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Title: The Expositor's Bible: The Second Book of Kings

Author: F. W. Farrar

Editor: Sir W. Robertson Nicoll

Release date: February 5, 2013 [eBook #42027]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE: THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS ***

The

Expositor's Bible

Edited by

W. Robertson Nicoll, D.D., LL.D.

THE EXPOSITORS' BIBLE
Edited by W. ROBERTSON NICOLL, D.D., LL.D.

New and Cheaper Edition. Printed from original plates Complete in every
detail. Uniform with this volume

Price 50 cents per volume. (If by mail add 10 cents postage)

OLD TESTAMENT VOLUMES

Genesis. By Rev. Prof. Marcus Dods, D.D.

Exodus. By Very Rev. G. A. Chadwick, D.D., Dean of Armagh.

Leviticus. By Rev. S. H. Kellogg, D.D.

Numbers. By Rev. R. A. Watson, D.D.

Deuteronomy. By Rev. Prof. Andrew Harper, B.D.

Joshua. By Rev. Prof. W. G. Blaikie, D.D., LL.D.

Judges and Ruth. By Rev. R. A. Watson, D.D.

First Samuel. By Rev. Prof. W. G. Blaikie, D.D., LL.D.

Second Samuel. By same author.

First Kings. By F. W. Farrar, D.D., Dean of Canterbury.

Second Kings. By same author.

First and Second Chronicles. By Rev. Prof. W. H. Bennett.

Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther. By Rev. Prof. W. F. Adeney.

Job. By Rev. R. A. Watson, D.D.

Psalms. In 3 vols. Vol. I., Chapters I.-XXXVIII.; Vol. II., Chapters
XXXIX.-LXXXIX.; Vol. III., Chapters XC.-CL. By Rev. Alexander
Maclaren, D.D.

Proverbs. By Rev. R. F. Horton, D.D.

Ecclesiastes. By Rev. Samuel Cox, D.D.

Song of Solomon and Lamentations. By Rev. Prof. W. F. Adeney.

Isaiah. In 2 vols. Vol. I., Chapters I.-XXXIX.; Vol. II., Chapters XL.-LXVI.
By Prof. George Adam Smith, D.D., LL.D.

Jeremiah. Chapters I.-XX. With a Sketch of his Life and Times. By Rev. C.
J. Ball.

Jeremiah. Chapters XXI.-LII. By Rev. Prof. W. H. Bennett.

Ezekiel. By Rev. Prof. John Skinner.

Daniel. By F. W. Farrar, D.D., Dean of Canterbury.

The Twelve (Minor) Prophets. In 2 vols. By Rev. George Adam Smith,
D.D., LL.D.

NEW TESTAMENT VOLUMES

St. Matthew. By Rev. J. Monro Gibson, D.D.

St. Mark. By Very Rev. G. A. Chadwick, D.D., Dean of Armagh.

St. Luke. By Rev. Henry Burton.

Gospel of St. John. In 2 vols. Vol. I., Chapters I.-XI.; Vol. II., Chapters
XII.-XXI. By Rev. Prof. Marcus Dods, D.D.

The Acts of the Apostles. In 2 vols. By Rev. Prof. G. T. Stokes, D.D.

Romans. By Rev. Handley C. G. Moule, D.D.

First Corinthians. By Rev. Prof. Marcus Dods, D.D.

Second Corinthians. By Rev. James Denney, D.D.

Galatians. By Rev. Prof. G. G. Findlay, D.D.

Ephesians. By same author.

Philippians. By Rev. Principal Robert Rainy, D.D.

Colossians and Philemon. By Rev. Alexander Maclaren, D.D.

Thessalonians. By Rev. James Denney, D.D.

Pastoral Epistles. By Rev. A. Plummer, D.D.

Hebrews. By Rev. Principal T. C. Edwards, D.D.

St. James and St. Jude. By Rev. A. Plummer, D.D.

St. Peter. By Rev. Prof. J. Rawson Lumby, D.D.

Epistles of St. John. By Rt. Rev. W. Alexander, Lord Bishop of Derry.

Revelation. By Prof. W. Milligan, D.D.

Index Volume to Entire Series.

New York: HODDER & STOUGHTON, Publishers

THE
SECOND BOOK OF KINGS

BY

F. W. Farrar, D.D., F.R.S.

LATE FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE; ARCHDEACON OF WESTMINSTER

HODDER & STOUGHTON

NEW YORK

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
page

AHAZIAH BEN-AHAB OF ISRAEL (B.C. 855-854) 3

A weak, shadowy, and faithless king—1. Relations between
Judah and Israel—2. Alliance with Jehoshaphat—3.
Revolt of Moab—Mesha and the Moabite Stone—4.
The fall from the lattice—Baal-Zebub—Elijah calling
down fire from heaven—How are we to judge
respecting the Elijah-spirit?—Variations of moral
standard.

CHAPTER II

THE ASCENSION OF ELIJAH 19

Uncertain date—The journey to Gilgal; to Bethel; to Jericho;
to the Jordan—The double portion—Chariot and horses
of fire—Elisha recrosses the Jordan—The young
prophets and their search—Grandeur of Elijah.

CHAPTER III

ELISHA 25

Cycle of supernatural stories—Elisha and Elijah—The cure
of the unwholesome fountain—"Go up, thou bald-
head"—The children and the bears.

CHAPTER IV

THE INVASION OF MOAB 29

Death of Ahaziah—Jehoram Ben-Ahab of Israel—Good
beginnings—Attempts to recover Moab—Alliance with

Judah and Edom—The invasion—An army perishing of
thirst—Elisha—Music—Trenches in the wâdy—Error
of the Moabites—Their disastrous rout—Devastation of
the country—Mesha propitiates Chemosh—"Great
wrath against Israel"—The invading army retreats.

CHAPTER V

ELISHA'S MIRACLES 40

Their chronological vagueness—Difference between Elisha
and Elijah—Contrasts and resemblances—Social life in
Israel—1. The widow and the oil—2. The lady of
Shunem—Her hospitality—Her reward—3. The boy's
death—Her distress—The resuscitation—4. Death in
the pot—5. The multiplied first-fruits.

CHAPTER VI

THE STORY OF NAAMAN 50

The little maid—The leper—Letter of Benhadad to Jehoram
—His indignation—Elisha's message—Naaman's
disappointment and anger—His servants—His healing
—His gratitude—Bowing in the house of Rimmon—
Mean cupidity of Gehazi—Stricken with leprosy—The
axe-head.

CHAPTER VII

ELISHA AND THE SYRIANS 66

Syrian marauders—They are baffled—Anger of Benhadad—
The vision at Dothan—Meaning of the promises—How
fulfilled to God's saints on earth—Some are delivered,
some are not—Elisha misleads the Syrians—His
generosity to them—Its effects—A fresh Syrian
invasion.

CHAPTER VIII

THE FAMINE AND THE SIEGE 76

Horrible straits of the besieged Samaritans—Stress of
famine—The King of Israel—The miserable women—
Sackcloth under the purple—The king's fury and
despair—He threatens Elisha—The messenger—The
king upbraids him—Prophecy of sudden plenty—The
disbelieving lord—The extramural lepers—The Syrian
camp—The king's misgivings—The lord killed in the
rush of the people.

CHAPTER IX

THE SHUNAMMITE AND HAZAEL 87

The lady of Shunem leaves her estate—Her return—Gehazi
talks with the king—Entrance of the Shunammite—Her
estates restored—Elisha visits Damascus—A royal
present—Benhadad's illness—Hazael—The dark
prophecy—Unexplained death of Benhadad—Hazael's
usurpation—Real meaning of Elisha's words to Hazael.

CHAPTER X

TWO SONS OF JEHOSHAPHAT 99

Jehoram (b.c. 851-843)—Ahaziah (b.c. 843-842)—Jehoram
ben-Jehoshaphat of Judah—Perplexing uncertainty of
minute chronological details—The blight of the
Jezebel-alliance—The husband of Athaliah—His
apostasies—Revolt of Edom—Narrow escape of
Jehoram—Revolt of Libnah—Jehoram's murder by his
brethren—Philistine invasion—Incurable disease—
Ahaziah ben-Jehoram—Joins his uncle (Jehoram ben-
Ahab) in the campaign against Ramoth-Gilead—Visits
him at Jezreel—Shot down by Jehu.

CHAPTER XI

THE REVOLT OF JEHU (B.C. 842) 106

Misery of Jehoram's reign—Thwarted invasion of Moab—
Aggression of Benhadad—At Ramoth-Gilead—The
young prophet—The two kings absent from the camp—
The dangerous commission—The assembled captains
—Jehu secretly anointed—His accession
enthusiastically welcomed by the army—His sudden
enthronement—His swift resolution—The watchman at
Jezreel—The two horsemen—The two kings—Their
murder—Ferocity of Jehu—Elijah's prophecy—Jezebel
—She is hurled down—Jehu drives over her body—
The curse fulfilled.

CHAPTER XII

JEHU ESTABLISHED ON THE THRONE (B.C.
842-814) 125

His politic subtlety—The murder of the seventy princes—
The ghastly heaps—Hypocritic ferocity.

CHAPTER XIII

FRESH MURDERS—THE EXTIRPATION OF
BAAL-WORSHIP (B.C. 842) 131

Wading through blood to a throne—The ride to Samaria—
The brethren of Ahaziah of Judah—The corpse-choked
tank of the shepherds—The Bedawy ascetic—The
scene of slaughter in the temple of Baal—Did Elisha
approve of these atrocities?—Prophetic judgment on
Jehu—Ravages of Hazael—Jehu's anguish—He pays
tribute to Assyria.

CHAPTER XIV

ATHALIAH (B.C. 842-836)—JOASH OF JUDAH
(B.C. 836-796) 146

The murderess-daughter of Jezebel—Fierce ambition—
Jehosheba—The rescued child—Reared in the Temple
—The high priest's plot—The coronation of the boy-
king—Athaliah enters the Temple—Her murder—The
fate of Baal's high priest—Proposed restoration of the
Temple—Joash calls to task the defaulting priests—
Death of Jehoiada—Defection of Joash—Murder of
Zechariah—Bad record of the line of Jewish priests—
Hazael attacks Judah—Defeat of Joash and plunder of
Jerusalem—Murder of Joash—Names of the murderers.

CHAPTER XV

AMAZIAH OF JUDAH (B.C. 796-783[?]) 167

The House of David—Amaziah brings to justice the
murderers of his father, but spares their children—
Grounds for this—Different views taken of him by the
historian and the chronicler—Splendid victory of
Amaziah in the Valley of Salt—Expansion of the story
in the Chronicles—His defiance of Joash—His defeat
and murder.

CHAPTER XVI

THE DYNASTY OF JEHU—JEHOAHAZ (B.C.
814-797)—JOASH (B.C. 797-781) 175

Israel at its nadir—Calf-worship—Oppression of Hazael—
Disappearance of Elisha—Repentance of Jehoahaz—
Joash of Israel visits the death-bed of Elisha—"The
arrow of the Lord's deliverance"—Three victories over
the Syrians—Death of Elisha, and posthumous marvels
—Joash and Amaziah—Contemptuous answer to the
King of Judah—Crushing defeat of Judah.

CHAPTER XVII

THE DYNASTY OF JEHU (CONTINUED)—
JEROBOAM II. (B.C. 781-740) 187

Jeroboam II. the greatest of the kings of Israel—His
conquests and wide dominion—A dying gleam of

prosperity—Cause of his success—Relations with
Assyria—Dawn of written prophecy—Jonah.

CHAPTER XVIII

AMOS AND HOSEA—ZACHARIAH BEN-
JEROBOAM (B.C. 740) 193

Amos describes the condition of Israel—Growth of usury
and vice—Humble origin of Amos—His burdens—
Degenerations of the "calf-worship"—Uncompromising
denunciation—Collision of Amos with Amaziah the
high priest at Bethel—His expulsion from Bethel—The
curse denounced—His justification of his mission—
Hosea the saddest of the prophets—His pictures of
Ephraim—Jeroboam II.—His death—His son
Zachariah—His desertion and shameful end.

CHAPTER XIX

UZZIAH OF JUDAH (B.C. 783[?]-737)—JOTHAM
(B.C. 737-735) 209

Wane of Assyria—Uzziah a wise and good king—His other
name Azariah—Expansion of the story of his conquests
in the Chronicles—Training of his army—Defeated by
the Assyrians (?)—Stricken with leprosy—The story—
Jotham acts as his public representative—Diminished
power of Judah under Jotham—Beginning of Isaiah's
prophecies—Death of Jotham.

CHAPTER XX

THE AGONY OF THE NORTHERN KINGDOM—
SHALLUM, MENAHEM, PEKAHIAH,
PEKAH (B.C. 740-734) 217

Shallum, an usurping murderer—Rapid disappearance of
kings—Distracted epoch—The prophet Zechariah and
the three shepherds—Zechariah's prophecies—The
cruel shepherd, Menahem—His savage deeds—
Portentous appearance of the Assyrians in Israel—
Menahem pays tribute—Tiglath-Pileser—Fulfilment of
Hosea's prophecy—Pekahiah—His murder—Pekah—
His alliance with Rezin against Judah—Ahaz appeals to
Assyria—Defeat and death of Rezin—Fulfilment of
prophecy of Amos—Beginning of the captivity of the
Ten Tribes—Tiglath-Pileser's successors—Murder of
Pekah by Hoshea—Horrible state of Israel as described
by Isaiah.

CHAPTER XXI

KING HOSHEA AND THE FALL OF THE
NORTHERN KINGDOM (B.C. 734-725) 235

The name Hoshea—The king and the prophet—Occasional
gleams of hope and promise—A humiliating reign—
Death of Tiglath-Pileser—Hoshea revolts to Sabaco of
Egypt—Seized by Shalmaneser—Samaria besieged—
Terrible state of the city—Sabaco renders no help—
Usurpation of Sargon—Capture of the city—Greatness
of Sargon—Fall of the Northern Kingdom—Blighted
destiny—God's mercy—"God, and not man"—
Despoliation of the tribes—Moral of the story—Assyria
and Egypt—The strength and weakness of a nation—
Machiavelli—Mixture of alien emigrants—Their

worship—The lions—Strange syncretism—The Jews
and the Samaritans.

CHAPTER XXII

THE REIGN OF AHAZ (B.C. 735-715) 260

The chronology—A distracted kingdom—Dark pictures
from Isaiah—No sign of repentance—Grapes and wild
grapes.

CHAPTER XXIII

ISAIAH AND AHAZ 265

Isaiah—Rezin and Pekah—Ahaz meets Isaiah—He receives
a promise of deliverance—He refuses a sign—The sign
given him—Immanuel—Birth of Messianic prophecy
—Maher-shalal-hash-baz—The promised Deliverer.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE APOSTASIES OF AHAZ 273

Moloch-worship—Sacrifice of children—Ahaz appeals to
Assyria for help—Ruin of Damascus and death of
Rezin—Ahaz does homage to Tiglath-Pileser at
Damascus—Records of Tiglath-Pileser—The new altar
—Complaisance of the priest Urijah—Unpopularity of
Ahaz—Further misgivings—His death.

CHAPTER XXV

HEZEKIAH (B.C. 715-686) 287

Dates—Importance of the reign—Hezekiah's age—His
character—His reformation—Partial suppression of the
bamoth—Removal of the matstseboth and Asherim—
Destruction of the brazen serpent—Trust in Jehovah—
Psalm xlvi.—Chastisement of the Philistines—Three
parties in Jerusalem—1. The Assyrian party—2. The
Egyptian party—3. The national party—Its attitude to
the others—Micah—Mockery of Egypt—Anger and
insults of the priests against Isaiah—Confidence of
Isaiah—Waverings of Hezekiah.

CHAPTER XXVI

HEZEKIAH'S SICKNESS—THE BABYLONIAN
EMBASSY 305

The story of Hezekiah's illness misplaced—At the point of
death—Isaiah's message—The king's agony of mind—
The prayer—The reprieve—The sun-dial of Ahaz—The
king's gratitude and thanksgiving—Merodach-Baladan
—Rising power of Babylon—Object of the embassy—
The king's action—The prophet's reproof—The king's
humble submission.

CHAPTER XXVII

HEZEKIAH AND ASSYRIA (B.C. 701) 319

Greatness of Sargon—His campaigns—Defeat of Egypt at
the battle of Raphia—Ashdod—Defeat of Merodach-
Baladan—Grandeur of Sennacherib—His invasion of
Judæa—Earlier collisions—His campaigns—1. Against
Babylon—2. Against Elam—3. Against the Hittites and
Philistines—Defeat of the Ethiopian Tirhakah at Altaqu
—Heavy mulct imposed on Hezekiah—Siege of
Lachish—Sennacherib breaks his compact—Distress of
Jerusalem.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE GREAT DELIVERANCE (B.C. 701) 331

Embassy of the Turtan, the Rabsaris, and the Rabshakeh—
Misery and licence in the city—The conference—
Oration of the Rabshakeh—Its effect on the king's
ministers and on the people—Taunting insults of the
Rabshakeh—Faithfulness and self-control of the people
—Heroic faith of Isaiah—Failure of the embassy—
Sennacherib's threatening letter—Hezekiah's prayer—
Isaiah promises deliverance in the name of Jehovah—
The sign—The angel of death—Scene of the
catastrophe—The Egyptian tradition of Sethos and the
mice—Death and burial of Hezekiah—The campaign
as recorded on the Assyrian monuments—The triumph
of indomitable faith—Grandeur of Isaiah—Wane of
Assyria—Beautiful tolerance of Isaiah.

CHAPTER XXIX

MANASSEH (B.C. 686-641) 351

The name Manasseh—His tender age—Influence of evil
counsellors—Heathenising party—Their dislike of
Hezekiah's reformation and of the exclusive worship of
Jehovah—Tendency to trust in sacrifices and asceticism
—Sanctification of licence—Arguments of the
heathenisers—Disparagement of the work of Isaiah—
Doubts and disbelief—Influence of the bamoth-priests
—Reliance on Assyria—The immoral and idolatrous
reaction—1. Restoration of the bamoth, and arguments
in their favour—2. Adoption of Phœnician nature-
worship—3. Assyrian Sabaism and star-worship—
Connivance of the priests—4. Canaanite Moloch-
worship—5. Mesopotamian Shamanism—6. The
Asherah—Denunciation of the prophets—Persecution
and the shedding of innocent blood—Asserted
captivity, repentance, and reforming energy of
Manasseh—Difficulties of the story—Reign of Amon
(b.c. 641-639)—Wretchedness of his reign—Zephaniah
and Jeremiah—Murder of Amon.

CHAPTER XXX

JOSIAH (B.C. 639-608) 374

Three vast movements—Jeremiah's earlier prophecies—The
state of society—The Scythians—Prophecies of Ezekiel
—Herodotus—The fate of Nineveh—Rise of the
Chaldæans—Habakkuk.

CHAPTER XXXI

JOSIAH'S REFORMATION 385

Growth of Josiah's character—Repairs of the Temple—
Hilkiah finds the Book of the Law—Intense effect
produced on mind of the king—His message to the
prophetess Huldah—Great assembly—Renewal of a
solemn league and covenant with Jehovah—The
bamoth-priests degraded—Defiling of Tophet—He
carries the reformation into Samaria—Its stringency
and severity—The Passover—Suppression of heathen
corruptions—Jeremiah's share in the reformation—Its
dangers and disappointing results—Jeremiah's warnings
against all trust in externals—The prophecy of a new
covenant—Note to Chapter XXXI.: The Book found
in the Temple.

CHAPTER XXXII

THE DEATH OF JOSIAH (B.C. 608) 402

Prosperity and happiness of Josiah—Accession of the great
Pharaoh Necho II.—His excursion against Carchemish
—Josiah determines to bar his path—Warnings of
Pharaoh Necho—Disaster at Megiddo and death of
Josiah—Mistaken hopes—God's dealings with men and
nations—Distress among Josiah's subjects—The king's
burial—Misgivings respecting the future—Sorrow of
Jeremiah—Ultimate fulfilments.

CHAPTER XXXIII

JEHOAHAZ (B.C. 608) 411

Four sons of Josiah—Shallum chosen by the people of the
land—Elegy of Ezekiel—Change of name from

Shallum to Jehoahaz—Conquests of Pharaoh Necho II.
—Jehoahaz summoned to Riblah—Carried captive by
Pharaoh to Egypt—Tribute imposed on Judæa.

CHAPTER XXXIV

JEHOIAKIM (B.C. 608-597) 416

Eliakim—His change of name—Ignored by Ezekiel—Evil
influences—Æsthetic selfishness and oppressive greed
—Denunciation by Habakkuk—Denunciation by
Jeremiah—Murder of Urijah—Threatened murder of
Jeremiah averted by Ahikam—Fall of Nineveh—
Utterances of the prophets—Rise of the Chaldæans—
Nabopolassar—Defeat of Pharaoh Necho by
Nebuchadrezzar—His return to Babylon—His invasion
of Judæa—Beginning of the Babylonian captivity—
Jehoiakim revolts to Egypt in spite of Jeremiah's
warnings—Imprisonment of Jeremiah—Baruch—The
menacing roll—Alarm of the princes—Rage of the king
—He cuts the scroll to pieces and burns it—
Wretchedness of the times—A great drought—Captives
of Jerusalem—Miserable death of Jehoiakim—"That
which was found in him."

CHAPTER XXXV

JEHOIACHIN (B.C. 597) 431

Bad influence over him—His brief reign—Allusions to him
by Jeremiah at Jerusalem—Second captivity—Regret
felt for Jehoiachin—Did he die childless?

CHAPTER XXXVI

ZEDEKIAH, THE LAST KING OF JUDAH (B.C.
597-586) 437

His oath to the King of Assyria—Ezekiel's prophecies—The
exiles and the remnant—Weakness of Zedekiah—
Continuance of idolatry as described by Ezekiel—The
king breaks his oath with Assyria—Indignation and
warnings of Jeremiah—The false prophet Hananiah—
The wooden and iron yokes—Death of Hananiah—
False prophets—The broken covenant—Advance of
Nebuchadrezzar—Belomancy and Babylonian
divinations—Siege of Jerusalem—Gloom of Jeremiah's
prophecies.

CHAPTER XXXVII

JEREMIAH AND HIS PROPHECIES 449

Pathos of Jeremiah's lot—The sad epoch in which he lived—
Religious changes—Arrest of Jeremiah—Progress of
the siege—Zedekiah sends for the prophet—His
hardships alleviated—Horrors of famine—Wicked
defiance—A sudden death—Anger of the priests and
nobles against Jeremiah—He is thrust into a miry pit—
Compassion of Ebed-Melech—Purchase of a field at
Anathoth—Secret interview with Zedekiah—It
becomes known—Distress of Zedekiah.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

THE FALL OF JERUSALEM (B.C. 586) 457

Nebuzaradan and the Babylonians—The final captivity—
Dreadful fate of Zedekiah—Prophecies of Ezekiel and
Jeremiah—Sack of the city—Massacre of the chief
inhabitants—Burning of the city and Temple—
Desolation—Respect shown by the Babylonian general
to Jeremiah—He decides to remain with the remnant in
Judæa.

CHAPTER XXXIX

GEDALIAH (B.C. 586) 465

Sad parting from the exiles—The wail at Ramah—
Gedaliah's appointment as satrap perhaps due to
Jeremiah—Desolation of Jerusalem—The seat of
government removed to Mizpah—A respite and a
gleam of hope—Guerilla bands—Johanan warns
Gedaliah against Ishmael—Unsuspecting generosity of
the governor—He receives Ishmael and his
confederates with hospitality—He is brutally murdered
—Massacre of the pilgrims from Shiloh—The horrible
well—Johanan pursues Ishmael—His escape—
Proposal to migrate to Egypt—Jeremiah consulted—
His advice refused—Prophecy of Jeremiah at the khan
of Chimham—Kindness shown by Evil-Merodach to
Jehoiachin.

EPILOGUE 477

The interest of the preceding history and the great moral
lessons which it involves—The central conceptions of
Hebrew prophecy—The end of the whole matter.

APPENDIX I

THE KINGS OF ASSYRIA, AND SOME OF THEIR
INSCRIPTIONS 487

APPENDIX II

INSCRIPTION IN THE TUNNEL OF THE POOL
OF SILOAM 493

APPENDIX III

WAS THERE A GOLDEN CALF AT DAN? 494

APPENDIX IV

DATES OF THE KINGS OF ISRAEL AND JUDAH,
AS GIVEN BY KITTEL AND OTHER
MODERN CRITICS 495

THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS

"Theories of inspiration which impaginate the Everlasting Spirit, and make
each verse a cluster of objectless and mechanical miracles, are not seriously
believed by any one: the Bible itself abides in its endless power and
unexhausted truth. All that is not of asbestos is being burned away by the
restless fires of thought and criticism. That which remains is enough, and it
is indestructible."—Bishop of Derry.

CHAPTER I
AHAZIAH BEN-AHAB OF ISRAEL

b.c. 855-854

2 Kings i. 1-18

"Ye know not of what spirit are ye."—Luke ix. 55.
"He is the mediator of a better covenant, which hath been enacted
upon better promises."—Heb. viii. 6.

Ahaziah, the eldest son and successor of Ahab, has been called "the most
shadowy of the Israelitish kings."[1] He seems to have been in all respects
one of the most weak, faithless, and deplorably miserable. He did but reign
two years—perhaps in reality little more than one; but this brief space was
crowded with intolerable disasters. Everything that he touched seemed to be
marked out for ruin or failure, and in character he showed himself a true son
of Jezebel and Ahab.
What results followed the defeat of Ahab and Jehoshaphat at Ramoth-
Gilead we are not told. The war must have ended in terms of peace of some
kind—perhaps in the cession of Ramoth-Gilead; for Ahaziah does not seem
to have been disturbed during his brief reign by any Syrian invasion. Nor
were there any troubles on the side of Judah. Ahaziah's sister was the wife
of Jehoshaphat's heir, and the good understanding between the two
kingdoms was so closely cemented, that in both royal houses there was an
identity of names—two Ahaziahs and two Jehorams.
But even the Judæan alliance was marked with misfortune. Jehoshaphat's
prosperity and ambition, together with his firm dominance over Edom—in
which country he had appointed a vassal, who was sometimes allowed the
courtesy title of king[2]—led him to emulate Solomon by an attempt to
revive the old maritime enterprise which had astonished Jerusalem with

ivory, and apes, and peacocks imported from India. He therefore built
"ships of Tarshish" at Ezion-Geber to sail to Ophir. They were called
"Tarshish-ships," because they were of the same build as those which sailed
to Tartessus, in Spain, from Joppa. Ahaziah was to some extent associated
with him in the enterprise. But it turned out even more disastrously than it
had done in former times. So unskilled was the seamanship of those days
among all nations except the Phœnicians, that the whole fleet was wrecked
and shattered to pieces in the very harbour of Ezion-Geber before it had set
sail.
Ahaziah, whose affinity with the King of Tyre and possession of some of
the western ports had given his subjects more knowledge of ships and
voyages, then proposed to Jehoshaphat that the vessels should be manned
with sailors from Israel as well as Judah. But Jehoshaphat was tired of a
futile and expensive effort. He refused a partnership which might easily
lead to complications, and on which the prophets of Jehovah frowned. It
was the last attempt made by the Israelites to become merchants by sea as
well as by land.
Ahaziah's brief reign was marked by one immense humiliation. David, who
extended the dominion of the Hebrews in all directions, had smitten the
Moabites, and inflicted on them one of the horrible atrocities against which
the ill-instructed conscience of men in those days of ignorance did not
revolt.[3] He had made the male warriors lie on the ground, and then,
measuring them by lines, he put every two lines to death and kept one alive.
After this the Moabites had continued to be tributaries. They had fallen to
the share of the Northern Kingdom, and yearly acknowledged the
suzerainty of Israel by paying a heavy tribute of the fleeces of a hundred
thousand lambs and a hundred thousand rams. But now that the warrior
Ahab was dead, and Israel had been crushed by the catastrophe at Ramoth-
Gilead, Mesha, the energetic viceroy of Moab, seized his opportunity to
revolt and to break from the neck of his people the odious yoke. The revolt
was entirely successful. The sacred historian gives us no details, but one of
the most priceless of modern archæological discoveries has confirmed the
Scriptural reference by securing and translating a fragment of Mesha's own
account of the annals of his reign. We have, in what is called "The Moabite
Stone," the memorial written in glorification of himself and of his god
Chemosh, "the abomination of the children of Ammon," by a contemporary

of Ahab and Jehoshaphat.[4] It is the oldest specimen which we possess of
Hebrew writing; perhaps the only specimen, except the Siloam inscription,
which has come down to us from before the date of the Exile. It was
discovered in 1878 by the German missionary Klein, amid the ruins of the
royal city of Daibon (Dibon, Num. xxi. 30), and was purchased for the
Berlin Museum in 1879. Owing to all kinds of errors and intrigues, it did
not remain in the hands of its purchaser, but was broken into fragments by
the nomad tribe of Beni Hamide, from whom it was in some way obtained
by M. Clermont-Ganneau. There is no ground for questioning its perfect
genuineness, though the discovery of its value led to the forgery of a
number of spurious and often indecent inscriptions. There can be no
reasonable doubt that when we look at it we see before us the identical
memorial of triumph which the Moabite emîr erected in the days of Ahaziah
on the bamah of Chemosh at Dibon, one of his chief towns.
This document is supremely interesting, not only for its historical allusions,
but also as an illustration of customs and modes of thought which have left
their traces in the records of the people of Jehovah, as well as in those of the
people of Chemosh.[5] Mesha tells us that his father reigned in Dibon for
thirty years, and that he succeeded. He reared this stone to Chemosh in the
town of Karcha, as a memorial of gratitude for the assistance which had
resulted in the overthrow of all his enemies. Omri, King of Israel, had
oppressed Moab many days, because Chemosh was wroth with his people.
Ahaziah wished to oppress Moab as his father had done. But Chemosh
enabled Mesha to recover Medeba, and afterwards Baal-Meon, Kirjatan,
Ataroth, Nebo, and Jahaz, which he reoccupied and rebuilt. Perhaps they
had been practically abandoned by all effective Israelite garrisons. In some
of these towns he put the inhabitants under a ban, and sacrificed them to
Moloch in a great slaughter. In Nebo alone he slew seven thousand men.
Having turned many towns into fortresses, he was enabled to defy Israel
altogether, to refuse the old burdensome tribute, and to re-establish a strong
Moabite kingdom east of the Dead Sea; for Israel was wholly unable to
meet his forces in the open field. Month after month of the reign of the
miserable son of Ahab must have been marked by tidings of shame, defeat,
and massacre.
Added to these public calamities, there came to Ahaziah a terrible personal
misfortune. As he was coming down from the roof of his palace, he seems

to have stopped to lean against the lattice of some window or balcony in his
upper chamber in Samaria.[6] It gave way under his weight, and he was
hurled down into the courtyard or street below. He was so seriously hurt
that he spent the rest of his reign on a sick-bed in pain and weakness, and
ultimately died of the injuries he had received.
A succession of woes so grievous might well have awakened the wretched
king to serious thought. But he had been trained under the idolatrous
influences of his mother. As though it were not enough for him to walk in
the steps of Ahab, of Jezebel, and of Jeroboam, he had the fatuity to go out
of his way to patronise another and yet more odious superstition. Ekron was
the nearest town to him of the Philistine Pentapolis, and at Ekron was
established the local cult of a particular Baal known as Baal-Zebub ("the
lord of flies").[7] Flies, which in temperate countries are sometimes an
intense annoyance, become in tropical climates an intolerable plague. Even
the Greeks had their Zeus Apomuios ("Zeus the averter of flies"), and some
Greek tribes worshipped Zeus Ipuktonos ("Zeus the slayer of vermin"), and
Zeus Muiagros and Apomuios, and Apollo Smintheus ("the destroyer of
mice").[8] The Romans, too, among the numberless quaint heroes of their
Pantheon, had a certain Myiagrus and Myiodes, whose function it was to
keep flies at a distance.[9] This fly-god, Baal-Zebub of Ekron, had an oracle,
to whose lying responses the young and superstitious prince attached
implicit credence. That a king of Israel professing any sort of allegiance to
Jehovah, and having hundreds of prophets in his own kingdom, should send
an embassy to the shrine of an abominable local divinity in a town of the
Philistines—whose chief object of worship was

"That twice-battered god of Palestine,
Who mourned in earnest when the captive ark
Maimed his brute image on the grunsel edge
Where he fell flat, and shamed his worshippers"—

was, it must be admitted, an act of apostasy more outrageously insulting
than had ever yet been perpetrated by any Hebrew king. Nothing can more
clearly illustrate the callous indifference shown by the race of Jezebel to the
lessons which God had so decisively taught them by Elijah and by Micaiah.
But

Quem vult Deus perire, dementat prius;

and in this "dementation preceding doom" Ahaziah sent to ask the fly-god's
oracle whether he should recover of his injury. His infatuated perversity
became known to Elijah, who was bidden by "the angel," or messenger, "of
the Lord"—which may only be the recognised phrase in the prophetic
schools, putting in a concrete and vivid form the voice of inward inspiration
—to go up, apparently on the road towards Samaria, and meet the
messengers of Ahaziah on their way to Ekron. Where Elijah was at the time
we do not know. Ten years had elapsed since the calling of Elisha, and four
since Elijah had confronted Ahab at the door of Naboth's vineyard. In the
interval he has not once been mentioned, nor can we conjecture with the
least certainty whether he had been living in congenial solitude or had been
helping to train the Sons of the Prophets in the high duties of their calling.
Why he had not appeared to support Micaiah we cannot tell. Now, at any
rate, the son of Ahab was drawing upon himself an ancient curse by going
a-whoring after wizards and familiar spirits, and it was high time for Elijah
to interfere.[10]
The messengers had not proceeded far on their way when the prophet met
them, and sternly bade them go back to their king, with the denunciation,
"Is it because there is no God in Israel that ye go to inquire of Baal-Zebub,
the god of Ekron? Now, therefore, thus saith Jehovah, 'Thou shalt not
descend from that bed on which thou art gone up, but dying thou shalt die.'"
He spoke, and after his manner vanished with no less suddenness.
The messengers, overawed by that startling apparition, did not dream of
daring to disobey. They at once went back to the king, who, astonished at
their reappearance before they could possibly have reached the oracle,
asked them why they had returned.
They told him of the apparition by which they had been confronted. That it
was a prophet who had spoken to them they knew; but the appearances of
Elijah had been so few, and at such long intervals, that they knew not who
he was.
"What sort of man was he that spoke to you?" asked the king.

"He was," they answered, "a lord of hair,[11] and girded about his loins with
a girdle of skin."[12]
Too well did Ahaziah recognise from this description the enemy of his
guilty race! If he had not been present on Carmel, or at Jezreel, on the
occasions when that swart and shaggy figure of the awful Wanderer had
confronted his father, he must have often heard descriptions of this strange
Bedawy ascetic who "feared man so little because he feared God so much."
"It is Elijah the Tishbite!" he exclaimed, with a bitterness which was
succeeded by fierce wrath; and with something of his mother's indomitable
rage he sent a captain with fifty soldiers to arrest him.
The captain found Elijah sitting at the top of "the hill," perhaps of Carmel;
and what followed is thus described:—
"Thou man of God," he cried, "the king hath said, Come down."
There was something strangely incongruous in this rude address. The title
"man of God" seems first to have been currently given to Elijah, and it
recognises his inspired mission as well as the supernatural power which he
was believed to wield. How preposterous, then, was it to bid a man of God
to obey a king's order and to give himself up to imprisonment or death!
"If I be a man of God," said Elijah, "then let fire come down from heaven,
to consume thee and thy fifty."[13]

The fire fell and reduced them all to ashes.[14]
Undeterred by so tremendous a consummation, the king sent another
captain with his fifty, who repeated the order in terms yet more imperative.
[15]

Again Elijah called down the fire from heaven, and the second captain with
his fifty soldiers was reduced to ashes.
For the third time the obstinate king, whose infatuation must indeed have
been transcendent, despatched a captain with his fifty. But he, warned by
the fate of his predecessors, went up to Elijah and fell on his knees, and
implored him to spare the life of himself and his fifty innocent soldiers.

Then "the angel of the Lord" bade Elijah go down to the king with him and
not be afraid.
What are we to think of this narrative?
Of course, if we are to judge it on such moral grounds as we learn from the
spirit of the Gospel, Christ Himself has taught us to condemn it. There have
been men who so hideously misunderstood the true lessons of revelation as
to applaud such deeds, and hold them up for modern imitation. The dark
persecutors of the Spanish Inquisition, nay, even men like Calvin and Beza,
argued from this scene that "fire is the proper instrument for the punishment
of heretics." To all who have been thus misled by a false and superstitious
theory of inspiration, Christ Himself says, with unmistakable plainness, as
He said to the Sons of Thunder at Engannim, "Ye know not what spirit ye
are of. I am not come to destroy men's lives, but to save."[16] In the abstract,
and judged by Christian standards, the calling down of lightning to
consume more than a hundred soldiers, who were but obeying the orders of
a king—the protection of personal safety by the miraculous destruction of a
king's messengers—could only be regarded as a deed of horror. "There are
few tracks of Elijah that are ordinary and fit for common feet," says Bishop
Hall; and he adds, "Not in his own defence would the prophet have been the
death of so many, if God had not, by a peculiar instinct, made him an
instrument of His just vengeance."[17]
For myself, I more than doubt whether we have any right to appeal to these
"peculiar instincts" and unrecorded inspirations; and it is so important that
we should not form utterly false views of what Scripture does and does not
teach, that we must once more deal with this narrative quite plainly, and not
beat about the bush with the untenable devices and effeminate euphemisms
of commentators, who give us the "to-and-fro-conflicting" apologies of a
priori theory instead of the clear judgments of inflexible morality.

"It is impossible not to feel," says Professor Milligan,[18] "that the events
thus presented to us are of a very startling kind, and that it is not easy to
reconcile them either with the conception that we form of an honoured
servant of God, or with our ideas of eternal justice. Elijah rather appears to
us at first sight as a proud, arrogant, and merciless wielder of the power
committed to him: we wonder that an answer should have been given to his

prayer; we are shocked at the destruction of so many men, who listened
only to the command of their captain and their king; and we cannot help
contrasting Elijah's conduct, as a whole, with the beneficent and loving
tenderness of the New Testament dispensation."
Professor Milligan proceeds rightly to set aside the attempts which have
been made to represent the first two captains and their fifties as especially
guilty—which is a most flimsy hypothesis, and would not in any case touch
the heart of the matter. He says that the event stands on exactly the same
footing as the slaughter of the 450 prophets of Baal at Kishon, and of the
3000 idolaters by order of Moses at Sinai; the swallowing up of Korah,
Dathan, and Abiram; the ban of total extirpation on Jericho and on Canaan;
the sweeping massacre of the Amalekites by Saul; and many similar
instances of recorded savagery. But the reference to analogous acts
furnishes no justification for those acts. What, then, is their justification, if
any can be found?
Some would defend them on the grounds that the potter may do what he
likes with the clay. That analogy, though perfectly admissible when used for
the purpose to which it is applied by St. Paul, is grossly inapplicable to such
cases as this. St. Paul uses it simply to prove that we cannot judge or
understand the purposes of God, in which, as he shows, mercy often lies
behind apparent severity. But, when urged to maintain the rectitude of
sweeping judgments in which a man arms his own feebleness with the
omnipotence of Heaven, they amount to no more than the tyrant's plea that
"might makes right." "Man is a reed," said Pascal, "but he is a thinking
reed." He may not therefore be indiscriminately crushed. He was made by
God in His image, after His likeness, and therefore his rights have a Divine
and indefeasible sanction.
All that can be said is that these deeds of wholesale severity were not in
disaccord with the conscience even of many of the best Old Testament
saints. They did not feel the least compunction in inflicting judgments on
whole populations in a way which would argue in us an infamous
callousness. Nay, their consciences approved of those deeds; they were but
acting up to the standard of their times, and they regarded themselves as
righteous instruments of divinely directed vengeance.[19] Take, for instance,
the frightful Eastern law which among the Jews no less than among

Babylonians and Persians thought nothing of overwhelming the innocent
with the guilty in the same catastrophe; which required the stoning, not only
of Achan, but of all Achan's innocent family, as an expiation for his theft;
and the stoning, not only of Naboth, but also of Naboth's sons, in requital
for his asserted blasphemy. Two reasons may be assigned for the chasm
between their moral sense and ours on such subjects—one was their
amazing indifference to the sacredness of human life, and the other their
invariable habit of regarding men in their corporate relations rather than in
their individual capacity. Our conscience teaches us that to slay the innocent
with the guilty is an action of monstrous injustice;[20] but they, regarding
each person as indissolubly mixed up with all his family and tribe,
magnified the conception of corporate responsibility, and merged the
individual in the mass.
It is clear that, if we take the narrative literally, Elijah would not have felt
the least remorse in calling fire from heaven to consume these scores of
soldiers, because the prophetic narrator who recorded the story, perhaps two
centuries later, must have understood the spirit of those days, and certainly
felt no shame for the prophet's act of vengeance. On the contrary, he relates
it with entire approval for the glorification of his hero. We cannot blame
him for not rising above the moral standard of his age. He held that the
natural manifestation of an angry Jehovah was, literally or metaphorically,
in consuming fire. Considering the slow education of mankind in the most
elementary principles of mercy and righteousness, we must not judge the
views of prophets who lived so many ages before Christ by those of
religious teachers who enjoy the inherited experience of two millenniums of
Christianity. Thus much is plainly taught us by Christ Himself, and there
perhaps we might be content to leave the question. But we are compelled to
ask, Do we not too much form all our judgments of the Scripture narratives
on a priori traditions and unreasoned prejudices? Can we with adequate
knowledge and honest conviction declare our certainty that this scene of
destruction ever occurred as a literal fact? If we turn to any of the great
students and critics of Germany, to whom we are indebted for the floods of
light which their researches have thrown on the sacred page, they with
almost consentient voice regard these details of this story as legendary.
There is indeed every reason to believe the account of Ahaziah's accident,
of his sending to consult the oracle of Baal-Zebub, of the turning back of

his messengers by Elijah, and of the menace which he heard from the
prophet's lips. But the calling down of lightning to consume his captains
and soldiers to ashes belongs to the cycle of Elijah-traditions preserved in
the schools of the prophets; and in the case of miracles so startling and to
our moral sense so repellent—miracles which assume the most insensate
folly on the part of the king, and the most callous ruthlessness on the part of
the prophet—the question may be fairly asked, Is there any proof, is there
anything beyond dogmatic assertion to convince us, that we were intended
to accept them au pied de la lettre? May they not be the formal vehicle
chosen for the illustration of the undoubted powers and righteous mission of
Elijah as the upholder of the worship of Jehovah? In a literature which
abounds, as all Eastern literature abounds, in vivid and concrete methods of
indicating abstract truths, have we any cogent proof that the supernatural
details, of which some may have been introduced into these narratives by
the scribes in the schools of the prophets, were not, in some instances,
meant to be regarded as imaginative apologues? The most orthodox divines,
both Jewish and Christian, have not hesitated to treat the Book of Jonah as
an instance of the use of fiction for purposes of moral and spiritual
edification. Were any critic to maintain that the story of the destruction of
Ahaziah's emissaries belongs to the same class of narratives, I do not know
how he could be refuted, however much he might be denounced by
stereotyped prejudice and ignorance. I do not, however, myself regard the
story as a mere parable composed to show how awful was the power of the
prophets, and how fearfully it might be exercised. I look upon it rather as
possibly the narrative of some event which has been imaginatively
embellished, and intermingled with details which we call supernatural.[21]
Circumstances which we consider natural would be regarded as directly
miraculous by an Eastern enthusiast, who saw in every event the immediate
act of Jehovah to the exclusion of all secondary causes, and who attributed
every occurrence of life to the intervention of those "millions of spiritual
creatures," who

"walk the earth
Unseen both when we wake and when we sleep."

If such a supposition be correct and admissible—and assuredly it is based
on all that we increasingly learn of the methods of Eastern literature, and of

the forms in which religious ideas were inculcated in early ages—then all
difficulties are removed. We are not dealing with the mercilessness of a
prophet, or the wielding of Divine powers in a manner which higher
revelation condemns, but only with the well-known fact that the Elijah-
spirit was not the Christ-spirit, and that the scribes of Ramah or Gilgal, and
"the men of the tradition" and the "men of letters" who lived at Jabez, when
they used the methods of Targum and Haggadah in handing down the
stories of the prophets, had not received that full measure of enlightenment
which came only when the Light of the World had shone.[22]

CHAPTER II
THE ASCENSION OF ELIJAH

2 Kings ii. 1-18

Ἠλίας ἐξ ἀνθρώπων ἠφανίσθη, καὶ οὐδεὶς ἔγνω μεχρὶς τῆς σήμερον
αὐτοῦ τὴν τελεύτην.—Jos., Antt., IX. ii. 2.
Γεγόνασιν ἀφανεῖς, θάνατον δὲ αὐτῶν οὐδεὶς οἶδεν.—St. Ephræm
Syrus.

