's body ? and so 
 is there not written as the interpretation of a 
 miracle, the like of which is not to be found 
 recorded in either Testaments, and which is at 
 first sight startling from this singularity, as the 
 legend of the whole life of the son of Shaphat, 
 "Behold, a greater than Elisha is here ?" 
 
 Nor is it only of the Lord in His own person 
 of whom Elisha is thus a type. He fore- 
 shadowed in a most remarkable manner the 
 Christ in His Church. "All the law and the 
 prophets prophesied until John" (Matt. xi. 13). 
 In him the old dispensation passed away. After 
 him, as Elisha after Elijah, came the Son of God 
 in the Kingdom of Heaven, the Christ in His 
 Church; with the double portion of the Spirit; 
 with far greater powers ; doing " greater works ; " 
 with the Gospel gentleness instead of the 
 
3 68 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY 
 
 thunders of the law; with the pervading uni- 
 versal influence from the gift of Pentecost which 
 was to leaven all society and spread through 
 all empires, instead of being the witness of a 
 solitary people in the wilderness of the world to 
 the unity of the Godhead. 
 
 Here is the last fulfilment of all that Elisha 
 foreshadowed. No greater prophet than the 
 mighty Tishbite had ever shaken the heart of 
 Israel ; yet his successor in the prophet's office 
 received a double portion of his master's spirit : 
 and so, whilst of the great Baptist it has been 
 declared, "Amongst them that are born of 
 women there hath not arisen a greater than 
 John the Baptist," it is added, " Notwithstand- 
 ing he that is least in the Kingdom of Heaven is 
 greater than he" (Matt. xi. nj. 
 
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