The date of the assumption of Elijah is wholly uncertain, and it becomes
still more so because of the confusion of chronological order which results
from the composite character of the records here collected. It appears from
various scattered notices that Elijah lived on till the reign of Jehoram of
Judah, whereas the narrative in this chapter is placed before the death of
Jehoshaphat.
When the time came that "Jehovah would take up Elijah by a whirlwind
into heaven," the prophet had a prevision of his approaching end, and
determined for the last time to visit the hills of his native Gilead. The story
of his end, though not written in rhythm, is told in a style of the loftiest
poetry, resembling other ancient poems in its simple and solemn repetitions.
On his way to Gilead, Elijah desires to visit ancient sanctuaries where
schools of the prophets were now established, and accompanied by Elisha,
whose faithful ministrations he had enjoyed for ten almost silent years, he
went to Gilgal. This was not the Gilgal in the Jordan valley so famous in the
days of Joshua,[23] but Jiljilia in the hills of Ephraim,[24] where many young
prophets were in course of training.[25]
Knowing that he was on his way to death, Elijah felt the imperious instinct
which leads the soul to seek solitude at the supreme crises of life. He would
have preferred that even Elisha should leave him, and he bade him stop at
Gilgal, because the Lord had sent him as far as Bethel. But Elisha was

determined to see the end, and exclaimed with strong asseveration, "As
Jehovah liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee."
So they went on to Bethel, where there was another school of prophets,
under the immediate shadow of Jeroboam's golden calf, though we are not
told whether they continued the protest of the old nameless seer from Judah,
or not.[26] Here the youths of the college came respectfully to Elisha—for
they were prevented by a sense of awe from addressing Elijah—and asked
him "whether he knew that that day God would take away his master." "Yes,
I know it," he answers; but—for this is no subject for idle talk—"hold ye
your peace."
Once more Elijah tries to shake off the attendance of his friend and disciple.
He bids him stay at Bethel, since Jehovah has sent him on to Jericho. Once
more Elisha repeats his oath that he will not leave him, and once more the
sons of the prophets at Jericho, who warn him of what is coming, are told to
say no more.
But little of the journey now remains. In vain Elijah urges Elisha to stay at
Jericho; they proceed to Jordan. Conscious that some great event is
impending, and that Elijah is leaving these scenes for ever, fifty of the sons
of the prophets watch the two as they descend the valley to the river. Here
they saw Elijah take off his mantle of hair, roll it up, and smite the waters
with it. The waters part asunder, and the prophets pass over dry-shod.[27] As
they crossed over Elijah asks Elisha what he should do for him, and Elisha
entreats that a double portion of Elijah's spirit may rest upon him. By this
he does not mean to ask for twice Elijah's power and inspiration, but only
for an elder son's portion, which was twice what was inherited by the
younger sons.[28] "Thou hast asked a hard thing," said Elijah; "but if thou
seest me when I am taken hence, it shall be so."
The sequel can be only told in the words of the text: "And it came to pass,
as they still went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of
fire, and horses of fire,[29] and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up
by a whirlwind into heaven. And Elisha saw it, and he cried, 'My father, my
father, the chariots of Israel, and the horsemen thereof!'[30] And he saw him
no more."

Respecting the manner in which Elijah ended his earthly career, we know
nothing beyond what is conveyed by this splendid narrative. His death, like
that of Moses, was surrounded by mystery and miracles, and we can say
nothing further about it. The question must still remain unanswered for
many minds whether it was intended by the prophetic annalists for literal
history, for spiritual allegory, or for actual events bathed in the colourings of
an imagination to which the providential assumed the aspect of the
supernatural.[31] We are twice told that "Elijah went up by a whirlwind into
heaven,"[32] and in that storm—which would have seemed a fit scene for the
close of a career of storm—God, in the high poetry of the Psalmist, may
have made the winds His angels, and the flames of fire His ministers. For us
it must suffice to say of Elijah, as the Book of Genesis says of Enoch, that
"he was not, for God took him."
Elisha signalised the removal of his master by a burst of natural grief. He
seized his garments and rent them in twain. Elijah had dropped his mantle
of skin, and his grieving disciple took it with him as a priceless relic.[33]
The legendary St. Antony bequeathed to St. Athanasius the only thing
which he had, his sheepskin mantle; and in the mantle of Elijah his
successor inherited his most characteristic and almost his sole possession.
He returned to Jordan, and with this mantle he smote the waters as Elijah
had done. At first they did not divide;[34] but when he exclaimed, "Where is
the Lord, the God of Elijah, even He?" they parted hither and thither. Seeing
the portent, the sons of the prophets came with humble prostrations, and
acknowledged him as their new leader.
They were not, however, satisfied with what they had seen, or had heard
from Elisha, of the departure of the great prophet, and begged leave to send
fifty strong men to search whether the wind of the Lord had not swept him
away to some mountain or valley. Elisha at first refused, but afterwards
yielded to their persistent importunity. They searched for three days among
the hills of Gilead, but found him not, either living or dead, as Elisha had
warned them would be the case.
From that time forward Elijah has taken his place in all Jewish and
Mohammedan legends as the mysterious and deathless wanderer. Malachi
spoke of him as destined to appear again to herald the coming of the
Messiah,[35] and Christ taught His disciples that John the Baptist had come

in the spirit and power of Elijah. In Jewish legend he often appears and
disappears. A chair is set for him at the circumcision of every Jewish child.
At the Paschal feast the door is set open for him to enter. All doubtful
questions are left for decision until he comes again. To the Mohammedans
he is known as the wonder-working and awful El Khudr.[36]
Elisha is mentioned but once in all the later books of Scripture; but Elijah is
mentioned many times, and the son of Sirach sums up his greatness when
he says: "Then stood up Elias as fire, and his word burned like a torch. O
Elias, how wast thou honoured in thy wondrous deeds! and who may glory
like unto thee—who anointed kings to take revenge, and prophets to
succeed after him—who wast ordained for reproof in their times, to pacify
the wrath of the Lord's judgment before it broke forth into fury, and to turn
the heart of the father unto the son, and to restore the tribes of Jacob!
Blessed are they that saw thee and slept in love; for we shall surely live!"

CHAPTER III
ELISHA

2 Kings ii. 1-25

"He did wonders in his life, and at death even his works were
marvellous. For all this the people repented not."—Ecclus. xlviii. 14,
15.

At this point we enter into the cycle of supernatural stories, which gathered
round the name of Elisha in the prophetic communities. Some of them are
full of charm and tenderness; but in some cases it is difficult to point out
their intrinsic superiority over the ecclesiastical miracles with which
monkish historians have embellished the lives of the saints. We can but
narrate them as they stand, for we possess none of the means for critical or
historical analysis which might enable us to discriminate between essential
facts and accidental elements.

We see at once that the figure of Elisha[37] is far less impressive than that of
Elijah. He inspires less of awe and terror. He lives far more in cities and
amid the ordinary surroundings of civilised life. The honour with which he
was treated was the honour of respect and admiration for his kindliness. He
plays his part in no stupendous scenes like those at Carmel and at Horeb,
and nearly all his miracles were miracles of mercy. Other remarkable
differences are observable in the records of Elijah and Elisha. In the case of
the former his main work was the opposition to Baal-worship; but although
Baal-worship still prevailed (2 Kings x. 18-27) we read of no protests raised
by Elisha against it. "With him"—perhaps it should be more accurately said,
in the narrative which tells us of him—"the miracles are everything, the
prophetic work nothing." The conception of a prophet's mission in these
stories of him differs widely from that which dominates the splendid
midrash of Elijah.

His separate career began with an act of beneficence. He had stopped for a
time at Jericho. The curse of the rebuilding of the town upon a site which
Joshua had devoted to the ban had expended itself on Hiel, its builder. It
was now a flourishing city, and the home of a large school of prophets. But
though the situation was pleasant as "a garden of the Lord,"[38] the water
was bad, and the land "miscarried." In other words, the deleterious spring
caused diseases among the inhabitants, and caused the trees to cast their
fruit. So the men of the city came to Elisha, and humbly addressing him as
"my lord," implored his help. He told them to bring him a new cruse full of
salt, and going with it to the fountain cast it into the springs, proclaiming in
Jehovah's name that they were healed, and that there should be no more
death or miscarrying land. The gushing waters of the Ain-es-Sultân, fed by
the spring of Quarantania, are to this day pointed out as the Fountains of
Elisha, as they have been since the days of Josephus.[39]
The anecdote of this beautiful interposition to help a troubled city is
followed by one of the stories which naturally repel us more than any other
in the Old Testament. Elisha, on leaving Jericho, returned to Bethel, and as
he climbed through the forest up the ascent leading to the town through
what is now called the Wady Suweinît, a number of young lads—with the
rudeness which in boys is often a venial characteristic of their gay spirits or
want of proper training, and which to this day is common among boys in
the East—laughed at him, and mocked him with the cry "Go up, round-
head! go up, round-head!"[40] What struck these ill-bred and irreverent
youngsters was the contrast between the rough hair-skin garb and unkempt
shaggy locks of Elijah, "the lord of hair," and the smooth civilised aspect
and shorter hair of his disciple. If the word quereach means "bald"[41] we
see an additional reason for their ill-mannered jeers, since baldness was a
cause of reproach and suspicion in the East, where it is comparatively rare.
No doubt, too, the conduct of these young scoffers was the more offensive,
and even the more wicked, because of the deeper reverence for age which
prevails in Eastern countries, and above all because Elisha was known as a
prophet. Perhaps, too, if some other reading lies behind the ἐλίθαζον of one
MS. of the Septuagint, they pelted him with stones.[42] That Elisha should
have rebuked them, and that seriously—that he should even have inflicted
some punishment upon them to reform their manners—would have been
natural; but we cannot repress the shudder with which we read the verse,

"And he turned back and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of
the Lord. And there came forth two she-bears out of the wood, and tare
forty-and-two children of them." Surely the punishment was
disproportionate to the offence! Who could doom so much as a single rude
boy, not to speak of forty-two, to a horrible and agonising death for
shouting after any one? It is the chief exception to the general course of
Elisha's compassionate interpositions. Here, too, we must leave the
narrative where it is; but we hold it quite admissible to conjecture that the
incident, in some form or other, really occurred—that the boys were
insolent, and that some of them may have been killed by the wild beasts
which at that time abounded in Palestine—and yet that the nuances of the
story which cause deepest offence to us may have suffered from some
corruption of the tradition in the original records, and may admit of being
represented in a slightly different form.
After this Elisha went for a time to the ancient haunts of his master on
Mount Carmel, and thence returned to Samaria, the capital of his country,
which he seems to have chosen for his most permanent dwelling-place.

CHAPTER IV
THE INVASION OF MOAB

2 Kings iii. 4-27

"What reinforcement we may gain from hope,
If not, what resolution from despair."
Milton, Paradise
Lost, i. 190.
Ahaziah, as Elijah had warned him, never recovered from the injuries
received in his fall through the lattice, and after his brief and luckless reign
died without a child. He was succeeded by his brother Jehoram ("Jehovah is
exalted"), who reigned for twelve years.[43]
Jehoram began well. Though it is said that he did "that which was evil in
the sight of the Lord," we are told that he was not so guilty as his father or
his mother. He did not, of course, abolish the worship of Jehovah under the
cherubic symbol of the calves; no king of Israel thought of doing that, and
so far as we know neither Elijah, nor Elisha, nor Jonah, nor Micaiah, nor
any genuine prophet of Israel before Hosea, ever protested against that
worship, which was chiefly disparaged by prophets of Judah like Amos and
the nameless seer.[44] But Jehoram at least removed the Matstsebah or stone
obelisk which had been reared in Baal's honour in front of his temple by
Ahab, or by Jezebel in his name.[45] In this direction, however, his
reformation must have been exceedingly partial, for until the sweeping
measures taken by Jehu the temple and images of Baal still continued to
exist in Samaria under his very eyes, and must have been connived at if not
approved.
The first great measure which occupied the thoughts of Jehoram was to
subdue the kingdom of Moab, which had been restored to independence by
the bravery of the great pastoral-king Mesha;[46] or at any rate to avenge the

series of humiliating defeats which Mesha had inflicted on his brother
Ahaziah. A war of forty years' duration[47] had ended in the complete
success of Moab. The loss of a tribute of the fleeces of one hundred
thousand lambs and one hundred thousand rams was too serious to be
lightly faced.[48] Jehoram laid his plans well. First he ordered a muster of all
the men of war throughout his kingdom, and then appealed for the co-
operation of Jehoshaphat and his vassal-king of Edom. Both kings
consented to join him. Jehoshaphat had already been the victim of a
powerful and wanton aggression on the part of King Mesha,[49] from which
he had been delivered by the panic of his foes in the Valley of Salt. Though
the king of Edom had, on that occasion, been an ally of Mesha, the forces of
Edom had fallen the first victims of that internecine panic. Both Judah and
Edom, therefore, had grave wrongs to avenge, and eagerly seized the
opportunity to humble the growing pride of the people of Chemosh. The
attack was wisely arranged. It was determined to advance against Moab
from the south, through the territory of Edom, by a rough and mountainous
track, and, as far as possible, to take the nation by surprise. The combined
host took a seven days' circuit round the south of the Dead Sea, hoping to
find an abundant supply of water in the stream which flows through the
Wady-el-Ahsa, which separates Edom from Moab.[50] But owing to recent
droughts the Wady was waterless, and the armies, with their horses,
suffered all the agonies of thirst. Jehoram gave way to despair, bewailing
that Jehovah should have brought together these three kings to deliver them
a helpless prey into the hands of Moab. But the pious Jehoshaphat at once
thinks of "inquiring of the Lord" by some true prophet, and one of
Jehoram's courtiers informs him that no less a person than Elisha, the son of
Shaphat, who had been the attendant of Elijah, is with the host.[51] We are
surprised to find that his presence in the camp had excited so little attention
as to be unknown to the king;[52] but Jehoshaphat, on hearing his name,
instantly acknowledged his prophetic inspiration. So urgent was the need,
and so deep the sense of Elisha's greatness, that the three kings in person
went on an embassy "to the servant of him who ran before the chariot of
Ahab." Their humble appeal to him produced so little elation in his mind
that, addressing Jehoram, who was the most powerful, he exclaimed, with
rough indignation: "What have I to do with thee? Get thee to the prophets of
thy father,"—nominal prophets of Jehovah, who will say to thee smooth

things and prophesy deceits, as four hundred of them did to Ahab—"and to
the Baal-prophets of thy mother." Instead of resenting this scant respect
Jehoram, in utmost distress, deprecated the prophet's anger, and appealed to
his pity for the peril of the three armies. But Elisha is not mollified. He tells
Jehoram that but for the presence of Jehoshaphat he would not so much as
look at him: so completely was the destiny of the people mixed up with the
character of their kings! Out of respect for Jehoshaphat Elisha will do what
he can. But all his soul is in a tumult of emotion. For the moment he can do
nothing. He needs to be calmed from his agitation by the spell of music, and
bids them send a minstrel to him. The harper came, and as Elisha listened
his soul was composed, and "the hand of the Lord came upon him" to
illuminate and inspire his thoughts.[53] The result was that he bade them dig
trenches in the dry wady, and promised that, though they should see neither
wind nor rain, the valley should be filled with water to quench the thirst of
the fainting armies, their horses and their cattle. After this God would also
deliver the Moabites into their hand; and they were bidden to smite the
cities, fell the trees, stop the wells, and mar the smiling pasture-lands,
which constituted the wealth of Moab, with stones. That the hosts of Judah
and Israel and jealous Edom should be prone to afflict this awfully
devastating vengeance on a power by which they had been so severely
defeated on past occasions, and on which they had so many wrongs and
blood-feuds to avenge, was natural; but it is surprising to find a prophet of
the Lord giving the commission to ruin the gifts of God and spoil the
innocent labours of man, and thus to inflict misery on generations yet
unborn. The behest is directly contrary to rules of international war which
have prevailed even between non-Christian nations, among whom the
stopping or poisoning of wells and the cutting down of fruit trees has been
expressly forbidden. It is also against the rules of war laid down in
Deuteronomy.[54] Such, however, was the command attributed to Elisha;
and, as we shall see, it was fulfilled, and seems to have led to disastrous
consequences.
Cheered by the promise of Divine aid which the prophet had given them,
the host retired to rest. The next morning at day-dawn, when the minchah of
fine flour, oil, and frankincense was offered,[55] water, which, according to
the tradition of Josephus, had fallen at three days' distance on the hills of

Edom, came flowing from the south and filled the wady with its refreshing
streams.
The incident itself is highly instructive. It throws light both upon the
general accuracy of the ancient narrative, and on the fact that events to
which a directly supernatural colouring is given are, in many instances, not
so much supernatural as providential. The deliverance of Israel was due, not
to a portent wrought by Elisha, but to the pure wisdom which he derived
from the inspiration of God. When the counsels of princes were of none
effect, and for lack of the spirit of counsel the people were perishing, his
mind alone, illuminated by a wisdom from on high, saw what was the right
step to take. He bade the soldiers dig trenches in the dry torrent bed,—
which was the very step most likely to ensure their deliverance from the
torment of thirst, and which would be done under similar circumstances to
this day. They saw neither wind nor rain; but there had been a storm among
the farther hills, and the swollen watercourses discharged their overflow
into the trenches of the wady which were ready prepared for them, and
offered the path of least resistance.
Moab, meanwhile, had heard of the advance of the three kings through the
territories of Edom. The whole military population had mustered in arms,
and stood on the frontier, on the other side of the dry wady, to oppose the
invasion. For they knew this would be a struggle of life and death, and that
if defeated they would have no mercy to expect. When the sun rose, and its
first rays burned on the wady, which had been dry on the previous evening,
the water which, unknown to the Moabites, had filled the trenches in the
night, looked red as blood. Doubtless it may have been stained, as Ewald
says, by the red soil which gave its name to the red land of the "red king,
Edom"; but as it gleamed under the dawn the Moabites thought that those
seemingly crimson pools had been filled with the blood of their enemies,
who had fallen by each other's swords. Their own recent experience when
Jehoshaphat met them in the Valley of Salt showed them how easy it was
for temporary allies to be seized by panic, and to fight among themselves.
[56]

The army of their invaders was composed of heterogeneous and mutually
conflicting elements. Between Israel and Judah there had been nearly a
century of war,[57] and only a brief reunion; and Edom, recently the willing

and natural ally of Moab, was not likely to fight very zealously for Judah,
which had reduced her to vassalage. So the Moabites said to one another, as
they pointed to the unexpected apparition of those red pools: "This is blood.
The kings are surely destroyed, and they have smitten each man his fellow.
Moab to the spoil!" They rushed down tumultuously on the camp of Israel,
and found the soldiers of Jehoram ready to receive them. Taken by surprise,
for they had expected no resistance, they were hurled back in utter
confusion and with immense slaughter. The three kings pushed their
advantage to the utmost. They went forward into the land, driving and
smiting the Moabites before them, and ruthlessly carrying out the command
attributed to Elisha. They beat down the cities—most of which in a land of
flocks and herds were little more than pastoral villages; they rendered the
green fields useless with stones; they filled up all the wells with earth; they
felled every fruit-bearing tree of any value. At last only one stronghold, Kir-
haraseth, the chief fenced town of Moab, held out against them.[58] Even
this fortress was sore bested. The slingers, for which Israel, and specially
the tribe of Benjamin, was so famous, advanced to drive its defenders from
the battlements. King Mesha fought with undaunted heroism. He decided to
take the seven hundred warriors who were left to him, and cut his way
through the besieging host to the king of Edom. He thought that even now
he might persuade the Edomites to abandon this new and unnatural alliance,
and turn the battle against their common enemies. But the numbers against
him were too strong, and he found the plan impossible. Then he formed a
dreadful resolution, dictated to him by the extremity of his despair. His
inscription at Karcha shows that he was a profound and even fanatical
believer in Chemosh, his god. Chemosh could still deliver him. If Chemosh
was, as Mesha says in his inscription, "angry with his land"—if, even for a
time, he allowed his faithful people and his devoted king to be afflicted—it
could not be for any lack of power on his part, but only because they had in
some way offended him, so that he was wroth, or because he had gone on a
journey, or was asleep, or deaf.[59] How could he be appeased? Only by the
offering of the most precious of all the king's possessions; only by the self-
devotion of the crown-prince, on whom were centred all the nation's hopes.
Mesha would force Chemosh to help him for very shame. He would offer to
Chemosh a human sacrifice, the sacrifice of his eldest son that should have
reigned in his stead. Doubtless the young prince gave himself up as a

willing offering, for that was essential to the holocaust being valid and
acceptable.[60]
So upon the wall of Kir-haraseth, in the sight of all the Moabites, and of the
three invading armies, the brave and desperate hero of a hundred fights,
who had inflicted so many reverses upon these enemies, and received so
many at their hands, but who, having liberated his country, now saw all the
efforts of his life ruined at one blow—took his eldest son, kindled the
sacrificial fire, and then and there solemnly offered that horrible burnt-
offering.[61]
And it proved effectual, though far otherwise than Mesha had expected. He
was delivered; and, doubtless, if ever he reared, at Kirharaseth or elsewhere,
another memorial stone, he would have attributed his deliverance to his
national god. But here, in the annals of Elisha, the result is hurried over, and
a veil is, so to speak, dropped upon the dreadful scene with the one
ambiguous expression, "And there was great wrath against Israel: and they
departed from him, and returned to their own land."
The phrase awakens but does not satisfy our curiosity. We are not certain of
the translation, or of the meaning. It may be, as in the margin of the Revised
Version, "there came great wrath upon Israel."[62] But wrath from whom?
and on what account? The word "wrath" all but invariably denotes divine
wrath; but we cannot imagine (as some critics do) that any Israelite of the
schools of the prophets would sanction the notion that the chosen people
were allowed to suffer from the kindled wrath of Chemosh. Can we then
suppose that the desperate act of King Mesha was a proof that Israel, who
was no doubt the most interested and the most remorseless of the invaders,
had pressed the Moabites too hard, and carried his vengeance much too far?
That is by no means impossible. The prophet Amos denounces upon Moab
in after years the doom that fire should devour the palaces of Kirioth, and
that Moab should perish with shoutings, and all his royal line be cut off, for
the far less offence of having burned into lime the bones of the king of
Edom.[63] The command of Elisha did not exempt the Israelites from their
share of moral responsibility. Jehu was commissioned to be an executioner
of vengeance upon the house of Ahab. Yet Jehu is expressly condemned by
the prophet Hosea for the tiger-like ferocity and horrible thoroughness with
which he had carried out his destined work.[64] Only one other explanation

is possible. If "wrath" here has the unusual sense of human indignation, the
clause can only imply that the armies of Judah and Edom were roused to
anger by the unpitying spirit which Israel had displayed. The horrible
tragedy enacted upon the wall of Kirharaseth awoke their consciences to the
sense of human compassion. These, after all, were fellow-men—fellow-
men of kindred blood to their own—whom they had driven to straits so
frightful as to cause a king to burn his own heir alive as a mute appeal to his
god in the hour of overwhelming ruin. They had done enough:

"Sunt lacrimæ rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt."

They hastily broke up the league, dissolved the alliance, returned horror-
stricken to their own land. They left Moab indeed in possession of his last
fortress, but they had reduced his territory to a wilderness before they
retired and called it peace.

CHAPTER V
ELISHA'S MIRACLES

2 Kings iv. 1-44

We are now in the full tide of Elisha's miracles, and as regards many of
them we can do little more than illustrate the text as it stands. The record of
them clearly comes from some account prevalent in the schools of the
prophets, which is however only fragmentary, and has been
unchronologically pieced into the annals of the kings of Israel.
The story of Elisha abounds far more in the supernatural than that of Elijah,
and is believed by most critics to be of earlier date. Yet the scenes and
portents of his life are almost wholly lacking in the element of grandeur
which belong to those of the elder seer. His personality, if on the whole
softer and more beneficent, inspires less of awe, and the whole tone of the
biography which recorded these isolated incidents is lacking in the poetic
and impassioned elevation which marks the episodes of Elijah's history. We
see in the records of Elisha, as in the biographies—so rich in prodigies—of
fourth-century hermits and mediæval saints, how little impressive in itself is
the exercise of abnormal powers; how it derives its sole grandeur from the
accompaniment of great moral lessons and spiritual revelations. John the
Baptist "did no miracle," yet our Lord placed him not only far above Elisha,
but even above Moses and Samuel and Elijah, when He said of him, "Verily
I say unto you, of them that have been born of women there hath not risen a
greater than John the Baptist."
It is impossible not to be struck with the singular parallelism between the
powers exercised by Elisha and those which are attributed to his
predecessor. "How true an heir is Elisha of his master," says Bishop Hall,
"not in his graces only, but in his actions! Both of them divided the waters
of Jordan, the one as his last act, the other as his first. Elijah's curse was the
death of the captains and their troops; Elisha's curse was the death of the
children. Elijah rebuked Ahab to his face; Elisha, Jehoram. Elijah supplied

the drought of Israel by rain from heaven; Elisha supplied the drought of the
three kings by waters gushing out of the earth; Elijah increased the oil of
the Sareptan, Elisha increased the oil of the prophet's widow; Elijah raised
from death the Sareptan's son, Elisha the Shunammite's; both of them had
one mantle, one spirit; both of them climbed up one Carmel, one heaven."
The resemblance, however, is not at all in character, but only in external and
miraculous circumstances. In all other respects Elisha furnishes a contrast to
Elijah which startles us quite as much as any superficial resemblances.
Elijah was a free, wild Bedawy prophet, hating and shunning as his
ordinary residence the abodes of men, making his home in the rocky wady
or in the mountain glades, appearing and disappearing suddenly as the
wind. He asserted his power most often in ministries of retribution. Clad in
the sheepskin of a Gadite shepherd or mountaineer, he was not one of those
who wear soft clothing or are found in kings' houses. He usually met
monarchs as their enemy and their reprover, but for the most part avoided
them. He never intervened for years together even in national events of the
utmost importance, whether military or religious, unless he received the
direct call of God, or there appeared to him to be a "dignus Vindice nodus."
Elisha, on the other hand, makes his home in cities, and chiefly in Samaria.
He is familiar with kings and moves about with armies, and has no long
retirements into unknown solitudes; and though he could speak roughly to
Jehoram, he is often on the friendliest terms with him and with other
sovereigns.
The stories of Elisha give us many interesting glimpses into the social life
of Israel in his day. As to their literal historic accuracy, those must make
positive affirmation who feel that they can do so in accordance alike with
adequate authority and with the sacredness of truth. Many will be unable to
escape the opinion that they bear some resemblance to other Jewish
haggadoth, written for edification, with every innocent intention, in the
schools of the Prophets, but no more intended for perfectly literal
acceptance in all their details than the Life of St. Paul the Hermit, by St.
Jerome; or that of St. Antony, attributed erroneously to St. Athanasius; or
that of St. Francis in the Fioretti; or the lives of humble saints of the people
called Kisar-el-anbiah, which are so popular among poor Mohammedans.
Into that question there is no need to enter further. Abundet quisque in sensu
suo.

I. On one occasion a widow of one of the Sons of the Prophets—for these
communities, though cœnobitic, were not celibate—came to him in deep
distress. Her husband—the Jews, with their usual guesswork, most
improbably identify him with Obadiah, the chamberlain of Ahab[65]—had
died insolvent. As she had nothing to pay, her creditor under the grim
provision of the law was about to exercise his right of selling her two sons
into slavery to recoup himself for the debt.[66] Would Elisha help her?
Prophets were never men of wealth, so that he could not pay her debt. He
asked her what she possessed to satisfy the demand. "Nothing," she said,
"but a pot of the common oil, used for anointing the body after a bath."
Elisha bade her go and borrow from her neighbours all the empty vessels
she could, then to return home, shut the door, and pour the oil into the
vessels.
She did so. They were all filled, and she asked her son to bring yet another.
But there was not another to be had, so she went out and told the Man of
God. He bade her sell the miraculously multiplied oil to pay the debt, and
live with her sons on the proceeds of what was over.
II. We next find Elisha at Shunem, famous as the abode of the fair maiden
—probably Abishag, the nurse of David's decrepitude—who is the heroine
of the Song of Songs. It is a village, now called Solam, on the slopes of
Little Hermon (Jebel-el-Duhy), three miles north of Jezreel. At this place
there lived a lady of wealth and influence, whose husband owned the
surrounding land. There were but few khans in Palestine, and even where
they now exist the traveller has in most cases to supply his own food.
Elisha, in his journeys to and fro among the schools of the Prophets, had
often enjoyed the welcome hospitality eagerly pressed upon him by the lady
of Shunem. Struck with his sacred character, she persuaded her husband to
take a step unusual even to the boundless hospitality of the East. She
begged him to do honour to this holy Man of God by building for him a
little chamber (alîyah) on the flat roof of the house, to which he might have
easy and private access by the outside staircase.[67] The chamber was built,
and furnished, like any other simple Eastern room, with a bed, a divan to sit
on, a table, and a lamp; and there the weary prophet on his journeys often
found a peaceful, simple, and delightful resting-place.

Grateful for the reverence with which she treated him, and the kind care
with which she had supplied his needs, Elisha was anxious to recompense
her in whatever way might be possible. The thought of money payment was
of course out of the question: merely to hint at it would have been a breach
of manners. But perhaps he might be of use to her in some other way. At
this time, and for years afterwards during his long ministry of perhaps fifty-
six years, he was attended by a servant named Gehazi, who stood to him in
the same sort of relation which he had held to Elijah. He told Gehazi to
summon the Shunammite lady. In the deep humility of Eastern womanhood
she came and stood in his presence. Even then he did not address her. So
downtrodden was the position of women in the East that any dignified
person, much more a great prophet, could not converse with a woman
without compromising his dignity. The more scrupulous Pharisees in the
days of Christ always carefully gathered up their garments in the streets,
lest they should so much as touch a woman with their skirts in passing by,
as the modern Chakams in Jerusalem do to this day.[68] The disciples
themselves, sophisticated by familiarity with such teachers, were astonished
that Jesus at the well of Shechem should talk with a woman.[69] So, though
the lady stood there, Elisha, instead of speaking to her directly, told Gehazi
to thank her for all the devout respect and care, all 'the modesty of fearful
duty,'[70] which she had displayed towards them, and to ask her if he should
say a good word for her to the King or the Captain of the Host. This is just
the sort of favour which an Eastern would be likely to value most.[71] The
Shunammite, however, was well provided for; she had nothing to complain
of, and nothing to request. She thanked Elisha for his kindly proposal, but
declined it, and went away.
"Is there, then, nothing which we can do for her?" asked Elisha of Gehazi.
[72]

There was. Gehazi had learnt that the sorrow of her life—a sorrow and a
source of reproach to any Eastern household, but most of all to that of a
wealthy householder—was her childlessness.
"Call her," he said.
She came back, and stood reverently in the doorway. "When the time comes
round," he said to her, "you shall embrace a son."

The promise raised in her heart a thrill of joy. It was too precious to be
believed. "Nay," she said "my lord, thou Man of God, do not lie unto thine
handmaid."
But the promise was fulfilled, and the lady of Shunem became the happy
mother of a son.
III. The charming episode then passes over some years. The child had
grown into a little boy, old enough now to go out alone to see his father in
the harvest fields and to run about among the reapers. But as he played
about in the heat he had a sunstroke, and cried to his father, "O my head,
my head!" Not knowing how serious the matter was, his father simply
ordered one of his lads to carry the child home to his mother. The fond
mother nursed him tenderly upon her knees, but at noon he died.
Then the lady of Shunem showed all the faith and strength and wisdom of
her character. "The good Shunammite," says Bishop Hall, "had lost her son;
her faith she lost not." Overwhelming as was this calamity—the loss of an
only child—she suppressed all her emotions, and, instead of bursting into
the wild helpless wail of Eastern mourners, or rushing to her husband with
the agonising news, she took the little boy's body in her arms, carried it up
to the chamber which had been built for Elisha, and laid it upon his bed.
Then, shutting the door, she called to her husband to send to her one of his
reapers and one of the asses, for she was going quickly to the Man of God
and would return in the cool of the evening. "Why should you go to-day
particularly?" he asked. "It is neither new moon, nor sabbath." "It is all
right," she said;[73] and with perfect confidence in the rectitude of all her
purposes, he sent her the she-ass, and a servant to drive it and to run beside
it for her protection on the journey of sixteen miles.
"Drive on the ass," she said. "Slacken me not the riding unless I tell you."
So with all possible speed she made her way—a journey of several hours—
from Shunem to Mount Carmel.
Elisha, from his retreat on the hill, marked her coming from a distance, and
it rendered him anxious. "Here comes the Shunammite," he said to Gehazi.
"Run to meet her, and ask Is it well with thee? is it well with thy husband?
is it well with the child?"

"All well," she answered, for her message was not to Gehazi, and she could
not trust her voice to speak; but pressing on up-hillwards, she flung herself
before Elisha and grasped his feet. Displeased at the familiarity which dared
thus to clasp the feet of his master, Gehazi ran up to thrust her away by
force, but Elisha interfered. "Let her alone," he cried; "she is in deep
affliction, and Jehovah has not revealed to me the cause." Then her long
pent-up emotion burst forth. "Did I desire a son of my lord?" she cried.
"Did I not say do not deceive me?"
It was enough—though she seemed unable to bring out the dreadful words
that her boy was dead. Catching her meaning, Elisha said to Gehazi, "Gird
up thy loins, take my staff, and without so much as stopping to salute any
one, or to return a salutation,[74] lay my staff on the dead child's face." But
the broken-hearted mother refused to leave Elisha. She imagined that the
servant, the staff, might be severed from Elisha; but she knew that wherever
the prophet was, there was power. So Elisha arose and followed her, and on
the way Gehazi met them with the news that the child lay still and dead,
with the fruitless staff upon his face.
Then Elisha in deep anguish went up to the chamber and shut the door, and
saw the boy's body lying pale upon his bed. After earnest prayer he
outstretched himself over the little corpse, as Elijah had done at Zarephath.
Soon it began to grow warm with returning life, and Elisha, after pacing up
and down the room, once more stretched himself over him. Then the child
opened his eyes and sneezed seven times, and Elisha called to Gehazi to
summon the mother.
"Take up thy son," he said. She prostrated herself at his feet in speechless
gratitude, and took up her recovered child, and went.
IV. We next find Elisha at Gilgal, in the time of the famine of which we
read his prediction in a later chapter.[75] The sons of the prophets were
seated round him, listening to his instructions; the hour came for their
simple meal, and he ordered the great pot to be put on the fire for the
vegetable soup, on which, with bread, they chiefly lived. One of them went
out for herbs, and carelessly brought his outer garment (the abeyah)[76] full
of wild poisonous coloquinths,[77] which, by ignorance or inadvertence,
were shred into the pottage. But when it was cooked and poured out they

perceived the poisonous taste, and cried out, "O Man of God, death in the
pot!"
"Bring meal," he said, for he seems always to have been a man of the
fewest words.
They cast in some meal, and were all able to eat of the now harmless
pottage. It has been noticed that in this, as in other incidents of the story,
there is no invocation of the name of Jehovah.

V. Not far from Gilgal was the little village of Baalshalisha,[78] at which
lived a farmer who wished to bring an offering of firstfruits and karmel
(bruised grain) in his wallet to Elisha as a Man of God.[79] It was a poor gift
enough—only twenty of the coarse barley loaves which were eaten by the
common people, and a sack[80] full of fresh ears of corn.[81] Elisha told his
servitor[82]—perhaps Gehazi—to set them before the people present.
"What?" he asked, "this trifle of food before a hundred men!" But Elisha
told him in the Lord's name that it should more than suffice; and so it did.

CHAPTER VI
THE STORY OF NAAMAN

2 Kings v. 1-27

Matt. viii. 3: Θέλω, καθαρίσθητι

After these shorter anecdotes we have the longer episode of Naaman.[83]
A part of the misery inflicted by the Syrians on Israel was caused by the
forays in which their light-armed bands, very much like the borderers on the
marches of Wales or Scotland, descended upon the country and carried off
plunder and captives before they could be pursued.
In one of these raids they had seized a little Israelitish girl and sold her to be
a slave. She had been purchased for the household of Naaman, the captain
of the Syrian host, who had helped his king and nation to win important
victories either against Israel or against Assyria. Ancient Jewish tradition
identified him with the man who had "drawn his bow at a venture" and slain
King Ahab. But all Naaman's valour and rank and fame, and the honour felt
for him by his king, were valueless to him, for he was suffering from the
horrible affliction of leprosy. Lepers do not seem to have been segregated in
other countries so strictly as they were in Israel, or at any rate Naaman's
leprosy was not of so severe a form as to incapacitate him from his public
functions.
But it was evident that he was a man who had won the affection of all who
knew him; and the little slave girl who waited on his wife breathed to her a
passionate wish that Naaman could visit the Man of God in Samaria, for he
would recover him from his leprosy. The saying was repeated, and one of
Naaman's friends mentioned it to the king of Syria. Benhadad was so much
struck by it that he instantly determined to send a letter, with a truly royal
gift to the king of Israel, who could, he supposed, as a matter of course,
command the services of the prophet. The letter came to Jehoram with a

stupendous present of ingots of silver to the value of ten talents, and six
thousand pieces of gold, and ten changes of raiment.[84] After the ordinary
salutations, and a mention of the gifts, the letter continued "And now, when
this letter is come to thee, behold I have sent Naaman my servant, that thou
mayest recover him of his leprosy."
Jehoram lived in perpetual terror of his powerful and encroaching
neighbour. Nothing was said in the letter about the Man of God; and the
king rent his clothes, exclaiming that he was not God to kill and to make
alive, and that this must be a base pretext for a quarrel. It never so much as
occurred to him, as it certainly would have done to Jehoshaphat, that the
prophet, who was so widely known and honoured, and whose mission had
been so clearly attested in the invasion of Moab, might at least help him to
face this problem. Otherwise the difficulty might indeed seem insuperable,
for leprosy was universally regarded as an incurable disease.
But Elisha was not afraid: he boldly told Jehoram to send the Syrian captain
to him. Naaman, with his horses and his chariots, in all the splendour of a
royal ambassador, drove up to the humble house of the prophet. Being so
great a man, he expected a deferential reception, and looked for the
performance of his cure in some striking and dramatic manner. "The
prophet," so he said to himself, "will come out, and solemnly invoke the
name of his God Jehovah, and wave his hand over the leprous limbs, and so
work the miracle."[85]
But the servant of the King of kings was not exultantly impressed, as false
prophets so often are, by earthly greatness. Elisha did not even pay him the
compliment of coming out of the house to meet him. He wished to efface
himself completely, and to fix the leper's thoughts on the one truth that if
healing was granted to him, it was due to the gift of God, not to the
thaumaturgy or arts of man. He simply sent out his servant to the Syrian
commander-in-chief with the brief message, "Go and wash in Jordan seven
times, and be thou clean."
Naaman, accustomed to the extreme deference of many dependants, was
not only offended, but enraged, by what he regarded as the scant courtesy
and procrastinated boon of the prophet. Why was he not received as a man
of the highest distinction? What necessity could there be for sending him all

the way to the Jordan? And why was he bidden to wash in that wretched,
useless, tortuous stream, rather than in the pure and flowing waters of his
own native Abanah and Pharpar?[86] How was he to tell that this "Man of
God" did not design to mock him by sending him on a fool's errand, so that
he would come back as a laughing-stock both to the Israelites and to his
own people? Perhaps he had not felt any great faith in the prophet, to begin
with; but whatever he once felt had now vanished. He turned and went
away in a rage.
But in this crisis the affection of his friends and servants stood him in good
stead. Addressing him, in their love and pity, by the unusual term of honour
"my father," they urged upon him that, as he certainly would not have
refused some great test, there was no reason why he should refuse this
simple and humble one.
He was won over by their reasonings, and descending the hot steep valley
of the Jordan, bathed himself in the river seven times. God healed him, and,
as Elisha had promised, "his flesh," corroded by leprosy, "came again like
the flesh of a little child, and he was clean."
This healing of Naaman is alluded to by our Lord to illustrate the truth that
the love of God extended farther than the limits of the chosen race; that His
Fatherhood is co-extensive with the whole family of man.
It is difficult to conceive the transport of a man cured of this most
loathsome and humiliating of all earthly afflictions. Naaman, who seems to
have possessed "a mind naturally Christian," was filled with gratitude.
Unlike the thankless Jewish lepers whom Christ cured as He left Engannim,
this alien returned to give glory to God. Once more the whole imposing
cavalcade rode through the streets of Samaria, and stopped at Elisha's door.
This time Naaman was admitted into his presence. He saw, and no doubt
Elisha had strongly impressed on him the truth, that his healing was the
work not of man but of God; and as he had found no help in the deities of
Syria, he confessed that the God of Israel was the only true God among
those of the nations. In token of his thankfulness he presses Elisha, as God's
instrument in the unspeakable mercy which has been granted to him, to
accept "a blessing" (i.e., a present) from him—"from thy servant," as he
humbly styled himself.

Elisha was no greedy Balaam. It was essential that Naaman and the Syrians
should not look on him as on some vulgar sorcerer who wrought wonders
for "the rewards of divination." His wants were so simple that he stood
above temptation. His desires and treasures were not on earth. To put an end
to all importunity, he appealed to Jehovah with his usual solemn formula
—"As the Lord liveth before whom I stand, I will receive no present."[87]
Still more deeply impressed by the prophet's incorruptible superiority to so
much as a suspicion of low motives, Naaman asked that he might receive
two mules' burden of earth wherewith to build an altar to the God of Israel
of His own sacred soil.[88] The very soil ruled by such a God must, he
thought, be holier than other soil; and he wished to take it back to Syria, just
as the people of Pisa rejoiced to fill their Campo Santo with mould from the
Holy Land, and just as mothers like to baptize their children in water
brought home from the Jordan. Henceforth, said Naaman, I will offer burnt-
offering and sacrifice to no God but unto Jehovah. Yet there was one
difficulty in the way. When the King of Syria went to worship in the temple
of his god Rimmon it was the duty of Naaman to accompany him.[89] The
king leaned on his hand, and when he bowed before the idol it was
Naaman's duty to bow also. He begged that for this concession God would
pardon him.
Elisha's answer was perhaps different from what Elijah might have given.
He practically allowed Naaman to give this sign of outward compliance
with idolatry, by saying to him, "Go in peace." It is from this circumstance
that the phrase "to bow in the house of Rimmon" has become proverbial to
indicate a dangerous and dishonest compromise. But Elisha's permission
must not be misunderstood. He did but hand over this semi-heathen convert
to the grace of God. It must be remembered that he lived in days long
preceding the conviction that proselytism is a part of true religion; in days
when the thought of missions to heathen lands was utterly unknown. The
position of Naaman was wholly different from that of any Israelite. He was
only the convert, or the half-convert of a day, and though he acknowledged
the supremacy of Jehovah as alone worthy of his worship, he probably
shared in the belief—common even in Israel—that there were other gods,
local gods, gods of the nations, to whom Jehovah might have divided the
limits of their power.[90] To demand of one who, like Naaman, had been an

idolater all his days, the sudden abandonment of every custom and tradition
of his life, would have been to demand from him an unreasonable, and, in
his circumstances, useless and all but impossible self-sacrifice. The best
way was to let him feel and see for himself the futility of Rimmon-worship.
If he were not frightened back from his sudden faith in Jehovah, the scruple
of conscience which he already felt in making his request might naturally
grow within him and lead him to all that was best and highest. The
temporary condonation of an imperfection might be a wise step towards the
ultimate realisation of a truth. We cannot at all blame Elisha, if, with such
knowledge as he then possessed, he took a mercifully tolerant view of the
exigencies of Naaman's position. The bowing in the house of Rimmon
under such conditions probably seemed to him no more than an act of
outward respect to the king and to the national religion in a case where no
evil results could follow from Naaman's example.[91]
But the general principle that we must not bow in the house of Rimmon
remains unchanged. The light and knowledge vouchsafed to us far
transcend those which existed in times when men had not seen the days of
the Son of Man. The only rule which sincere Christians can follow is to
have no truce with Canaan, no halting between two opinions, no tampering,
no compliance, no connivance, no complicity with evil,—even no tolerance
of evil as far as their own conduct is concerned. No good man, in the light
of the Gospel dispensation, could condone himself in seeming to sanction—
still less in doing—anything which in his opinion ought not to be done, or
in saying anything which implied his own acquiescence in things which he
knows to be evil. "Sir," said a parishioner to one of the non-juring clergy:
"there is many a man who has made a great gash in his conscience; cannot
you make a little nick in yours?" No! a little nick is, in one sense, as fatal as
a great gash. It is an abandonment of the principle; it is a violation of the
Law. The wrong of it consists in this—that all evil begins, not in the
commission of great crimes, but in the slight divergence from right rules.
The angle made by two lines may be infinitesimally small, but produce the
lines and it may require infinitude to span the separation between the lines
which inclose so tiny an angle. The wise man gave the only true rule about
wrong-doing, when he said, "Enter not into the path of the wicked and go
not in the way of evil men. Avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it and pass

away."[92] And the reason for his rule is that the beginning of sin—like the
beginning of strife—"is as when one letteth out water."[93]
The proper answer to all abuses of any supposed concession to the
lawfulness of bowing in the house of Rimmon—if that be interpreted to
mean the doing of anything which our consciences cannot wholly approve
—is Obsta principiis—avoid the beginnings of evil.

"We are not worst at once; the course of evil
Begins so slowly, and from such slight source,
An infant's hand might stem the breach with clay;
But let the stream grow wider, and philosophy,
Age, and religion too, may strive in vain
To stem the headstrong current."

The mean cupidity of Gehazi, the servant of Elisha, gives a deplorable
sequel to the story of the prophet's magnanimity. This man's wretched greed
did its utmost to nullify the good influence of his master's example. There
may be more wicked acts recorded in Scripture than that of Gehazi, but
there is scarcely one which shows so paltry a disposition.
He had heard the conversation between his master and the Syrian marshal,
and his cunning heart despised as a futile sentimentality the magnanimity
which had refused an eagerly proffered reward. Naaman was rich: he had
received a priceless boon; it would be rather a pleasure to him than
otherwise to return for it some acknowledgment which he would not miss.
Had he not even seemed a little hurt by Elisha's refusal to receive it? What
possible harm could there be in taking what he was anxious to give? And
how useful those magnificent presents would be, and to what excellent uses
could they be put! He could not approve of the fantastic and unpractical
scrupulosity which had led Elisha to refuse the "blessing" which he had so
richly earned. Such attitudes of unworldliness seemed entirely foolish to
Gehazi.
So pleaded the Judas-spirit within the man. By such specious delusions he
inflamed his own covetousness, and fostered the evil temptation which had
taken sudden and powerful hold upon his heart, until it took shape in a
wicked resolve.
The mischief of Elisha's quixotic refusal was done, but it could be speedily
undone, and no one would be the worse. The evil spirit was whispering to
Gehazi:—

"Be mine and Sin's for one short hour; and then
Be all thy life the happiest man of men."

"Behold," he said, with some contempt both for Elisha and for Naaman,
"my master hath let off this Naaman the Syrian; but as the Lord liveth I will
run after him, and take somewhat of him."
"As the Lord liveth!" It had been a favourite appeal of Elijah and Elisha,
and the use of it by Gehazi shows how utterly meaningless and how very
dangerous such solemn words become when they are degraded into
formulæ.[94] It is thus that the habit of swearing begins. The light use of
holy words very soon leads to their utter degradation. How keen is the satire
in Cowper's little story:—

"A Persian, humble servant of the sun,
Who, though devout, yet bigotry had none,
Hearing a lawyer, grave in his address,
With adjurations every word impress,—
Supposed the man a bishop, or, at least,
God's Name so often on his lips—a priest.
Bowed at the close with all his gracious airs,
And begged an interest in his frequent prayers!"

Had Gehazi felt their true meaning—had he realised that on Elisha's lips
they meant something infinitely more real than on his own, he would not
have forgotten that in Elisha's answer to Naaman they had all the validity of
an oath, and that he was inflicting on his master a shameful wrong, when he
led Naaman to believe that, after so sacred an adjuration, the prophet had
frivolously changed his mind.

Gehazi had not very far to run,[95] for in a country full of hills, and of which
the roads are rough, horses and chariots advance but slowly. Naaman,
chancing to glance backwards, saw the prophet's attendant running after
him. Anticipating that he must be the bearer of some message from Elisha,
he not only halted the cavalcade, but sprang down from his chariot,[96] and
went to meet him with the anxious question, "Is all well?"
"Well," answered Gehazi; and then had ready his cunning lie. "Two youths,"
he said, "of the prophetic schools had just unexpectedly come to his master
from the hill country of Ephraim; and though he would accept nothing for
himself, Elisha would be glad if Naaman would spare him two changes of

garments, and one talent of silver for these poor members of a sacred
calling."[97]
Naaman must have been a little more or a little less than human if he did
not feel a touch of disappointment on hearing this message. The gift was
nothing to him. It was a delight to him to give it, if only to lighten a little
the burden of gratitude which he felt towards his benefactor. But if he had
felt elevated by the magnanimous example of Elisha's disinterestedness, he
must have thought that this hasty request pointed to a little regret on the
prophet's part for his noble self-denial. After all, then, even prophets were
but men, and gold after all was gold! The change of mind about the gift
brought Elisha a little nearer the ordinary level of humanity, and, so far, it
acted as a sort of disenchantment from the high ideal exhibited by his
former refusal. And so Naaman said, with alacrity, "Be content: take two
talents."
The fact that Gehazi's conduct thus inevitably compromised his master, and
undid the effects of his example, is part of the measure of the man's
apostacy. It showed how false and hypocritical was his position, how
unworthy he was to be the ministering servant of a prophet. Elisha was
evidently deceived in the man altogether. The heinousness of his guilt lies
in the words Corruptio optimi pessima. When religion is used for a cloak of
covetousness, of usurping ambition, of secret immorality, it becomes
deadlier than infidelity. Men raze the sanctuary, and build their idol temples
on the hallowed ground. They cover their base encroachments and impure
designs with the "cloke of profession, doubly lined with the fox-fur of
hypocrisy," and hide the leprosy which is breaking out upon their foreheads
with the golden petalon on which is inscribed the title of "holiness to the
Lord."
At first Gehazi did not like to take so large a sum as two talents; but the
crime was already committed, and there was not much more harm done in
taking two talents than in taking one. Naaman urged him, and it is very
improbable that, unless the chances of detection weighed with him, he
needed much urging. So the Syrian weighed out silver ingots to the amount
of two talents, and putting them in two satchels laid them on two of his
servants and told them to carry the money before Gehazi to Elisha's house.
But Gehazi had to keep a look-out lest his nefarious dealings should be

observed, and when they came to Ophel—the word means the foot of the
hill of Samaria, or some part of the fortifications[98]—he took the bags from
the two Syrians, dismissed them, and carried the money to some place
where he could conceal it in the house. Then, as though nothing had
happened, with his usual smooth face of sanctimonious integrity, the pious
Jesuit went and stood before his master.
He had not been unnoticed! His heart must have sunk within him when
there smote upon his ear Elisha's question,—
"Whence comest thou, Gehazi?"
But one lie is as easy as another, and Gehazi was doubtless an adept at
lying.
"Thy servant went no whither," he replied, with an air of innocent surprise.

"Went not my beloved one?"[99] said Elisha—and he must have said it with
a groan, as he thought how utterly unworthy the youth, whom he thus called
"my loving heart" or "my dear friend,"—"when the man turned from his
chariot to meet thee?" It may be that from the hill of Samaria Elisha had
seen it all, or that he had been told by one who had seen it. If not, he had
been rightly led to read the secret of his servant's guilt. "Is it a time," he
asked, "to act thus?" Did not my example show thee that there was a high
object in refusing this Syrian's gifts, and in leading him to feel that the
servants of Jehovah do His bidding with no afterthought of sordid
considerations? Are there not enough troubles about us actual and
impending, to show that this is no time for the accumulation of earthly
treasures? Is it a time to receive money—and all that money will procure?
to receive garments, and olive-yards and vineyards, and oxen, and men-
servants and maid-servants? Has a prophet no higher aim than the
accumulation of earthly goods, and are his needs such as earthly goods can
supply? And hast thou, the daily friend and attendant of a prophet, learnt so
little from his precepts and his example?
Then followed the tremendous penalty for so grievous a transgression—a
transgression made up of meanness, irreverence, greed, cheating, treachery,
and lies.

"The leprosy therefore of Naaman shall cleave unto thee, and unto thy seed
for ever!" "Oh heavy talents of Gehazi!" exclaims Bishop Hall: "Oh the
horror of the one unchangeable suit! How much better had been a light
purse and a homely coat, with a sound body and a clean soul!"

"And he went out from his presence a leper as white as snow."[100]
It is the characteristic of the leprous taint in the system to be thus suddenly
developed, and apparently in crises of sudden and overpowering emotion it
might affect the whole blood. And one of the many morals which lie in
Gehazi's story is again that moral to which the world's whole experience
sets its seal—that though the guilty soul may sell itself for a desired price,
the sum-total of that price is nought. It is Achan's ingots buried under the
sod on which stood his tent. It is Naboth's vineyard made abhorrent to Ahab
on the day he entered it. It is the thirty pieces of silver which Judas dashed
with a shriek upon the Temple floor. It is Gehazi's leprosy for which no
silver talents or changes of raiment could atone.
The story of Gehazi—of the son of the prophets who would naturally have
succeeded Elisha as Elisha had succeeded Elijah—must have had a
tremendous significance to warn the members of the prophetic schools from
the peril of covetousness. That peril, as all history proves to us, is one from
which popes and priests, monks, and even nominally ascetic and nominally
pauper communities, have never been exempt;—to which, it may even be
said, that they have been peculiarly liable. Mercenariness and falsity,
displayed under the pretence of religion, were never more overwhelmingly
rebuked. Yet, as the Rabbis said, it would have been better if Elisha, in
repelling with the left hand, had also drawn with the right.[101]

The fine story of Elisha and Naaman, and the fall and punishment of
Gehazi, is followed by one of the anecdotes of the prophet's life which
appears to our unsophisticated, perhaps to our imperfectly enlightened
judgment, to rise but little above the ecclesiastical portents related in
mediæval hagiologies.

At some unnamed place—perhaps Jericho—the house of the Sons of the
Prophets had become too small for their numbers and requirements, and
they asked Elisha's leave to go down to the Jordan and cut beams to make a
new residence. Elisha gave them leave, and at their request consented to go
with them. While they were hewing, the axe-head of one of them fell into
the water, and he cried out, "Alas! master, it was borrowed!" Elisha
ascertained where it had fallen. He then cut down a stick,[102] and cast it on
the spot, and the iron swam and the man recovered it.
The story is perhaps an imaginative reproduction of some unwonted
incident. At any rate, we have no sufficient evidence to prove that it may
not be so. It is wholly unlike the economy invariably shown in the Scripture
narratives which tell us of the exercise of supernatural power. All the eternal
laws of nature are here superseded at a word, as though it were an every-
day matter, without even any recorded invocation of Jehovah, to restore an
axe-head, which could obviously have been recovered or resupplied in
some much less stupendous way than by making iron swim on the surface
of a swift-flowing river. It is easy to invent conventional and à priori
apologies to show that religion demands the unquestioning acceptance of
this prodigy, and that a man must be shockingly wicked who does not feel
certain that it happened exactly in the literal sense; but whether the doubt or
the defence be morally worthier, is a thing which God alone can judge.[103]

CHAPTER VII
ELISHA AND THE SYRIANS

2 Kings vi. 1-23

"Now there was found in the city a poor wise man, and he by his
wisdom delivered the city."—Eccles. ix. 15.

Elisha, unlike his master Elijah, was, during a great part of his long career,
intimately mixed up with the political and military fortunes of his country.
The king of Israel who occurs in the following narratives is left nameless—
always the sign of later and more vague tradition; but he has usually been
identified with Jehoram ben-Ahab, and, though not without some
misgivings, we shall assume that the identification is correct. His dealings
with Elisha never seem to have been very cordial, though on one occasion
he calls him "my father." The relations between them at times became
strained and even stormy.
His reign was rendered miserable by the incessant infestation of Syrian
marauders. In these difficulties he was greatly helped by Elisha. The
prophet repeatedly frustrated the designs of the Syrian king by revealing to
Jehoram the places of Benhadad's ambuscades, so that Jehoram could
change the destination of his hunting parties or other movements, and
escape the plots laid to seize his person. Benhadad, finding himself thus
frustrated, and suspecting that it was due to treachery, called his servants
together in grief and indignation, and asked who was the traitor among
them. His officers assured him that they were all faithful, but that the
secrets whispered in his bed-chamber were revealed to Jehoram by Elisha
the prophet in Israel, whose fame had spread into Syria, perhaps because of
the cure of Naaman. The king, unable to take any step while his counsels
were thus published to his enemies, thought—not very consistently—that
he could surprise and seize Elisha himself, and sent to find out where he
was. At that time he was living in Dothan, about twelve miles north-east of

Samaria,[104] and Benhadad sent a contingent with horses and chariots by
night to surround the city, and prevent any escape from its gates. That he
could thus besiege a town so near the capital shows the helplessness to
which Israel had been now reduced.
When Elisha's servitor rose in the morning he was terrified to see the
Syrians encamped round the city, and cried to Elisha, "Alas! my master,
what shall we do?"
"Fear not," said the prophet: "they that be with us are more than they that be
with them." He prayed God to grant the youth the same open eyes, the same
spiritual vision which he himself enjoyed; and the youth saw the mountain
full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.
This incident has been full of comfort to millions, as a beautiful illustration
of the truth that—

"The hosts of God encamp around
The dwellings of the just;
Deliverance He affords to all
Who on His promise trust.

"Oh, make but trial of His love,
Experience will decide,
How blest are they, and only they,
Who in His truth confide."

The youth's affectionate alarm had not been shared by his master. He knew
that to every true servant of God the promise will be fulfilled, "He shall
defend thee under His wings; thou shalt be safe under His feathers; His
righteousness and truth shall be thy shield and buckler."[105]
Were our eyes similarly opened, we too should see the reality of the Divine
protection and providence, whether under the visible form of angelic
ministrants or not. Scripture in general, and the Psalms in particular, are full
of the serenity inspired by this conviction. The story of Elisha is a picture-
commentary on the Psalmist's words: "The angel of the Lord encampeth
round them that fear Him, and delivereth them."[106] "He shall give His

angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways."[107] "And I will
encamp about Mine house because of the army, because of him that passeth
by, and because of him that returneth: and no oppressor shall pass through
them any more: for now have I seen with Mine eyes."[108] "The angel of His
presence saved them: in His love and in His pity He redeemed them; and
He bare them, and carried them all the days of old."[109]
But what is the exact meaning of all these lovely promises? They do not
mean that God's children and saints will always be shielded from anguish or
defeat, from the triumph of their enemies, or even from apparently hopeless
and final failure, or miserable death. The lesson is not that their persons
shall be inviolable, or that the enemies who advance against them to eat up
their flesh shall always stumble and fall. The experiences of tens of
thousands of troubled lives and martyred ends instantly prove the futility of
any such reading of these assurances. The saints of God, the prophets of
God, have died in exile and in prison, have been tortured on the rack and
broken on the wheel, and burnt to ashes at innumerable stakes; they have
been destitute, afflicted, tormented, in their lives—stoned, beheaded, sawn
asunder, in every form of hideous death; they have rotted in miry dungeons,
have starved on desolate shores, have sighed out their souls into the
agonising flame. The Cross of Christ stands as the emblem and the
explanation of their lives, which fools count to be madness, and their end
without honour. On earth they have, far more often than not, been crushed
by the hatred and been delivered over to the will of their enemies. Where,
then, have been those horses and chariots of fire?
They have been there no less than around Elisha at Dothan. The eyes
spiritually opened have seen them, even when the sword flashed, or the
flames wrapped them in indescribable torment. The sense of God's
protection has least deserted His saints when to the world's eyes they
seemed to have been most utterly abandoned. There has been a joy in
prisons and at stakes, it has been said, far exceeding the joy of harvest.
"Pray for me," said a poor boy of fifteen, who was being burned at
Smithfield in the fierce days of Mary Tudor. "I would as soon pray for a dog
as for a heretic like thee," answered one of the spectators. "Then, Son of
God, shine Thou upon me!" cried the boy-martyr; and instantly, upon a dull
and cloudy day, the sun shone out, and bathed his young face in glory;

whereat, says the martyrologist, men greatly marvelled. But is there one
death-bed of a saint on which that glory has not shone?
The presence of those horses and chariots of fire, unseen by the carnal eye
—the promises which, if they be taken literally, all experience seems to
frustrate—mean two things, which they who are the heirs of such promises,
and who would without them be of all men most miserable, have clearly
understood.
They mean, first, that as long as a child of God is on the path of duty, and
until that duty has been fulfilled, he is inviolable and invulnerable. He shall
tread upon the lion and the adder; the young lion and the dragon shall he
trample under his feet. He shall take up the serpent in his hands; and if he
drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt him. He shall not be afraid of the
terror by night, nor of the arrow that flieth by day; of the pestilence that
walketh in darkness, nor of the demon that destroyeth in the noonday. A
thousand shall fall at his right hand, and ten thousand beside him; but it
shall not come nigh him. The histories and the legends of numberless
marvellous deliverances all confirm the truth that, when a man fears the
Lord, He will keep him in all his ways, and give His angels charge over
him, lest at any time he dash his foot against a stone. God will not permit
any mortal force, or any combination of forces, to hinder the
accomplishment of the task entrusted to His servant. It is the sense of this
truth which, under circumstances however menacing, should enable us to

"bate no jot
Of heart or hope, but still bear up, and steer
Uphillward"

It is this conviction which has nerved men to face insuperable difficulties,
and achieve impossible and unhoped-for ends. It works in the spirit of the
cry, "Who art thou, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel be thou changed
into a plain!" It inspires the faith as a grain of mustard seed which is able to
say to this mountain, "Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea,"—
and it shall obey. It stands unmoved upon the pinnacle of the Temple
whereon it has been placed, while the enemy and the tempter, smitten by
amazement, falls. In the hour of difficulty it can cry,—

"Rescue me, O Lord, in this mine evil hour,
As of old so many by Thy mighty power,—
Enoch and Elias from the common doom;
Noe from the waters in a saving home;
Abraham from the abounding guilt of heathenesse;
Job from all his multiform and fell distress;
Isaac when his faither's knife was raised to slay;
Lot from burning Sodom on the judgment day;
Moses from the land of bondage and despair;
Daniel from the hungry lions in their lair;
And the children three amid the furnace flame;
Chaste Susanna from the slander and the shame;
David from Golia, and the wrath of Saul;
And the two Apostles from their prison-thrall."

The strangeness, the unexpectedness, the apparently inadequate source of
the deliverance, have deepened the trust that it has not been due to accident.
Once, when Felix of Nola was flying from his enemies, he took refuge in a
cave, and he had scarcely entered it before a spider began to spin its web
over the fissure. The pursuer, passing by, saw the spider's web, and did not
look into the cave; and the saint, as he came out into safety, remarked: "Ubi
Deus est, ibi aranea murus, ubi non est ibi murus aranea" ("Where God is,
a spider's web is as a wall; where He is not, a wall is but as a spider's web").
This is one lesson conveyed in the words of Christ when the Pharisees told
Him that Herod desired to kill Him. He knew that Herod could not kill Him
till He had done His Father's will and finished His work. "Go ye," He said,
"and tell this fox, Behold, I cast out devils, and I do cures to-day and to-
morrow, and the third day I shall be perfected. Nevertheless, I must walk to-
day, and to-morrow, and the day following."
But had all this been otherwise—had Felix been seized by his pursuers and
perished, as has been the common lot of God's prophets and heroes—he
would not therefore have felt himself mocked by these exceeding great and
precious promises. The chariots and horses of fire are still there, and are
there to work a deliverance yet greater and more eternal. Their office is not
to deliver the perishing body, but to carry into God's glory the immortal
soul. This is indicated in the death-scene of Elijah. This was the vision of

the dying Stephen. This was what Christian legend meant when it
embellished with beautiful incidents such scenes as the death of Polycarp.
This was what led Bunyan to write, when he describes the death of
Christian, that "all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side." When
poor Captain Allan Gardiner lay starving to death in that Antarctic isle with
his wretched companions, he yet painted on the entrance of the cave which
had sheltered them, and near to which his remains were found, a hand
pointing downward at the words, "Though He slay me, yet will I put my
trust in Him."
There was a touch of almost joyful humour in the way in which Elisha
proceeded to use, in the present emergency, the power of Divine
deliverance. He seems to have gone out of the town and down the hill to the
Syrian captains,[110] and prayed God to send them illusion (ἀβλεψία), so
that they might be misled.[111] Then he boldly said to them, "You are being
deceived: you have come the wrong way, and to the wrong city. I will take
you to the man whom ye seek." The incident reminds us of the story of
Athanasius, who, when he was being pursued on the Nile, took the
opportunity of a bend of the river boldly to turn back his boat towards
Alexandria. "Do you know where Athanasius is?" shouted the pursuers. "He
is not far off!" answered the disguised Archbishop; and the emissaries of
Constantius went on in the opposite direction from that in which he made
his escape.
Elisha led the Syrians in their delusion straight into the city of Samaria,
where they suddenly found themselves at the mercy of the king and his
troops. Delighted at so great a chance of vengeance, Jehoram eagerly
exclaimed, "My father, shall I smite, shall I smite?"
Certainly the request cannot be regarded as unnatural, when we remember
that in the Book of Deuteronomy, which did not come to light till after this
period, we read the rule that, when the Israelites had taken a besieged city,
"thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword";[112] and
that when Israel defeated the Midianites[113] they slew all the males, and
Moses was wroth with the officers of the host because they had not also
slain all the women. He then (as we are told) ordered them to slay all except
the virgins, and also—horrible to relate—"every male among the little
ones." The spirit of Elisha on this occasion was larger and more merciful. It

almost rose to the spirit of Him who said, "It was said to them of old time,
Thou shalt love thy neighbour and hate thine enemy; but I say unto you,
Love your enemies; forgive them that hate you; do good unto them that
despitefully use you and persecute you." He asked Jehoram reproachfully
whether he would even have smitten those whom he had taken captive with
sword and bow.[114] He not only bade the king to spare them, but to set food
before them, and send them home. Jehoram did so at great expense, and the
narrative ends by telling us that the example of such merciful generosity
produced so favourable an impression that "the bands of Syria came no
more into the land of Israel."
It is difficult, however, to see where this statement can be chronologically
fitted in. The very next chapter—so loosely is the compilation put together,
so completely is the sequence of events here neglected—begins with telling
us that Benhadad with all his host went up and besieged Samaria. Any
peace or respite gained by Elisha's compassionate magnanimity must, in
any case, have been exceedingly short-lived. Josephus tries to get over the
difficulty by drawing a sufficiently futile distinction between marauding
bands and a direct invasion,[115] and he says that King Benhadad gave up
his frays through fear of Elisha. But, in the first place, the encompassing of
Dothan had been carried out by "a great host with horses and chariots,"
which is hardly consistent with the notion of a foray, though it creates new
difficulties as to the numbers whom Elisha led to Samaria; secondly, the
substitution of a direct invasion for predatory incursions would have been
no gain to Israel, but a more deadly peril; and, thirdly, if it was fear of
Elisha which stopped the king's raids, it is strange that it had no effect in
preventing his invasions. We have, however, no data for any final solution
of these problems, and it is useless to meet them with a network of idle
conjectures. Such difficulties naturally occur in narratives so vague and
unchronological as those presented to us in the documents from the story of
Elisha which the compiler wove into his history of Israel and Judah.[116]

CHAPTER VIII
THE FAMINE AND THE SIEGE

2 Kings vi. 24-vii. 20

"'Tis truly no good plan when princes play
The vulture among carrion; but when
They play the carrion among vultures—that
Is ten times worse."
Lessing, Nathan the Wise, Act I., Sc. 3.
If the Benhadad, King of Syria, who reduced Samaria to the horrible straits
recorded in this chapter, (2 Kings vi.) was the same Benhadad whom Ahab
had treated with such impolitic confidence, his hatred against Israel must
indeed have burned hotly. Besides the affair at Dothan, he had already been
twice routed with enormous slaughter, and against those disasters he could
only set the death of Ahab at Ramoth-Gilead. It is obvious from the
preceding narrative that he could advance at any time at his will and
pleasure into the heart of his enemy's country, and shut him up in his capital
almost without resistance. The siege-trains of ancient days were very
inefficient, and any strong fortress could hold out for years, if only it was
well provisioned. Such was not the case with Samaria, and it was reduced to
a condition of sore famine. Food so loathsome as an ass's head, which at
other times the poorest would have spurned, was now sold for eighty
shekels' weight of silver (about £8); and the fourth part of a xestes or kab—
which was itself the smallest dry-measure, the sixth part of a seah—of the
coarse, common pulse, or roasted chick-peas, vulgarly known as "dove's
dung," fetched five shekels (about 12s. 6d.).[117]
While things were at this awful pass, "the King of Israel," as he is vaguely
called throughout this story, went his rounds upon the wall to visit the
sentries and encourage the soldiers in their defence. As he passed, a woman
cried, "Help, my lord, O king!" In Eastern monarchies the king is a judge of

the humblest; a suppliant, however mean, may cry to him. Jehoram thought
that this was but one of the appeals which sprang from the clamorous
mendicity of famine with which he had grown so painfully familiar. "The
Lord curse you!" he exclaimed impatiently.[118] "How can I help you?
Every barn-floor is bare, every wine-press drained." And he passed on.
But the woman continued her wild clamour, and turning round at her
importunity, he asked, "What aileth thee?"
He heard in reply a narrative as appalling as ever smote the ear of a king in
a besieged city. Among the curses denounced upon apostate Israel in the
Pentateuch, we read, "Ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of
your daughters shall ye eat";[119] or, as it is expressed more fully in the
Book of Deuteronomy, "He shall besiege thee in all thy gates throughout all
thy land.... And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy
sons and thy daughters, which the Lord thy God hath given thee, in the
siege, and in the straitness wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee: so
that the man that is tender among you, and very delicate, his eye shall be
evil towards his brother, and towards the wife of his bosom, and towards
the remnant of his children which he shall leave; so that he shall not give to
any of them of the flesh of his children whom he shall eat, because he hath
nothing left him in the siege.... The tender and delicate woman, which
would not adventure to set the sole of her foot upon the ground for
delicateness and tenderness, her eye shall be evil towards the husband of
her bosom, and towards her son, and towards her daughter, and towards her
children: for she shall eat them for want of all things secretly in the siege
and the straitness, if thou wilt not observe to do all the words of the law, ...
that thou mayest fear the glorious and fearful name, The Lord thy God."[120]
We find almost the same words in the prophet Jeremiah;[121] and in
Lamentations we read: "The hands of the pitiful women have sodden their
own children: they were their meat in the destruction of the daughter of My
people."[122]
Isaiah asks, "Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not
have compassion on the son of her womb?" Alas! it has always been so in
those awful scenes of famine, whether after shipwreck or in beleaguered
cities, when man becomes degraded to an animal, with all an animal's
primitive instincts, and when the wild beast appears under the thin veneer of

civilisation. So it was at the siege of Jerusalem, and at the siege of
Magdeburg, and at the wreck of the Medusa, and on many another occasion
when the pangs of hunger have corroded away every vestige of the tender
affections and of the moral sense.
And this had occurred at Samaria: her women had become cannibals and
devoured their own little ones.
"This woman," screamed the suppliant, pointing her lean finger at a wretch
like herself—"this woman said unto me, 'Give thy son, that we may eat him
to-day, and we will afterwards eat my son.' I yielded to her suggestion. We
killed my little son, and ate his flesh when we had sodden it. Next day I said
to her, 'Now give thy son, that we may eat him'; and she hath hid her son!"
How could the king answer such a horrible appeal? Injustice had been done;
but was he to order and to sanction by way of redress fresh cannibalism,
and the murder by its mother of another babe? In that foul obliteration of
every natural instinct, what could he do, what could any man do? Can there
be equity among raging wild beasts, when they roar for their prey and are
unfed?
All that the miserable king could do was to rend his clothes in horror and to
pass on, and as his starving subjects passed by him on the wall they saw
that he wore sackcloth beneath his purple, in sign, if not of repentance, yet
of anguish, if not of prayer, yet of uttermost humiliation.[123]
But if indeed he had, in his misery, donned that sackcloth in order that at
least the semblance of self-mortification might move Jehovah to pity, as it
had done in the case of his father Ahab, the external sign of his humility had
done nothing to change his heart. The gruesome appeal to which he had just
been forced to listen only kindled him to a burst of fury[124].The man who
had warned, who had prophesied, who so far during this siege had not
raised his finger to help—the man who was believed to be able to wield the
powers of heaven, and had wrought no deliverance for his people, but
suffered them to sink unaided into these depths of abjectness—should he be
permitted to live? If Jehovah would not help, of what use was Elisha? "God
do so to me, and more also," exclaimed Jehoram—using his mother's oath

to Elijah[125]—"if the head of Elisha, the son of Shaphat, shall stand on him
this day."
Was this the king who had come to Elisha with such humble entreaty, when
three armies were perishing of thirst before the eyes of Moab? Was this the
king who had called Elisha "my father," when the prophet had led the
deluded host of Syrians into Samaria, and bidden Jehoram to set large
provision before them? It was the same king, but now transported with fury
and reduced to despair. His threat against God's prophet was in reality a
defiance of God, as when our unhappy Plantagenet, Henry II., maddened by
the loss of Le Mans, exclaimed that, since God had robbed him of the town
he loved, he would pay God out by robbing Him of that which He most
loved in him—his soul.
Jehoram's threat was meant in grim earnest, and he sent an executioner to
carry it out. Elisha was sitting in his house with the elders of the city, who
had come to him for counsel at this hour of supreme need. He knew what
was intended for him, and it had also been revealed to him that the king
would follow his messenger to cancel his sanguinary threat. "See ye," he
said to the elders, "how this son of a murderer"—for again he indicates his
contempt and indignation for the son of Ahab and Jezebel—"hath sent to
behead me! When he comes, shut the door, and hold it fast against him. His
master is following hard at his heels."
The messenger came, and was refused admittance. The king followed him,
[126]
and entering the room where the prophet and elders sat, he gave up his
wicked design of slaying Elisha with the sword, but he overwhelmed him
with reproaches, and in despair renounced all further trust in Jehovah.
Elisha, as the king's words imply, must have refused all permission to
capitulate: he must have held out from the first a promise that God would
send deliverance. But no deliverance had come. The people were starving.
Women were devouring their babes. Nothing worse could happen if they
flung open their gates to the Syrian host. "Behold," the king said, "this evil
is Jehovah's doing. You have deceived us. Jehovah does not intend to
deliver us. Why should I wait for Him any longer?" Perhaps the king meant
to imply that his mother's Baal was better worth serving, and would never
have left his votaries to sink into these straits.

And now man's extremity had come, and it was God's opportunity. Elisha at
last was permitted to announce that the worst was over, that the next day
plenty should smile on the besieged city. "Thus saith the Lord," he
exclaimed to the exhausted and despondent king, "To-morrow about this
time, instead of an ass's head being sold for eighty shekels, and a thimbleful
of pulse for five shekels, a peck of fine flour shall be sold for a shekel, and
two pecks of barley for a shekel, in the gate of Samaria."
The king was leaning on the hand of his chief officer, and to this soldier the
promise seemed not only incredible, but silly: for at the best he could only
suppose that the Syrian host would raise the siege; and though to hope for
that looked an absurdity, yet even that would not in the least fulfil the
immense prediction. He answered, therefore, in utter scorn: "Yes! Jehovah
is making windows in heaven! But even thus could this be?" It is much as if
he should have answered some solemn pledge with a derisive proverb such
as, "Yes! if the sky should fall, we should catch larks!"
Such contemptuous repudiation of a Divine promise was a blasphemy; and
answering scorn with scorn, and riddle with riddling, Elisha answers the
mocker, "Yes! and you shall see this, but shall not enjoy it."
The word of the Lord was the word of a true prophet, and the miracle was
wrought. Not only was the siege raised, but the wholly unforeseen spoil of
the entire Syrian camp, with all its accumulated rapine, brought about the
predicted plenty.

There were four lepers[127] outside the gate of Samaria, like the leprous
mendicants who gather there to this day. They were cut off from all human
society, except their own. Leprosy was treated as contagious, and if "houses
of the unfortunate" (Biut-el-Masákin) were provided for them, as seems to
have been the case at Jerusalem, they were built outside the city walls.[128]
They could only live by beggary, and this was an aggravation of their
miserable condition. And how could any one fling food to these beggars
over the walls, when food of any kind was barely to be had within them?
So taking counsel of their despair, they decided that they would desert to
the Syrians: among them they would at least find food, if their lives were
spared; and if not, death would be a happy release from their present
misery.

So in the evening twilight, when they could not be seen or shot at from the
city wall as deserters, they stole down to the Syrian camp.
When they reached its outermost circle, to their amazement all was silence.
They crept into one of the tents in fear and astonishment. There was food
and drink there, and they satisfied the cravings of their hunger. It was also
stored with booty from the plundered cities and villages of Israel. To this
they helped themselves, and took it away and hid it. Having spoiled this
tent, they entered a second. It was likewise deserted, and they carried a
fresh store of treasures to their hiding-place. And then they began to feel
uneasy at not divulging to their starving fellow-citizens the strange and
golden tidings of a deserted camp. The night was wearing on; day would
reveal the secret. If they carried the good news, they would doubtless earn a
rich guerdon. If they waited till morning, they might be put to death for
their selfish reticence and theft. It was safest to return to the city, and rouse
the warder, and send a message to the palace. So the lepers hurried back
through the night, and shouted to the sentinel at the gate, "We went to the
Syrian camp, and it was deserted! Not a man was there, not a sound was to
be heard. The horses were tethered there, and the asses, and the tents were
left just as they were."
The sentinel called the other watchmen to hear the wonderful news, and
instantly ran with it to the palace. The slumbering house was roused; and
though it was still night, the king himself arose. But he could not shake off
his despondency, and made no reference to Elisha's prediction. News
sometimes sounds too good to be true. "It is only a decoy," he said. "They
can only have left their camp to lure us into an ambuscade, that they may
return, and slaughter us, and capture our city."
"Send to see," answered one of his courtiers. "Send five horsemen to test
the truth, and to look out. If they perish, their fate is but the fate of us all."
So two chariots with horses were despatched, with instructions not only to
visit the camp, but track the movements of the host.
They went, and found that it was as the lepers had said. The camp was
deserted, and lay there as an immense booty; and for some reason the
Syrians had fled towards the Jordan to make good their escape to Damascus

by the eastern bank. The whole road was strewn with the traces of their
headlong flight; it was full of scattered garments and vessels.
Probably, too, the messengers came across some disabled fugitive, and
learnt the secret of this amazing stampede. It was the result of one of those
sudden unaccountable panics to which the huge, unwieldy, heterogeneous
Eastern armies, which have no organised system of sentries, and no trained
discipline, are constantly liable. We have already met with several instances
in the history of Israel. Such was the panic which seized the Midianites
when Gideon's three hundred blew their trumpets; and the panic of the
Syrians before Ahab's pages of the provinces; and of the combined armies
in the Valley of Salt; and of the Moabites at Wady-el-Ahsy; and afterwards
of the Assyrians before the walls of Jerusalem. Fear is physically
contagious, and, when once it has set in, it swells with such unaccountable
violence, that the Greeks called these terrors "panic," because they believed
them to be directly inspired by the god Pan. Well-disciplined as was the
army of the Ten Thousand Greeks in their famous retreat, they nearly fell
victims to a sudden panic, had not Clearchus, with prompt resource,
published by the herald the proclamation of a reward for the arrest of the
man who had let the ass loose. Such an unaccountable terror—caused by a
noise as of chariots and of horses which reverberated among the hills—had
seized the Syrian host. They thought that Jehoram had secretly hired an
army of the princes of the Khetas[129] and of the Egyptians to march
suddenly upon them. In wild confusion, not stopping to reason or to inquire,
they took to flight, increasing their panic by the noise and rush of their own
precipitance.
No sooner had the messengers delivered their glad tidings, than the people
of Samaria began to pour tumultuously out of the gates, to fling themselves
on the food and on the spoil. It was like the rush of the dirty, starving,
emaciated wretches which horrified the keepers of the reserved stores at
Smolensk in Napoleon's retreat from Moscow, and forced them to shut the
gates, and fling food and grain to the struggling soldiers out of the windows
of the granaries. To secure order and prevent disaster, the king appointed his
attendant lord to keep the gate. But the torrent of people flung him down,
and they trampled on his body in their eagerness for relief. He died after
having seen that the promise of Elisha was fulfilled, and that the cheapness

and abundance had been granted, the prophecy of which he thought only fit
for his sceptical derision.
"The sudden panic which delivered the city," says Dean Stanley, "is the one
marked intervention on behalf of the northern capital. No other incident
could be found in the sacred annals so appropriately to express, in the
Church of Gouda, the pious gratitude of the citizens of Leyden, for their
deliverance from the Spanish army, as the miraculous raising of the siege of
Samaria."[130]

CHAPTER IX
THE SHUNAMMITE AND HAZAEL

2 Kings viii. 1-6, 7-15. (Circ. b.c. 886.)

"Our acts still follow with us from afar,
And what we have been makes us what we are."
George
Eliot.
The next anecdote of Elisha brings us once more into contact with the Lady
of Shunem. Famines, or dearths, were unhappily of very frequent
occurrence in a country which is so wholly dependent, as Palestine is, upon
the early and latter rain. On some former occasion Elisha had foreseen that
"Jehovah had called for a famine"; for the sword, the famine, and the
pestilence are represented as ministers who wait His bidding.[131] He had
also foreseen that it would be of long duration, and in kindness to the
Shunammite had warned her that she had better remove for a time into a
land in which there was greater plenty. It was under similar circumstances
that Elimelech and Naomi, ancestors of David's line, had taken their sons
Mahlon and Chilion, and gone to live in the land of Moab; and, indeed, the
famine which decided the migration of Jacob and his children into Egypt
had been a turning-point in the history of the Chosen People.
The Lady of Shunem had learnt by experience the weight of Elisha's words.
Her husband is not mentioned, and was probably dead; so she arose with
her household, and went for seven years to live in the plain of Philistia. At
the end of that time the dearth had ceased, and she returned to Shunem, but
only to find that during her absence her house and land were in possession
of other owners, and had probably escheated to the Crown. The king was
the ultimate, and to a great extent the only, source of justice in his little
kingdom, and she went to lay her claim before him and demand the
restitution of her property. By a providential circumstance she came exactly

at the most favourable moment. The king—it must have been Jehoram—
was at the very time talking to Gehazi about the great works of Elisha. As it
is unlikely that he would converse long with a leper, and as Gehazi is still
called "the servant of the man of God," the incident may here be narrated
out of order. It is pleasant to find Jehoram taking so deep an interest in the
prophet's story. Already on many occasions during his wars with Moab and
Syria, as well as on the occasion of Naaman's visit, if that had already
occurred, he had received the completest proof of the reality of Elisha's
mission, but he might be naturally unaware of the many private incidents in
which he had exhibited a supernatural power. Among other stories Gehazi
was telling him that of the Shunammite, and how Elisha had given life to
her dead son. At that juncture she came before the king, and Gehazi said,
"My lord, O king, this is the very woman, and this is her son whom Elisha
recalled to life." In answer to Jehoram's questions she confirmed the story,
and he was so much impressed by the narrative that he not only ordered the
immediate restitution of her land, but also of the value of its products
during the seven years of her exile.
We now come to the fulfilment of the second of the commands which Elijah
had received so long before at Horeb. To complete the retribution which
was yet to fall on Israel, he had been bidden to anoint Hazael to be king of
Syria in the room of Benhadad. Hitherto the mandate had remained
unfulfilled, because no opportunity had occurred; but the appointed time
had now arrived. Elisha, for some purpose, and during an interval of peace,
visited Damascus, where the visit of Naaman and the events of the Syrian
wars had made his name very famous. Benhadad II., grandson or great-
grandson of Rezin, after a stormy reign of some thirty years, marked by
some successes, but also by the terrible reverses already recorded, lay
dangerously ill. Hearing the news that the wonder-working prophet of Israel
was in his capital, he sent to ask of him the question, "Shall I recover?" It
had been the custom from the earliest days to propitiate the favour of
prophets by presents, without which even the humblest suppliant hardly
ventured to approach them.[132] The gift sent by Benhadad was truly royal,
for he thought perhaps that he could purchase the intercession or the
miraculous intervention of this mighty thaumaturge. He sent Hazael with a
selection "of every good thing of Damascus," and, like an Eastern, he

endeavoured to make his offering seem more magnificent[133] by
distributing it on the backs of forty camels.
At the head of this imposing procession of camels walked Hazael, the
commander of the forces, and stood in Elisha's presence with the humble
appeal, "Thy son Benhadad, King of Syria, hath sent me to thee, saying,
Shall I recover of this disease?"
About the king's munificence we are told no more, but we cannot doubt that
it was refused. If Naaman's still costlier blessing had been rejected, though
he was about to receive through Elisha's ministration an inestimable boon, it
is unlikely that Elisha would accept a gift for which he could offer no
return, and which, in fact, directly or indirectly, involved the death of the
sender. But the historian does not think it necessary to pause and tell us that
Elisha sent back the forty camels unladen of their treasures. It was not
worth while to narrate what was a matter of course. If it had been no time, a
few years earlier, to receive money and garments, and olive-yards and
vineyards, and men-servants and maid-servants, still less was it a time to do
so now. The days were darker now than they had been, and Elisha himself
stood near the Great White Throne. The protection of these fearless
prophets lay in their utter simplicity of soul. They rose above human fears
because they stood above human desires. What Elisha possessed was more
than sufficient for the needs of the plain and humble life of one whose
communing was with God. It was not wonderful that prophets should rise to
an elevation whence they could look down with indifference upon the
superfluities of the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, when even sages of
the heathen have attained to a similar independence of earthly luxuries. One
who can climb such mountain-heights can look with silent contempt on
gold.
But there is a serious difficulty about Elisha's answer to the embassage.
"Go, say unto him"—so it is rendered in our Authorised Version—"Thou
mayest certainly recover: howbeit the Lord hath showed me that he shall
surely die."
It is evident that the translators of 1611 meant the emphasis to be laid on the
"mayest," and understood the answer of Elisha to mean, "Thy recovery is
quite possible; and yet"—he adds to Hazael, and not as part of his answer to

the king—"Jehovah has shown me that dying he shall die,"—not indeed of
this disease, but by other means before he has recovered from it.
Unfortunately, however, the Hebrew will not bear this meaning. Elisha bids
Hazael to go back with the distinct message, "Thou shalt surely recover," as
it is rightly rendered in the Revised Version.
This, however, is the rendering, not of the written text as it stands, but of
the margin. Every one knows that in the Masoretic original the text itself is
called the K'thîb, or "what is written," whereas the margin is called Q'rî,
"read." Now, our translators, both those of 1611 and those of the Revision
Committee, all but invariably follow the Kethîb as the most authentic
reading. In this instance, however, they abandon the rule and translate the
marginal reading.
What, then, is the written text?
It is the reverse of the marginal reading, for it has: "Go, say, Thou shalt not
recover."
The reader may naturally ask the cause of this startling discrepancy.
It seems to be twofold.
(I.) Both the Hebrew word lo, "not" (‫)ֹלא‬, and the word lo, "to him" (‫)לֹו‬,
have precisely the same pronunciation. Hence this text might mean either
"Go, say to him, Thou shalt certainly recover," or "Go, say, Thou shalt not
recover." The same identity of the negative and the dative of the preposition
has made nonsense of another passage of the Authorised Version, where
"Thou hast multiplied the nation, and not increased the joy: they joy before
Thee according to the joy of harvest," should be "Thou hast multiplied the
nation, and increased its joy." So, too, the verse "It is He that hath made us,
and not we ourselves," may mean "It is He that hath made us, and to Him
we belong." In the present case the adoption of the negative (which would
have conveyed to Benhadad the exact truth) is not possible; for it makes the
next clause and its introduction by the word "Howbeit" entirely
meaningless.
But (II.) this confusion in the text might not have arisen in the present
instance but for the difficulty of Elisha's appearing to send a deliberately

false message to Benhadad, and a message which he tells Hazael at the time
is false.
Can this be deemed impossible?
With the views prevalent in "those times of ignorance," I think not.
Abraham and Isaac, saints and patriarchs as they were, both told practical
falsehoods about their wives. They, indeed, were reproved for this, though
not severely; but, on the other hand, Jael is not reproved for her treachery to
Sisera; and Samuel, under the semblance of a Divine permission, used a
diplomatic ruse when he visited the household of Jesse; and in the apologue
of Micaiah a lying spirit is represented as sent forth to do service to
Jehovah; and Elisha himself tells a deliberate falsehood to the Syrians at
Dothan. The sensitiveness to the duty of always speaking the exact truth is
not felt in the East with anything like the intensity that it is in Christian
lands; and reluctant as we should be to find in the message of Elisha
another instance of that falsitas dispensativa which has been so fatally
patronised by some of the Fathers and by many Romish theologians, the
love of truth itself would compel us to accept this view of the case, if there
were no other possible interpretation.
I think, however, that another view is possible. I think that Elisha may have
said to Hazael, "Go, say unto him, Thou shalt surely recover," with the
same accent of irony in which Micaiah said at first to the two kings, "Go up
to Ramoth-Gilead, and prosper; for the Lord shall deliver it into the hand of
the king." I think that his whole manner and the tone of his voice may have
shown to Hazael, and may have been meant to show him, that this was not
Elisha's real message to Benhadad. Or, to adopt the same line of explanation
with an unimportant difference, Elisha may have meant to imply, "Go,
follow the bent which I know you will follow; go, carry back to your master
the lying message that I said he would recover. But that is not my message.
My message, whether it suits your courtier instincts or not, is that Jehovah
has warned me that he shall surely die."
That some such meaning as this attaches to the verse seems to be shown by
the context. For not only was some reproof involved in Elisha's words, but
he showed his grief still more by his manner. It was as though he had said,
"Take back what message you choose, but Benhadad will certainly die"; and

then he fastened his steady gaze on the soldier's countenance, till Hazael
blushed and became uneasy. Only when he noted that Hazael's conscience
was troubled by the glittering eyes which seemed to read the inmost secrets
of his heart did Elisha drop his glance, and burst into tears. "Why weepeth,
my lord?" asked Hazael, in still deeper uneasiness. Whereupon Elisha
revealed to him the future. "I weep," he said, "because I see in thee the
curse and the avenger of the sins of my native land. Thou wilt become to
them a sword of God; thou wilt set their fortresses on fire; thou wilt
slaughter their youths; thou wilt dash their little ones to pieces against the
stones; thou wilt rip up their women with child." That he actually inflicted
these savageries of warfare on the miserable Israelites we are not told, but
we are told that he smote them in all their coasts; that Jehovah delivered
them into his hands; that he oppressed Israel all the days of Jehoahaz.[134]
That being so, there can be no question that he carried out the same laws of
atrocious warfare which belonged to those times and continued long
afterwards. Such atrocities were not only inflicted on the Israelites again
and again by the Assyrians and others,[135] but they themselves had often
inflicted them, and inflicted them with what they believed to be Divine
approval, on their own enemies.[136] Centuries after, one of their own poets
accounted it a beatitude to him who should dash the children of the
Babylonians against the stones.[137]
As the answer of Hazael is usually read and interpreted, we are taught to
regard it as an indignant declaration that he could never be guilty of such
vile deeds. It is regarded as though it were "an abhorrent repudiation of his
future self." The lesson often drawn from it in sermons is that a man may
live to do, and to delight in, crimes which he once hated and deemed it
impossible that he should ever commit.
The lesson is a most true one, and is capable of a thousand illustrations. It
conveys the deeply needed warning that those who, even in thought, dabble
with wrong courses, which they only regard as venial peccadilloes, may live
to commit, without any sense of horror, the most enormous offences. It is
the explanation of the terrible fact that youths who once seemed innocent
and holy-minded may grow up, step by step, into colossal criminals. "Men,"
says Scherer, "advance unconsciously from errors to faults, and from faults
to crimes, till sensibility is destroyed by the habitual spectacle of guilt, and

the most savage atrocities come to be dignified by the name of State
policy."

"Lui-même à son portrait forcé de rendre hommage,
Il frémira d'horreur devant sa propre image."

But true and needful as these lessons are, they are entirely beside the mark
as deduced from the story of Hazael. What he said was not, as in our
Authorised Version, "But what, is thy servant a dog, that he should do this
great thing?" nor by "great thing" does he mean "so deadly a crime." His
words, more accurately rendered in our Revision, are, "But what is thy
servant, which is but a dog, that he should do this great thing?" or, "But
what is the dog, thy servant?" It was a hypocritic deprecation of the future
importance and eminence which Elisha had prophesied for him. There is not
the least sense of horror either in his words or in his thoughts. He merely
means "A mere dog, such as I am, can never accomplish such great
designs." A dog in the East is utterly despised;[138] and Hazael, with
Oriental irony, calls himself a dog, though he was the Syrian Commander-
in-chief—just as a Chinaman, in speaking of himself, adopts the periphrasis
"this little thief."
Elisha did not notice his sham humility, but told him, "The Lord hath
showed me that thou shalt be King over Syria." The date of the event was
b.c. 886.

The scene has sometimes been misrepresented to Elisha's discredit, as
though he suggested to the general the crimes of murder and rebellion. The
accusation is entirely untenable. Elisha was, indeed, in one sense,
commissioned to anoint Hazael King of Syria, because the cruel soldier had
been predestined by God to that position; but, in another sense, he had no
power whatever to give to Hazael the mighty kingdom of Aram, nor to
wrest it from the dynasty which had now held it for many generations. All
this was brought about by the Divine purpose, in a course of events entirely
out of the sphere of the humble man of God. In the transferring of this
crown he was in no sense the agent or the suggester. The thought of
usurpation must, without doubt, have been already in Hazael's mind.
Benhadad, as far as we know, was childless. At any rate he had no natural
heirs, and seems to have been a drunken king, whose reckless undertakings

and immense failures had so completely alienated the affections of his
subjects from himself and his dynasty, that he died undesired and
unlamented, and no hand was uplifted to strike a blow in his defence. It
hardly needed a prophet to foresee that the sceptre would be snatched by so
strong a hand as that of Hazael from a grasp so feeble as that of Benhadad
II. The utmost that Elisha had done was, under Divine guidance, to read his
character and his designs, and to tell him that the accomplishment of these
designs was near at hand.
So Hazael went back to Benhadad, and in answer to the eager inquiry,
"What said Elisha to thee?" he gave the answer which Elisha had foreseen
that he meant to give, and which was in any case a falsehood, for it
suppressed half of what Elisha had really said. "He told me," said Hazael,
"that thou shouldest surely recover."
Was the sequel of the interview the murder of Benhadad by Hazael?
The story has usually been so read, but Elisha had neither prophesied this
nor suggested it. The sequel is thus described. "And it came to pass on the
morrow, that he took the coverlet,[139] and dipped it in water, and spread it
on his face, so that he died: and Hazael reigned in his stead." The repetition
of the name Hazael in the last clause is superfluous if he was the subject of
the previous clause, and it has been consequently conjectured that "he took"
is merely the impersonal idiom "one took." Some suppose that, as
Benhadad was in the bath, his servant took the bath-cloth, wetted it, and
laid its thick folds over the mouth of the helpless king; others, that he
soaked the thick quilt, which the king was too weak to lift away.[140] In
either case it is hardly likely that a great officer like Hazael would have
been in the bath-room or the bed-room of the dying king. Yet we must
remember that the Prætorian Præfect Macro is said to have suffocated
Tiberius with his bed-clothes. Josephus says that Hazael strangled his
master with a net; and, indeed, he has generally been held guilty of the
perpetration of the murder. But it is fair to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Be that as it may, he seems to have reigned for some forty-six years (b.c.
886-840), and to have bequeathed the sceptre to a son on whom he had
bestowed the old dynastic name of Benhadad.

CHAPTER X
(1) JEHORAM BEN-JEHOSHAPHAT OF JUDAH

b.c. 851-843

(2) AHAZIAH BEN-JEHORAM OF JUDAH

b.c. 843-842

2 Kings viii. 16-24, 25-29

"Bear like the Turk, no brother near the throne."—Pope.
The narrative now reverts to the kingdom of Judah, of which the historian,
mainly occupied with the great deeds of the prophet in Israel, takes at this
period but little notice.
He tells us that in the fifth year of Jehoram of Israel, son of Ahab, his
namesake and brother-in-law, Jehoram of Judah, began to reign in Judah,
though his father, Jehoshaphat, was then king.[141]
The statement is full of difficulties, especially as we have been already told
(i. 17) that Jehoram ben-Ahab of Israel began to reign in the second year of
Jehoram ben-Jehoshaphat of Judah, and (iii. 1) in the eighteenth year of
Jehoshaphat. It is hardly worth while to pause here to disentangle these
complexities in a writer who, like most Eastern historians, is content with
loose chronological references. By the current mode of reckoning, the
twenty-five years of Jehoshaphat's reign may merely mean twenty-three and
a month or two of two other years; and some suppose that, when Jehoram of
Judah was about sixteen, his father went on the expedition against Moab,
and associated his son with him in the throne. This is only conjecture.
Jehoshaphat, of all kings, least needed a coadjutor, particularly so weak and
worthless a one as his son; and though the association of colleagues with

themselves has been common in some realms, there is not a single instance
of it in the history of Israel and Judah—the case of Uzziah, who was a leper,
not being to the point.[142]
The kings both of Israel and of Judah at this period, with the single
exception of the brave and good Jehoshaphat, were unworthy and
miserable. The blight of the Jezebel-marriage and the curse of Baal-worship
lay upon both kingdoms. It is scarcely possible to find such wretched
monarchs as the two sons of Jezebel—Ahaziah and Jehoram in Israel, and
the son-in-law and grandson of Jezebel, Jehoram and Ahaziah, in Judah.
Their respective reigns are annals of shameful apostasy, and almost
unbroken disaster.
Jehoram ben-Jehoshaphat of Judah was thirty-two years old when he began
his independent reign, and reigned for eight deplorable years. The fact that
his mother's name is (exceptionally) omitted seems to imply that his father
Jehoshaphat set the good example of monogamy.[143] Jehoram was wholly
under the influence of Athaliah, his wife, and of Jezebel, his mother-in-law,
and he introduced into Judah their alien abominations. He "walked in their
way, and did evil in the sight of the Lord." The Chronicler fills up the
general remark by saying that he did his utmost to foster idolatry by
erecting bamoth in the mountains of Judah, and compelled his people to
worship there, in order to decentralise the religious services of the kingdom,
and so to diminish the glory of the Temple. He introduced Baal-worship
into Judah, and either he or his son was the guilty builder of a temple to
Baalim, not only on the "opprobrious mount" on which stood the idolatrous
chapels of Solomon, but on the Hill of the House itself. This temple had its
own high priest, and was actually adorned with treasures torn from the
Temple of Jehovah.[144] So bad was Jehoram's conduct that the historian can
only attribute his non-destruction to the "covenant of salt" which God had
made with David, "to give him a lamp for his children always."
But if actual destruction did not come upon him and his race, he came very
near such a fate, and he certainly experienced that "the path of transgressors
is hard." There is nothing to record about him but crime and catastrophe.
First Edom revolted. Jehoshaphat had subdued the Edomites, and only
allowed them to be governed by a vassal; now they threw off the yoke. The
Jewish King advanced against them to "Zair"—by which must be meant

apparently either Zoar (through which the road to Edom lay), or their
capital, Mount Seir.[145] There he was surrounded by the Edomite hosts; and
though by a desperate act of valour he cut his way through them at night in
spite of their reserve of chariots, yet his army left him in the lurch.[146]
Edom succeeded in establishing its final independence, to which we see an
allusion in the one hope held out to Esau by Isaac in that "blessing" which
was practically a curse.
The loss of so powerful a subject-territory, which now constituted a source
of danger on the eastern frontier of Judah, was succeeded by another
disaster on the south-west, in the Shephelah or lowland plain. Here Libnah
revolted,[147] and by gaining its autonomy contracted yet farther the narrow
limits of the southern kingdom.
The Book of Kings tells us no more about the Jewish Jehoram, only adding
that he died and was buried with his fathers, and was succeeded by his son
Ahaziah. But the Book of Chronicles, which adds far darker touches to his
character, also heightens to an extraordinary degree the intensity of his
punishment. It tells us that he began his reign by the atrocious murder of his
six younger brothers, for whom, following the old precedent of Rehoboam,
Jehoshaphat had provided by establishing them as governors of various
cities. As his throne was secure, we cannot imagine any motive for this
brutal massacre except the greed of gain, and we can only suppose that, as
Jehoram ben-Jehoshaphat became little more than a friendly vassal of his
kinsmen in Israel, so he fell under the deadly influence of his wife Athaliah,
as completely as his father-in-law had done under the spell of her mother
Jezebel. With his brothers he also swept away a number of the chief nobles,
who perhaps embraced the cause of his murdered kinsmen. Such conduct
breathes the known spirit of Jezebel and of Athaliah. To rebuke him for this
wickedness, he received the menace of a tremendous judgment upon his
home and people in a writing from Elijah, whom we should certainly have
assumed to be dead long before that time. The judgment itself followed.
The Philistines and Arabians invaded Judah, captured Jerusalem, and
murdered all Jehoram's own children, except Ahaziah, who was the
youngest. Then Jehoram, at the age of thirty-eight, was smitten with an
incurable disease of the bowels, of which he died two years later, and not
only died unlamented, but was refused burial in the sepulchres of the kings.

In any case his reign and that of his son and successor were the most
miserable in the annals of Judah, as the reigns of their namesakes and
kinsmen, Ahaziah ben-Ahab and Jehoram ben-Ahab, were also the most
miserable in the annals of Israel.
Jehoram was succeeded on the throne of Judah by his son Ahaziah. If the
chronology and the facts be correct, Ahaziah ben-Jehoram of Judah must
have been born when his father was only eighteen, though he was the
youngest of the king's sons, and so escaped from being massacred in the
Philistine invasion. He succeeded at the age of twenty-two, and only
reigned a single year. During this year his mother, the Gebîrah Athaliah, the
daughter of Ahab and Jezebel, and granddaughter of the Tyrian Ethbaal,
was all-supreme. She bent the weak nature of her son to still further
apostasies. She was "his counsellor to do wickedly," and her Baal-priest
Mattan was more important than the Aaronic high priest of the despised and
desecrated Temple. Never did Judah sink to so low a level, and it was well
that the days of Ahaziah of Judah were cut short.
The only event in his reign was the share he took with his uncle Jehoram of
Israel in his campaign to protect Ramoth-Gilead from Hazael. The
expedition seems to have been successful in its main purpose. Ramoth-
Gilead, the key to the districts of Argob and Bashan, was of immense
importance for commanding the country beyond Jordan. It seems to be the
same as Ramath-Mizpeh (Josh. xiii. 26); and if so, it was the spot where
Jacob made his covenant with Laban. Ahab, or his successors, in spite of
the disastrous end of the expedition to Ahab personally, had evidently
recovered the frontier fortress from the Syrian king.[148] Its position upon a
hill made its possession vital to the interests of Gilead; for the master of
Ramah was the master of that Trans-Jordanic district. But Hazael had
succeeded his murdered master, and was already beginning to fulfil the
ruthless mission which Elisha had foreseen with tears. Jehoram ben-Ahab
seems to have held his own against Hazael for a time; but in the course of
the campaign at Ramoth he was so severely wounded that he was
compelled to leave his army under the command of Jehu, and to return to
Jezreel, to be healed of his wounds. Thither his nephew Ahaziah of Judah
went to visit him; and there, as we shall hear, he too met his doom. That
fate, the Chronicler tells us, was the penalty of his iniquities. "The
destruction of Ahaziah was of God by coming to Joram."

We have no ground for accusing either king of any want of courage; yet it
was obviously impolitic of Jehoram to linger unnecessarily in his luxurious
capital, while the army of Israel was engaged in service on a dangerous
frontier. The wounds inflicted by the Syrian archers may have been
originally severe. Their arrows at this time played as momentous a part in
history as the cloth-yard shafts of our English bowmen which "sewed the
French ranks together" at Poictiers, Creçy, and Azincour. But Jehoram had
at any rate so far recovered that he could ride in his chariot; and if he had
been wise and bravely vigorous, he would not have left his army under a
subordinate at so perilous an epoch, and menaced by so resolute a foe. Or if
he were indeed compelled to consult the better physicians at Jezreel, he
should have persuaded his nephew Ahaziah of Judah—who seems to have
been more or less of a vassal as well as a kinsman—to keep an eye on the
beleaguered fort. Both kings, however, deserted their post,—Jehoram to
recover perfect health; and Ahaziah, who had been his comrade—as their
father and grandfather had gone together to the same war—to pay a state
visit of condolence to the royal invalid. The army was left under a popular,
resolute, and wholly unscrupulous commander, and the results powerfully
affected the immediate and the ultimate destiny of both kingdoms.

CHAPTER XI
THE REVOLT OF JEHU

b.c. 842

2 Kings ix. 1-37

"Te semper anteit sæva Necessitas
Clavos trabales et cuneos manu,
Gestans ahenâ."
Horat., Od., I. xxxv. 17.
A long period had elapsed since Elijah had received the triple commission
which was to mark the close of his career. Two of those Divine behests had
now been accomplished. He had anointed Elisha, son of Shaphat, of Abel-
Meholah, to be prophet in his room;[149] and Elisha had anointed Hazael to
be king over Syria;[150] the third and more dangerous commission,
involving nothing less than the overthrow of the mighty dynasty of Omri,
remained still unaccomplished.

If the name of Jehu ("Jehovah is He")[151] had been actually mentioned to
Elijah, the dreadful secret must have remained buried in the breast of the
prophet and in that of his successor for many years. Further, Jehu was yet a
very young man, and to have marked him out as the founder of a dynasty
would have been to doom him to certain destruction. An Eastern king,
whose family has once securely seated itself on the throne, is hedged round
with an awful divinity, and demands an unquestioning obedience. Elijah
had been removed from earth before this task had been fulfilled, and Elisha
had to wait for his opportunity. But the doom was passed, though the
judgment was belated. The sons of Ahab were left a space to repent, or to
fill to the brim the cup of their father's iniquities.

"The sword of Heaven is not in haste to smite,

Nor yet doth linger."
Ahaziah, Ahab's eldest son, after a reign of one year, marked only by crimes
and misfortunes, had ended in overwhelming disaster his deplorable career.
His brother Jehoram had succeeded him, and had now been on the throne
for at least twelve years, which had been chiefly signalised by that
unsuccessful attempt to recover the territory of revolted Moab, to which we
owe the celebrated Stone of Mesha. We have already narrated the result of
the campaign which had so many vicissitudes. The combined armies of
Israel, Judah, and Edom had been delivered by the interposition of Elisha
from perishing of thirst beside the scorched-up bed of the Wady-el-Ahsy;
and availing themselves of the rash assault of the Moabites, had swept
everything before them. But Moab stood at bay at Kir-Haraseth (Kerak), his
strongest fortress, six miles from Ar or Rabbah, and ten miles east of the
southern end of the Dead Sea. It stood three thousand feet above the level of
the sea, and is defended by a network of steep valleys. Nevertheless, Israel
would have subdued it, but for the act of horrible despair to which the King
of Moab resorted in his extremity, by offering up his eldest son as a burnt-
offering to Chemosh upon the wall of the city. Horror-stricken by the
catastrophe, and terrified with the dread that the vengeance of Chemosh
could not but be aroused by so tremendous a sacrifice, the besieging host
had retired. From that moment Moab had not only been free, but assumed
the rôle of an aggressor, and sent her marauding bands to harry and carry
the farms and homesteads of her former conqueror.[152]
Then followed the aggressions of Benhadad which had been frustrated by
the insight of Elisha, and which owed their temporary cessation to his
generosity.[153] The reappearance of the Syrians in the field had reduced
Samaria to the lowest depths of ghastly famine. But the day of the guilty
city had not yet come, and a sudden panic, caused among the invaders by a
rumoured assault of Hittites and Egyptians, had saved her from destruction.
[154]
Taking advantage of the respite caused by the change of the Syrian
dynasty, and pressing on his advantage, Jehoram, with the aid of his Judæan
nephew, had once more got possession of Ramoth-Gilead before Hazael
was secure on the throne which he had usurped.
This then was the situation:—The allied and kindred kings of Israel and
Judah were idling in the pomp of hospitality at Jezreel; their armies were

encamped about Ramoth-Gilead; and at the head of the host of Israel was
the crafty and vehement grandson of Nimshi.
Elisha saw and seized his opportunity. The day of vengeance from the Lord
had dawned. Things had not materially altered since the days of Ahab. If
Jehovah was nominally worshipped, if the very names of the kings of Israel
bore witness to His supremacy,[155] Baal was worshipped too. The curse
which Elijah had pronounced against Ahab and his house remained
unfulfilled. The credit of prophecy was at stake. The blood of Naboth and
his slaughtered sons cried to the Lord from the ground; and hitherto it
seemed to have cried in vain. If the Nebiîm (the prophetic class) were to
have their due weight in Israel, the hour had come, and the man was ready.
The light which falls on Elisha is dim and intermittent. His name is
surrounded by a halo of nebulous wonders, of which many are of a private
and personal character. But he was a known enemy of Ahab and his house.
He had, indeed, more than once interposed to snatch them from ruin, as in
the expedition against Moab, and in the awful straits of the siege of Samaria
by the Syrians. But his person had none the less been hateful to the sons of
Jezebel, and his life had been endangered by their bursts of sudden fury. He
could hardly again have a chance so favourable as that which now offered
itself, when the armed host was at one place and the king at another.
Perhaps, too, he may have been made aware that the soldiers were not well
pleased to find at their head a king who was so far a fainéant as to leave
them exposed to a powerful enemy, and show no eagerness to return. His
"urgent private affairs" were not so urgent as to entitle him to take his ease
at luxurious Jezreel.
Where Elisha was at the time we do not know—perhaps at Dothan, perhaps
at Samaria. Suddenly he called to him a youth—one of the Sons of the
Prophets, on whose speed and courage he could rely—placed in his hands a
vial of the consecrated anointing oil,[156] told him to gird up his loins,[157]
and to speed across the Jordan to Ramoth-Gilead. When he arrived, he was
to bid Jehu rise up from the company of his fellow-captains to hurry him
into "a chamber within a chamber,"[158] to shut the door for secrecy, to pour
the consecrating oil upon his head, to anoint him King of Israel in the name
of Jehovah, and then to fly without a moment's delay.[159]

The messenger—the Rabbis guess that he was Jonah, the son of Amittai[160]
—knew well that his was a service of immense peril, in which his life might
easily pay the forfeit of his temerity. How was he to guess that at once,
without striking a blow, the host of Israel would fling to the winds its sworn
allegiance to the son of the warrior Ahab, the fourth monarch of the
powerful dynasty of Omri? Might not any one of a thousand possible
accidents thwart a conspiracy of which the success depended on the
unflinching courage and promptitude of his single hand?
He was but a youth, but he was the trained pupil of a master who had, again
and again, stood before kings, and not been afraid. He sprang from a
community which inherited the splendid traditions of the Prophet of Flame.
He did not hesitate a moment. He tightened the camel's hide round his
naked limbs, flung back the long dark locks of the Nazarite, and sped upon
his way. A true son of the schools of Jehovah's prophets has, and can have,
no fear of man. The armies of Israel and Judah saw the wild, flying figure
of a young man, with his hairy garment and streaming locks, rush through
the camp. Whatever might be their surmisings, he brooked no questions.
Availing himself of the awe with which the shadow of Elijah had covered
the sacrosanct person of a prophetic messenger, he made his way straight to
the war-council of the captains; and brushing aside every attempt to impede
his progress with the plea that he was the bearer of Jehovah's message, he
burst into the council of the astonished warriors, who were assembled in the
private courtyard of a house in the fortress-town.[161]
He knew the fame of Jehu, but did not know his person, and dared not
waste time. "I have an errand to thee, O captain," he said to the assembly
generally. The message had been addressed to no one in particular, and Jehu
naturally asked, "Unto which of all of us?" With the same swift intuition
which has often enabled men in similar circumstances to recognise a leader
—as Josephus recognised Vespasian, and St. Severinus recognised Odoacer,
and Joan of Arc recognised Charles VI. of France—he at once replied, "To
thee, O captain." Jehu did not hesitate a moment. Prophets had shown,
many a time, that their messages might not be neglected or despised. He
rose, and followed the youth, who led him into the most secret recess of the
house, and there, emptying on his head the fragrant oil of consecration,
said, "Thus saith Jehovah, God of Israel, I have anointed thee king over the

people of Jehovah, even over Israel."[162] He was to smite the house of his
master Ahab in vengeance for the blood of Jehovah's prophets and servants
whom Jezebel had murdered. Ahab's house, every male of it, young and old,
bond and free,[163] is doomed to perish, as the houses of Jeroboam and of
Baasha had perished before them, by a bloody end. Further, the dogs should
eat Jezebel by the rampart of Jezreel,[164] and there should be none to bury
her.
One moment sufficed for his daring deed, for his burning message; the next
he had flung open the door and fled. The soldiers of the camp must have
whispered still more anxiously together as they saw the same agitated youth
rushing through their lines with the same impetuosity which had marked his
entrance. In those dark days the sudden appearance of a prophet was usually
the herald of some terrific storm.[165]
Jehu was utterly taken by surprise; but according to the reading preserved
by Ephraem Syrus in 2 Kings ix. 26, he had on the previous night seen in a
dream the blood of Naboth and his sons. If the thought of revolt had ever
passed for a moment through his mind, it had never assumed a definite
shape. True, he had been a warrior from his youth. True, he had been one of
Ahab's bodyguard, and had ridden before him in a chariot at least twenty
years earlier, and had now risen by valour and capacity to the high station of
captain of the host. True, also, that he had heard the great curse which
Elijah had pronounced on Ahab at the door of Naboth's vineyard; but he
heard it while he was yet an obscure youth, and he had little dreamed that
his was the hand which should carry it into execution. Who was he? And
had not the house of Omri been, in some sense, sanctioned by Heaven? And
were not the words of the prophet "wild and wandering cries," of which the
issues might be averted by such a repentance as that of Ahab?
And he felt another misgiving. Might not this scene be the plot of some
secret enemy? Might it not at any rate be a reckless jest palmed upon him
by his comrades? If any jealous member of the confederacy of captains
betrayed the fact that Jehu had tampered with their allegiance, would his
head be safe for a single hour? He would act warily. He came back to his
fellow-captains and said nothing.

But they were burning with curiosity. Something must be impending.
Prophets did not rush in thus tumultuously for no purpose. Must not the
youth's mantle of hair be some standard of war?

"Is all right?" they shouted. "Why did this frantic fellow come to thee?"[166]
"You know all about it," answered Jehu, with wary coolness. "You know
more about it than I do. You know the man, and what his talk was."

"Lies!" bluntly answered the rough soldiers.[167] "Tell us now."
Then Jehu's eye took measure of them and their feelings. A judge of men
and of men's countenances, he saw conspiracy flashing in their faces. He
saw that they suspected the true state of things, and were on fire to carry it
out. Perhaps they had caught sight of the vial of oil under the youth's scant
dress. Could any quickened observation at least fail to notice that the
soldier's dark locks were shining and fragrant, as they had not been a
moment ago, with consecrated oil?
Then Jehu frankly told them the perilous secret. Thus and thus had the
young prophet spoken, and had said, "Thus saith Jehovah, I have anointed
thee king over Israel."
The message was met with a shout of answering approbation. That shout
was the death-knell of the house of Omri. It showed that the reigning
dynasty had utterly forfeited its popularity. No luck had followed the sons
of Naboth's murderer. Israel was weary of their mother Jezebel. Why was
this king Jehoram, this king of evil auspices, who had been repudiated by
Moab and harried by Syria—why, in the first gleam of possible prosperity,
was he being detained at Jezreel by wounds which rumour said were
already sufficiently healed to allow him to return to his post? Down with
the seed of the murderer and the sorceress! Let brave Jehu be king, as
Jehovah has said!
So the captains sprang to their feet, and then and there seized Jehu, and
carried him in triumph to the top of the stairs which ran round the inside of
the courtyard, and stripped off their mantles to extemporise for him the
semblance of a cushioned throne.[168] Then in the presence of such soldiers

as they could trust they blew a sudden blast of the ram's horn, and shouted,
"Jehu is king!"
Jehu was not the man to let the grass grow under his feet. Nothing tries a
man's vigour and nerve so surely as a sudden crisis. It is this swift
resolution which has raised many a man to the throne, as it raised Otho, and
Napoleon I. and Napoleon III. The history of Israel is specially full of coups
d'état, but no one of them is half so decisive or overwhelming as this. Jehu
instantly accepted the office of Jehovah's avenger on the house of Ahab.[169]
Everything, as Jehu saw, depended on the suddenness and fury with which
the blow was delivered. "If you want me to be your king,"[170] he said,
"keep the lines secure, and guard the fortress walls. I will be my own
messenger to Jehoram. Let no deserter go forth to give him warning."[171]
It was agreed; and Jehu, only taking with him Bidkar, his fellow-officer, and
a small band of followers, set forth at full speed from Ramoth-Gilead.
The fortress of Ramoth, now the important town of Es-Salt, a place which
must always have been the key of Gilead, was built on the summit of a
rocky headland, fortified by nature as well as by art. It is south of the river
Jabbok, and lies at the head of the only easy road which runs down
westward to the Jordan and eastward to the rich plateau of the interior.[172]
Crossing the fords of the Jordan, Jehu would soon be able to join the main
road, which, passing Tirzah, Zaretan, and Beth-shean, and sweeping
eastward of Mount Gilboa, gives ready access to Jezreel.
The watchman on the lofty watchtower of the summer palace caught sight
of a storm of dust careering along from the eastward up the valley towards
the city.[173] The times were wild and troublous. What could it be? He
shouted his alarm, "I see a troop!" The tidings were startling, and the king
was instantly informed that chariots and horsemen were approaching the
royal city. "Send a horseman to meet them," he said, "with the message, 'Is
all well?'"
Forth flew the rider, and cried to the rushing escort, "The king asks, 'Is all
well? Is it peace?'" For probably the anxious city hoped that there might
have been some victory of the army against Hazael, which would fill them
with joy.

"What hast thou to do with peace? Turn thee behind me," answered Jehu;
and perforce the horseman, whatever may have been his conjectures, had to
follow in the rear.
"He reached them," cried the sentry on the watchtower, "but he does not
return."
The news was enigmatical and alarming; and the troubled king sent another
horseman. Again the same colloquy occurred, and again the watchman gave
the ominous message, adding to it the yet more perplexing news that, in the
mad and headlong driving[174] of the charioteer, he recognises the driving of
Jehu, the son of Nimshi.[175]
What had happened to his army? Why should the captain of the host be
driving thus furiously to Jezreel?
Matters were evidently very critical, whatever the swift approach of
chariots and horsemen might portend. "Yoke my chariot," said Jehoram;
and his nephew Ahaziah, who had shared his campaign, and was no less
consumed with anxiety to learn tidings which could not but be pressing,
rode by him in another chariot to meet Jehu. They took with them no escort
worth mentioning. The rebellion was not only sudden, but wholly
unexpected.
The two kings met Jehu in a spot of the darkest omen. It was the plot of
ground which had once been the vineyard of Naboth, at the door of which
Ahab had heard from Elijah the awful message of his doom. As the New
Forest was ominous to our early Norman kings as the witness of their
cruelties and encroachments, so was this spot to the house of Omri, though
it was adjacent to their ivory palace, and had been transformed from a
vineyard into a garden or pleasance.
"Is it peace, Jehu?" shouted the agitated king; by which probably he only
meant to ask, "Is all going well in the army at Ramoth?"
The fierce answer which burst from the lips of his general fatally
undeceived him. "What peace," brutally answered the rebel, "so long as the
whoredoms of thy mother Jezebel and her witchcrafts are so many?" She,
after all, was the fons et origo mali to the house of Jehoram. Hers was the

dark spirit of murder and idolatry which had walked in that house. She was
the instigator and the executer of the crime against Naboth. She had been
the foundress of Baal- and Asherah-worship; she was the murderess of the
prophets; she had been specially marked out for vengeance in the doom
pronounced both by Elijah and Elisha.
The answer was unmistakable. This was a revolt, a revolution. "Treachery,
Ahaziah!" shouted the terrified king, and instantly wheeled round his
chariot to flee.[176] But not so swiftly as to escape the Nemesis which had
been stealing upon him with leaden feet, but now smote him irretrievably
with iron hand. Without an instant's hesitation, Jehu snatched his bow from
his attendant charioteer, "filled his hands with it," and from its full stretch
and resonant string sped the arrow, which smote Jehoram in the back with
fatal force, and passed through his heart.[177] Without a word the unhappy
king sank down upon his knees[178] in his chariot, and fell face forward,
dead.

"Take him up," cried Jehu to Bidkar,[179] "and fling him down where he is,
—here in this portion of the field of Naboth the Jezreelite. Here, years ago,
you and I, as we rode behind Ahab,[180] heard Elijah utter his oracle on this
man's father, that vengeance should meet him here. Where the dogs licked
the blood of Naboth and his sons, let dogs lick the blood of the son of
Ahab."[181]
But Jehu was not the man to let the king's murder stay his chariot-wheels
when more work had yet to be done. Ahaziah of Judah, too, belonged to
Ahab's house, for he was Ahab's grandson, and Jehoram's nephew and ally.
Without stopping to mourn or avenge the tragedy of his uncle's murder,
Ahaziah fled towards Bethgan or Engannim,[182] the fountain of gardens,
south of Jezreel, on the road to Samaria and Jerusalem. Jehu gave the
laconic order, "Smite him also";[183] but fright added wings to the speed of
the hapless King of Judah. His chariot-steeds were royal steeds, and were
fresh; those of Jehu were spent with the long, fierce drive from Ramoth. He
got as far as the ascent of Gur before he was overtaken.[184] There, not far
from Ibleam, the rocky hill impeded his flight, and he was wounded by the
pursuers. But he managed to struggle onwards to Megiddo, on the south of
the plain of Jezreel, and there he hid himself.[185] He was discovered,

dragged out, and slain. Even Jehu's fierce emissaries did not make war on
dead bodies, any more than Hannibal did, or Charles V. They left such
meanness to Jehu himself, and to our Charles II. They did not interfere with
the dead king's remains. His servants carried them to Jerusalem, and there
he was buried with his fathers in the sepulchre of the kings, in the city of
David. As there was nothing more to tell about him, the historian omits the
usual formula about the rest of the acts of Ahaziah, and all that he did. His
death illustrates the proverb Mitgegangen mitgefangen: he was the comrade
of evil men, and he perished with them.
Jehu speedily reached Jezreel, but the interposition of Jehoram and the
orders for the pursuit of Ahaziah had caused a brief delay, and Jezebel had
already been made aware that her doom was imminent.
Not even the sudden and dreadful death of her son, and the nearness of her
own fate, daunted the steely heart of the Tyrian sorceress. If she was to die,
she would meet death like a queen. As though for some Court banquet, she
painted her eyelashes and eyebrows with antimony, to make her eyes look
large and lustrous,[186] and put on her jewelled head-dress.[187] Then she
mounted the palace tower, and, looking down through the lattice above the
city gate, watched the thundering advance of Jehu's chariot, and hailed the
triumphant usurper with the bitterest insult she could devise. She knew that
Omri, her husband's father, had taken swift vengeance on the guilt of the
usurper Zimri, who had been forced to burn himself in the harem at Tirzah
after one month's troubled reign. Her shrill voice was heard above the roar
of the chariot-wheels in the ominous taunt,—

"Is it peace, thou Zimri, thou murderer of thy master?"[188]
No!—She meant, "There is no peace for thee nor thine, any more than for
me or mine! Thou mayest murder us; but thee too, thy doom awaiteth!"
Stung by the ill-omened words, Jehu looked up at her and shouted,—
"Who is on my side? Who?"
The palace was apparently rife with traitors. Ahab had been the first
polygamist among the kings of Israel, and therefore the first also to
introduce the odious atrocity of eunuchs. Those hapless wretches, the

portents of Eastern seraglios, the disgrace of humanity, are almost always
the retributive enemies of the societies of which they are the helpless
victims. Fidelity or gratitude are rarely to be looked for from natures
warped into malignity by the ruthless misdoing of men. Nor was the nature
of Jezebel one to inspire affection. One or two eunuchs[189] immediately
thrust out of the windows their bloated and beardless faces. "Fling her
down!" Jehu shouted. Down they flung the wretched queen (has any queen
ever died a death so shamelessly ignominious?), and her blood spirted upon
the wall, and on the horses. Jehu, who had only stopped for an instant in his
headlong rush, drove his horses over her corpse,[190] and entered the gate of
her capital with his wheels crimson with her blood. History records scarcely
another instance of such a scene, except when Tullia, a century later, drove
her chariot over the dead body of her father Servius Tullius in the Vicus
Sceleratus of ancient Rome.[191]
But what cared Jehu? Many a conqueror ere now has sat down to the dinner
prepared for his enemy; and the obsequious household of the dead tyrants,
ready to do the bidding of their new lord, ushered the hungry man to the
banquet provided for the kings whom he had slain. No man dreamt of
uttering a wail; no man thought of raising a finger for dead Jehoram or for
dead Jezebel, though they had all been under her sway for at least five-and-
thirty years. "The wicked perish, and no man regardeth." "When the wicked
perish, there is shouting."[192]
We may be startled at a revolution so sudden and so complete; yet it is true
to history. A tyrant or a cabal may oppress a nation for long years. Their
word may be thought absolute, their power irresistible. Tyranny seems to
paralyse the courage of resistance, like the fabled head of Medusa. Remove
its fascination of corruption, and men become men, and not machines, once
more. Jehu's daring woke Israel from the lethargy which had made her
tolerate the murders and enchantments of this Baal-worshipping alien. In
the same way in one week Robespierre seemed to be an invincible autocrat;
the next week his power had crumbled into dust and ashes at a touch.
It was not until Jehu had sated his thirst and hunger after that wild drive,
which had ended in the murder of two kings and a queen and in his sudden
elevation to a throne, that it even occurred to this new tiger-king to ask what
had become of Jezebel. But when he had eaten and drunk, he said, "Go, see

now to this cursed woman, and bury her: for she is a king's daughter." That
she had been first Princess, then Queen, then Gebîrah in Israel for nearly a
full lifetime was nothing: it was nothing to Jehu that she was a wife, and
mother, and grandmother of kings and queens both of Israel and Judah;—
but she was also the daughter of Ethbaal, the priest-king of Tyre and Sidon,
and therefore any shameful treatment of her remains might kindle trouble
from the region of Phœnicia.[193]
But no one had taken the trouble so much as to look after the corpse of
Jezebel. The populace of Jezreel were occupied with their new king. Where
Jezebel fell, there she had been suffered to lie; and no one, apparently, cared
even to despoil her of the royal robes, now saturated with bloodshed. Flung
from the palace-tower, her body had fallen in the open space just outside the
walls—what is called "the mounds" of an Eastern city. In the strange
carelessness of sanitation which describes as "fate" even the visitation of an
avoidable pestilence, all sorts of offal are shot into this vacant space to
fester in the tropic heat. I myself have seen the pariah dogs and the vultures
feeding on a ghastly dead horse in a ruined space within the street of Beit-
Dejun; and the dogs and the vultures—"those national undertakers"—had
done their work unbidden on the corpse of the Tyrian queen. When men
went to bury her, they only found a few dog-mumbled bones—the skull,
and the feet, and the palms of the hands.[194] They brought the news to Jehu
as he rested after his feast. It did not by any means discompose him. He at
once recognised that another levin-bolt had fallen from the thunder-crash of
Elijah's prophecy, and he troubled himself about the matter no further. Her
carcase, as the man of God had prophesied, had become as dung upon the
face of the field, so that none could say, "This is Jezebel."[195]

CHAPTER XII
JEHU ESTABLISHED ON THE THRONE

b.c. 842-814

2 Kings x. 1-17

"The devil can quote Scripture for his purpose."
Shake
speare.

But the work of Jehu was not yet over. He was established at Jezreel; he
was lord of the palace and seraglio of his master; the army of Israel was
with him. But who could be sure that no civil war would arise, as between
the partisans of Zimri and Omri, as between Omri and Tibni? Ahab, first of
the kings of Israel, had left many sons. There were no less than seventy of
these princes at Samaria. Might there not be among them some youth of
greater courage and capacity than the murdered Jehoram? And could it be
anticipated that the late dynasty was so utterly unfortunate and execrated as
to have none left to do them reverence, or to strike one blow on their behalf,
after more than half a century of undisputed sway?[196] Jehu's coup de main
had been brilliantly successful. In one day he had leapt into the throne. But
Samaria was strong upon its watch-tower hill. It was full of Ahab's sons,
and had not yet declared on Jehu's side. It might be expected to feel some
gratitude to the dynasty which Jehu had supplanted, seeing that it owed to
the grandfather of the king whom he had just slain its very existence as the
capital of Israel.
He would put a bold face on his usurpation, and strike while the iron was
hot. He would not rouse opposition by seeming to assume that Samaria
would accept his rebellion. He therefore wrote a letter to the rulers of
Samaria[197]—which was but a journey of nine hours' distance from Jezreel
—and to the guardians of the young princes, reminding them that they were

masters in a strong city, protected with its own contingent of chariots and
horses, and well supplied with armour. He suggested that they should select
the most promising of Ahab's sons, make him king, and begin a civil war on
his behalf.
The event showed how prudent was this line of conduct. As yet Jehu had
not transferred the army from Ramoth-Gilead. He had doubtless taken good
care to prevent intelligence of his plans from reaching the adherents of
Jehoram in Samaria. To them the unknown was the terrible. All they knew
was that "Behold, two kings stood not before him!" The army must have
sanctioned his revolt: what chance had they? As for loyalty and affection, if
ever they had existed towards this hapless dynasty, they had vanished like a
dream. The people of Samaria and Jezreel had once been obedient as sheep
to the iron dominance of Jezebel. They had tolerated her idol-abominations,
and the insolence of her army of dark-browed priests. They had not risen to
defend the prophets of Jehovah, and had suffered even Elijah, twice over, to
be forced to flee for his life. They had borne, hitherto without a murmur, the
tragedies, the sieges, the famines, the humiliations, with which during these
reigns they had been familiar. And was not Jehovah against the waning
fortunes of the Beni-Omri? Elijah had undoubtedly cursed them, and now
the curse was falling. Jehu must doubtless have let it be known that he was
only carrying out the behest of their own citizen the great Elisha, who had
sent to him the anointing oil. They could find abundant excuses to justify
their defection from the old house, and they sent to the terrible man a
message of almost abject submission:—Let him do as he would; they would
make no king: they were his servants, and would do his bidding.
Jehu was not likely to be content with verbal or even written promises. He
determined, with cynical subtlety, to make them put a very bloody sign-
manual to their treaty, by implicating them irrevocably in his rebellion. He
wrote them a second mandate.
"If," he said, "ye accept my rule, prove it by your obedience. Cut off the
heads of your master's sons, and see that they are brought to me here to-
morrow by yourselves before the evening."
The ruthless order was fulfilled to the letter by the terrified traitors. The
king's sons were with their tutors, the lords of the city. On the very morning

that Jehu's second missive arrived, every one of these poor guiltless youths
was unceremoniously beheaded. The hideous, bleeding trophies were
packed in fig-baskets and sent to Jezreel.[198]
When Jehu was informed of this revolting present it was evening, and he
was sitting at a meal with his friends.[199] He did not trouble himself to rise
from his feast or to look at "death made proud by pure and princely beauty."
He knew that those seventy heads could only be the heads of the royal
youths. He issued a cool and brutal order that they should be piled in two
heaps[200] until the morning on either side the entrance of the city gates.
Were they watched? or were the dogs and vultures and hyænas again left to
do their work upon them? We do not know. In any case it was a scene of
brutal barbarism such as might have been witnessed in living memory in
Khiva or Bokhara;[201] nor must we forget that even in the last century the
heads of the brave and the noble rotted on Westminster Hall and Temple
Bar, and over the Gate of York, and over the Tolbooth at Edinburgh, and on
Wexford Bridge.
The day dawned, and all the people were gathered at the gate, which was
the scene of justice. With the calmest air imaginable the warrior came out to
them, and stood between the mangled heads of those who but yesterday had
been the pampered minions of fortune and luxury. His speech was short and
politic in its brutality. "Be yourselves the judges," he said. "Ye are
righteous. Jezebel called me a Zimri. Yes! I conspired against my master
and slew him: but"—and here he casually pointed to the horrible, bleeding
heaps—"who smote all these?" The people of Jezreel and the lords of
Samaria were not only passive witnesses of his rebellion; they were active
sharers in it. They had dabbled their hands in the same blood. Now they
could not choose but accept his dynasty: for who was there besides himself?
And then, changing his tone, he does not offer "the tyrant's devilish plea,
necessity," to cloak his atrocities, but—like a Romish inquisitor of Seville
or Granada—claims Divine sanction for his sanguinary violence. This was
not his doing. He was but an instrument in the hands of fate. Jehovah is
alone responsible. He is doing what He spake by His servant Elijah. Yes!
and there was yet more to do; for no word of Jehovah's shall fall to the
ground.

With the same cynical ruthlessness, and cold indifference to smearing his
robes in the blood of the slain, he carried out to the bitter end his task of
policy which he gilded with the name of Divine justice. Not content with
slaying Ahab's sons, he set himself to extirpate his race, and slew all who
remained to him in Jezreel, not only his kith and kin, but every lord and
every Baal-priest who favoured his house, until he left him none remaining.
But what a frightful picture do these scenes furnish us of the state of
religion and even of civilisation in Jezreel! There was this man-eating tiger
of a king wallowing in the blood of princes, and enacting scenes which
remind us of Dahomey and Ashantee, or of some Tartary khanate where
human hands are told out in the market-place after some avenging raid. And
amid all this savagery, squalor, and Turkish atrocity, the man pleads the
sanction of Jehovah, and claims, unrebuked, that he is only carrying out the
behests of Jehovah's prophets! It is not until long afterwards that the voice
of a prophet is heard repudiating his plea and denouncing his
bloodthirstiness.

"An evil soul producing holy witness
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek—
A goodly apple rotten at the core."

CHAPTER XIII
FRESH MURDERS—THE EXTIRPATION OF BAAL-WORSHIP
(b.c. 842)

2 Kings x. 12-28

"Jéhu, sur les hauts lieux, enfin osant offrir
Un téméraire encens que Dieu ne peut souffrir,
N'a pour servir sa cause et venger ses injures
Ni le cœur assez droit, ni les mains assez pures."
Racin
e.

After such abject subservience had been shown him by the lords of Samaria and
Jezreel, Jehu evidently had no further shadow of apprehension. He seems to have
loved blood for its own sake—to have been seized by a vertigo of blood-
poisoning. Having waded through slaughter to a throne, he loved to wash his
footsteps in the blood of the slain, and to stretch to the very uttermost—to stretch
until it cracked all its ravelled threads—the Divine sanction claimed by his
fanaticism or his hypocrisy.
When he had finished his massacres at Jezreel, he went to Samaria. It was only a
journey of a few hours. On the high road he met a company of travellers, whose
escort and rich apparel showed that they were persons of importance. They were
about to halt, perhaps for refreshment, at the shearing-house of the shepherds—the
place in which the sheep were gathered before they were shorn.[203]
"Who are ye?" he asked.
They answered that they were princes of the house of Judah, the brethren of
Ahaziah,[204] on their way to see the two kings at Jezreel, and to salute their
cousins, the children of Jehoram, and their kinsfolk the children of Jezebel the
Gebîrah.[205] The answer sealed their fate. Jehu ordered his followers to take them
alive. At first he had not decided what he would do with them. But half measures
had now become impossible. This cavalcade of princes little knew that they were
on their way to greet the dead children of a dead king and a dead queen. Jehu felt
that the possibilities of an endless vendetta must be quenched in blood. He gave

orders to slay them, and there in one hour forty-two more scions of the royal
houses of Judah and Israel were done to death.[206] With the usual reckless
insouciance of the East, where any tank or well is made the natural receptacle for
corpses regardless of ultimate consequences, their bodies were flung into the
cistern of the shearing-house, in which the sheep were washed before shearing,
just as the bodies of Gedaliah's followers were flung by Ishmael into the well at
Mizpah, and the bodies of our own murdered countrymen were flung into the well
of Cawnpore. He did not leave one of them alive.
Thus Jehu "murdered two kings, and one hundred and twelve princes, and gave
Queen Jezebel to dogs to eat; and if priests had but noticed how even Hosea
condemns and denounces his savagery, they would have abstained from some of
their glorifications of assassins and butchers, nor would they have appealed to this
man's hideous example, as they have done, to excuse some of their own revolting
atrocities."[207] But

"Crime was ne'er so black
As ghostly cheer and pious thanks to lack.
Satan is modest. At heaven's door he lays
His evil offspring, and in Scriptural phrase
And saintly posture gives to God the praise
And honour of his monstrous progeny."[208]

One cruel deed more or less was nothing to Jehu. Leaving this tank choked with
death and incarnadined with royal blood, he went on his way as if nothing
particular had happened. He had not proceeded far when he saw a man well known
to him, and of a spirit kindred to his own. It was the Arab ascetic and Nazarite
Jehonadab, the son of Rechab (or "The Rider"), the chief of the tribe of Kenites
who had flung in their lot with the children of Israel since the days of Moses.[209]
It was the tribe which had produced a Jael; and Jehonadab had something of the
fierce, fanatical spirit of the ancient chieftainess, who, in her own tent, had dashed
out with the tent-peg the brains of Sisera. His very name, "The Lord is noble,"
indicated that he was a worshipper of Jehovah, and his fierce zeal showed him to
be a genuine Kenite. Disgusted with the wickedness of cities, disgusted above all
with the loathly vice of drunkenness, which, as we see from the contemporary
prophets, had begun in this age to acquire fresh prominence in luxurious and
wealthy communities, he exacted of his sons a solemn oath that neither they nor
their successors would drink wine nor strong drink, and that, shunning the squalor
and corruption of cities, they would live in tents, as their nomad ancestors had
done in the days when Jethro and Hobab were princes of pastoral Midian. We learn
from Jeremiah, nearly two and a half centuries later, how faithfully that oath had

been observed; and how, in spite of all temptation, the vow of abstinence was
maintained, even when the strain of foreign invasion had driven the Rechabites
into Jerusalem from their desolated pastures.[210]
Jehu knew that the stern fanaticism of the Kenite Emîr would rejoice in his
exterminating zeal, and he recognised that the friendship and countenance of this
"good man and just," as Josephus calls him, would add strength to his cause, and
enable him to carry out his dark design. He therefore blessed him.[211]
"Is thine heart right with my heart, as my heart is with thy heart?" he asked, after
he had returned the greeting of Jehonadab.

"It is, it is!" answered the vehement Rechabite.[212]

"Then give me thy hand," he said; and grasping the Arab by the hand,[213] he
pulled him up into his chariot—the highest distinction he could bestow upon him
—and bade him come and witness his zeal for Jehovah.
His first task on arriving at Samaria was to tear up the last fibres of Ahab's kith and
destroy all his partisans. This was indeed to push to a self-interested extreme the
denunciation which had been pronounced upon Ahab; but the crime helped to
secure his fiercely founded throne.
One deep-seated plot was yet unaccomplished. It was the total extermination of
Baal-worship. To drive out for ever this orgiastic, corrupt, and alien idolatry was
right; but there is nothing to show that Jehu would have been unable to effect this
purpose by one stern decree, together with the destruction of Baal's images and
temple. A method so simply righteous did not suit this Nero-Torquemada, who
seemed to be never happy unless he united Jesuitical cunning with the pouring out
of rivers of massacre.
He summoned the people together; and as though he now threw off all pretence of
zeal for orthodoxy, he proclaimed that Ahab had served Baal a little, but Jehu
would serve him much. The Samaritans must have been endowed with infinite
gullibility if they could suppose that the king who had ridden into the city side by
side with such a man as Jehonadab—"the warrior in his coat of mail, the ascetic in
his shirt of hair"—who had already exhibited an unfathomable cunning, and had
swept away the Baal-priests of Jezreel, was indeed sincere in this new conversion.
[214]
Perhaps they felt it dangerous to question the sincerity of kings. The Baal-
worshippers of former days were known, and Jehu proclaimed that if any one of
them was missing at the great sacrifice which he intended to offer to Baal he
should be put to death. A solemn assembly to Baal was proclaimed, and every

apostate from God to nature-worship from all Israel was present, till the idol's
temple was thronged from end to end.[215] To add splendour to the solemnity, Jehu
bade the wardrobe-keeper to bring out all the rich vestments of Tyrian dye and
Sidonian broidery, and clothe the worshippers.[216] Solemnly advancing to the altar
with the Rechabite by his side, he warned the assembly to see that their gathering
was not polluted by the presence of a single known worshipper of Jehovah. Then,
apparently, he still further disarmed suspicion by taking a personal part in offering
the burnt-offering. Meanwhile, he had surrounded the temple and blocked every
exit with eighty armed warriors, and had threatened that any one of them should be
put to death if he let a single Baal-worshipper escape. When he had finished the
offering,[217] he went forth, and bade his soldiers enter, and slay, and slay, and slay
till none were left. Then flinging the corpses in a heap, they made their way to the
fortress of the Temple, where some of the priests may have taken refuge. They
dragged out and burnt the matstseboth of Baal,[218] broke down the great central
idol, and utterly dismantled the whole building. To complete the pollution of the
dishallowed shrine, he made it a common midden for Samaria, which it continued
to be for centuries afterwards.[219] It was his last voluntary massacre. The House of
Ahab was no more. Baal-worship in Israel never survived that exterminating blow.
Happily for the human race, such atrocities committed in the name of religion have
not been common. In Pagan history we have but few instances, except the
slaughter of the Magians at the beginning of the reign of Darius, son of Hystaspes.
Alas that other parallels should be furnished by the abominable tyranny of a false
Christianity, blessed and incited by popes and priests! The persecutions and
massacres of the Albigenses, preached by Arnold of Citeaux, and instigated by
Pope Innocent III.; the expulsion of the Jews from Spain; the deadly work of
Torquemada; the murderous furies of Alva among the hapless Netherlanders, urged
and approved by Pope Pius V.; the massacre of St. Bartholomew, for which Pope
Gregory and his cardinals sang their horrible Te Deum in their desecrated shrines,
—these are the parallels to the deeds of Jehu. He has found his chief imitators
among the votaries of a blood-stained and usurping sacerdotalism, which has
committed so many crimes and inflicted so many horrors on mankind.
And did God approve all this detestable mixture of zealous enthusiasm with lying
deceit and the insatiate thirst of blood?
If right be right, and wrong be wrong, the answer must not be an elaborate
subterfuge, but an uncompromising "No!" We need be under no doubt on that
subject. Christ Himself reproved His Apostles for savage zealotry, and taught them
that the Elijah-spirit was not the Christ-spirit. Nor is the Elisha-spirit the Christian
spirit any the more if these deeds of hypocrisy and blood were in any sense

approved by him who is sometimes regarded as the mild and gentle Elisha. Where
was he? Why was he silent? Could he possibly approve of this murderer's fury?
We do not, indeed, know how far Elisha lent his sanction to anything more than
the general end. Ahab's house had been doomed to vengeance by the voice which
gave utterance to the verdict of the national conscience. The doom was just; Jehu
was ordained to be the executioner. In no other way could the judgment be carried
out. The times were not sentimental. The murder of Jehoram was not regarded as
an act of tyrannicide, but of divinely commissioned justice. Elisha may have
shrunk from the unreined furies of the man whom he had sent his emissary to
anoint. On the other hand, we have not the least proof that he did so. He partook,
probably, of the wild spirit of the times, when such deeds were regarded with
feelings very different from the abhorrence with which we, better taught by the
spirit of love, and more enlightened by the widening dawn of history, now justly
regard them. No remonstrance of contemporary prophecy, however faint, is
recorded as having been uttered against the doings of Jehu. The fact that, several
centuries later, they could be recorded by the historian without a syllable of
reprobation shows that the education of nations in the lessons of righteousness is
slow, and that we are still amid the annals of the deep night of moral imperfection.
But the nation was on the eve of purer teaching, and in the prophets Amos and
Hosea we read the clear condemnation of deeds of cruelty in general, and specially
of the king who felt no pity. Amos condemns even the idolatrous King of Edom,
"because he did pursue his brother with the sword, and did cast off all pity, and his
anger did tear perpetually, and he kept his wrath for ever."[220] He condemns no
less severely the Chemosh-worshipping King of Moab even for an insult done to
the dead: "Because he burned the bones of the King of Edom into lime."[221] Jehu
had warred pitilessly upon the living, and had shamelessly insulted the dead. He
had flung the heads of seventy princes in two bleeding heaps on the common road
for all eyes to stare upon, and he had polluted the cistern of Beth-equed-haroim
with the dead bodies of forty-two youths of the royal house of Judah. He might
plead that he was but carrying out to the full the commission of Jehovah, imposed
upon him by Elisha; but Hosea, a century later, gives God's message against his
house: "Yet a little while, and I will avenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house of
Jehu, and will cause to cease the kingdom of the house of Israel."[222]
Nay, more! If, as is possible, the ghastly story of the siege of Samaria, narrated in
the memoirs of Elisha, is displaced, and if it really belongs to the reign of
Jehoahaz ben-Jehu, then Elisha himself brands the cruelty of the rushing
thunderbolt of vengeance which his own hand had launched. For he calls the
unnamed "King of Israel" "the son of a murderer."

Men who are swords of God, and human executioners of Divine justice, may
easily deceive themselves. God works the ends of His own providence, and He
uses their ministry. "The fierceness of man shall turn to Thy praise, and the
fierceness of them shalt Thou refrain."[223] But they can never make their plea of
prophetic sanction a cloak of maliciousness. Cromwell had stern work to do.
Rightly or wrongly, he deemed it inevitable, and did not shrink from it. But he
hated it. Over and over again, he tells us, he had prayed to God that He would not
put him to this work. To the best of his power he avoided, he minimised, every act
of vengeance, even when the sternness of his Puritan sense of righteousness made
him look on it as duty. Far different was the case of Jehu. He loved murder and
cunning for their own sakes, and, like Joab, he dyed the garments of peace with the
blood of war.
How little was his gain! It had been happier for him if he had never mounted
higher than the captaincy of the host, or even so high. He reigned for twenty-eight
years (842-814)—longer than any king except his great-grandson Jeroboam II.;
and in recognition of any element of righteousness which had actuated his revolt,
his children, even to the fourth generation, were suffered to sit upon the throne.
His dynasty lasted for one hundred and thirteen years.[224] But his own reign was
only memorable for defeat, trouble, and irreparable disaster.
For Hazael, who had seized the throne of his murdered lord Benhadad, was a
fierce and able warrior. He held his own against the overweening might of his
northern neighbour Assyria; and whenever he obtained a respite from this
desperate warfare, he indemnified himself for all losses by enlarging his dominion
out of the territories of the Ten Tribes. "In those days the Lord began to cut Israel
short, and Hazael smote them in all the borders of Israel." Jehu had the
mortification of seeing the fairest and most fruitful regions of his dominion, those
which had belonged to Israel from the most ancient times, wrenched out of his
grasp. From this time forwards Israel lost half the fair Promised Land which God
had given to their fathers. It was the beginning of the end. Henceforth the tribal
inheritance of Reuben, Gad, and the half tribe of Manasseh was an oppressed
dependency of Aram. Hazael overran and annexed the land of Bashan from the
spurs of Mount Hermon to the Lake of Gennezareth; Gaulan, and volcanic Argob,
and Hauran the entire ancient kingdom of Og, King of Bashan, with all the herds
and pasture-lands. Southward of this he seized the whole forest-clad plateau of
Gilead, with its lovely ravines, north of the Jabbok, the territory of Gad; and
pushing still southward, established his sway over the district, of the Ammonites
and the tribe of Reuben, as far as the city of Aroer, on the other side of the great
chasm of Arnon (Wady Mojib). All the fatness of Bashan and Rabbah with her
watery plain of the Beni-Ammon, and the grass-covered uplands which fed the

enormous flocks of Mesha, the great Emîr and sheep-master of Moab, passed from
Israel to Syria, never to be recovered. What made the humiliation more terrible
was that the invasion and conquest were accompanied with acts of unwonted
cruelty. Elisha had wept to think what evil Hazael would do the children of
Israel[225]—how he would set their strongholds on fire, and slay their young men
with the sword, and dash in pieces their little ones, and rip up their women with
child. These atrocities were in those horrible days the ordinary incidents of
warfare;[226] but Hazael seems to have been pre-eminent in brutal fierceness. It
was this which called down on him and his people the "burdens" of Amos. "Thus
saith the Lord; For three transgressions of Damascus, and for four, I will not turn
away the punishment thereof; because they have threshed Gilead with threshing
instruments of iron: but I will send a fire into the house of Hazael, which shall
devour the palaces of Benhadad."[227]
We can imagine rather than describe the anguish of Jehu when he was compelled
to look impotently on, while his powerful Syrian neighbour laid waste his
dominion with fire and sword, and the cry of his despoiled and slaughtered
subjects was uplifted to him in vain. Nor was this all. Emboldened by these
reverses, a host of other enemies, once subjugated and despised, began to wreak
their revenge and insolence on humbled Israel. The Philistines eagerly undertook
the sale of the wretched captives who were brought to them in gangs from the
burnt Trans-Jordanic towns.[228] The old "brotherly covenant" with the Tyrian,
which had once been formed by Solomon, and had been cemented by the marriage
of Jezebel with Ahab, was cancelled by Jehu's insults, and the Tyrians emulously
outbad the Philistines in the purchase of Israelitish slaves. The Edomites and the
Ammonites also helped Hazael in his marauding raids, and enlarged their own
domains at the expense of Samaria. Such insults and humiliations might well go
far to break the heart of an impetuous and warrior-king.
Of Jehu the Books of Kings and Chronicles have no more to tell us, but we gain
fresh insight into his degradation from the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser II. (860-
824), now in the British Museum. From the inscription we find that, in 842, Jehu
—"the son of Omri," as he is erroneously called—was one of the vassal kings who
subjected themselves to the Assyrian conqueror,[229] and sent him tribute, which
may have euphemistically passed under the name of presents. The despot of
Nineveh twice speaks of it as a tribute. On this obelisk we see a picture of Jehu's
ambassadors—perhaps of Jehu himself. On the left stands the Assyrian King with
the winged circle over his head. He holds a beaker of wine in his hand, and two
eunuchs stand behind him, one of whom covers him with a sunshade. Before him
kneels and grovels in adoration the Jewish King, with his beard sweeping the

ground. In long array behind him come his servants—first two eunuchs, then a
number of bearded figures, who carry the tribute. They are dressed in long richly
fringed robes, exactly resembling those of the Assyrians themselves, and they wear
shoes which turn up at the toes. They are carrying figures of gold and silver,
goblets, golden vessels, ingots of precious metals, spear-shafts, a kingly sceptre,
baskets, bags, and trays of treasure, the contribution of which must have fallen
with crushing weight on the impoverished kingdom.[230]
This tribute must have been sent in 842, the eighteenth year of Shalmaneser II.'s
reign. Doubtless Jehu thought he might be delivered from his furious neighbour
Hazael by propitiating the Northern tyrant, who at the same time received the
submission of the Tyrians and Sidonians. But if so, Jehu's hopes were dashed to
the ground. Shalmaneser was the enemy of Hazael (Ha-sa-ilu), who had gone out
to meet him at Antilibanus, and there had fought a desperate battle. The Syrian
King was routed, and driven back, and Shalmaneser had besieged Damascus. But
he had failed to take it, and indeed had not troubled Syria again till 832, when he
made an excursion of minor importance. His troubles on the north and east of
Assyria had diverted his attention from Damascus; and this, together with the
inferiority of his son Samsiniras (d. 811), had given Hazael a free hand to avenge
himself on Israel as the ally of Assyria. Of Jehu we hear no more. After his long
reign of twenty-eight years he slept with his fathers, and was buried in Samaria,
and Jehoahaz his son reigned in his stead. Savage as had been his measures, his
victory over alien idolatries was by no means complete. What Micah calls "the
statutes of Omri, and the works of the House of Ahab,"[231] were still kept; and
men, both in Israel and Judah, walked in their old sins. Even in the reign of Jehu's
own son Jehoahaz there still remained in Samaria the Asherah, or tree consecrated
to the nature-goddess, which Jehu seems to have put away, but not to have
destroyed.[232] As he grovelled in the dust before Shalmaneser, did no memory of
his own ferocities darken his humiliated soul? Must not he, like our Henry II.,
have been inclined to utter the wailing cry, "Shame, shame on a conquered king!"

CHAPTER XIV
ATHALIAH (b.c. 842-836)—JOASH BEN-AHAZIAH OF JUDAH
(b.c. 836-796)

2 Kings xi. 1-xii. 21

"Par cette fin terrible, et due à ses forfaits,
Apprenez, Roi des Juifs, et n'oubliez jamais,
Que les rois dans le ciel ont un juge sevère,
L'innocence un vengeur, et les orphelins un père!"
Racine,
Athalie.
"Regardless of the sweeping whirlwind's sway,
That, hushed in grim repose, expects its evening prey."
Gray.
Before we follow the destinies of the House of Jehu we must revert to Judah, and
watch the final consequences of ruin which came in the train of Ahab's Tyrian
marriage, and brought murder and idolatry into Judah, as well as into Israel.
Athaliah, who, as queen-mother, was more powerful than the queen-consort
(malekkah), was the true daughter of Jezebel. She exhibits the same undaunted
fierceness, the same idolatrous fanaticism, the same swift resolution, the same
cruel and unscrupulous wickedness.
It might have been supposed that the miserable disease of her husband Jehoram,
followed so speedily by the murder, after one year's reign, of her son Ahaziah,
might have exercised over her character the softening influence of misfortune. On
the contrary, she only saw in these events a short path to the consummation of her
ambition.
Under Jehoram she had been queen: under Ahaziah she had exercised still more
powerful influence as Gebîrah, and had asserted her sway alike over her husband
and over her son, whose counsellor she was to do wickedly. It was far from her
intention tamely to sink from her commanding position into the abject nullity of an
aged and despised dowager in a dull provincial seraglio. She even thought that

"To reign is worth ambition, though in hell;
Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven."

The royal family of the House of David, numerous and flourishing as it once was,
had recently been decimated by cruel catastrophes. Jehoram, instigated probably
by his heathen wife, had killed his six younger brothers.[233] Later on, the Arabs
and Philistines, in their insulting invasion, had not only plundered his palace, but
had carried away his sons; so that, according to the Chronicler, "there was never a
son left him, save Jehoahaz [i.e., Ahaziah], the youngest of his sons."[234] He may
have had other sons after that invasion; and Ahaziah had left children, who must
all, however, have been very young, since he was only twenty-two or twenty-three
when Jehu's servants murdered him. Athaliah might naturally have hoped for the
regency; but this did not content her. When she saw that her son Ahaziah was dead,
"she arose and destroyed all the seed royal." In those days the life of a child was
but little thought of; and it weighed less than nothing with Athaliah that these
innocents were her grandchildren. She killed all of whose existence she was aware,
and boldly seized the crown. No queen had ever reigned alone either in Israel or in
Judah. Judah must have sunk very low, and the talents of Athaliah must have been
commanding, or she could never have established a precedent hitherto undreamed
of, by imposing on the people of David for six years the yoke of a woman, and that
woman a half-Phœnician idolatress. Yet so it was! Athaliah, like her cousin Dido,
felt herself strong enough to rule.
But a woman's ruthlessness was outwitted by a woman's cunning. Ahaziah had a
half-sister on the father's side,[235] the princess Jehosheba, or Jehoshabeath, who
was then or afterwards (we are told) married to Jehoiada, the high priest.[236] The
secrets of harems are hidden deep, and Athaliah may have been purposely kept in
ignorance of the birth to Ahaziah of a little babe whose mother was Zibiah of
Beersheba, and who had received the name of Joash. If she knew of his existence,
some ruse must have been palmed off upon her, and she must have been led to
believe that he too had been killed. But he had not been killed. Jehosheba "stole
him from among the king's sons that were slain," and, with the connivance of his
nurse, hid him from the murderers sent by Athaliah in the palace store-room in
which beds and couches were kept.[237] Thence, at the first favourable moment,
she transferred the child and nurse to one of the chambers in the three storeys of
chambers which ran round the Temple, and were variously used as wardrobes or as
dwelling-rooms.
The hiding-place was safe; for under Athaliah the Temple of Jehovah fell into
neglect and disrepute, and its resident ministers would not be numerous. It would

not have been difficult, in the seclusion of Eastern life, for Jehosheba to pass off
the babe as her own child to all but the handful who knew the secret.
Six years passed away, and the iron hand of Athaliah still kept the people in
subjection. She had boldly set up in Judah her mother's Baal-worship. Baal had his
temple not far from that of Jehovah; and though Athaliah did not imitate Jezebel in
persecuting the worshippers of Jehovah, she made her own high priest, Mattan, a
much more important person than Jehoiada for all who desired to propitiate the
favours of the Court.
Joash had now reached his seventh year, and a Jewish prince in his seventh year is
regarded as something more than a mere child. Jehoiada thought that it was time to
strike a blow in his favour, and to deliver him from the dreadful confinement
which made it impossible for him to leave the Temple precincts.
He began secretly to tamper with the guards both of the Temple and of the palace.
Upon the Levitic guards, indignant at the intrusion of Baal-worship, he might
securely count, and the Carites and queen's runners were not likely to be very
much devoted to the rule of the manlike and idolatrous alien-queen. Taking an oath
of them in secrecy, he bound them to allegiance to the little boy whom he
produced from the Temple chamber as their lawful lord, and the son of their late
king.
The plot was well laid. There were five captains of the five hundred royal body-
guards, and the priest secretly enlisted them all in the service.[238] The Chronicler
says that he also sent round to all the chief Levites, and collected them in
Jerusalem for the emergency. The arrangements of the Sabbath gave special
facility to his plans; for on that day only one of the five divisions of guards
mounted watch at the palace, and the others were set free for the service of the
Temple.[239] It had evidently been announced that some great ceremony would be
held in the shrine of Jehovah; for all the people, we are told, were assembled in the
courts of the house of the Lord. Jehoiada ordered one of the companies to guard
the palace; another to be at the "gate Sur," or the gate "of the Foundation";[240]
another at the gate behind the barracks(?) of the palace-runners, to be a barrier[241]
against any incursion from the palace. Two more were to ensure the safety of the
little king by watching the precincts of the Temple. The Levitic officers were to
protect the king's person with serried ranks. Jehoiada armed them with spears and
shields, which David had placed as trophies in the porch; and if any one tried to
force his way within their lines he was to be slain. The only danger to be
apprehended was from any Carite mercenaries, or palace-servants of the queen:

among all others Jehoiada found a widespread defection. The people, the Levites,
even the soldiers, all hated the Baal-worshipping usurper.[242]
At the fateful moment the guards were arranged in two dense lines, beginning
from either side of the porch, till their ranks met beyond the altar, so as to form a
hedge round the royal boy. Into this triangular space the young prince was led by
the high priest, and placed beside the Matstsebah—some prominent pillar in the
Temple court, either one of Solomon's pillars Jachin and Boaz, or some special
erection of later days.[243] Round him stood the princes of Judah, and there, in the
midst of them, Jehoiada placed the crown upon his head, and in significant symbol
also laid lightly upon it for a moment "The Testimony"—perhaps the Ten
Commandments and the Book of the Covenant—the most ancient fragment of the
Pentateuch[244]—which was treasured up with the pot of manna inside or in front
of the Ark. Then he poured on the child's head the consecrated oil, and said, "Let
the king live!"
The completion of the ceremony was marked by the blare of the rams' horns, the
softer blast of the silver trumpets, and the answering shouts of the soldiers and the
people. The tumult, or the news of it, reached the ears of Athaliah in the
neighbouring palace, and, with all the undaunted courage of her mother, she
instantly summoned her escort, and went into the Temple to see for herself what
was taking place.[245] She probably mounted the ascent which Solomon had made
from the palace to the Temple court, though it had long been robbed of its precious
metals and scented woods. She led the way, and thought to overawe by her
personal ascendency any irregularity which might be going on; for in the deathful
hush to which she had reduced her subjects she does not seem to have dreamt of
rebellion. No sooner had she entered than the guards closed behind her, excluding
and menacing her escort.[246]
A glance was sufficient to reveal to her the significance of the whole scene. There,
in royal robes, and crowned with the royal crown, stood her little unknown
grandson beside the Matstsebah,[247] while round him were the leaders of the
people and the trumpeters, and the multitudes were still rolling their tumult of
acclamation from the court below. In that sight she read her doom. Rending her
clothes, she turned to fly, shrieking, "Treason! treason!" Then the commands of the
priest rang out: "Keep her between the ranks,[248] till you have got her outside the
area of the Temple; and if any of her guards follow or try to rescue her, kill him
with the sword. But let not the sacred courts be polluted with her blood." So they
made way for her,[249] and as she could not escape she passed between the rows of
Levites and soldiers till she had reached the private chariot-road by which the

kings drove to the precincts.[250] There the sword of vengeance fell. Athaliah
disappears from history, and with her the dark race of Jezebel. But her story lives
in the music of Handel and the verse of Racine.
This is the only recorded revolution in the history of Judah. In two later cases a
king of Judah was murdered, but in both instances "the people of the land" restored
the Davidic heir. Life in Judah was less dramatic and exciting than in Israel, but far
more stable;[251] and this, together with comparative immunity from foreign
invasions, constituted an immense advantage.
Jehoiada, of course, became regent for the young king, and continued to be his
guide for many years, so that even the king's two wives were selected by his
advice. As the nation had been distracted with idolatries, he made the covenant
between the king and the people that they should be loyal to each other, and
between Jehoiada and the king and the people that they should be Jehovah's
people. Such covenants were not infrequent in Jewish history. Such a covenant had
been made by Asa[252] after Abijam's apostasy, as it was afterwards made by
Hezekiah[253] and by Josiah.[254] The new covenant, and the sense of awakenment
from the dream of guilty apostasy, evoked an outburst of spontaneous enthusiasm
in the hearts of the populace. Of their own impulse they rushed to the temple of
Baal which Athaliah had reared, dismantled it, and smashed to pieces his altars and
images. The riot was only stained by a single murder. They slew Mattan, Athaliah's
Baal-priest, before the altars of his god.[255]
With Jehoiada begins the title of "high priest." Hitherto no higher name than "the
priest" had been given even to Aaron, or Eli, or Zadok; but thenceforth the title of
"chief priest" is given to his successors, among whom he inaugurated a new epoch.
[256]

It was now Jehoiada's object to restore such splendour and solemnity as he could
to the neglected worship of the Temple, which had suffered in every way from
Baal's encroachments. He did this before the king's second solemn inauguration.
Even the porters had been done away with, so that the Temple could at any time be
polluted by the presence of the unclean, and the whole service of priests and
Levites had fallen into desuetude.
Then he took the captains, and the Carians, and the princes, and conducted the
boy-king, amid throngs of his shouting and rejoicing people, from the Temple to
his own palace. There he seated him on the lion-throne of Solomon his father, in
the great hall of justice, and the city was quiet and the land had rest. According to
the historian, "Joash did right all his days, because Jehoiada the priest instructed

him."[257] The stock addition that "howbeit the bamoth were not removed, and the
people still sacrificed and offered incense there," is no derogation from the merits
of Joash, and perhaps not even of Jehoiada, since if the law against the bamoth
then existed, it had become absolutely unknown, and these local sanctuaries were
held to be conducive to true religion.[258]
It was natural that the child of the Temple should have at heart the interests of the
Temple in which he had spent his early days, and to the shelter of which he owed
his life and throne. The sacred house had been insulted and plundered by persons
whom the Chronicler calls "the sons of Athaliah, that wicked woman,"[259]
meaning, probably, her adherents. Not only had its treasures been robbed to enrich
the house of Baal, but it had been suffered to fall into complete disrepair. Breaches
gaped in the outer walls, and the very foundations were insecure. The necessity for
restoring it occurred, not, as we should have expected, to the priests who lived at
its altar, but to the boy-king. He issued an order to the priests that they should take
charge of all the money presented to the Temple for the hallowed things, all the
money paid in current coin, and all the assessments for various fines and vows,[260]
together with every freewill contribution. They were to have this revenue entirely
at their disposal, and to make themselves responsible for the necessary repairs.
According to the Chronicler, they were further to raise a subscription throughout
the country from all their personal friends.
The king's command had been urgent. Money had at first come in, but nothing was
done. Joash had reached the twenty-third year of his reign, and was thirty years
old; but the Temple remained in its old sordid condition. The matter is passed over
by the king as lightly, courteously, and considerately as he could; but if he does not
charge the priests with downright embezzlement, he does reproach them for most
reprehensible neglect. They were the appointed guardians of the house: why did
they suffer its dilapidations to remain untouched year after year, while they
continued to receive the golden stream which poured—but now, owing to the
disgust of the people, in diminished volume—into their coffers? "Take no more
money, therefore," he said, "from your acquaintances, but deliver it for the
breaches of the house." For what they had already received he does not call them
to account, but henceforth takes the whole matter into his own hands. The
neglectful priests were to receive no more contributions, and not to be responsible
for the repairs. Joash, however, ordered Jehoiada to take a chest and put it beside
the altar on the right.[261] All contributions were to be dropped into this chest.
When it was full, it was carried by the Levites unopened into the palace,[262] and
there the king's chancellor and the high priest had the ingots weighed and the
money counted; its value was added up, and it was handed over immediately to the

architects, who paid it to the carpenters and masons. The priests were left in
possession of the money for the guilt-offerings[263] and for the sin-offerings, but
with the rest of the funds they had nothing to do. In this way was restored the
confidence which the management of the hierarchy had evidently forfeited, and
with renewed confidence in the administration fresh gifts poured in. Even in the
cautious narrative of the Chronicler it is clear that the priests hardly came out of
these transactions with flying colours. If their honesty is not formally impugned, at
least their torpor is obvious, as is the fact that they had wholly failed to inspire the
zeal of the people till the young king took the affair into his own hands.[264]
The long reign of Joash ended in eclipse and murder. If the later tradition be
correct, it was also darkened with atrocious ingratitude and crime.
For, according to the Chronicler, Jehoiada died at the advanced age of one hundred
and thirty, and was buried, as an unwonted honour, in the sepulchres of the kings.
[265]
When he was dead, the princes of Judah came to Joash, who had now been
king for many years, and with a strange suddenness tempted the zealous repairer of
the Temple of Jehovah into idolatrous apostasy. With soft speech they seduced him
into the worship of Asherim. It was marvellous indeed if the child of the Temple
became its foe, and he who had made a covenant with Jehovah fell away to
Baalim. But worse followed. Prophets reproved him, and he paid them no heed, in
spite of "the greatness of the burdens"—i.e., the multitude of the menaces—laid
upon him.[266] The stern, denunciative harangues were despised. At last Zechariah,
the son of his benefactor Jehoiada, rebuked king and people. He cried aloud from
some eminence in the court of the Temple, that "since they had transgressed the
commandments of Jehovah they could not prosper: they had forsaken Him, and He
would forsake them." Infuriated by this prophecy of woe, the guilty people, at the
command of their guiltier king, stoned him to death.[267] As he lay dying, he
exclaimed, "The Lord look upon it, and require it!"[268]
The entire silence of the elder and better authority might lead us to hope that there
may be room for doubt as to the accuracy of the much later tradition. Yet there
certainly was a persistent belief that Zechariah had been thus martyred. A wild
legend, related in the Talmud,[269] tells us that when Nebuzaradan conquered
Jerusalem and entered the Temple he saw blood bubbling up from the floor of the
court, and slaughtered ninety-four myriads, so that the blood flowed till it touched
the blood of Zechariah, that it might be fulfilled which is said (Hos. iv. 2), "Blood
toucheth blood." When he saw the blood of Zechariah, and noticed that it was
boiling and agitated, he asked, "What is this?" and was told that it was the spilled
blood of the sacrifices. Finding this to be false, he threatened to comb the flesh of
the priests with iron curry-combs if they did not tell the truth. Then they confessed

that it was the blood of the murdered Zechariah. "Well," he said, "I will pacify
him." First he slaughtered the greater and lesser Sanhedrin: but the blood did not
rest. Then he sacrificed young men and maidens: but the blood still bubbled. At
last he cried, "Zechariah, Zechariah, must I then slay them all?" Then the blood
was still, and Nebuzaradan, thinking how much blood he had shed, fled, repented,
and became a Jewish proselyte!
Perhaps the worst feature of the story against Joash might have been susceptible of
a less shocking colouring. He had naturally all his life been under the influence of
priestly domination. The ascendency which Jehoiada had acquired as priest-regent
had been maintained till long after the young king had arrived at full manhood. At
last, however, he had come into collision with the priestly body. He was in the
right; they were transparently in the wrong. The Chronicler, and even the older
historian, soften the story against the priests as much as they can; but in both their
narratives it is plain that Jehoiada and the whole hierarchy had been more careful
of their own interests than of those of the Temple, of which they were the
appointed guardians. Even if they can be acquitted of potential malfeasance, they
had been guilty of reprehensible carelessness. It is clear that in this matter they did
not command the confidence of the people; for so long as they had the
management of affairs the sources of munificence were either dried up or only
flowed in scanty streams, whereas they were poured forth with glad abundance
when the administration of the funds was placed mainly in the hands of laymen
under the king's chancellor. It is probable that when Jehoiada was dead Joash
thought it right to assert his royal authority in greater independence of the priestly
party; and that party was headed by Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada. The Chronicler
says that he prophesied: that, however, would not necessarily constitute him a
prophet, any more than it constituted Caiaphas. If he was a prophet, and was yet at
the head of the priests, he furnishes an all-but solitary instance of such a position.
The position of a prophet, occupied in the great work of moral reformation, was so
essentially antithetic to that of priests, absorbed in ritual ceremonies, that there is
no body of men in Scripture of whom, as a whole, we have a more pitiful record
than of the Jewish priests. From Aaron, who made the golden calf, to Urijah, who
sanctioned the idolatrous altar of Ahaz, and so down to Annas and Caiaphas, who
crucified the Lord of glory, they rendered few signal services to true religion. They
opposed Uzziah when he invaded their functions, but they acquiesced in all the
idolatries and abominations of Rehoboam, Abijah, Ahaziah, Ahaz, and many other
kings, without a syllable of recorded protest. When a prophet did spring from their
ranks, they set their faces with one consent, and were confederate against him.
They mocked and ridiculed Isaiah. When Jeremiah rose among them, the priest
Pashur smote him on the cheek, and the whole body persecuted him to death,
leaving him to be protected only by the pity of eunuchs and courtiers. Ezekiel was

the priestliest of the prophets, and yet he was forced to denounce the apostasies
which they permitted in the very Temple. The pages of the prophets ring with
denunciations of their priestly contemporaries.[270]
We do not know enough of Zechariah to say much about his character; but priests
in every age have shown themselves the most unscrupulous and the most
implacable of enemies. Joash probably stood to him in the same relation that
Henry II. stood to Thomas à Becket. The priest's murder may have been due to an
outburst of passion on the part of the king's friends, or of the king himself—gentle
as his character seems to have been—without being the act of black ingratitude
which late traditions represented it to be. The legend about Zechariah's blood
represents the priest's spirit as so ruthlessly unforgiving as to awaken the
astonishment and even the rebukes of the Babylonian idolater. Such a legend could
hardly have arisen in the case of a man who was other than a most formidable
opponent. The murder of Joash may have been, in its turn, a final outcome of the
revenge of the priestly party. The details of the story must be left to inference and
conjecture, especially as they are not even mentioned in the earlier and more
impartial annalists.
It is at least singular that while Joash, the king, is blamed for continuing the
worship at the bamoth, Jehoiada, the high priest, is not blamed, though they
continued throughout his long and powerful regency. Further, we have an instance
of the priest-regent's autocracy which can hardly be regarded as redounding to his
credit. It is preserved in an accidental allusion on the page of Jeremiah. In Jer.
xxix. 26 we read his reproof and doom of the lying prophecy of the priest
Shemaiah the Nehelamite, because as a priest he had sent a letter to the chief priest
Zephaniah and all the priests, urging them as the successors of Jehoiada to follow
the ruling of Jehoiada, which was to put Jeremiah in a collar. For Jehoiada, he said,
"had ordered the priests, as officers [pakidim] in the house of Jehovah, to put in the
stocks every one that is mad and maketh himself a prophet."[271] If, then, the
Jehoiada referred to is the priest-regent, as seems undoubtedly to be the case, we
see that he hated all interference of Jehovah's prophets with his rule. That the
prophets were usually regarded by the world and by priests as "mad," we see from
the fact that the title is given by Jehu's captains to Elisha's emissary;[272] and that
this continued to be the case we see from the fact that the priests and Pharisees of
Jerusalem said of John the Baptist that he had a devil, and of Christ that He was a
Samaritan, and that He, too, had a devil. If Joash was in opposition to the priestly
party, he was in the same position as all God's greatest saints and reformers have
ever been from the days of Moses to the days of John Wesley. The dominance of
priestcraft is the invariable and inevitable death of true, as apart from functional,
religion. Priests are always apt to concentrate their attention upon their temples,

altars, religious practices and rites—in a word, upon the externals of religion. If
they gain a complete ascendency over their fellow-believers, the faithful become
their absolute slaves, religion degenerates into formalism, "and the life of the soul
is choked by the observance of the ceremonial law." It was a misfortune for the
Chosen People that, except among the prophets and the wise men, the external
worship was thought much more of than the moral law. "To the ordinary man,"
says Wellhausen, "it was not moral but liturgical acts which seemed to be
religious." This accounts for the monotonous iteration of judgments on the
character of kings, based primarily, not upon their essential character, but on their
relation to the bamoth and the calves.
Although the historian of the Kings gives no hint of this dark story of Zechariah's
murder, or of the apostasy of Joash, and indeed narrates no other event of the long
reign of forty years, he tells us of the deplorable close. Hazael's ambition had been
fatal to Israel; and now, in the cessation of Assyrian inroads upon Aram, he
extended his arms towards Judah. He went up against Gath and took it, and
cherished designs against Jerusalem. Apparently he did not head the expedition in
person, and the historian implies that Joash bought off the attack of his "general."
But the Chronicler makes things far worse. He says that the Syrian host marched
to Jerusalem, destroyed all the princes of the people, plundered the city, and sent
the spoil to Hazael, who was at Damascus. Judah, he says, had assembled a vast
army to resist the small force of the Syrian raid; but Joash was ignominiously
defeated, and was driven to pay blackmail to the invader. As to this defeat in battle
the historian is silent; but he mentions what the Chronicler omits—namely, that the
only way in which Joash could raise the requisite bribe was by once more stripping
the Temple and the palace, and sending to Damascus all the treasures which his
three predecessors had consecrated,—though we are surprised to learn that after so
many strippings and plunderings any of them could still be left.
The anguish and mortification of mind caused by these disasters, and perhaps the
wounds he had received in the defeat of his army, threw Joash into "great
diseases." But he was not suffered to die of these.[273] His servants—perhaps, if
that story be authentic, to avenge the slain son of Jehoiada, but doubtless also in
disgust at the national humiliation—rose in conspiracy against him, and smote him
at Beth-Millo,[274] where he was lying sick. The Septuagint, in 2 Chron. xxiv. 27,
adds the dark fact that all his sons joined in the conspiracy.[275] This cannot be true
of Amaziah, who put the murderer to death. Such, however, was the deplorable
end of the king who had stood by the Temple pillar in his fair childhood, amid the
shouts and trumpet-blasts of a rejoicing people. At that time all things seemed full
of promise and of hope. Who could have anticipated that the boy whose head had
been touched with the sacred oil and over-shadowed with the Testimony—the

young king who had made a covenant with Jehovah, and had initiated the task of
restoring the ruined Temple to its pristine beauty—would end his reign in
earthquake and eclipse? If indeed he had been guilty of the black ingratitude and
murderous apostasy which tradition laid to his charge, we see in his end the
Nemesis of his ill-doing; yet we cannot but pity one who, after so long a reign,
perished amid the spoliation of his people, and was not even allowed to end his
days by the sore sickness into which he had fallen, but was hurried into the next
world by the assassin's knife.
It is impossible not to hope that his deeds were less black than the Chronicler
painted. He had made the priests feel his power and resentment, and their Levitic
recorder was not likely to take a lenient view of his offences. He says that though
Joash was buried in the City of David, he was not buried in the sepulchres of his
fathers. The historian of the Kings, however, expressly says that "they buried him
with his fathers in the City of David," and he was peaceably succeeded by
Amaziah his son.
There is a curious, though it may be an accidental, circumstance about the name of
the two conspirators who slew him. They are called "Jozacar, the son of Shimeath,
and Jehozabad, the son of Shomer, his servants." The names mean "Jehovah
remembers," the son of "Hearer," and "Jehovah awards," the son of "Watcher"; and
this strangely recalls the last words attributed in the Book of Chronicles to the
martyred Zechariah. "Jehovah look upon it, and require it!" The Chronicler turns
the names into "Zabad, the son of Shimeath, an Ammonitess, and Jehozabad, the
son of Shimrith, a Moabitess." Does he record this to account for their murderous
deed by the blood of hated nations which ran in their veins?

CHAPTER XV
AMAZIAH OF JUDAH

b.c. 796-783 (?)

2 Kings xiv. 1-22

"All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword."—Matt. xxvi. 52.

The fate of Amaziah ("Jehovah is strong"), son of Joash of Judah, resembles in
some respects that of his father. Both began to reign prosperously: the happiness of
both ended in disaster. Amaziah at his accession was twenty-five years old. He was
the son of a lady of Jerusalem named Jehoaddin. He reigned twenty-nine years, of
which the later ones were passed in misery, peril, and degradation, and, like the
unhappy Joash, and at about the same age, he fell the victim of domestic
conspiracy.
The hereditary principle was too strongly established to enable the murderers of
Joash to set it aside, but Amaziah was not at first strong enough to make any head
against them. In time he became established in his kingdom, and then his earliest
act was to bring the head conspirators, Jozacar and Jehozabad, to justice. It was
noted as a most remarkable circumstance that he did not put to death their
children, and extirpate their houses. In acting thus, if he were influenced by a spirit
of mercy, he showed himself before his time; but such mercy was completely
contrary to the universal custom, and was also regarded as most impolitic. Even
the comparatively merciful Greeks had the proverb, "Fool, who has murdered the
sire, and left his sons to avenge him!"[276]
In epochs of the wild justice of revenge, when blood-feuds are an established and
approved institution, the policy of letting vengeance only fall on the actual
offender was regarded as fatal. Perhaps Amaziah felt it beyond his power to do
more than bring the actual murderers to justice, and it is possible that their children
may have been among the conspirators who, in his hour of shame, intimately
destroyed him.
The historian, it is true, attributes his conduct to magnanimity, or rather to his
obedience to the law, "The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, nor the

children for the fathers; but every man shall die for his own sin." This is a
reference to Deut. xxiv. 16, and is probably the independent comment of the writer
who recorded the event two centuries later. In the gradual growth of a milder
civilisation, and the more common dominance of legal justice, such a law may
have come into force, as expressive of that voice of conscience which is to sincere
nations the voice of God. That the book of Deuteronomy, as a book, was not in
existence in its present form till four reigns later we shall hereafter see strong
reasons to believe. But even if any part of that book was in existence, it is not easy
to understand how Amaziah would have been able to decide that the law which
forbade the punishment of the children with the offending parents was the law
which he was bound to follow, when Moses and Joshua and other heroes of his
race had acted on the olden principle. The innocent families of Korah, Dathan, and
Abiram were represented as having been swallowed up with the ambitious heads
of their houses. Joshua and all Israel had not only stoned Achan, but with him all
his unoffending house. What, too, was the meaning of the law which established
the five Cities of Refuge as the best way to protect the accidental homicide from
the recognised and unrebuked actions of the Goel—the avenger of blood? The
vengeance of a Goel was regarded, as it is in the East and South to this day, not as
an implacable fierceness, but as a sacred duty, the neglect of which would cover
him with infamy. Judging of our documents by the impartial light of honest
criticism, it seems impossible to deny that the law of Deuteronomy was the law of
an advancing civilisation, which became more mild as justice became firmer and
more available. If Deuteronomy represents the legislation of Moses, we can only
say that in this respect Amaziah was the first person who paid the slightest
attention to it. Such exceptional obedience may well excite the notice of the
historian, in whose pages we see that prophets like Ahijah, Elijah, and Elisha had,
again and again, in accordance with the spirit of their times, contemplated the total
excision, not only of erring kings, but even of their little children and their most
distant kinsfolk.
Further:—We are told that Amaziah "did that which was right in the sight of
Jehovah: he did according to all things as Joash his father did." The Chronicler
also bestows his eulogy on Amaziah; but having told such dark stories of the
apostasy of Joash to Asherah-worship and his murder of the prophets, he could
hardly add "as Joash his father did"; so he omits those words. The reservation that
Amaziah did right, "yet not like David his father" (2 Kings xiv. 3), "but not with a
perfect heart" (2 Chron. xxv. 2), is followed by the stock abatement about the
bamoth, and the sacrifices and incense burnt in them. This was a crime in the eyes
of writers in b.c. 540, but certainly not in the eyes of any king before the discovery
of the "Book of the Law" in the reign of Josiah, b.c. 621. We are compelled,
therefore, by simple truth, to ask, How came it that Amaziah should be so

scrupulous as to observe the Deuteronomic law by not slaying the sons of his
father's murderers, while he does not seem to be aware, any more than the best of
his predecessors, that while he obeyed one precept he was violating the essence
and spirit of the entire code in which the precept occurs? The one main object, the
constantly repeated law of Deuteronomy, is the centralisation of all worship, and
the rigid prohibition of every local place of sacrifice. Strange that Amaziah should
have selected for attention a single precept, while he is profoundly unconscious of,
or indifferent to, the fact that he is setting aside the regulation with which the law,
as Deuteronomy represents it, begins and ends, and on which it incessantly insists!
Joash had been something of a weakling, as though the gloom of his early
concealment in the Temple and the shadow of priestly dominance had paralysed
his independence. Amaziah, on the other hand, born in the purple, was vigorous
and restless. When he was secure upon the throne, and had done his duty to his
father's memory, he bent his efforts to recover Edom. The Edomites had revolted
in the days of his great-grandfather Jehoram,[277] and since then "did tear
perpetually,"[278] harassing with incessant raids the miserable fellahîn of Southern
Judah. They reaped the crops of the settled inhabitants, cut down their fruit-trees,
burnt their farmsteads, and carried their children into cruel and hopeless slavery.
One verse tells us all that the historian knew, or cared to relate, of Amaziah's
campaign. He only says that it was eminently successful. Amaziah confronted the
Edomites in the Valley of Salt,[279] on the border of Edom, to the south of the Dead
Sea, and inflicted upon them a signal defeat. He not only slaughtered ten thousand
of them, but, advancing southwards, he stormed and captured Selah or Petra, their
rocky capital, two days' journey north of Ezion-Geber, on the gulf of Akabah.[280]
Considering the natural strength of Petra, amid its mountain-fastnesses, this was a
victory of which he might well be proud, and he marked his prowess by changing
the name of the city to Joktheel, "subdued by God." The historian, copying the
ancient record before him, says that Selah continued to be so called "to this day."
[281]
This is a curious instance of close transcription, for it is certain that Selah can
only have retained the name of Joktheel for a very short period, and had lost it
long before the days of the Exile. Even in the reign of Ahaz (b.c. 735-715) the
Edomites had so completely recovered lost ground that they were able to make
predatory excursions into Judah, and to threaten Hebron, which would have been
obviously impossible if they were not masters of their own chief capital.[282] The
district which Amaziah seems to have conquered was mainly west of the Arabah.
He wished to restore Elath, and perhaps to carry out the old commerce with the
Red Sea which Solomon began, and which had fired the ambition of Jehoshaphat.
The conquest of Selah secured the road for his commercial caravans.

So far the older and better authorities. The Chronicler expands the story in his
usual fashion, in which historical and critical verity is so often compelled, if not to
suspect the disease of exaggeration and the bias of Levitism, at least to feel
uncertainty as to the details. He says that Amaziah collected an army of three
hundred thousand men of Judah, trained them to a high state of discipline, and
armed them with spear and shield. He hired in addition one hundred thousand
Israelitish mercenaries, mighty men of valour, at the heavy cost of one hundred
talents of silver. He was rebuked by a prophet for employing Israelites, "because
the Lord was not with them," so that if he used their aid he would certainly be
defeated. Amaziah asked what he was to do for the hundred talents, and the
prophet told him that Jehovah could give him much more than this.[283] So he
dismissed his Ephraimites who, returning home in great fury, "fell upon the cities
of Judah," from Samaria even unto Beth-horon, killed three thousand of their
inhabitants, and took much spoil. Amaziah, however, defeated the Edomites
without their aid, and not only slew ten thousand, but took captive ten thousand
more, all of whom he dashed to pieces by hurling them from the top of the rock of
Petra.[284]
Then, by an apostasy much more astounding than even that of his father Joash, he
took home with him the idols of Mount Seir, worshipped them, and burnt incense
before them. Jehovah sends a prophet to rebuke him for his senseless infatuation in
worshipping the gods of the Edomites whom he had just so utterly defeated; but
Amaziah returns him the insolent answer, "Who made thee of the king's council?
Be silent, or I will put thee to death." The prophet met his ironical sneer with
words of deeper meaning: "If I am not on your council, I am on God's. Because
thou hast not hearkened to my counsel, I know that God has counselled to destroy
thee."
The later writer thus accounts for the folly and overthrow of this valorous and
hitherto eminently pious king. Certain it is, as we shall narrate in the next chapter,
that, in spite of warning, he had the temerity to challenge to battle the warlike
Joash ben-Jehoahaz of Israel, grandson of Jehu. The kings met at Beth-Shemesh,
and Amaziah was utterly routed, with consequences so shameful to himself and to
Jerusalem that he was never able to hold up his head again. He could but eat away
his own heart in despair, a ruined man. After this he "lived" rather than reigned
fifteen years longer.[285] The wall of Jerusalem, broken down near the Damascus
Gate, on the side towards Israel, for a space of four hundred cubits, was a standing
witness of the king's infatuated folly. His people were ashamed of him, and weary
of him; and at last, seeing that nothing more could be expected of one whose spirit
had evidently been broken from impetuosity into abjectness, they formed a
conspiracy against him. To save his life he fled to the strong fort of Lachish, a

royal Canaanite city, in the hills to the south-west of Judah.[286] But they pursued
him thither, and even Lachish would not protect him. He was murdered. They
threw the corpse upon a chariot, conveyed it to Jerusalem, and buried it in the
sepulchres of his fathers. The people quietly elevated to the throne his son Azariah,
then sixteen years old, who had been born the year before his father's crowning
disgrace. What became of the conspirators we do not know. They were probably
too strong to be brought to justice, and we are not told that Azariah even attempted
to visit their crime upon their heads.

CHAPTER XVI
THE DYNASTY OF JEHU

b.c.
Jehoahaz 814-797 2 Kings xiii. 1-9
Joash 797-781 " xiii. 10-21, xiv. 8-16
Jeroboam II. 781-740 " xiv. 23-29
Zechariah 740 " xv. 8-12

"Them that honour Me I will honour, and they that despise Me shall be lightly
esteemed."—1 Sam. ii. 30.

Israel had scarcely ever sunk to so low a nadir of degradation as she did in the
reign of the son of Jehu. We have already mentioned that some assign to his reign
the ghastly story which we have narrated in our sketch of the work of Elisha. It is
told in the sixth chapter of the Second Book of Kings, and seems to belong to the
reign of Jehoram ben-Ahab; but it may have got displaced from this epoch of yet
deeper wretchedness. The accounts of Jehoahaz in 2 Kings xiii. are evidently
fragmentary and abrupt.

Jehoahaz reigned seventeen years.[287] Naturally, he did not disturb the calf-
worship, which, like all his predecessors and successors, he regarded as a perfectly
innocent symbolic adoration of Jehovah, whose name he bore and whose service
he professed. Why should he do so? It had been established now for more than two
centuries. His father, in spite of his passionate and ruthless zeal for Jehovah, had
never attempted to disturb it. No prophet—not even Elijah nor Elisha, the practical
establishers of his dynasty—had said one word to condemn it. It in no way rested
on his conscience as an offence; and the formal condemnation of it by the historian
only reflects the more enlightened judgment of the Southern Kingdom and of a
later age. But according to the parenthesis which breaks the thread of this king's
story (2 Kings xiii. 5, 6), he was guilty of a far more culpable defection from
orthodox worship; for in his reign, the Asherah—the tree or pillar of the Tyrian
nature-goddess—still remained in Samaria, and therefore must have had its
worshippers. How it came there we cannot tell. Jezebel had set it up (1 Kings xvi.
33), with the connivance of Ahab. Jehu apparently had "put it away" with the great
stêlê of Baal (2 Kings iii. 2), but, for some reason or other, he had not destroyed it.

It now apparently occupied some public place, a symbol of decadence, and
provocative of the wrath of Heaven.
Jehoahaz sank very low. Hazael's savage sword, not content with the devastation
of Bashan and Gilead, wasted the west of Israel also in all its borders. The king
became a mere vassal of his brutal neighbour at Damascus. So little of the barest
semblance of power was left him, that whereas, in the reign of David, Israel could
muster an army of eight hundred thousand, and in the reign of Joash, the son and
successor of Jehoahaz, Amaziah could hire from Israel one hundred thousand
mighty men of valour as mercenaries, Jehoahaz was only allowed to maintain an
army of ten chariots, fifty horsemen, and ten thousand infantry! In the picturesque
phrase of the historian, "the King of Syria had threshed down Israel to the dust," in
spite of all that Jehoahaz did, or tried to do, and "all his might." How completely
helpless the Israelites were is shown by the fact that their armies could offer no
opposition to the free passage of the Syrian troops through their land. Hazael did
not regard them as threatening his rear; for, in the reign of Jehoahaz, he marched
southwards, took the Philistine city of Gath, and threatened Jerusalem. Joash of
Judah could only buy them off with the bribe of all his treasures, and according to
the Chronicler they "destroyed all the princes of the people," and took great spoil
to Damascus.[288]
Where was Elisha? After the anointing of Jehu he vanishes from the scene. Unless
the narrative of the siege of Samaria has been displaced, we do not so much as
once hear of him for nearly half a century.
The fearful depth of humiliation to which the king was reduced drove him to
repentance. Wearied to death of the Syrian oppression of which he was the daily
witness, and of the utter misery caused by prowling bands of Ammonites and
Moabites—jackals who waited on the Syrian lion—Jehoahaz "besought the Lord,
[289]
and the Lord hearkened unto him, and gave Israel a saviour, so that they went
out from under the hand of the Syrians: and the children of Israel dwelt in their
tents, as beforetime." If this indeed refers to events which come out of place in the
memoirs of Elisha; and if Jehoahaz ben-Jehu, not Jehoram ben-Ahab, was the king
in whose reign the siege of Samaria was so marvellously raised, then Elisha may
possibly be the temporary deliverer who is here alluded to.[290] On this supposition
we may see a sign of the repentance of Jehoahaz in the shirt of sackcloth which he
wore under his robes, as it became visible to his starving people when he rent his
clothes on hearing the cannibal instincts which had driven mothers to devour their
own children. But the respite must have been brief, since Hazael (ver. 22)
oppressed Israel all the days of Jehoahaz. If this rearrangement of events be
untenable, we must suppose that the repentance of Jehoahaz was only so far

accepted, and his prayer so far heard, that the deliverance, which did not come in
his own days, came in those of his son and of his grandson.
Of him and of his wretched reign we hear no more; but a very different epoch
dawned with the accession of his son Joash, named after the contemporary King of
Judah, Joash ben-Ahaziah.
In the Books of Kings and Chronicles Joash of Israel is condemned with the usual
refrains about the sins of Jeroboam. No other sin is laid to his charge; and breaking
the monotony of reprobation which tells us of every king of Israel without
exception that "he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord," Josephus
boldly ventures to call him "a good man, and the antithesis to his father."
He reigned sixteen years. At the beginning of his reign he found his country the
despised prey, not only of Syria, but of the paltry neighbouring bandit-sheykhs
who infested the east of the Jordan; he left it comparatively strong, prosperous,
and independent.
In his reign we hear again of Elisha, now a very old man of past eighty years.
Nearly half a century had elapsed since the grandfather of Joash had destroyed the
house of Ahab at the prophet's command. News came to the king that Elisha was
sick of a mortal sickness, and he naturally went to visit the death-bed of one who
had called his dynasty to the throne, and had in earlier years played so memorable
a part in the history of his country. He found the old man dying, and he wept over
him, crying, "My father, my father! the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen
thereof."[291] The address strikes us with some surprise. Elisha had indeed
delivered Samaria more than once when the city had been reduced to direst
extremity; but in spite of his prayers and of his presence, the sins of Israel and her
kings had rendered this chariot of Israel of very small avail. The names of Ahab,
Jehu, Jehoahaz, call up memories of a series of miseries and humiliations which
had reduced Israel to the very verge of extinction. For sixty-three years Elisha had
been the prophet of Israel; and though his public interpositions had been signal on
several occasions, they had not been availing to prevent Ahab from becoming the
vassal of Assyria, nor Israel from becoming the appanage of the dominion of that
Hazael whom Elisha himself had anointed King of Syria, and who had become of
all the enemies of his country the most persistent and the most implacable.
The narrative which follows is very singular. We must give it as it occurs, with but
little apprehension of its exact significance.
Elisha, though Joash "did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord," seems to
have regarded him with affection. He bade the youth take his bow,[292] and laid his

feeble, trembling hands on the strong hands of the king. Then he ordered an
attendant to fling open the lattice, and told the king to shoot eastward towards
Gilead, the region whence the bands of Syria made their way over the Jordan. The
king shot, and the fire came back into the old prophet's eye as he heard the arrow
whistle eastward. He cried, "The arrow of Jehovah's deliverance, even the arrow of
victory over Syria: for thou shalt smite the Syrians in Aphek, till thou have
consumed them."[293] Then he bade the young king to take the sheaf of arrows, and
smite towards the ground, as if he was striking down an enemy. Not understanding
the significance of the act, the king made the sign of thrice striking the arrows
downwards, and then naturally stopped.[294] But Elisha was angry—or at any rate
grieved.[295] "You should have smitten five or six times," he said, "and then you
would have smitten Syria to destruction. Now you shall only smite Syria thrice."
The king's fault seems to have been lack of energy and faith.
There are in this story some peculiar elements which it is impossible to explain,
but it has one beautiful and striking feature. It tells us of the death-bed of a
prophet. Most of God's greatest prophets have perished amid the hatred of priests
and worldlings. The progress of the truth they taught has been "from scaffold to
scaffold, and from stake to stake."

"Careless seems the Great Avenger. History's pages but record
One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the
Word—
Truth for ever on the scaffold, wrong for ever on the throne;
Yet that scaffold sways the Future, and behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His
own!"

Now and then, however, as an exception, a great prophetic teacher or reformer
escapes the hatred of the priests and of the world, and dies in peace. Savonarola is
burnt, Huss is burnt, but Wiclif dies in his bed at Lutterworth, and Luther died in
peace at Eisleben. Elijah passed away in storm, and was seen no more. A king
comes to weep by the death-bed of the aged Elisha. "For us," it has been said, "the
scene at his bedside contains a lesson of comfort and even encouragement. Let us
try to realise it. A man with no material power is dying in the capital of Israel. He
is not rich: he holds no office which gives him any immediate control over the
actions of men; he has but one weapon—the power of his word. Yet Israel's king
stands weeping at his bedside—weeping because this inspired messenger of
Jehovah is to be taken from him. In him both king and people will lose a mighty
support, for this man is a greater strength to Israel than chariots and horsemen are.
Joash does well to mourn for him, for he has had courage to wake the nation's

conscience; the might of his personality has sufficed to turn them in the true
direction, and rouse their moral and religious life. Such men as Elisha everywhere
and always give a strength to their people above the strength of armies, for the true
blessings of a nation are reared on the foundations of its moral force."
The annals are here interrupted to introduce a posthumous miracle—unlike any
other in the whole Bible—wrought by the bones of Elisha. He died, and they
buried him, "giving him," as Josephus says, "a magnificent burial." As usual, the
spring brought with it the marauding bands of Moabites. Some Israelites who were
burying a man caught sight of them, and, anxious to escape, thrust the man into the
sepulchre of Elisha, which happened to be nearest at hand. But when he was
placed in the rocky tomb, and touched the bones of Elisha, he revived, and stood
up on his feet. Doubtless the story rests on some real circumstance. There is,
however, something singular in the turn of the original, which says (literally) that
the man went and touched the bones of Elisha;[296] and there is proof that the story
was told in varying forms, for Josephus says that it was the Moabite plunderers
who had killed the man, and that he was thrown by them into Elisha's tomb.[297] It
is easy to invent moral and spiritual lessons out of this incident, but not so easy to
see what lesson is intended by it. Certainly there is not throughout Scripture any
other passage which even seems to sanction any suspicions of magic potency in
the relics of the dead.[298]
But Elisha's symbolic prophecy of deliverance from Syria was amply fulfilled.
About this time Hazael had died, and had left his power in the feebler hands of his
son Benhadad III. Jehoahaz had not been able to make any way against him (2
Kings xiii. 3), but Joash his son thrice met and thrice defeated him at Aphek. As a
consequence of these victories, he won back all the cities which Hazael had taken
from his father on the west of Jordan. The east of Jordan was never recovered. It
fell under the shadow of Assyria, and was practically lost for ever to the tribes of
Israel.
Whether Assyria lent her help to Joash under certain conditions we do not know.
Certain it is that from this time the terror of Syria vanishes. The Assyrian king
Rammânirâri III. about this time subjugated all Syria and its king, whom the
tablets call Mari, perhaps the same as Benhadad III. In the next reign Damascus
itself fell into the power of Jeroboam II., the son of Joash.
One more event, to which we have already alluded, is narrated in the reign of this
prosperous and valiant king.
Amity had reigned for a century between Judah and Israel, the result of the politic-
impolitic alliance which Jehoshaphat had sanctioned between his son Jehoram and

the daughter of Jezebel. It was obviously most desirable that the two small
kingdoms should be united as closely as possible by an offensive and defensive
alliance. But the bond between them was broken by the overweening vanity of
Amaziah ben-Joash of Judah. His victory over the Edomites, and his conquest of
Petra, had puffed him up with the mistaken notion that he was a very great man
and an invincible warrior. He had the wicked infatuation to kindle an unprovoked
war against the Northern Tribes. It was the most wanton of the many instances in
which, if Ephraim did not envy Judah, at least Judah vexed Ephraim, Amaziah
challenged Joash to come out to battle, that they might look one another in the
face. He had not recognised the difference between fighting with and without the
sanction of the God of battles.
Joash had on his hands enough of necessary and internecine war to make him more
than indifferent to that bloody game. Moreover, as the superior of Amaziah in
every way, he saw through his inflated emptiness. He knew that it was the worst
possible policy for Judah and Israel to weaken each other in fratricidal war, while
Syria threatened their northern and eastern frontiers, and while the tread of the
mighty march of Assyria was echoing ominously in the ears of the nations from
afar. Better and kinder feelings may have mingled with these wise convictions. He
had no wish to destroy the poor fool who so vaingloriously provoked his superior
might. His answer was one of the most crushingly contemptuous pieces of irony
which history records, and yet it was eminently kindly and good-humoured. It was
meant to save the King of Judah from advancing any further on the path of certain
ruin.
"The thistle that was in Lebanon" (such was the apologue which he addressed to
his would-be rival) "sent to the cedar that was in Lebanon, saying: Give thy
daughter to my son to wife.[299] The cedar took no sort of notice of the thistle's
ludicrous presumption, but a wild beast that was in Lebanon passed by, and trod
down the thistle."

It was the answer of a giant to a dwarf;[300] and to make it quite clear to the
humblest comprehension, Joash good-naturedly added: "You are puffed up with
your victory over Edom: glory in this, and stay at home. Why by your vain
meddling should you ruin yourself and Judah with you? Keep quiet: I have
something else to do than to attend to you."
Happy had it been for Amaziah if he had taken warning! But vanity is a bad
counsellor, and folly and self-deception—ill-matched pair—were whirling him to
his doom. Seeing that he was bent on his own perdition, Joash took the initiative
and marched to Beth-Shemesh, in the territory of Judah.[301] There the kings met,

and there Amaziah was hopelessly defeated. His troops fled to their scattered
homes, and he fell into the hands of his conqueror. Joash did not care to take any
sanguinary revenge; but much as he despised his enemy, he thought it necessary to
teach him and Judah the permanent lesson of not again meddling to their own hurt.
He took the captive king with him to Jerusalem, which opened its gates without a
blow.[302] We do not know whether, like a Roman conqueror, he entered it through
the breach of four hundred cubits which he ordered them to make in the walls,[303]
but otherwise he contented himself with spoil which would swell his treasure, and
amply compensate for the expenses of the expedition which had been forced upon
him. He ransacked Jerusalem for silver and gold; he made Obed-Edom, the
treasurer, give up to him all the sacred vessels of the Temple, and all that was
worth taking from the palace. He also took hostages—probably from among the
number of the king's sons—to secure immunity from further intrusions. It is the
first time in Scripture that hostages are mentioned. It is to his credit that he shed no
blood, and was even content to leave his defeated challenger with the disgraced
phantom of his kingly power, till, fifteen years later, he followed his father to the
grave through the red path of murder at the hand of his own subjects.[304]
After this we hear no further records of this vigorous and able king, in whom the
characteristics of his grandfather Jehu are reflected in softer outline. He left his son
Jeroboam II. to continue his career of prosperity, and to advance Israel to a pitch of
greatness which she had never yet attained, in which she rivalled the grandeur of
the united kingdom in the earlier days of Solomon's dominion.

CHAPTER XVII
THE DYNASTY OF JEHU (continued)—JEROBOAM II

b.c. 781-740

2 Kings xiv. 23-29

If we had only the history of the kings to depend upon, we should scarcely form an
adequate conception either of the greatness of Jeroboam II. or of the condition of
society which prevailed in Israel during his long and most prosperous reign of
forty-one years (b.c. 781-740). In the Books of Chronicles he is merely mentioned
accidentally in a genealogy. The Second Book of Kings only devotes one verse to
him (xiv. 25) beyond the stock formulæ of connection so often repeated. That
verse, however, gives us at least a glimpse of his great importance, for it tells us
that "he restored the coast of Israel from the entering of Hamath unto the sea of the
plain." Those two lines sufficiently prove to us that he was by far the greatest and
most powerful of all the kings of Israel, as he was also the longest-lived and had
the longest reign. His victories flung a broad gleam of sunset over the afflicted
kingdom, and, for a time, they might have beguiled the Israelites into lofty hopes
for the future; but with the death of Jeroboam the light instantly faded away, and
there was no after-glow.
And this sudden brightness, if it deceived others, did not deceive the prophets of
the Lord. It happened in accordance with the promise of Jehovah given by Jonah,
the son of Amittai, of Gath-Hepher;[305] but Amos and Hosea saw that the glory of
the reign was hollow and delusive, and that the outward prosperity did but "skin
and film the ulcerous place" below.
In truth, the possibility of this sudden outburst of success was due to the very
enemy who, within a few years, was to grind Israel to powder. God pitied the
deplorable overthrow of His chosen people: He saw that there was neither slave
nor freeman—"neither any shut up, nor any left at large, nor any helper for Israel";
and in Jeroboam He gave them the saviour who had been granted to the penitence
of Jehoahaz.[306] It was, so to speak, a last pledge to them of the love and mercy of
Jehovah, which gave them a respite, and would fain have saved them altogether, if
they had turned with their whole heart to Him. And, personally, Jeroboam II.

seems to have been one of the better kings. Not a single crime is laid to his charge;
for under the circumstances of its deep-rooted continuance through the reigns of
all his predecessors, it cannot be deemed a heinous crime that he did not put down
the symbolic cult of Jehovah by the cherubic emblems at Dan and Bethel. The fact
that he had been named after the founder of the kingdom of Israel shows that the
kingdom was proud of the valiant and Heaven-commissioned rebel who had
thrown off the yoke of the house of Solomon. The house of Jehu admired his
policy and his institutions. The son of Nebat did not by any means appear in the
eyes of his people as only worthy of the monotonous epitaph, "who made Israel to
sin." It is true that now the voice of prophecy in Israel itself began to denounce the
concomitants of the "calf-worship"; but the voices of the Jewish herdsman of
Tekoa and of the Israelite Hosea probably raised but faint murmurs in the ears of
the warrior-king, with whom they do not seem to have come into personal contact.
In no case would he rank them as equal in importance with the fiery Elijah or the
king-making Elisha, who had been for four generations the counsellor of his race.
Neither of those great prophets had insisted on the Deuteronomic law of a
centralised worship, nor had they denounced the revered local sanctuaries with
which Israel had been so long familiar. Jonah, indeed—who, if legend be correct,
had been the boy of Zarephath, and the personal attendant of Elijah—had
predicted the king's unbroken success, and had neither made it conditional on a
religious revolution, nor, so far as we know, had in any way censured the existing
institutions.
What rendered Jeroboam's glory possible was the immediate paralysis and
imminent ruin of the power of Syria. The Israelitish king was probably on good
terms with Assyria, and, during this epoch, three Assyrian monarchs had struck
blow after blow against the house of Hazael. Damascus and its dependencies had
received shattering defeats at the hands of Rammânirâri III., Shalmaneser III.
(782-772), and Assurdan III. (772-754). Rammânirâri had made expeditions
against Damascus (773) and Hazael (772), and Assurdan had invaded the Syrian
domains in 767, 755, and 754. Syria had more than enough to do to hold her own
in a struggle for life and death against her atrocious neighbour. With Uzziah in
Judah, Jeroboam II. seems to have been on the friendliest terms; and probably
Uzziah acted as a half-independent vassal, united with him by common interests.
The day for Assyria to threaten Israel had not yet come. Syria lay in the path; and
Assurdan III. had been succeeded by Assurnirari, who gave the world the unusual
spectacle of a peaceful Assyrian king.
Jeroboam II., therefore, was free to enlarge his domains; and unless there be a little
patriotic exaggeration in the extent and reality of his prowess, he exercised at least
a nominal suzerainty over a realm nearly as extensive as that of David. He first

advanced against Damascus, and so far "recovered" it as to make it acknowledge
his rule.[307] His father Joash had won back all the Israelite cities which Benhadad
III. had taken from Jehoahaz; and Jeroboam, if he did not absolutely reconquer the
district east of Jordan, yet kept it in check and repressed the predatory incursions
of the Emîrs of Moab and Ammon.[308] He thus extended the border of Israel to the
sea of the Arabah and "the brook of willows" which divides Edom from Moab.[309]
But this was not all. He pushed his conquests two hundred miles northwards of
Samaria, and became lord of Hamath the Great. Ascending the gorge of the Litâny
between the chains of Libanus and Antilibanus, which formed the northern limit of
Israel, and following the river to its source near Baalbek, he then descended the
Valley of the Orontes, which constitutes the "pass" or "entering in" of Hamath.
Hamath was a town of the Hittites, the most powerful race of ancient Canaan.
They were not of Semitic origin, but spoke a separate language. They were the last
great branch of the once famous and dominant Khetas, whose former importance
has only recently been revealed by their deciphered inscriptions. A century and a
half earlier the Hamathites had thrown off the yoke of Solomon, and they
governed nearly a hundred dependent cities. In alliance with the Phœnicians and
Syrians, they had been valuable members of a league, which, though defeated, had
long formed a barrier against the southward movement of the Assyrians. How
striking was the conquest of this city by Jeroboam is shown by the title of "Hamath
the Great," bestowed upon it by the contemporary prophets,[310] with whom
literary prophecy begins.
The result of these conquests was unwonted peace. Agriculture once more became
possible, when the farmers of Israel were secure that their crops would not be
reaped by plundering Bedouîn. Intercourse with neighbouring nations was revived,
as in the golden days of Solomon, though it was regarded with suspicion.[311]
Civilisation softened something of the old brutality. Prophecy assumed a different
type, and literature began to dawn.
But to this state of things there was, as we learn from the contemporary prophets
Amos and Hosea, a darker side. Of Jonah we know nothing more; for it is
impossible to see in the Book of Jonah much more than a beautiful and edifying
story, which may or may not rest on some surviving legends. It differs from every
other prophetic book by beginning with the word "And," and its late origin and
legendary character cannot any longer be reasonably disputed.[312] We may hope,
therefore, that the Northern prophet, whose home was not far from Nazareth, was
not quite the morose and ruthless grumbler so strikingly portrayed in the book
which bears his name. Of any historical intervention of his in the affairs of

Jeroboam we know nothing further than the recorded promise of the king's
prosperity.

CHAPTER XVIII
AMOS, HOSEA, AND THE KINGDOM OF ISRAEL

2 Kings xiv. 23-29; xv. 8-12

"In them is plainest taught and easiest learnt
What makes a nation happy and keeps it so,
What ruins kingdoms and lays cities flat."
Milton, Paradise Regained.
"We see dimly in the Present what is small and what is
great,
Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn the iron helm
of Fate:
But the soul is still oracular: amid the market's din
List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave
within,
'They enslave their children's children who make
compromise with sin.'"
L
owell.

Amos and Hosea are the two earliest prophets whose "burdens" have come down
to us. From them we gain a near insight into the internal condition of Israel in this
day of her prosperity.
We see, first, that the prosperity was not unbroken. Though peace reigned, the
people were not left to lapse unwarned into sloth and godlessness. The land had
suffered from the horrible scourge of locusts, until every carmel—every garden of
God on hill and plain—withered before them.[313] There had been widespread
conflagrations;[314] there had been a visitation of pestilence; and, finally, there had
been an earthquake so violent that it constituted an epoch from which dates were
reckoned.[315] There were also two eclipses of the sun, which darkened with fear
the minds of the superstitious.[316]
Nor was this the worst. Civilisation and commerce had brought luxury in their
train, and all the bonds of morality had been relaxed. The country began to be

comparatively depleted, and the innocent regularity of agricultural pursuits palled
upon the young, who were seduced by the glittering excitement of the growing
towns. All zeal for religion was looked on as archaic, and the splendour of formal
services was regarded as a sufficient recognition of such gods as there were. As a
natural consequence, the nobles and the wealthy classes were more and more
infected with a gross materialism, which displayed itself in ostentatious furniture,
and sumptuous palaces of precious marbles inlaid with ivory. The desire for such
vanities increased the thirst for gold, and avarice replenished its exhausted coffers
by grinding the faces of the poor, by defrauding the hireling of his wages, by
selling the righteous for silver, the needy for handfuls of barley, and the poor for a
pair of shoes. The degrading vice of intoxication acquired fresh vogue, and the
gorgeous gluttonies of the rich were further disgraced by the shameful spectacle of
drunkards, who lolled for hours over the revelries which were inflamed by
voluptuous music. Worst of all, the purity of family life was invaded and broken
down. Throwing aside the old veiled seclusion of women in Oriental life, the
ladies of Israel showed themselves in the streets in all "the bravery of their tinkling
ornaments of gold," and sank into the adulterous courses stimulated by their
pampered effrontery.
Such is the picture which we draw from the burning denunciations of the peasant-
prophet of Tekoa. He was no prophet nor prophet's son, but a humble gatherer of
sycomore-fruit, a toil which only fell to the humblest of the people.[317] Who is not
afraid, he asks, when a lion roars? and how can a prophet be silent when the Lord
God has spoken? Indignation had transformed and dilated him from a labourer into
a seer, and had summoned him from the pastoral shades of his native village—
whether in Judah or in Israel is uncertain—to denounce the more flagrant iniquities
of the Northern capital.[318] First he proclaims the vengeance of Jehovah upon the
transgressions of the Philistines, of Tyre, of Edom, of Ammon, of Moab, and even
of Judah; and then he turns with a crash upon apostatising Israel.[319] He speaks
with unsparing plainness of their pitiless greed, their shameless debauchery, their
exacting usury, their attempts to pervert even the abstinent Nazarites into
intemperance, and to silence the prophets by opposition and obloquy. Jehovah was
crushed under their violence.[320] And did they think to go unscathed after such
black ingratitude? Nay! their mightiest should flee away naked in the day of
defeat. Robbery was in their houses of ivory, and the few of them who should
escape the spoiler should only be as when a shepherd tears out of the mouth of a
lion two legs and a piece of an ear?[321] As for Bethel, their shrine—which he calls
Bethaven, "House of Vanity," not Bethel, "House of God"—the horns of its altars
should be cut off. Should oppression and licentiousness flourish? Jehovah would
take them with hooks, and their children with fish-hooks, and their sacrifices at

Bethel and Gilgal should be utterly unavailing. Drought, and blasting, and mildew,
and wasting plague, and earth-convulsions like those which had swallowed Sodom
and Gomorrha, from which they should only be plucked as a "firebrand out of the
burning," should warn them that they must prepare to meet their God.[322] It was
lamentable; but lamentation was vain, unless they would return to Jehovah, Lord
of hosts,[323] and abandon the false worship of Bethel, Beersheba, and Gilgal, and
listen to the voice of the righteous, whom they now abhorred for his rebukes. They
talked hypocritically about "the day of the Lord," but to them it should be
blackness. They relied on feast days, and services, and sacrifices; but since they
would not give the sacrifice of judgment and righteousness, for which alone God
cared, they should be carried into captivity beyond Damascus: yes! even to that
terrible Assyria with whose king they now were on friendly terms. They lay at ease
on their carved couches at their delicate feasts, draining the wine-bowls, and
glistering with fragrant oils, heedless of the impending doom which would smite
the great house with breaches and the little house with clefts, and which should
bring upon them an avenger who should afflict them from their conquered Hamath
southwards even to the wady of the wilderness.[324] The threatened judgments of
locusts and fire had been mitigated at the prophet's prayer, but nothing could avert
the plumb-line of destruction which Jehovah held over them, and He would rise
against the House of Jeroboam with His sword.[325] We infer from all that Amos
and Hosea say that the calf-worship at Bethel (for Dan is not mentioned in this
connexion[326]) had degenerated into an idolatry far more abject than it originally
was. The familiarity of such multitudes of the people with Baal-worship and
Asherah-worship had tended to obliterate the sense that the "calves" were cherubic
emblems of Jehovah; and were it not for some confusions of this kind, it is
inconceivable that Jehoram ben-Jehu should have restored the Asherah which his
father had removed. Be that as it may, Bethel and Gilgal seem to have become
centres of corruption. Dan is scarcely once alluded to as a scene of the calf-
worship.
Others, then, might be deceived by the surface-glitter of extended empire in the
days of Jeroboam II. Not so the true prophets. It has often happened—as to Persia,
when, in b.c. 388, she dictated the Peace of Antalcidas, and to Papal Rome in the
days of the Jubilee of 1300, and to Philip II. of Spain in the year of the Armada,
and to Louis XIV. in 1667—that a nation has seemed to be at its zenith of pomp
and power on the very eve of some tremendous catastrophe. Amos and Hosea saw
that such a catastrophe was at hand for Israel, because they knew that Divine
punishment inevitably dogs the heels of insolence and crime. The loftiness of
Israel's privilege involved the utterness of her ruin. "You only have I known of all
the families of the earth: therefore I will visit upon you all your iniquities."[327]

Such prophecies, so eloquent, so uncompromising, so varied, and so constantly
disseminated among the people, first by public harangues, then in writing, could
no longer be neglected. Amos, with his natural culture, his rhythmic utterances,
and his inextinguishable fire, was far different from the wild fanatics, with their
hairy garments, and sudden movements, and long locks, and cries, and self-
inflicted wounds, with whom Israel had been familiar since the days of Elijah
whom they all imitated. So long as this inspired peasant confined himself to moral
denunciations the aristocracy and priesthood of Samaria could afford comfortably
to despise him. What were moral denunciations to them? What harm was there in
ivory palaces and refined feasts? This man was a mere red socialist who tried to
undermine the customs of society. The hold of the upper classes on the people,
whom their exactions had burdened with hopeless debt, and whom they could with
impunity crush into slavery, was too strong to be shaken by the "hysteric gush" of
a philanthropic faddist and temperance fanatic like this. But when he had the
enormous presumption to mention publicly the name of their victorious king, and
to say that Jehovah would rise against him with the sword, it was time for the
clergy to interfere, and to send the intruder back to his native obscurity.

So Amaziah, the priest of Bethel,[328] invoked the king's authority. "Amos," he said
to the king, "hath conspired against thee in the midst of the house of Israel." The
charge was grossly false, but it did well enough to serve the priest's purpose. "The
land is not able to bear all his words."
That was true; for when nations have chosen to abide by their own vicious courses,
and refuse to listen to the voice of warning, they are impatient of rebuke. They
refuse to hear when God calls to them.

"For when we in our viciousness grow hard,
Oh misery on it! the wise gods seal our eyes;
In our own filth drop our clear judgments; make us
Adore our errors; laugh at us while we strut
To our confusion."

The priest tried further to inflame the king's anger by telling him two more of
Amos's supposed predictions. He had prophesied (which was a false inference)
that Israel should be led away captive out of their own land,[329] and had also
prophesied (which was a perversion of the fact) "that Jeroboam should die by the
sword."
At the first prophecy Jeroboam probably smiled. It might indeed come true in the
long-run. If he was a man of prescience as well as of prowess, he probably foresaw

that the elements of ruin lurked in his transient success, and that though, for the
present, Assyria was occupied in other directions, it was unlikely that the weaker
Israel would escape the fate of the far more powerful Syria. As for the personal
prophecy, he was strong, and was honoured, and had his army and his guards. He
would take his chance. Nor does it seem to have troubled any one that Amos
looked for the ultimate union of Israel with Judah. Since the time of Joash the
inheritance of David had been but as "a ruined booth" (ix. 11); but Amos
prophesied its restoration. This touch may have been added later, when he wrote
and published his "burdens"; but he did not hesitate to speak as if the two
kingdoms were really and properly one.[330]

We are not told that Jeroboam II. interfered with the prophet in any way.[331] Had
he done so, he would have been rebuked and denounced for it. He probably went
no further than to allow the priest and the prophet to settle the matter between
themselves. Perhaps he gave a contemptuous permission that, if Amaziah thought
it worth while to send the prophet back into Judah, he might do so.
Armed with this nonchalant mandate, Amaziah, with more mildness and good-
humour than might have been expected from one of his class, said to Amos, "O
Seer,[332] go home, and eat thy bread, and prophesy to thy heart's content at home;
but do not prophesy any more at Bethel, for it is the king's sanctuary and the king's
court."
Amos obeyed perforce, but stopped to say that he had not prophesied out of his
own mouth, but by Jehovah's bidding. He then hurled at the priest a message of
doom as frightful as that which Jeremiah pronounced upon Pashur, when that
priest smote him on the face. His wife should be a harlot in the city; his sons and
daughters should be slain; his inheritance should be divided; he should die in a
polluted land; and Israel should go into captivity. And as for his mission, he
justified it by the fact that he was not one of an hereditary or a professional
community; he was no prophet or prophet's son. Such men might—like Zedekiah,
the son of Chenaanah, and his four hundred abettors—be led into mere function
and professionalism, into manufactured enthusiasm and simulated inspiration.
From such communities freshness, unconventionality, courage, were hardly to be
expected. They would philippise at times; they would get to love their order and
their privileges better than their message, and themselves best of all. It is the
tendency of organised bodies to be tempted into conventionality, and to sink into
banded unions chiefly concerned in the protection of their own prestige. Not such
was Amos. He was a peasant herdsman in whose heart had burned the inspiration
of Jehovah and the wrath against moral misdoing till they had burst into flame. It
was indignation against iniquity which had called Amos from the flocks and the

sycomores to launch against an apostatising people the menace of doom. In that
grief and indignation he heard the voice and received the mandate of the Lord of
hosts. He heads the long line of literary prophets whose priceless utterances are
preserved in the Old Testament. The inestimable value of their teaching lies most
of all in the fact that they were—like Moses—preachers of the moral law; and that,
like the Book of the Covenant, which is the most ancient and the most valuable
part of the Laws of the Pentateuch, they count external service as no better than the
small dust of the balance in comparison with righteousness and true holiness.
The rest of the predictions of Amos were added at a later date. They dwelt on the
certainty and the awful details of the coming overthrow; the doom of the idolaters
of Gilgal and Beersheba; the inevitable swiftness of the catastrophe in which
Samaria should be sifted like corn in a sieve in spite of her incorrigible security.
[333]
Yet the ruin should not be absolute. "Thus saith Jehovah: As the shepherd
teareth out of the mouth of the lion two legs and the piece of an ear, so shall the
children of Israel be rescued, that sit in Samaria on the corner of a couch, and on
the damask of a bed."
The Hebrew Prophets almost invariably weave together the triple strands of
warning, exhortation, and hope. Hitherto Amos has not had a word of hope to utter.
At last, however, he lets a glimpse of the rainbow irradiate the gloom. The
overthrow of Israel should be accompanied by the restoration of the fallen booth of
David, and, under the rule of a scion of that house, Israel should return from
captivity to enjoy days of peaceful happiness, and to be rooted up no more.[334]

Hosea, the son of Beeri, was of a somewhat later date than Amos. He, too,
"became electric," to flash into meaner and corrupted minds the conviction that
formalism is nothing, and that moral sincerity is all in all. That which God requires
is not ritual service, but truth in the inward parts. He is one of the saddest of the
prophets; but though he mingles prophecies of mercy with his menaces of wrath,
the general tenor of his oracles is the same. He pictures the crimes of Ephraim by
the image of domestic unfaithfulness, and bids Judah to take warning from the
curse involved in her apostasy.[335] Many of his allusions touch upon the days of
that deluge of anarchy which followed the death of Jeroboam II. (iv.-vi. 3). That he
was a Northerner appears from the fact that he speaks of the King of Israel as "our
king" (vii. 5). Yet he seems to blame the revolt of Jeroboam I. (i. 11, viii. 4),

although a prophet had originated it, and he openly aspires after the reunion of the
Twelve Tribes under a king of the House of David (iii. 5). He points more
distinctly to Assyria, which he frequently names as the scourge of the Divine
vengeance, and indicates how vain is the hope of the party which relied on the
alliance of Egypt.[336] He speaks with far more distinct contempt of the cherub at
Bethel and the shrine at Gilgal, and says scornfully, "Thy calf, O Samaria, has cast
thee off."[337] Shalmaneser had taken Beth-Arbel, and dashed to pieces mother and
children. Such would be the fate of the cities of Israel.[338] Yet Hosea, like Amos,
cannot conclude with words of wrath and woe, and he ends with a lovely song of
the days when Ephraim should be restored, after her true repentance, by the loving
tenderness of God.
Jeroboam II. must have been aware of some at least of these prophecies. Those of
Hosea must have impressed him all the more because Hosea was a prophet of his
own kingdom, and all of his allusions were to such ancient and famous shrines of
Ephraim as Mizpeh, Tabor, Bethel, Gilgal, Shechem,[339] Jezreel, and Lebanon. He
was the Jeremiah of the North, and a passionate patriotism breathes through his
melancholy strains. Yet in the powerful rule of Jeroboam II. he can only see a
godless militarism founded upon massacre (i. 4), and he felt himself to be the
prophet of decadence. Page after page rings with wailing, and with denunciations
of drunkenness, robbery, and whoredom—"swearing, lying, killing, stealing, and
adultery" (iv. 2).
If Jeroboam was as wise and great as he seemed to have been, he must have seen
with his own eyes the ominous clouds on the far horizon, and the deep-seated
corruption which was eating like a cancer into the heart of his people. Probably,
like many another great sovereign—like Marcus Aurelius when he noted the
worthlessness of his son Commodus, like Charlemagne when he burst into tears at
the sight of the ships of the Vikings—his thoughts were like those of the ancient
and modern proverbs—"When I am dead, let earth be mixed with fire." We have
no trace that Jeroboam treated Hosea as did those guilty priests to whom he was a
rebuke, and who called him "a fool" and "mad" (ix. 7, 8, iv. 6-8, v. 2). Yet the aged
king—he must have reached the unusual age of seventy-three at least, before he
ended the longest and most successful reign in the annals of Israel—could hardly
have anticipated that within half a year of his death his secure throne would be
shaken to its foundation, his dynasty be hurled into oblivion, and that Israel, to
whom, as long as he lived, mighty kingdoms had curtsied, should,

"Like a forlorn and desperate castaway,
Do shameful execution on herself."

Yet so it was. Jeroboam II. was succeeded by no less than six other kings,
but he was the last who died a natural death. Every one of his successors
fell a victim to the assassin or the conqueror. His son Zachariah
("Remembered by Jehovah") succeeded him (b.c. 740), the fourth in
descent from Jehu. Considering the long reign of his father, he must have
ascended the throne at a mature age. But he was the child of evil times. That
he should not interrupt the "calf"-worship was a matter of course; but if he
be the king of whom we catch a glimpse in Hos. vii. 2-7, we see that he
partook deeply of the depravity of his day. We are there presented with a
deplorable picture. There was thievishness at home, and bands of
marauding bandits began to appear from abroad. The king was surrounded
by a desperate knot of wicked counsellors, who fooled him to the top of his
bent, and corrupted him to the utmost of his capacity. They were all
scorners and adulterers, whose furious passions the prophet compares to the
glowing heat of an oven heated by the baker. They made the king glad with
their wickedness, and the princes with lying flatteries. On the royal
birthday, apparently at some public feast, this band of infamous revellers,
who were the boon companions of Zachariah, first made him sick with
bottles of wine, and then having set an ambush in waiting, murdered the
effeminate and self-indulgent debauchee before all the people.[340] The
scene reads like the assassination of a Commodus or an Elagabalus. No one
was likely to raise a hand in his favour. Like our Edward II., he was a
weakling who followed a great and warlike father. It was evident that
troublous times were near at hand, and nothing but the worst disasters could
ensue if there was no one better than such a drunkard as Zachariah to stand
at the helm of state.
So did the dynasty of the mighty Jehu expire like a torch blown out in
stench and smoke.
Its close is memorable most of all because it evoked the magnificent moral
and spiritual teaching of Hebrew prophecy. The ideal prophet and the
ordinary priest are as necessarily opposed to each other as the saint and the
formalist. The glory of prophecy lies in its recognition that right is always

right, and wrong always wrong, apart from all expediency and all casuistry,
apart from "all prejudices, private interests, and partial affections." "What
Jehovah demands," they taught, "is righteousness—neither more nor less;
what He hates is injustice. Sin or offence to the Deity is a thing of purely
moral character. Morality is that for the sake of which all other things exist;
it is the most essential element of all sincere religion. It is no postulate, no
idea, but a necessity and a fact; the most intensely living of human powers
—Jehovah, the God of hosts. In wrath, in ruin, this holy reality makes its
existence known; it annihilates all that is hollow and false."[341]

CHAPTER XIX
AZARIAH-UZZIAH (b.c. 783(?)-737)

JOTHAM (b.c. 737-735)

2 Kings xv. 1-7, 32-38

"This is vanity, and it is a sore sickness."—Eccles. vi. 2.

Before we watch the last "glimmerings and decays" of the Northern
Kingdom, we must once more revert to the fortunes of the House of David.
Judah partook of the better fortunes of Israel. She, too, enjoyed the respite
caused by the crippling of the power of Syria, and the cessation from
aggression of the Assyrian kings, who, for a century, were either
unambitious monarchs like Assurdan, or were engaged in fighting on their
own northern and eastern frontiers. Judah, too, like Israel, was happy in the
long and wise governance of a faithful king.
This king was Azariah ("My strength is Jehovah"), the son of Amaziah. He
is called Uzziah by the Chronicler, and in some verses of the brief
references to his long reign in the Book of Kings. It is not certain that he
was the eldest son of Amaziah;[342] but he was so distinctly the ablest, that,
at the age of sixteen, he was chosen king by "all the people." His official
title to the world must have been Azariah, for in that form his name occurs
in the Assyrian records. Uzziah seems to have been the more familiar title
which he bore among his people.[343] There seems to be an allusion to both
names—Jehovah-his-helper, and Jehovah-his-strength—in the Chronicles:
"God helped him, and made him to prosper; and his name spread far abroad,
and he was marvellously helped, till he was strong."
The Book of Kings only devotes a few verses to him; but from the
Chronicler we learn much more about his prosperous activity. His first
achievement was to recover and fortify the port of Elath, on the Red Sea,

[344]
and to reduce the Edomites to the position they had held in the earlier
days of his father's reign. This gave security to his commerce, and at once
"his name spread far abroad, even to the entering in of Egypt."
He next subdued the Philistines; took Gath, Jabneh, and Ashdod;
dismantled their fortifications, filled them with Hebrew colonists, and
"smote all Palestine with a rod."[345]
He then chastised the roving Arabs of the Negeb or south country in Gur-
Baal and Maon, and suppressed their plundering incursions.
His next achievement was to reduce the Ammonite Emîrs to the position of
tributaries, and to enforce from them rights of pasturage for his large flocks,
not only in the low country (shephelah), but in the southern wilderness
(midbar), and in the carmels or fertile grounds among the Trans-Jordanic
hills.
Having thus subdued his enemies on all sides, he turned his attention to
home affairs—built towers, strengthened the walls of Jerusalem at its most
assailable points, provided catapults and other instruments of war, and
rendered a permanent benefit to Jerusalem by irrigation and the storing of
rain-water in tanks.
All these improvements so greatly increased his wealth and importance that
he was able to renew David's old force of heroes (Gibborim), and to
increase their number from six hundred to two thousand six hundred, whom
he carefully enrolled, equipped with armour, and trained in the use of
engines of war. And he not only extended his boundaries southwards and
eastwards, but appears to have been strong enough, after the death of
Jeroboam II., to make an expedition northwards, and to have headed a
Syrian coalition against Tiglath-Pileser III., in b.c. 738. He is mentioned in
two notable fragments of the annals of the eighth year of this Assyrian king.
He is there called Azrijahu, and both his forces and those of Hamath seem
to have suffered a defeat.[346]
It is distressing to find that a king so good and so great ended his days in
overwhelming and irretrievable misfortune. The glorious reign had a
ghastly conclusion. All that the historian tells us is that "the Lord smote the
king, so that he was a leper, and dwelt in a several [i.e., a separate] house."

The word rendered "a several house" may perhaps mean (as in the margin
of the A.V.) "a lazar house," like the Beit el Massakîn or "house of the
unfortunate," the hospital or abode of lepers, outside the walls of Jerusalem.
[347]
The rendering is uncertain, but it is by no means impossible that the
prevalence of the affliction had, even in those early days, created a retreat
for those thus smitten, especially as they formed a numerous class.
Obviously the king could no more fulfil his royal duties. A leper becomes a
horrible object, and no one would have been more anxious than the
unhappy Azariah himself to conceal his aspect from the eyes of his people.
[348]
His son Jotham was set over the household; and though he is not called
a regent or joint-king—for this institution does not seem to have existed
among the ancient Hebrews—he acted as judge over the people of the land.
We are told that Isaiah wrote the annals of this king's reign, but we do not
know whether it was from Isaiah's biography that the Chronicler took the
story of the manner in which Uzziah was smitten with leprosy. The
Chronicler says that his heart was puffed up with his successes and his
prosperity, and that he was consequently led to thrust himself into the
priest's office by burning incense in the Temple.[349] Solomon appears to
have done the same without the least question of opposition; but now the
times were changed, and Azariah, the high priest,[350] and eighty of his
colleagues went in a body to prevent Uzziah, to rebuke him, and to order
him out of the Holy Place.[351] The opposition kindled him into the fiercest
anger, and at this moment of hot altercation the red spot of leprosy suddenly
rose and burned upon his forehead. The priests looked with horror on the
fatal sign; and the stricken king, himself horrified at this awful visitation of
God, ceased to resist the priests, and rushed forth to relieve the Temple of
his unclean presence, and to linger out the sad remnant of his days in the
living death of that most dishonouring disease. Surely no man was ever
smitten down from the summits of splendour to a lower abyss of
unspeakable calamity! We can but trust that the misery only laid waste the
few last years of his reign; for Jotham was twenty-five when he began to
reign, and he must have been more than a mere boy when he was set to
perform his father's duties.
So the glory of Uzziah faded into dust and darkness. At the age of sixty-
eight death came as the welcome release from his miseries, and "they

buried him with his fathers in the City of David." The Levitically
scrupulous Chronicler adds that he was not laid in the actual sepulchre of
his fathers, but in a field of burial which belonged to them—"for they said,
He is a leper." The general outline of his reign resembled that of his father's.
It began well; it fell by pride; it closed in misery.
The annals of his son Jotham were not eventful, and he died at the age of
forty-one or earlier. He is said to have reigned sixteen years, but there are
insuperable difficulties about the chronology of his reign, which can only be
solved by hazardous conjectures.[352] He was a good king, "howbeit the
high places were not removed." The Chronicler speaks of him chiefly as a
builder. He built or restored the northern gate of the Temple, and defended
Judah with fortresses and towns. But the glory and strength of his father's
reign faded away under his rule. He did indeed suppress a revolt of the
Ammonites, and exacted from them a heavy indemnity; but shortly
afterwards the inaction of Assyria led to an alliance between Pekah, King of
Israel, and Rezin, King of Damascus; and these kings harassed Jotham—
perhaps because he refused to become a member of their coalition. The
good king must also have been pained by the signs of moral degeneracy all
around him in the customs of his own people. It was "in the year that King
Uzziah died" that Isaiah saw his first vision, and he gives us a deplorable
picture of contemporary laxity. Whatever the king may have been, the
princes were no better than "rulers of Sodom," and the people were "people
of Gomorrha." There was abundance of lip-worship, but little sincerity;
plentiful religionism, but no godliness. Superstition went hand in hand with
formalism, and the scrupulosity of outward service was made a substitute
for righteousness and true holiness. This was the deadliest characteristic of
this epoch, as we find it portrayed in the first chapter of Isaiah. The faithful
city had become a harlot—but not in outward semblance. She "reflected
heaven on her surface, and hid Gomorrha in her heart." Righteousness had
dwelt in her—but now murderers; but the murderers wore phylacteries, and
for a pretence made long prayers. It was this deep-seated hypocrisy, this
pretence of religion without the reality, which called forth the loudest
crashes of Isaiah's thunder. There is more hope for a country avowedly
guilty and irreligious than for one which makes its scrupulous
ceremonialism a cloak of maliciousness. And thus there lay at the heart of
Isaiah's message that protest for bare morality, as constituting the end and

the essence of religion, which we find in all the earliest and greatest
prophets:—
"Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom;
Give ear unto the Law of our God, ye people of Gomorrha!
To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the
Lord.
I am full of the burnt-offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts;
And I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats.
When ye come to see My face, who hath required this at your hands, to
trample My courts?
Bring no more vain oblations!
Incense is an abomination unto Me:
New moon and sabbath, the calling of assemblies—
I cannot away with iniquity and the solemn meeting...
Wash you! make you clean!"[353]
Of Jotham we hear nothing more. He died a natural death at an early age. If
the years of his reign are counted from the time when his father's affliction
devolved on him the responsibilities of office, it is probable that he did not
long survive the illustrious leper, but was buried soon after him in the City
of David his father.

CHAPTER XX.
THE AGONY OF THE NORTHERN KINGDOM.

b.c.
Shallum 740
Menahem 740-737
Pekahiah 737-735
Pekah 735-734

2 Kings xv. 8-31

"Blood toucheth blood."—Hos. iv. 2.
"The revolters are profuse in murders."—Hos. v. 2.
"They have set up kings, but not by Me: they have made princes, and I
knew it not."—Hos. viii. 4.
"Non tam reges fuere quam fures, latrones, et tyranni."—Witsius,
Decaph., 326.

With the death of Zachariah begins the acute agony of Israel's dissolution.
Four kings were murdered in forty years. Indeed, within two centuries, at
least nine kings—Nadab, Elah, Zimri, Tibni, Jehoram, Zachariah, Shallum,
Pekahiah, Pekah—had made the steps of the throne slippery with blood.
Except in the house of Omri, all the kings of Israel either left no sons or left
them to be slain. Amos, by his vision of the basket of summer fruit, had
intimated that the sins of Israel were ripe for punishment, and the lesson
had been emphasised by the paronomasia of quîts, "summer," and queets,
"end."[354] The prophet had singled four out of many crimes as the cause of
her ruin. They were (1) greedy oppression of the poor; (2) land-grabbing;
(3) licentious and idolatrous revelries; (4) cruelty to poor debtors, and
rioting on the proceeds of unjust gains. In their drunkenness they even

tempted God's Nazarites to break their vows. "Behold," saith Jehovah, "I
am pressed under you, as a cart is pressed that is full of sheaves." Even
women shared in the common intoxication, and showed themselves utterly
shameless, so that Amos contemptuously calls them "fat cows of Bashan
upon the mountain of Samaria," whom in punishment the brutal conqueror
should drag by the hair out of their ivory palaces, as a fisherman drags his
prey out of the water by hooks.[355]
Shallum, son of Jabesh, the unknown murderer of Zachariah and the
usurper of his throne, suffered the fate of Zimri, and only reigned for one
month. If his conspiracy was marked by the odious circumstances of
treachery and corruption, which we infer from the allusions of Hosea,
Shallum richly deserved the swift retribution which fell upon him. He
seems to have destroyed Zachariah by means of his best affections—under
the guise of friendship, in the midst of boon companionship. But the slayer
of his master had no peace, and from the moment of his fruitless crime the
unhappy country seems to have been plunged in the horrors of civil war.
Some dim glimpses of the evils of the day are gained from the earlier
Zechariah,[356] just as some dim glimpses of the horrors of Rome in the
days of the later Cæsars may be seen in the Apocalypse. The prophet speaks
of three shepherds cut off in one month, who abhorred God, and His soul
was impatient at them.[357]
Just as Galba, Otho, and Vitellius flit across the stage of the Empire amid
war and assassinations, so Zachariah and Shallum are swept away by
"dagger-thrusts through the purple." Was there a third? Ewald and others
think that they detect a shadowy outline of him and of his name in 2 Kings
xv. 10. If so, his name was Kobolam, but we know no more of him beyond
the fact that "he was, and is not." For the sacred annals are but little
concerned with this bloody phantasmagoria of feeble kings, who ruled amid
usurpation, anarchy, hostile attacks from without, and civil war within.
"Israel," said Hosea, "hath cast off the thing that is good: the enemy shall
pursue him. They have set up kings, but not by Me: they have made princes,
and I knew it not." "They are all as hot as an oven, and have devoured their
judges; all their kings have fallen; there is none among them that calleth
upon Me."[358]

It was perhaps during this distracted epoch that for one moment there was
an attempt to place the ruling authority of the nation in the hands of the
prophet himself. So it would appear from Zech. xi. 7-14. Of course these
chapters may be allegorical throughout, as, in any case, they are in great
part. But if so, it becomes more difficult to understand the meaning. What
the prophet says is as follows:—
First, as though he saw the terrible conflagration of the Assyrian tyranny
rolling southwards, and felt it to be irresistible, he bids Lebanon open her
doors, that the fire may devour her cedars. There is perhaps an allusion to
the death of Jeroboam II. in the words, "Howl fir tree, for the cedar is
fallen." He sees in vision the forces of devastation raging among the oaks of
Bashan, the forest and the vintage, while the shepherds cry, and the ousted
lions roar in vain. Then Jehovah bids him feed "the flock of the
slaughter"—the flock sold remorselessly by its rich possessors, and slain,
and left unpitied, as the people were despoiled by its nobles and its kings.
The prophet undertakes the charge of the miserable flock, and takes two
staves, one of which he calls "Prosperity," and the other "Union." While he
was thus engaged three shepherds were cut off in one month,[359] whom he
loathed, and who abhorred him. But he finds his task hopeless, and flings it
up; and in sign that his covenant with the people is broken, he breaks his
staff "Prosperity." The nation refused to pay him anything for his services,
except a paltry sum of thirty pieces of silver, and these he disdainfully flung
into the sacred treasury.[360] Then seeing that all hope of union between
Israel and Judah was at an end, he broke his staff "Union." Lastly, Jehovah
says He will raise up a foolish, neglectful, cruel shepherd who would care
for nothing but to eat the flesh of the fat and break the hoofs of the flock.
And as for this worthless shepherd, the sword should be upon his arm and
in his right eye; his arm shall be dried up, and his right eye utterly darkened.
By this cruel and self-seeking shepherd is probably meant Menahem. He
had been, according to Josephus, the captain of the guard, and was living at
Tirzah, the old beautiful capital of the land. From Tirzah, where he
occupied the position of the captain of the chariots, he marched on the ill-
supported Shallum. Samaria apparently offered no protection to the usurper.
Menahem defeated him and put him to death. Then he proceeded to enforce
the allegiance of the rest of the country. An otherwise unknown town of the

name of Tiphsach[361] ventured to resist him. Menahem conquered it, and
perhaps thinking, as Machiavelli thought, that princes had better exhibit
their utmost cruelty at first, to deter any further opposition, he let loose his
ferocity on the town in a way which created a shuddering remembrance. As
though he had been one of the ferocious heathen, who had never been
restrained by the knowledge of God, he exhibited the extreme of callous
brutality by ripping up all the women that were with child.[362] In this he
followed the remorseless example of Hazael. Hosea had prophesied that this
should be the fate of Samaria;[363] Amos had denounced the Ammonites for
acting thus in the cities of Gilead;[364] Shalmaneser III. had, in b.c. 732,
thus avenged himself on the resistance of Beth-Arbel,[365] and Assyria was
ultimately to meet an analogous retribution,[366] as also was Babylon.[367]
But that a king of Ephraim, of God's chosen people, should act thus to his
own brethren was a horrible portent, ominous of swift destruction.
And the vengeance came. Menahem reigned, at least in name, for ten years;
for the sword which had slain mothers with their unborn infants reduced the
stricken people to terrified silence. But at this epoch Assyria woke once
more from her lethargy, and became the scourge of God to the guilty people
and their guiltier kings. For a whole century the Assyrians had either been
governed by kings who had abjured the lust of blood and conquest, or had
been too seriously occupied on their own eastern and northern frontiers to
intermeddle with the southern kingdoms, or break down the barriers erected
by the confederacy of Hamath and Damascus between Nineveh and the
weaker principalities of Palestine. But now (b.c. 745) there came to the
throne a king who, in Chaldæa, was known by the name of Pul, and in
Assyria by the name of Tiglath-Pileser;[368] and being too formidable for
any power to stay his path, he marched against Menahem. Already he was
lord of the world from the Caspian to the Gulf of Persia; already he had
subdued Babylonia, Elam, Media, Armenia, eastward—Mesopotamia and
Syria westward. Who was Menahem, the petty usurper of a tenth-rate
kingdom, that he should withstand his power or even retard his advance?
The cruel usurper was in no condition to resist him. The brand of Cain was
on him and his kingdom. How could the weak, impoverished, harassed
troops of Israel stand up in battle against those numberless serried ranks, or
withstand their tremendous discipline? If the very name of Persia once

struck terror into the brave Greeks before the spell of Persian ascendency
was broken at Marathon, Thermopylæ, and Salamis, much more did the
name of Assyria make the hearts of the wretched Israelites melt like water.
They now for the first time saw those bearded warriors with their broad
swords, their tremendous bows, their fierce, sensual faces, their thickset
figures. In the language of the prophets we still hear the echo of the fears
which they excited by their swift, unfaltering marches, their sleepless
vigilance, their girded loins, stout sandals, and barbed arrows.[369]
"Their horses' hoofs," says Isaiah, "shall be like flint, and their wheels like a
whirlwind: their roaring shall be like a lion, they shall roar like young lions;
yea, they shall roar, and lay hold of the prey, and carry it away safe, and
there shall be none to deliver. And they shall roar against them in that day
like the roaring of the sea; and if one look unto the land, behold darkness
and distress, and the light is darkened in the clouds thereof."
Ancient Assyria lay beneath the Snowy Mountains of Kurdistan; and its
capital, Nineveh—near Mosul, Kouyunjik, and Neby-Junus—lay six
hundred miles from the Gulf of Persia. The people spoke, as their
descendants still speak, a dialect of Syriac, akin both grammatically and
structurally to Hebrew. Assyria was constantly at war with Babylonia; but
for the most part the kings of Assyria held Babylon in subjection, and
Tiglath-Pileser was a king of the Chaldæans under the name Pul, as well as
a king of Nineveh.
Menahem was warrior enough to know how hopeless it was to struggle
against these trained forces. He was not even secure on his own throne. He
thought it best to offer himself without resistance as a feudatory, if the
Assyrian King would confirm his sovereignty. Tiglath-Pileser did not think
Menahem worth more trouble, and was graciously pleased to accept by way
of bribe a tribute of a thousand talents of silver, or about £125,000. This,
however, as we learn from the Eponym Canon, was not all. Menahem had
to pay a further tribute year by year. Later on, in 738, Shalmaneser
mentions Minik-himmi (Menahem), as well as Rasunnu (Rezin), among his
tributaries.
The Assyrian withdrew, and Menahem had to exact this vast sum of money
from his miserable subjects. To tax the poor was hopeless. He found that

there were some sixty thousand persons who might be reckoned among the
wealthier farmers and proprietors,[370] and from them he at once exacted
fifty shekels of silver (more than £3) apiece. Probably they thought that to
pay the sum demanded was not too heavy a price for the retirement of these
frightful Assyrians, whose forces Tiglath-Pileser did not withdraw until he
had the money in hand. The event took place in 738, and Tiglath-Pileser
continued to reign till 727. How bitterly the burden of foreign tribute was
felt appears from Hos. viii. 9, 10, which should perhaps be rendered, "They
are gone up to Assyria like a wild ass alone by himself. Ephraim hath hired
lovers. And they begin to be minished by reason of the burden of the king
of princes." "The king of princes" was the haughty title usurped by Tiglath-
Pileser, who said, "Are not my princes all of them kings?" (Isa. x. 8).
All this was a fulfilment of what Hosea had foreseen:—
"Ephraim is oppressed, he is crushed in judgment, because he was content
to walk after vanity. Therefore am I unto Ephraim as a moth, and to the
house of Judah as rottenness. When Ephraim saw his sickness, and the
house of Judah his wound, then went Ephraim to Assyria, and sent unto an
avenging king:[371] yet could he not heal you, nor cure you of your wound.
For I will be unto Ephraim as a lion, and as a young lion to the House of
Judah: I, even I, will tear and go away; I will take away, and none shall
rescue him." The Assyrian was irresistible, because he was the destined
instrument of the wrath of God. The "mixing with the heathens" was a sin,
and Israel in cooing to Assyria was like a foolish dove; but the day
sometimes comes to doomed nations when no course can save them from
the fate which they have provoked.[372]
Not long afterwards Menahem died, and he had sufficiently established his
rule to be succeeded as a matter of course by his son Pekahiah. But

"Revenge and wrong bring forth their kind;
The foul cubs like their parents are."

Samaria had fearful object-lessons in the apparently immediate success of
murder and rebellion. The prize looked near and splendid: the vengeance
might be belated or might not come. Of Pekahiah we are told absolutely
nothing but that he reigned two years, with this stereotyped addition, that

"he did that which was evil in the sight of Jehovah" by continuing the calf-
worship.[373] After this brief and uneventful reign, his captain Pekah got
together fifty fierce Gileadites, and with the aid of two otherwise unknown
friends, Argob and Arieh, murdered Pekahiah in his own harem.[374] Argob
was probably so named from the district in Bashan, and Arieh was a fit
name for a lion-faced Gadite (1 Chron. xii. 8).
The sacred historian troubles himself but little about these kings. His annals
of them are brief to extreme meagreness. Like the prophet, he viewed them
as God-abandoned phantoms of guilty royalty.

"They that cry unto me, My God, we, Israel, know thee.
Israel hath cast off that which is good:
The enemy shall pursue him.
They have set up kings, but not by Me;
They have removed them, and I knew it not:
Of their silver and their gold have they made them idols,
That they may be cut off.
He hath cast on thy calf, O Samaria."

Probably Pekahiah was, as so often happens, the weak son of a vigorous
father. The times could not tolerate incapable sovereigns; and the fact that
Pekah not only maintained himself on the throne for twenty years,[375] but
was able to take active steps of aggression against Jerusalem, seems to
show that he was a man of some administrative capacity. If he had not
achieved political and military importance, it would hardly have been worth
while for a fierce and powerful king like Rezin, the last king of Syria, to
form so close an alliance with him. Probably Rezin saw that his throne and
his very existence were in danger, and Pekah wished with Rezin's aid to
resist to the uttermost the encroachments of Assyria, and escape the
burdensome tribute which Menahem had paid. Indeed, it may well be that
Pekahiah's passive continuance of this tribute may have been distasteful to
the people of the land, and that they condoned or even tacitly aided Pekah's
rebellion in order to get rid of it, and to find protection in an abler monarch.
It was the last, perhaps the only, chance for the kings of Syria and of Israel.
As we hear no more of Hamath as a member of the alliance, we must
suppose that it had now been reduced to impotence and vassalage by the all-

powerful Assyrian. If, however, there was to be any overbalance to the
colossal menace of Nineveh, it could only be by a large confederacy; and it
may have been the refusal of Jotham to join that confederacy, on the death
of his father Uzziah, which caused the joint invasion of Rezin and Pekah to
force him to accept their alliance or to suppress him altogether. In that case
they might have formed a close alliance with Egypt, and the forces of the
united South might, they fancied, prove to be a match for the forces of the
North.[376]
Whatever designs they may have formed against Jotham, or to whatever
extent they may have annoyed him, it was not till the reign of his son Ahaz
that they became formidable and ruinous. Of this we shall say more in
recounting the reign of Ahaz. All that we need now remark is that their bold
aggression on Judah became the cause of utter destruction to them both.
They advanced against Ahaz, and overran his helpless country. It was their
object to depose the descendant of David, and to crown in his place a
certain unnamed "son of Tabeal," whom Ewald supposed to have been a
Syrian, but whose name may possibly furnish a specimen of the later Jewish
device of Gematria.[377]
It is not impossible that behind these events we may find the efforts and
yearnings of a party which cared more for Israel's unity than for David's
throne. Such a party may easily have sprung up during the splendid,
prosperous reign of Jeroboam II. It has been conjectured by some that the
election of Uzziah by the people—delayed, according to one reckoning, for
twelve years—was in reality the triumph of the party which felt an
unquenchable allegiance to David's house. In Deut. xxxiii. Reuben is put
before Judah; Jeshurun (i.e., Israel) is magnified far more than Judah; and
some Northern shrine in Zebulon, as well as the Temple, is celebrated as a
sanctuary.[378] That there were men in Jerusalem who preferred Rezin and
Pekahiah to their own king is clearly stated in Isaiah. He compares them to
those who prefer a turbid torrent to a soft, sweet stream. "Because," he says,
"this people despise the waters of Shiloah that flow softly, and take delight
in Rezin and Remaliah's son; now, therefore, the Lord bringeth upon them
the waters of the river, strong and many, even the King of Assyria, and all
his glory."[379] Isaiah seems to have had a contempt for the whole attack. He
told Ahaz not to fear for the stumps of those two smoking firebrands Rezin,

King of Syria, and the Israelitish usurper, whom he only condescends to call
"Remaliah's son." He promises the trembling Ahaz that, since he had
faithlessly refused a sign, God would give him a sign. The sign was that the
young woman who accompanied Isaiah—perhaps his youthful wife—
should bear a son, whose name should be called Immanuel; and that before
the child Immanuel—whose designation, "God with us," was an omen of
the loftiest hope—should be of an age to distinguish evil from good, the
Northern land, which Ahaz abhorred, should be forsaken of both her kings.
The prophecy came true in every particular. Rezin and Pekah swept all
before them, and besieged Jerusalem; but they wasted their time in vain
before the fortifications which Jotham had strengthened and repaired.
Obliged to raise the siege, Rezin carried his army southward, and
indemnified himself by seizing Elath, by driving out the Judæan garrison,
and replacing them with Syrians.[380] It was the last gleam of Syrian
success, before the final overthrow of Damascus which prophecy had often
and emphatically foretold.
Pekah also withdrew his forces—no doubt compelled to do so by the step
which Ahaz took in his desperation. For now the King of Judah invoked the
protection and invited the active interference of Tiglath-Pileser against his
enemies—"to save him out of the hand of the King of Syria, and out of the
hand of the King of Israel, who were risen up against him."
Rezin and Damascus first felt the might of the Assyrian's conquering arm.
The account of his decisive conquest is preserved in the Eponym Canon,
and the passages which refer to the defeat of the Syrians will be found in
the First Appendix at the end of the volume. It appears from the monuments
that Rezin (Rasannu) lost not only his kingdom, but his life.
It is the death-knell of Aramæan greatness, as Amos had foretold.
"Thus saith Jehovah:
For three transgressions of Damascus, and for four,
I will not turn away the punishment thereof;
Because they have threshed Gilead with threshing instruments of iron:
But I will send a fire into the house of Hazael,
Which shall devour the palaces of Benhadad.
And I will break the bar of Damascus,[381]

And cut off him that sitteth [on the throne] in the Valley of Aven,[382]
And him that holdeth the sceptre from Beth-Eden:[383]
And the people of Syria shall go into captivity unto Kir,[384]
Saith Jehovah."
Rezin was slain—how we know not; very probably by one of the horrible
methods of torture—by being flayed alive, or decapitated, or having his lips
and nose cut off—which were practised by these demon-kings of Nineveh.
Nor did Pekah escape. Tiglath-Pileser advanced against the northern part of
his dominions, and afflicted the land of Zebulon and Naphtali. Ijon; Abel-
beth-Maachah, the city of Elisha; Zanoah, the ancient sanctuary of Kedesh-
Naphtali, the home of the hero Barak; Hazor, the former capital of the
Canaanitish king Jabin; Gilead; Galilee,—all submitted to him, apparently
without striking a serious blow. He dealt with the miserable inhabitants in
the way familiar to kings of Assyria. He deported them en masse into a
strange country of which they did not understand the language, and in
which they were reduced to hopeless subjection, while he supplied their
places by aliens from various parts of his own dominions. There could be
no securer method of reducing to paralysis all their national aspirations.
Strangers in a strange land, they forgot their nationality, forgot their
religion, forgot their language, forgot their traditions. Their sole resource
was to plunge into material pursuits, and to melt away into
indistinguishable obliteration among the neighbouring heathen. It was the
beginning of the Northern Captivity—of the loss of the Ten Tribes.
As Tiglath-Pileser thus permanently subdued and depopulated the land of
the Northern Tribes, it is a Jewish tradition that at this time he carried away
the golden "calf" from Dan among his spoils.[385] Scripture does not record
the fact, though in Hosea (viii. 5) there may be an allusion to the fate of that
at Bethel, whether the right version be "He hath cast off thy calf, O
Samaria," or "Thy calf, O Samaria, hath cast thee off."[386] "The workman
made it," he continues; "therefore it is not God: for the calf of Samaria shall
be broken in pieces." And again (x. 5): "The people of Samaria shall fear
because of the heifer of the House of Vanity: for the people thereof shall
mourn over it, and the chemarim [i.e., the black-robed false priests thereof]
shall tremble for it, for the glory thereof, because it is departed. It [the idol]
shall also be carried to Assyria for a present to King Combat."

For a time Pekah escaped; but unsuccess is fatal to a murderous usurper,
weakened by the loss and plunder of dominions which he is unable to
defend. Instead of wasting time in the siege of a strong city like Samaria,
Tiglath-Pileser in all probability stirred up Hoshea, the son of Elah, to rise
in conspiracy against his master and slay him. For Pekah and Israel seem to
have made light of the Northern raid. They said in their pride and stoutness
of heart, "The bricks are fallen down, but we will build with new stones: the
sycomores are cut down, but we will change them into cedars." Such
pretence of security was ill-timed and senseless, and Isaiah denounced it.
"Therefore," he said, "Jehovah hath set up against Israel the adversaries of
Rezin [i.e., the Assyrians], and hath stirred up his enemies; the Syrians on
the east, and the Philistines on the west; and they have devoured Israel with
open mouth. For all this His anger is not turned away, but His hand is
stretched out still. Yet the people have not turned unto Him that smote them,
neither have they sought the Lord of hosts. Therefore Jehovah hath cut off
from Israel palm-branch and rush in one day. The elder and the honourable
man, he is the head; and the prophet that speaketh lies, he is the tail. For
they that lead this people cause them to err, and they that are led of them are
swallowed up."[387]
The following verses furnish one of the numerous pictures of the anarchy
and abounding misery of these evil days. "For wickedness burneth as the
fire: it devoureth the briers and thorns; yea, it kindleth in the thickets of the
forest, and they roll upwards in thick clouds of smoke. Through the wrath
of the Lord of hosts is the land burnt up; the people also are the fuel of fire:
no man spareth his brother. And one shall snatch on the right, and be
hungry; and he shall eat on the left hand, and they shall not be satisfied:
they shall eat every man the flesh of his own arm: Manasseh, Ephraim; and
Ephraim, Manasseh: and they together shall be against Judah. For all this
His anger is not turned away, but His hand is stretched out still."
We are told in the Book of Kings that Pekah reigned for twenty years; but
some of these later reigns must be shortened to suit the exigencies of known
chronological data. It seems probable that he occupied the throne for a
much shorter time.[388]
Such was the weakened, harassed, vassal kingdom—the gaunt spectre of
itself—to the throne of which, after a period of anarchy and chaos, Hoshea,

by conspiracy and murder, succeeded as the miserable feudatory of Assyria.

CHAPTER XXI
HOSHEA, AND THE FALL OF THE NORTHERN KINGDOM

b.c. 734-725

2 Kings xvii. 1-41

"As for Samaria, her king is cut off as the foam upon the water."—
Hos. x. 7.

As a matter of convenience, we follow our English Bible in calling the
prophet by the name Hosea, and the nineteenth, last, and best king of Israel
Hoshea. The names, however, are identical ( ‫)ֹהוֵׁש ַצ‬, and mean "Salvation"—
the name borne by Joshua also in his earlier days. In the irony of history the
name of the last king of Ephraim was thus identical with that of her earliest
and greatest hero, just as the last of Roman emperors bore the double name
of the Founder of Rome and the Founder of the Empire—Romulus
Augustulus. By a yet deeper irony of events the king in whose reign came
the final precipitation of ruin wore the name which signified deliverance
from it.
And more and more, as time went on, the prophet Hosea felt that he had no
word of present hope or comfort for the king his namesake. It was the more
brilliant lot of Isaiah, in the Southern Kingdom, to kindle the ardour of a
generous courage. Like Tyrtæus, who roused the Spartans to feel their own
greatness—like Demosthenes, who hurled the might of Athens against
Philip of Macedon—like Chatham, "bidding England be of good cheer, and
hurl defiance at her foes"—like Pitt, pouring forth, in the days of the
Napoleonic terror, "the indomitable language of courage and of hope,"—
Isaiah was missioned to encourage Judah to despise first the mighty Syrian,
and then the mightier Assyrian. Far different was the lot of Hosea, who
could only be the denouncer of an inevitable doom. His sad function was
like that of Phocion after Chæroneia, of Hannibal after Zama, of Thiers

after Sedan: he had to utter the Cassandra-voices of prophecy, which his
besotted and demented contemporaries—among whom the priests were the
worst of all[389]—despised and flouted until the time for repentance had
gone by for ever.
True it is that Hosea could not be content—what true heart could?—to
breathe nothing but the language of reprobation and despair. Israel had been
"yoked to his two transgressions,"[390] but Jehovah could not give up His
love for His chosen people:—

"How shall I give thee up, Ephraim?
How shall I surrender thee, Israel?
How shall I make thee as Admah?
How shall I treat thee as Zeboim?
Mine heart is turned within Me;
I am wholly filled with compassion!
I will not execute the fierceness of Mine anger;
I will not again destroy Ephraim:
For I am God, and not man.
The Holy One in the midst of thee!
I will not come to exterminate!
They shall come after Jehovah as after a lion that roars!
For he shall roar, and his sons shall come hurrying from the
west,
They shall come hurrying as a bird out of Egypt,
And as a dove out of the land of Assyria;
And I will cause them to dwell in their houses, Saith
Jehovah."[391]

Alas! the gleam of alleviation was imaginary rather than actual. The
prophet's wish was father to his thought. He had prophesied that Israel
should be scattered in all lands (ix. 3, 12, 17, xiii. 3-16). This was true; and
it did not prove true, except in some higher ideal sense, that "Israel shall
again dwell in his own land" (xiv. 4-7) in prosperity and joy.
The date of Hoshea's accession is uncertain, and we cannot tell in what
sense we are to understand his reign as having lasted "nine years."[392] We
have no grounds for accepting the statement of Josephus (Antt., IX. xiii. 1),

that Hoshea had been a friend of Pekah and plotted against him. Tiglath-
Pileser expressly says that he himself slew Pekah and appointed Hoshea.
[393]
His must have been, at the best, a pitiful and humiliating reign. He
owed his purely vassal sovereignty to Assyrian patronage. He probably did
as well for Israel as was in his power. Singular to relate, he is the only one
of all the kings of Israel of whom the historian has a word of
commendation; for while we are told that "he did that which was evil in the
sight of the Lord," it is added that it was "not as the kings of Israel that were
before him." But we do not know wherein either his evil-doing or his
superiority consisted. The Rabbis guess that he did not replace the golden
calf at Dan which Tiglath-Pileser had taken away (Hos. x. 6); or that he did
not prevent his subjects from going to Hezekiah's passover.[394] "It seems
like a harsh jest," says Ewald, "that this Hoshea, who was better than all his
predecessors, was to be the last king." But so it has often been in history.
The vengeance of the French Revolution smote the innocent and harmless
Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette—not Louis XIV., or Louis XV. and
Madame du Pompadour.
His patron Tiglath-Pileser ended his magnificent reign of conquest in 727,
soon after he had seated Hoshea on the throne. The removal of his strong
grasp on the helm caused immediate revolt. Phœnicia especially asserted
her independence against Shalmaneser IV. He seems to have spent five
years in an unavailing attempt to capture Island-Tyre. Meanwhile, the
internal troubles which had harassed and weakened Egypt ceased, and a
strong Ethiopian king named Sabaco established his rule over the whole
country.[395] It was perhaps the hope that Phœnicia might hold out against
the Assyrian, and that the Egyptian might protect Samaria, which kindled in
the mind of Hoshea the delusive plan of freeing himself and his
impoverished land from the grinding tribute imposed by Nineveh. While
Shalmaneser[396] was trying to quell Tyre, Hoshea, having received
promises of assistance from Sabaco, withheld the "presents"—the minchah,
as the tribute is euphemistically called—which he had hitherto paid. Seeing
the danger of a powerful coalition, Shalmaneser swept down on Samaria in
724. Possibly he defeated the army of Israel in the plain of Jezreel (Hos. i.
5), and got hold of the person of Hoshea. Josephus says that he "besieged
him"; but the sacred historian only tells us that "he shut him up, and bound
him in prison." Whether Hoshea was taken in battle, or betrayed by the

Assyrian party in Samaria, or whether he went in person to see if he could
pacify the ruthless conqueror, he henceforth disappears from history "like
foam"—or like a chip or a bubble—"upon the water." We do not know
whether he was put to death, but we infer from an allusion in Micah that he
was subjected to the cruel indignities in which the Assyrians delighted; for
the prophet says, "They shall smite the Judge of Israel with a rod upon the
cheek."[397] Perhaps in the title "Judge" (Shophet, suffes) we may see a sign
that Hoshea's royalty was little more than the shadow of a name.
Having thus got rid of the king, Shalmaneser proceeded to invest the
capital. But Samaria was strongly fortified upon its hill, and the Jewish race
has again and again shown—as it showed so conspicuously in the final
crisis of its destiny, when Jerusalem defied the terrible armies of Rome—
that with walls to protect them they could pluck up a terrible courage and
endurance from despair. Strong as Assyria was, the capital of Ephraim for
three years resisted her beleaguering host and her crashing battering-rams.
About all the anguish which prevailed within the city, and the wild
vicissitudes of orgy and starvation, history is silent. But prophecy tells us
that the sorrows of a travailing woman came upon the now kingless city.
They drank to the dregs the cup of fury.[398] The saddest Northern prophet,
"the Jeremiah of Israel," sings the dirge of Israel's saddest king.[399]

"I am become to them as a lion;
As a leopard will I watch by the way;
I will meet them as a bear bereaved of her whelps,
And rend the caul of their heart,
And there will I devour them like a lioness:
The beast of the field shall tear them....
Where now is thy king, that he may save thee in all thy cities
And thy judges, of whom thou saidst, 'Give me a king and
prince'?
I give thee a king in Mine anger,
And take him away in My wrath."

For three years Samaria held out. During the siege Shalmaneser died, and
was succeeded by Sargon, who—though he vaguely talks of "the kings his
ancestors," and says that he had been preceded by three hundred and thirty

Assyrian dynasts—never names his father, and seems to have been a
usurping general.[400]
Sabaco remained inactive, and basely deserted the miserable people which
had relied on his protection. In this conduct Egypt was true to its historic
character of untrustworthiness and inertness. Both in Israel and in Judah
there were two political parties. One relied on the strength of Egypt; the
other counselled submission to Assyria, or—in the hour when it became
necessary to defy Assyria—confidence in God. Egypt was as frail a support
as one of her own paper-reeds, which bent under the weight, and broke and
ran into the hand of every one who leaned on it.
Sargon did not raze the city, and we see from the Eponym Canon that its
inhabitants were still strong enough some years later to take part in a futile
revolt. But we have one dreadful glimpse of the horrors which he inflicted
upon it. They were the inevitable punishment of every conquered city which
had dared to resist the Assyrian arm.

"Samaria shall bear her guilt,
For she hath rebelled against her God.
They shall fall by the sword:
Their infants shall be dashed in pieces,
And their women in child shall be ripped up."[401]

Sargon's own record of the matter on the tablets at Khorsabad is: "I
besieged, took, and occupied the city of Samaria, and carried into captivity
twenty-seven thousand two hundred and eighty of its inhabitants. I changed
the former government of this country, and placed over it lieutenants of my
own. And Sebeh, Sultan of Egypt, came to Raphia to fight against me. They
met me, and I routed them. Sebeh fled."[402] The Assyrians were occupied
in the unsuccessful siege of Tyre between 720-715, during which years
Sargon put down Yahubid of Hamath, whose revolt had been aided by
Damascus and Samaria. In 710 he marched against Ashdod (Isa. xx. 1). In
709 he defeated Merodach-Baladan at Dur-Yakin, and reconquered
Chaldæa, deporting some of the population into Samaria. In 704, in the
fifteenth year of his reign, he was assassinated, after a career of victory. He
inscribes on his palace at Khorsabad a prayer to his god Assur, that, after his
toils and conquests, "I may be preserved for the long years of a long life, for

the happiness of my body, for the satisfaction of my heart. May I
accumulate in this palace immense treasures, the booties of all countries,
the products of mountains and valleys." Assur and the gods of Chaldæa
were invoked in vain; the prayer was scattered to the winds, and the
murderer's dagger was the comment on Sargon's happy anticipations of
peace and splendour.
Israel fell unpitied by her southern neighbour, for Judah was still smarting
under memories of the old contempt and injury of Joash ben-Jehoahaz, and
the more recent wrongs inflicted by Pekah and Rezin. Isaiah exults over the
fate of Samaria, while he points the moral of her fall to the drunken priests
and prophets of Jerusalem. "Woe," he says, "to the crown of pride of the
drunkards of Ephraim, and to the fading flower of his glorious beauty,
which is on the head of the fat valley of them that are smitten down with
wine! Behold, the Lord hath a mighty and strong one [i.e., the Assyrian]; as
a tempest of hail, a destroying storm, as a tempest of mighty water
overflowing, shall he cast down to the earth with violence. The crown of
pride, the drunkards of Ephraim, shall be trodden underfoot: and the fading
flower of his glorious beauty, which is on the head of the fat valley, shall be
as the first ripe fig before the summer; which when he that looketh upon it
seeth, while it is yet in his hand he eateth it up."[403] Israel had begun in
hostility to Judah, and perished by it at last.
Such, then, was the end of the once brilliant kingdom of Israel—the
kingdom which, even so late as the reign of Jeroboam II., seemed to have a
great future before it. No one could have foreseen beforehand that, when,
with the prophetic encouragement of Ahijah, Jeroboam I. established his
sovereignty over the greater, richer, and more flourishing part of the land
assigned to the sons of Jacob, the new kingdom should fall into utter ruin
and destruction after only two and a half centuries of existence, and its
tribes melt away amid the surrounding nations, and sink into a mixed and
semi-heathen race without any further nationality or distinctive history. It
seemed far less probable that the mere fragment of the Southern Kingdom,
after retaining its separate existence for more than one hundred and sixty
years longer than its more powerful brother, should continue to endure as a
nation till the end of time. Such was the design of God's providence, and we
know no more. The Northern Kingdom had, up to this time, produced the
greatest and most numerous prophets—Ahijah, Elijah, Elisha, Micaiah,

Jonah, Amos, Hosea, Nahum, and many more.[404] It had also produced the
loveliest and most enduring poetry in the Song of Songs, the Song of
Deborah, and other contributions to the Books of Jashar, and of the Wars of
Jehovah. It had also brought into vigour the earliest and best historic
literature, the narratives of the Elohist and the Jehovist. These immortal
legacies of the religious spirit of the Northern Kingdom were incomparably
superior in moral and enduring value to the Levitic jejuneness of the
Priestly Code, with its hierarchic interests and ineffectual rules, which, in
the exaggerated supremacy attached to rites, proved to be the final blight of
an unspiritual Judaism. Israel had also been superior in prowess and in
deeds of war, and in the days of Joash ben-Jehoahaz ben-Jehu had barely
conceded to Judah a right to separate existence. More than all this, the
apostasies of Judah, from the days of Solomon downwards, were quite as
heinous as Jezebel's Baal-worship, and far more deadly than the irregular
but not at first idolatrous cultus of Bethel. The prophets are careful to teach
Judah that if she was spared it was not because of any good deservings.[405]
Yet now the cedar was scathed and smitten down, and its boughs were rent
and scattered; and the thistle had escaped the wild beast's tread!
In the former volume we glanced at some of the causes of this, and the
blessings which resulted from it. The central and chiefest blessing was, first,
the preservation of a purer form of monotheism, and a loftier ideal of
religion—though only realised by a few in Judah—than had ever prevailed
in the Northern Tribes; secondly, and above all, the development of that
inspiring Messianic prophecy which was to be fulfilled seven centuries
later, when He who was David's Son and David's Lord came to our lost race
from the bosom of the Father, and brought life and immortality to light.
And it was the work purely of "God's unseen providence, by men
nicknamed 'Chance,'" which, dealing with nations as the potter with his
clay, chooses some to honour and some to dishonour. For, as all the
prophets are anxious to remind the Judæan Kingdom, their success, the
procrastination of their downfall, their restoration from captivity, were not
due to any merits of their own. The Jews were and ever had been a stiff-
necked nation; and though some of their kings had been faithful servants of
Jehovah, yet many of them—like Rehoboam, and Ahaz, and Manasseh—
exceeded in wickedness and inexcusable apostasy the least faithful of the
worshippers at Gilgal and Bethel. They were plainly reminded of their

nothingness: "And thou shalt speak and say before the Lord thy God, A
Syrian ready to perish was my father, and he went down into Egypt, and
sojourned there with a few, and became there a nation."[406] "Fear not, thou
worm Jacob: I will help thee."[407]
But this was the end of the Ten Tribes. Nor must we say that Hosea's
prediction of mercy was laughed to scorn by the irony of events, when he
had given it as God's promise that—

"I will not execute the fierceness of Mine anger,
I will not again destroy Israel;
For I am God, and not man."[408]

The words mean that mercy is God's chiefest and most essential attribute;
and, after all, a nation is composed of families and individuals, and in
political extinction there may have been many families and individuals in
Israel, like that of Tobias, and like that of Anna, the prophetess of the tribe
of Asher, who found, either in their far exile, or among the scattered Jews
who still peopled the old territories, a peace which was impossible during
the distracted anarchy and deepening corruption of the whole period which
had elapsed since the founding of the house of Omri. In any case God
knows and loves His own. The words,

"I will not execute the fierceness of Mine anger;
For I am God, and not man,"

might stand for an epitome of much that is most precious in Holy Writ.
God's orthodoxy is the truth; and the truth remaineth, though man's
orthodoxy exercises all its fury and all its baseness to overwhelm it. What
hope has any man, even a St. Paul—what hope had even the Lord Himself
—before the harsh, self-interested tribunals of human judgment, or of that
purely external religionism which has always shown itself more brutal and
more blundering than secular cruelty? What chance has there been,
humanly speaking, for God's best saints, prophets, and reformers, when
priests, popes, or inquisitors have been their judges? If God resembled those
generations of unresisted ecclesiastics, whose chief resort has been the
syllogism of violence, and whose main arguments have been the torture-
chamber and the stake, what hope could there possibly be for the vast

majority of mankind but those endless torments by the terrors of which
corrupt Churches have forced their tyranny upon the crushed liberties and
the paralysed conscience of mankind? The Indian sage was right who said
that "God can only be truly described by the words No! No!"—that is, by
repudiating multitudes of the ignoble and cruel basenesses which religious
teachers have imagined or invented respecting Him. Because God is God,
and not man—God, not a tyrant or an inquisitor—God, with the great
compassionate heart of unfathomable tenderness,—therefore, in all who
truly love Him, perfect love casteth out fear, because fear hath torment. Sin
means ruin; yet God is love.[409]

The historian of the Kings here digresses, in a manner unusual to the Old
Testament, to give us a most interesting glimpse of the fate of the conquered
people, and the origin of the race which was known to after-ages by the
name "Samaritan."
Sargon, when he had sacked the capital, carried out the policy of
deportation which had now been established by the Assyrian kings. He
achieved the double purpose of populating the capital and province of
Nineveh, while he reduced subject nations to inanition, by sweeping away
all the chief of the inhabitants from conquered states, and settling them in
his own more immediate dominions. There they would be reduced to
impotence, and mingle with the races among whom their lot would
henceforth be cast. He therefore "carried Israel away" into Assyria, and
placed them in Halah, north of Thapsacus, on the Euphrates, and in Habor,
the river of Gozan[410]—i.e., on the river in Northern Assyria which still
bears the name of Khabour, and flows into the Euphrates—and in the cities
of the Medes.[411] He replaced the old population by Dinaites, Tarplites,
Apharsathchites, Susanchites, Elamites, Dehavites, and Babylonians, after
carrying away the great bulk of the better-class population.[412]
After this the historian pauses to sum up and emphasise once more the main
lesson of his narrative. It is that "righteousness exalteth a nation, and sin is

the reproach of any people." God had called His son Israel out of Egypt,
delivered His chosen from Pharaoh, given them a pleasant land; but "Israel
had sinned against Jehovah their God, and had feared other gods, and
walked in the statutes of the heathen." They had failed therefore in fulfilling
the very purpose for which they had been set apart. They had been intended
"to uplift among the nations the banner of righteousness" and the banner of
the One True God. Instead of this, they were seduced by the heathen ritual
of

"Gay religions full of pomp and gold."

They decked out alien institutions,[413] and alike in frequented and populous
places—"from the tower of the watchmen to the fenced city"—set up
matstseboth (A.V., "pillars") and Asherim on every high hill. The green
trees became obumbratrices scelerum, the secret bowers of their iniquities.
They burnt incense on the bamoth, and served idols, and wrought
wickedness. Useless had been the voices of all the prophets and the seers.
They went after vain things, and became vain. Beginning with the two
"calves," they proceeded to lewd and orgiastic idolatries. Ahab and Jezebel
seduced them into Tyrian Baal-worship. From the Assyrians they learnt and
practised the adoration of the host of heaven.[414] From Moab and Ammon
they borrowed the abominable rites of Moloch, and used divination and
enchantments by means of belomancy (Ezek. xxi. 21, 22) and necromancy,
and sold themselves to do wickedness.
Nor was this all. These idolatries, with their guilty ritualism, were not
confined to Israel, but also

"Infected Zion's daughters with like heat,
Whose wanton passions in the sacred porch
Ezekiel saw, when, by the vision led,
His eye surveyed the dark idolatries
Of alienated Judah."

And thus, when Jehovah afflicted the seed of Israel and cast them out of His
sight, Judah also had to feel the stroke of retribution.[415]

And it is idle to object that even if Israel had been faithful she must have
inevitably perished before the superior might of Damascus, or Nineveh, or
Babylon. How can we tell? It is not possible for us thus to write unwritten
history, and there is absolutely nothing to show that the surmise is correct.
In the days of David, of Uzziah, of Jeroboam II., Judah and Israel had
shown what they could achieve. Had they been strong in faithfulness to
Jehovah, and in the righteousness which that faith required, they would
have shown an invincible strength amid the moral enervation of the
surrounding people. They might have held their own by welding into one
strong kingdom the whole of Palestine, including Philistia, Phœnicia, the
Negeb, and the Trans-Jordanic region. They might have consolidated the
sway which they at various times attained southwards, as far as the Red Sea
port of Elath; northwards over Aram and Damascus, as far as the Hamath
on the Orontes; eastwards to Thapsacus on the Euphrates; westward to the
Isles of the Gentiles. There is nothing improbable, still less impossible, in
the view that, if the Israelites had truly served Jehovah and obeyed His
laws, they might then have permanently established the monarchy which
was ideally regarded as their inheritance, and which for brief and fitful
periods they partially maintained. And such a monarchy, held together by
warrior statesmen, strong and righteous, and above all secure in the blessing
of God, would have been a thoroughly adequate counterpoise, not only to
dilatory and distracted Egypt, which had long ceased to be aggressive, but
even to brutal Assyria, which prevailed in no small measure because of the
isolation and mutual dissension of these southern principalities.
But, as it was, "Assyria and Egypt—the two world-powers in the dawn of
history, the two chief sources of ancient civilisation, the twin giant-empires
which bounded the Israelite people on the right hand and on the left—were
cruel neighbours, between whom the ill-fated nation was tossed to and fro
in wanton sport like a shuttlecock. They were cruel friends before whom it
must cringe in turns, praying sometimes for help, suing sometimes for very
life—alternate scourges in the hand of the Divine wrath. Now it is the fly of
Egypt, and now it is the bee of Assyria, whose ruthless swarms issue forth
at the word of Jehovah, settling in the holes of the rocks, and upon all
thorns, and upon all bushes, with deadly sting, fatal to man and beast,
devastating the land far and wide. Holding the poor Israelite in their
relentless embrace, they threatened ever and again to crush him by their

grip. Like the fabled rocks which frowned over the narrow straits of the
Bosporus, they would crash together and annihilate the helpless craft which
the storms of destiny had placed at their mercy. Israel reeled under their
successive blows. As was the beginning, so was the end. As the captivity of
Egypt had been the cradle of the nation, so was the captivity of Assyria to
be its tomb."[416]
In any case the principle of the historian remains unshaken. Sin is
weakness; idolatry is folly and rebellion; uncleanness is decrepitude. St.
Paul was not thinking of this ancient Philosophy of History when he wrote
his Epistle to the Romans; yet the intense and masterly sketch which he
gives of that moral corruption which brought about the long, slow,
agonising dissolution of the beauty that was Greece, and the grandeur that
was Rome, is one of its strongest justifications. His view only differs from
the summary before us in the power of its eloquence and the profoundness
of its psychologic insight. He says the same thing as the historian of the
Kings, only in words of greater power and wider reach, when he writes:
"For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and
unrighteousness of men, who hold down the truth in unrighteousness.
Knowing God, they glorified Him not as God, neither gave thanks; but
became vain in their reasonings" (ἐματαιώθησαν, the very word used in the
LXX. in 2 Kings xvii. 15), "and their senseless heart was darkened.
Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools" (words which might
describe the expediency-policy of Jeroboam I., and its fatal consequences),
"and changed the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an
image of corruptible man, and of birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping
things. For this cause God gave them up to passions of dishonour, and unto
a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting, being filled with
all unrighteousness, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy,
murder, strife, deceit, malignity,"—and so on, through a long catalogue of
iniquities which are identical with those which we find so burningly
denounced on the pages of the prophets of Israel and Judah.
Even a Machiavelli, cool and cynical and audacious as was his scepticism,
could see and admit that faithfulness to religion is the secret of the
happiness and prosperity of states.[417] An irreligious society tends
inevitably and always to be a dissolute society; and a "dissolute society is
the most tragic spectacle which history has ever to present—a nest of

disease, of jealousy, of dissensions, of ruin, and despair, whose last hope is
to be washed off the world and disappear. Such societies must die sooner or
later of their own gangrene, of their own corruption, because the infection
of evil, spreading into unbounded selfishness, ever intensifying and
reproducing passions which defeat their own aim, can never end in anything
but moral dissolution." We need not look further than the collapse of France
after the battle of Sedan, and the cause to which that collapse was
attributed, not only by Christians, but by her own most worldly and
sceptical writers, to see that the same causes ever issue and will issue in the
same ruinous effects.

In order to complete the history of the Northern Kingdom, the historian here
anticipates the order of time by telling us what happened to the mongrel
population whom Sargon transplanted into central Ephraim in place of the
old inhabitants.
The king, we are told, brought them from Babylon—which was at this time
under the rule of Assyria; from Cuthah—by which seems to be meant some
part of Mesopotamia near Babylon;[418] from Avva, or Ivah—probably the
same as Ahavah or Hit, on the Euphrates, north-west of Babylon; from
Sepharvaim, or Sippara, also on the Euphrates;[419] and from Hamath, on
the Orontes, which had not long remained under Jeroboam II.[420] It must
not be supposed that the whole population of Ephraim was deported; that
was a physical impossibility. Although we are told in Assyrian annals that
Sargon carried away with him so vast a number of captives, it is, of course,
clear that the lowest and poorest part of the population was left.[421] We can
imagine the wild confusion which arose when they found themselves
compelled to share the dismantled palaces and abandoned estates of the
wealthy with the horde of new colonists, whose language, in all probability,
they but imperfectly understood. There must have been many a tumult,
many a scene of horror, such as took place in the long antagonism of
Normans and Saxons in England, before the immigrants and the relics of
the former populace settled down to amalgamation and mutual tolerance.

Sargon is said to have carried away with him the golden calf or calves of
Bethel, as Tiglath-Pileser is said by the Rabbis to have carried away that of
Dan.[422] He also took away with him all the educated classes, and all the
teachers of religion.[423] No one was left to instruct the ignorant inhabitants;
and, as Hosea had prophesied, there was neither a sacrifice, nor a pillar, nor
an ephod, and not even teraphim to which they could resort.[424] Naturally
enough, the disunited dregs of an old and of a new population had no clear
knowledge of religion. They "feared not Jehovah." The sparseness of
inhabitants, with its consequent neglect of agriculture, caused the increase
of wild beasts among them. There had always been lions and bears in "the
swellings of Jordan,"[425] and in all the lonelier parts of the land; and to this
day there are leopards in the woods of Carmel, and hyænas and jackals in
many regions. Conscious of their miserable and godless condition, and
afflicted by the lions, which they regarded as a sign of Jehovah's anger, the
Ephraimites sent a message to the King of Assyria. They only claimed
Jehovah as their local god, and complained that the new colonists had
provoked the wrath of "the God of the land" by not knowing His
"manner"—that is, the way in which He should be worshipped. The
consequence was that they were in danger of being exterminated by lions.
The kings of Assyria were devoted worshippers of Assur and Merodach, but
they held the common belief of ancient polytheists that each country had its
own potent divinities. Sargon, therefore, gave orders that one of the priests
of his captivity should be sent back to Samaria, "to teach them the manner
of the god of the land." The priest selected for the purpose returned, took up
his residence at the old shrine of Bethel, and "taught them how they should
fear Jehovah." His success was, however, extremely limited, except among
the former followers of Jeroboam's dishonoured cult. The old religious
shrines still continued, and the immigrants used them for the glorification of
their former deities. Samaria, therefore, witnessed the establishment of a
singularly hybrid form of religionism. The Babylonians worshipped
Succoth-Benoth,[426] perhaps Zirbanit, wife of Merodach or Bel; the
Cuthites worshipped Nergal, the Assyrian war-god, the lion-god;[427] the
Hittites, from Hamath, worshipped Ashima or Esmûn, the god of air and
thunder, under the form of a goat;[428] the Avites preferred Nibhaz and
Tartak, perhaps Saturn—unless these names be Jewish jeers, implying that
one of these deities had the head of a dog, and the other of an ass.[429] More

dreadful, if less ridiculous, was the worship of the Sepharvites, who adored
Adrammelech and Anammelech, the sun-god under male and female forms,
to whom, as to Moloch, they burnt their children in the fire. As for
ministers, "they made unto them priests from among themselves,[430] who
offered sacrifices for them in the shrines of the bamoth." Thus the whole
mongrel population "feared the Lord, and served their own gods," as they
continued to do in the days of the annalist whose record the historian
quotes. He ends his interesting sketch with the words, that, in spite of the
Divine teaching, "these nations"—so he calls them, and so completely does
he refuse to them the dignity of being Israel's children—feared the Lord,
and served their graven images, their children likewise, and their children's
children,—"as did their fathers, so do they unto this day."[431]
The "unto this day" refers, no doubt, to the document from which the
historian of the Kings was quoting—perhaps about b.c. 560, in the third
generation after the fall of Samaria. A very brief glance will suffice to
indicate the future history of the Samaritans. We hear but little of them
between the present reference and the days of Ezra and Nehemiah. By that
time they had purged themselves of these grosser idolatries, and held
themselves fit in all respects to co-operate with the returned exiles in the
work of building the Temple. Such was not the opinion of the Jews. Ezra
regarded them as "the adversaries of Judah and Israel."[432] The exiles
rejected their overtures. In b.c. 409 Manasseh, a grandson of the high priest
expelled by Nehemiah for an unlawful marriage with a daughter of
Sanballat, of the Samaritan city of Beth-horon, built the schismatic temple
on Mount Gerizim.[433] The relations of the Samaritans to the Jews became
thenceforth deadly. In b.c. 175 they seconded the profane attempt of
Antiochus Epiphanes to paganise the Jews, and in b.c. 130 John Hyrcanus,
the Maccabee, destroyed their temple. They were accused of waylaying
Jews on their way to the Feasts, and of polluting the Temple with dead
bones.[434] They claimed Jewish descent (John iv. 12), but our Lord called
them "aliens" (ἀλλογενής, Luke xvii. 18), and Josephus describes them as
"residents from other nations" (μέτοικοι, ἀλλοεθνεῖς). They are now a
rapidly dwindling community of fewer than a hundred souls—"the oldest
and smallest sect in the world"—equally despised by Jews and
Mohammedans. The Jews, as in the days of Christ, have no dealings with
them. When Dr. Frankl, on his philanthropic visit to the Jews of the East,

went to see their celebrated Pentateuch, and mentioned the fact to a Jewish
lady—"What!" she exclaimed: "have you been among the worshippers of
the pigeon? Take a purifying bath!" Regarding Gerizim as the place which
God had chosen (John iv. 20), they alone can keep up the old tradition of
the sacrificial passover. For long centuries, since the Fall of Jerusalem, it is
only on Gerizim that the Paschal lambs and kids have been actually slain
and eaten, as they are to this day, and will be, till, not long hence, the whole
tribe disappears.

CHAPTER XXII
THE REIGN OF AHAZ

b.c. 735-715

2 Kings xvi. 1-20

"Rimmon, whose delightful seat
Was fair Damascus, on the fertile banks
Of Abbana and Pharphar, lucid streams.
He also against the House of God was bold:
A leper once he lost, and gained a king—
Ahaz, his sottish conqueror, whom he drew
God's altar to disparage and displace
For one of Syrian mode, whereon to burn
His odious offerings, and adore the gods
Whom he had vanquished."
Paradise Lost, i. 467-
476.

According to our authorities, Ahaz ("Possessor")[435] began his reign of
sixteen years at the age of twenty. Of the exactitude of these references we
cannot be certain, because they also state (2 Kings xviii. 2) that Hezekiah
was twenty-five years old when he began to reign, and this reduces us to the
absurdity of supposing that Hezekiah was born when his father was only
eleven years old.[436] We might infer from Isa. iii. 4 that Ahaz was not so
old as twenty when he succeeded Jotham; for there—in a terrible prophecy
which can only refer to the beginning of this reign—we read, "And I will
give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them"; or, as it
should be perhaps rendered, "And with childishness, or wilfulness, shall
they rule over them."

Whatever may have been the king's age, surely never king succeeded to a
more distracted kingdom, or reigned over a more terrified people! If he
could have had any choice in the matter, he might well have declined the
fearful burden. Describing the state of things, the great prophet Isaiah, who
now began his career, exclaims,—
"For, behold, the Lord, the Lord of hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem
and from Judah stay and staff, the whole stay of bread, and the whole stay
of water; the mighty man, and the man of war, the judge, and the prophet,
and the diviner, and the elder; the captain of fifty, and the honourable man,
and the counsellor, and the cunning charmer, and the skilful enchanter. And
the people shall be oppressed every one by another, and every one by his
neighbour: the child shall behave himself proudly against the elder, and the
base against the honourable. Then a man shall take hold of his brother in the
house of his father, saying, 'Thou hast clothing, be thou our judge, and let
this ruin be under thy hand': in that day shall he lift his voice, saying, 'I will
not be a builder-up; for in my house is neither bread nor clothing: ye shall
not make me a ruler of the people.' For Jerusalem is ruined and Judah is
fallen. The show of their countenance is against them; and they declare their
sin as Sodom, and hide it not. As for My people, children are their
oppressors, and women rule over them."[437]
This is a frightful picture of famine—the dearth of intellect, the dearth of
statesmen, of all genius, of all insight. It describes the prevalence of
oppression and of ghastly destitution, accompanied by such utter despair
that no one cared to exert himself for the arrest of the ruin which seemed
imminent over that which was already no better than itself a ruin.
The Book of Isaiah is arranged in a most confused and unchronological
manner, and it is probable that the first five chapters should be placed after
the sixth, which describes the prophet's call in the year that King Uzziah
died. They paint a picture of moral collapse. His first chapter is called by
Ewald "the great arraignment," and by its references describes the awful
period of alarm during the war of Syria and Ephraim against Judah. It might
seem as if the combined host was even then in the country, or had only just
retired from it; for we read,—

"Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land,
strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by
strangers. And the daughter of Zion is left as a booth in a wilderness, as a
lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city."
But even in the midst of this afflictive dispensation there were no signs of
repentance. The children of Israel were rebels who despised the Holy One
of Israel,—"Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evil-
doers, children that deal corruptly!" (i. 7-9). They had all the externals of
religion: they offered vain sacrifices, and kept a multitude of idle feasts, and
offered many formal prayers; but all this was but a cumbrance to Him who
desired clean hands and a pure heart as conditions of forgiveness (10-20).
What hope could there be for a city of murderers, who loved bribes and
perverted judgment (21-24)? The land was full of pride, full of idols, full of
the luxury of the rich amid the starvation of the poor (ii. 1-22).[438] Women
partook of the general corruption. They walked mincingly with stretched-
forth necks and wanton eyes,[439] thinking of nothing but their anklets, and
crescents, and bracelets, and mufflers, ear-drops, head-tires, perfumes,
mirrors, armlets, and nose-jewels: therefore they should have sackcloth for
stomachers, ropes for girdles, and burning instead of beauty, and only a
remnant should escape (iii. 16-iv. 1). Judah was like a vineyard,—rich in
advantages, blessed with fondest care; but when God looked for grapes, it
only brought forth wild grapes—a semblance, but only a poisoned
semblance, of the true vintage: therefore it should be left neglected and
rainless. Woe to the greedy land-grabbing, and drunkenness, and revelry of
the rich! Woe to their mockery of God and their devotion to vanity! Woe to
their insane pride and wanton injustice! Could they escape vengeance? No!
Jehovah had looked for judgment (mishpat), but behold oppression
(mishpach); for righteousness (tse'dakah), but behold a cry (tse'akah) (v. 1-
24).[440] They might escape—they would escape—the Syrian and the
Ephraimite; but behind these lay a more terrible and a more portentous foe,
even the Assyrian, the scourge of God's wrath (25-30).
"It was told the house of David, saying, Syria is confederate with Ephraim."
Is it strange that in such a condition of things the heart of Ahaz and of his
people "was moved as the trees of the wood are moved with the wind"?

Such was the terrible crisis at which Isaiah began his ministry. He was the
son of Amoz,[441] who has been (much too precariously) identified with a
brother of Amaziah. It is probable that he was a man of distinguished, if not
princely, birth, and he exercised a more powerful influence over the politics
of his country than any other prophet—not even excepting Jeremiah.

CHAPTER XXIII
ISAIAH AND AHAZ

2 Kings xvi

"Expediency is man's wisdom; doing right is
God's."
George
Meredith.
Isaiah was one of those men whom God provides for the need of kingdoms.
He was not only a prophet, but a statesman, a reformer, a poet, a man of
invincible faith and unequalled insight. If Ahaz had accepted his counsels
and followed his moral guidance, the whole history of Judah might have
been different.
But the position of things was indeed disastrous. Judah was attacked from
every side. On the south-east the Edomites renewed their devastating raids,
and swept off multitudes of captives, who were sold as slaves in the
Western slave-markets. On the south-west the Philistines once more rose in
revolt, and acquired permanent repossession of many parts of the
Shephelah, mastering Beth-Shemesh, Ajalon, Gederoth, Shocho, Timnath,
Gimzo, and all the adjacent districts. But this was nothing compared with
the humiliation and destruction inflicted by Rezin and Pekah. They shut up
Ahaz in Jerusalem; and though they could not storm its almost impregnable
defences, which had recently been fortified by Uzziah and Jotham, they
were undisputed masters of the rest of the land, so that Judah was "brought
low and made naked."[442] Rezin, indeed, weary of a tedious siege, swept
southwards to Elath, on the gulf of Akabah, seized it, and peopled it with an
Edomite garrison, thereby destroying the commerce in which Solomon and
Jehoshaphat had taken pride, and which Uzziah had recently re-established.
Having thus left an effectual annoyance to Judah in his rear, he gave up the
design of dethroning Ahaz and substituting in his place "the son of Tabeal,"

who would have been a tool in the hands of the confederate kings. He
seized, however, a multitude of captives, and with them and with much
booty he returned to Damascus. "The son of Tabeal"—a name which occurs
nowhere else—has been found very puzzling.[443] I believe it to be simply
an instance of the Rabbinic process of transposition, called Themourah.
Some identify it with Itibi'alu of an inscription of Tiglath-Pileser. Others
suppose that he was a Syrian, and that Tabeal stands for Tabrimnon. But by
the application of Themourah (called the Albam) Tabeal simply gives us
"Remaliah," and is either a scornful variation of the name of Pekah's father,
or has arisen from the watchword of a secret conspiracy. Since in the text of
Jeremiah (li. 41, xxv. 26) (by Atbash, another form of the secret
transposition of letters of which the generic name was Gematria) we read
Sheshach for Babel, the name Tabeal may have been dealt with in a similar
method.[444] Pekah, according to the Chronicler, inflicted far deadlier
injuries than Rezin. In one day he slew one hundred and twenty thousand
"sons of valour," because they had forsaken Jehovah, God of their fathers.
His general Zichri, a mighty Ephraimite, slew Maaseiah, the king's son;[445]
and Azrikam, the chancellor; and Elkanah, "the second to the king." The
army carried away two hundred thousand captives and much spoil to
Samaria. But on their arrival, a prophet named Oded[446] reproved the
Israelites for having massacred the Judæans "in a rage that reacheth to
heaven." Aided by various princes, he succeeded in inducing the people to
refuse to harbour the captives, and clothed, fed, and sent them back
unharmed to Jericho, mounting the feeble on horses and asses. The story
bears on the face of it the signs of enormous exaggeration.
In the crisis of their miseries, but just before the siege, Ahaz had gone
outside the city walls "at the end of the conduit of the upper pool, in the
causeway of the fuller's field," probably to look after the water-supply,
which had always been a difficulty for Jerusalem, and on which depended
her capacity to withstand a siege. Here he was met by the prophet Isaiah,
who was leading by the hand the little son to whom he had given the name
of "Shear-jashub" ("A remnant shall return"),[447] as a witness to the truth of
the prophecy which he had heard on the occasion of his call,—
"And if there should yet be a tenth in it, this shall be again consumed; yet as
the terebinth and the oak, though cut down, have their stock remaining,

even so a sacred seed shall be the stock thereof."[448]
The object of the prophet was to cheer up the fainting heart of the king, and
to say to him first,—
"Take heed, and be quiet."
This mandate probably refers to rumours—which Isaiah must have heard—
of the king's intention to follow the counsels of the party which urged him
to seek foreign assistance. One of these parties advised him to throw
himself into the arms of Egypt, and rely on her protection; the other gave
the more perilous counsel of invoking the aid of Assyria. Isaiah's mandate
to the king and to the nation was to take neither step, but to trust in the
Lord, and to repent of individual and national misdoing. He summed up his
message in the rule,—
"In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and confidence shall
be your strength."
The advice was emphasised by a promise of the most decisive and
encouraging kind. When all looked so helpless, the prophet was bidden to
say,—
"Fear not, neither be faint-hearted, for these two stumps of smoking torches,
for the fierce anger of Rezin with Syria, and of Remaliah's son. They have
taken evil counsel against thee. But thus saith the Lord God, 'It shall not
stand, neither shall it come to pass. For the head of Syria is only Rezin, and
the head of Samaria is a mere Remaliah's son.'"[449]
And then, to confirm the lesson of confidence in God, the brief assurance,
—

"If ye will not confide,
Surely ye shall not abide."

Convinced of the certainty of this immediate deliverance, Isaiah bade the
king to ask for a sign from Jehovah, either in the height above, or in the
depth beneath.

But the timid and hypocritical king was not so to be influenced. He had on
his side "the scornful men, who ruled Judah"; the mocking priests, who
sneered and jeered at Isaiah's teaching as repetitive and commonplace, and
only fit for children; and the princes and nobles, who formed the Court
party, headed by Shebna the scribe. He probably looked on Isaiah as a mere
unpractical faddist, an excited fanatic—all very well as a prophet, but not a
man who ought to thrust himself into the plans of politicians. Ahaz had his
own plans, and he had not the smallest intention of altering them in
consequence of anything which Isaiah might say. He was far too timid and
unfaithful to rely on anything so vague as Divine assurance. He was
convinced that his only chance lay in the horses of Egypt or the fierce
infantry of Assyria. So he said with sham piety, merely intended to put the
prophet off, "I will not ask, neither will I tempt Jehovah."
That moment marks what may be called the birth-throe of Messianic
prophecy in its most specific character. For then the prophet, after reproving
the king for wearying Jehovah as well as His servants, adds, in words of far
wider and deeper significance than their immediate bearing, that Jehovah
Himself should give a sign; for the maiden should conceive and bear a Son,
and call His name Immanuel ("God with us"). The child should grow up in
a time of scarcity; for owing to the devastation of the land, he would only
be able to be nurtured on curdled milk and honey. But before he had
reached years of discretion—before he had arrived at the power of moral
choice—the land whose two kings Ahaz abhorred should be a desert. Yet let
not Ahaz exult too much in the immediate deliverance! Days of unexampled
misery were at hand. Jehovah should hiss for the fly from the farthest canals
of Egypt, and for the bee of Assyria, and they should settle in swarms in the
valleys and pastures. Ahaz—he had not alluded to the design, but Isaiah
knew it well—was about to hire a razor from beyond the Euphrates, but that
razor should sweep away the hair and beard of Judah. Agriculture should
languish, and the people should only be able to live in privation on whey
and honey; and the vineyards should be full of briers and thorns, and should
be mere places for hunting.[450]
This event, therefore, as Caspari says, stands at the turning-point of Old
Testament History. It marks the beginning of that second period of the
History of the Chosen People in which their hopes were granted as a
counterpoise to their anguish and their humiliation. "It stood, therefore, at

the point where a prospect offered itself to the eye of the prophet which
reached out over the whole development of the people of God."
To all such prophecies Ahaz was utterly deaf: they did not for a moment
induce him to swerve from his purpose. But to call still further attention to
his promise as the Syrian Ephraimitish host pressed forward, Isaiah took a
great piece of vellum, and inscribed on it, in the ordinary characters,—

"Speed-plunder-haste-spoil."

He put it up in some conspicuous place, before his own house or in the
Temple, and took the priest Urijah and Zechariah, the son of Jeberechiah,
into his confidence as faithful witnesses. He told them the explanation of
his sign, and they would satisfy the curiosity of the people on the subject. It
meant that in nine months' time his wife should bear a son, and that he and
his wife, the prophetess, would call the boy's name "Speed-plunder-haste-
spoil," as a sign that before the child was able to say "Father" or "Mother"
Rezin and Pekah should be extinguished. For the Assyrian should speed to
the plunder and haste to the spoil, and the riches of Damascus and the spoil
of Samaria should be carried away by the King of Assyria. Since Judah
despised "the soft flowing waters of Shiloah,"[451] and preferred Rezin and
Pekah,[452] they should be deluged by the Euphrates of Assyria, and
Assyria's outspread wings should overshadow thy land, O Immanuel (viii.
1-8). How vain, then, of the people to try and meet the confederacy of Syria
and Ephraim by new confederacy of Judah with Assyria! This, after all, is
Immanuel's land. God is with us. We have but to fear God, we have but to
be faithful to duty, and Jehovah shall be our sanctuary, though He be a
stumbling-block to many in Israel, and a snare to many in Jerusalem.[453]
This is God's teaching and God's testimony, and Isaiah and his children are
signs of it. For does not Isaiah mean "Salvation of Jehovah"; and Shear-
jashub, "A remnant shall return"; and Maher-shalal-hash-baz, "Swift-spoil-
speedy-prey"; and Immanuel, "God is with us"? What need, then, to seek
wizards and necromancers? Seek God; confide, abide![454] Trouble and
darkness there should be; but all was not utterly hopeless. Northern Israel
had been bedimmed and afflicted; but soon they should be exalted, and see
light, and their yoke be broken as in the day of Midian, and the trampling
boot and blood-stained mantle of the warrior shall be burned in the fire: for

a Child is born, a Son is given unto us of David's line, who shall be a
Mighty Deliverer, a Prince of Peace,—and Israel shall perish.

CHAPTER XXIV
THE APOSTASIES OF AHAZ

2 Kings xvi. 1-18

"For when we in our wickedness grow hard,
Oh misery on't! the wise gods seal our eyes;
In our own filth drop our clear judgments; make
us
Adore our errors; laugh at us while we strut
To our confusion."
Ahaz was indifferent to these prophecies because his heart was otherwhere.
It is clear from our authorities that this king had excited an unusually deep
antipathy in the hearts of those later writers who judged religion not only
from the earlier standpoint, but from the stern and inexorable requirements
of the Deuteronomic and the Priestly Codes. The historian, adopting an
unusual phrase, says that "he did not that which was right in the sight of the
Lord, but he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel." He not only
continued the high places, as the best of his predecessors had done, but he
increased their popularity and importance by personally offering sacrifices
and burning incense "on the hills and under every green tree." It is probable,
too, that he introduced into Judah horses and chariots dedicated to the sun.
[455]
"He made molten images for the Baalim," says the Chronicler, "and
burnt incense in the valley of the son of Himmon."
This last was his crowning atrocity: he actually sanctioned the revolting
worship of the abomination of the children of Ammon, which Solomon had
tolerated on the mount of offence. "He made his son to pass through the
fire." The Chronicler expresses it still more dreadfully by saying that "he
burnt his children in the fire."[456]
In the Valley of Ben-Hinnom, or of the Benî-Hinnom, of which the name is
perpetuated in Gehenna, the place of torture for lost souls, there stood a

frightful image of the king—Moloch, Melek, Malcham. It represented the
sun-god, worshipped, not only as Baal under the emblems of prolific nature,
but, like the Egyptian Typhon, as the emblem of the sun's scorching and
blighting force. It was perhaps a human figure with the head of an ox. The
arms of the brazen image sloped downwards over a cistern, which was
filled with fuel; and when a human sacrifice was to be offered to him, the
child was probably first killed, and then placed on these brazen arms as a
gift to the idol. It rolled down into the flaming tank, and was consumed
amid the strains of music. Recourse was only had to the most frightful form
of human sacrifice—the burning of grown-up victims—in extremities of
disaster, as when Mesha of Moab offered up his eldest son to Chemosh on
the wall of Kir-Hareseth in the sight of his people and of the three invading
armies. But the sacrifice of children was public, and perhaps annual. Hence
Milton, following the learned researches of Selden in his Syntagma De Dis
Syriis, writes:—

"First, Moloch, horrid king, besmeared with blood
Of human sacrifice, and parents' tears;
Though, for the noise of drums and timbrels loud,
Their children's cries unheard that pass'd through fire
To his grim idol. Him the Ammonite
Worshipp'd in Rabba and her watery plain,
In Argob and in Basan, to the stream
Of utmost Arnon. Nor content with such
Audacious neighbourhood, the wisest heart
Of Solomon he led by fraud to build
His temple right against the Temple of God
On that opprobrious hill, and made his grove
The pleasant Valley of Hinnom, Tophet thence
And black Gehenna call'd, the type of hell."[457]

But it may be doubted whether Ahaz, in spite of his frightful position, or, in
later days, the less excusable Manasseh, really destroyed the lives of their
young sons.[458] The ancients had a notion that they could easily cheat their
devil-deities. If a white ox of Clitumnus became unfitted for a victim to
Jupiter of the Capitol by having on its body a few black spots, it was quite
sufficient to make it pass with the Dî faciles by chalking the black spots

over it.[459] If human victims had to be thrown into the Tiber to Hercules,
Numa taught the people that little wickerwork images (scirpea) would suit
the purpose just as well.[460] Figures of dough were sometimes offered
instead of human beings on the altar of Artemis of Tauris. Thus it became
the custom, it is believed, merely to throw or to pass children through or
over the flames, and conventionally to regard them as having been
sacrificed, though they might escape the ordeal with little or no hurt. This
was called februatio, or "lustration by fire."[461] We may hope that this
device was adopted by the two Judæan kings, and, if so, they did not add to
their horrible apostasy the crime of infanticide. If, however, Ahaz was even
to the smallest extent implicated in such foul idolatries, it is not surprising
that he was in no mood to listen to Isaiah. What is profoundly surprising,
and is indeed a circumstance for which we cannot account, is that no word
of fierce indignation was addressed to him on this account by Urijah, the
high priest, whom Isaiah seems to describe as faithful, or by Zechariah, the
son of Jeberechiah, or by Micah, or by Isaiah, who feared man so little and
God so much.
The Assyrian party at the Court of Ahaz prevailed over the Egyptian. Until
the accession of the Ethiopian Sabaco[462] in 725, Egypt was indeed in so
weak, harassed, and divided a condition under feeble native Pharaohs, that
her help was obviously unavailable. The King of Judah, seeing no
extrication from his calamities except in the way of worldly expediency,
appealed to Tiglath-Pileser. In this he followed the precedent of his ancestor
Asa, who had diverted the attack of Baasha by invoking the assistance of
Syria. Ahaz sent to the Assyrian potentate the humble message, "I am thy
servant and thy son: come up and save me from the Kings of Syria and
Israel." If he had not faith to accept Isaiah's promises, what else could he
do, when Syria, Israel, the Philistines, Edom, and Moab were all arrayed
against him? The ambassadors probably made their way, not without peril,
along the east of Jordan, or else by sea from Joppa, and so inland. Whether
they took with them the enormous bribe without which the appeal of the
helpless king might have been in vain, or whether this was sent
subsequently under Assyrian escort, we do not know. It was euphemistically
described as "a present" or "a blessing," but must be regarded either as a
tribute or a bribe.

Tiglath-Pileser II. saw his opportunity, and at once invaded Damascus. In
b.c. 733 he failed, but the next year he entirely subjugated the kingdom, and
put an end to the dynasty. Rezin was probably put to death with the horrible
barbarities which were normal among the brutal Ninevites; and as the
Assyrians had no conception of colonisation or the wise government of
dependencies, the Syrian population was deported en masse to Elam and an
unknown Kir.[463] For a time Damascus was made "a ruinous heap," and the
cities of Aroer were the desolated lairs of pasturing flocks. Israel, as we
have seen, was next overwhelmed by the same irremediable catastrophe,
none of her people being left except such as might be compared to the mere
gleanings of a vintage, and the few berries on the topmost boughs of the
olive tree.[464]
Tiglath-Pileser meant to make Ahaz feel his yoke. He summoned him to do
homage at Damascus, and there Ahaz once more displayed his
cosmopolitan æstheticism at the expense of every pure tradition of the
religion of his fathers.
His visit to Damascus was no doubt compulsory. His worldly policy, which
looked so expedient, and which—apart from the defiance which it involved
to the voice of God by His prophets—seemed to be so pardonable, had for
the time succeeded. Isaiah's promises had been fulfilled to the letter. There
was nothing more to fear either from Rezin or from Remaliah's son. Their
kingdoms were a desolation. In his own annals Tiglath-Pileser[465] does not
exaggerate his achievements.[466] He wrote as follows:—
"Rezin's warriors I captured, and with the sword I destroyed.
Of his charioteers and [his horsemen] the arms I broke:
Their bow-bearing warriors, [their footmen] armed with spear and shield,
With my hand I captured them, and those that fought in their battle-line.
He to save his life fled away alone;
Like a deer [he ran], and entered into the great gate of his city.
His generals, whom I had taken alive, on crosses I hung;
His country I subdued;
Damascus, his city, I subdued, and like a caged bird I shut him in.
I cut down the unnumbered trees of his forest; I left not one.
Hadara, the palace of the father of Rezin of Syria, [I burnt].
The city of Samaria I besieged, I captured; eight hundred of its people and

children I took;
Their oxen and their sheep I carried away.
I took five hundred and ninety-one cities;
Over sixteen districts of Syria like a flood I swept."
But the more complete destruction of Israel was due to Shalmaneser IV.,
who says,—
"The city of Samaria I besieged, I took,
I carried away twenty-seven thousand two hundred of its inhabitants;
I seized fifty of their chariots.
I gave up to plunder the rest of their possessions.
I appointed officers over them;
I laid on them the tribute of the former king.
In their place I settled the men of conquered countries."
The immediate service to Judah looked immense. The Assyrian might
safely claim, and Ahaz might truthfully confess, that the intervention of
Tiglath-Pileser had rescued him from the apparent imminence of
destruction. But the Assyrian kings served no one for nothing. The price
which had to be paid for Tiglath-Pileser's intervention was vassalage and
tribute. Ahaz, or, as the Assyrians call him, Jehoahaz,[467] had styled himself
Tiglath-Pileser's "servant and his son," and the Assyrian chose to have
substantial proof of this parental suzerainty. The great king therefore
summoned the poor subject-potentate to Damascus, where he was holding
his victorious court.
So far Ahaz had no reason to complain of his "dreadful patron"; and if he
had returned when he paid his homage, no immediate harm would have
happened. But during his visit he saw "the altar" (Heb.) at the conquered
city. Was it the altar of the defeated Syrian god Rimmon? or did the
Assyrian persuade his willing vassal to sacrifice at the portable altar of his
god Assur? We may, perhaps, infer the former from 2 Chron. xxviii. 23,
where Ahaz says: "Because the gods of the kings of Syria help them,
therefore will I sacrifice to them, that they may help me." There is room to
suspect some error here, because Rezin had fallen, and Damascus was in
ruins, and Rimmon had conspicuously failed to help or to avenge his
votaries.[468] Ahaz admired the altar, to whatever god it had been erected;

and unmindful, or perhaps unconscious, that the altar of the Temple of
Jerusalem was declared in the Pentateuch to have been divinely ordained—
a fact to which the historian does not himself refer—he sent to the head
priest Urijah a pattern of the altar which had struck his fancy at Damascus.
The subservient priest, without a murmur or a remonstrance, undertook to
have a similar altar ready for Ahaz in the Temple by the time of his return—
a crime, if crime it were, which the Chronicler conceals. "Never any prince
was so foully idolatrous," says Bishop Hall, "as that he wanted a priest to
second him. A Urijah is fit to humour an Ahaz.[469] Greatness could never
command anything which some servile wits were not ready both to applaud
and justify." Certainly we should have hoped for more fidelity to ancient
tradition from a man who earned the approving word of Isaiah; but it is only
fair and just to admit that Urijah, in the universal ignorance which prevailed
about the codes which were afterwards collected and published as the total
legislation of the wilderness, may have viewed his obedience to the king's
commands with very different eyes from those by which it was regarded in
the sixth and fifth centuries before Christ. He may have been frankly
unaware that he was guilty of an act which would afterwards be denounced
as an apostatising enormity.[470]
When Ahaz returned, he was so much pleased with his new plaything that
he at once acted as priest at his own new altar. Without the least opposition
from the priests—who had so sternly resisted Uzziah—he offered burnt-
offerings and meat-offerings and drink-offerings, and sprinkled the blood of
peace-offerings on his altar.[471] Not content with this, he did not hesitate to
order the removal of the huge brazen altar from the position, in front of the
Temple porch, which it had held since the days of Solomon. He did this in
order that his own favourite altar might be in the line of vision from the
court, and not be overshadowed by the old one, which he shifted from the
place of honour to the north side. He proceeded to call his own altar "the
great altar," and ordered that the morning burnt-offering, and the evening
minchah, and all the principal sacrifices should henceforth be offered upon
it.[472] He did not wholly supersede the old brazen altar, which, he said,
"shall be for me to inquire by," or, as the Hebrew may perhaps mean, "it
should await"—i.e., "I will hereafter consider what to do with it."

Ahaz is charged with the additional crime of removing the ornamental
festoons of bronze pomegranates from the lavers, and the brazen oxen from
under the molten sea, which henceforth lay dishonoured, without its proper
and splendid supports, on the pavement of the court.[473] He also took away
the balustrade of the royal "ascent" from the palace to the Temple, and
made a new entrance of a less gorgeous character than that which, in the
days of Solomon, the Queen of Sheba had admired.[474]
No doubt these proceedings helped to heighten the unpopularity of Ahaz.
But what could he do? He could, indeed, if he had had sufficient faith, have
"trusted in Jehovah," as Isaiah bade him do. But he was under the terrific
pressure of hostile circumstances, and, being a weak and timid man, felt
himself unable to resist the influence of the haughty politicians and worldly
priests by whom he was surrounded—men who openly made Isaiah their
scoff. When he invited the interposition of Tiglath-Pileser,[475] all the other
consequences of humiliation would naturally follow. He probably disliked
as much as any one to see the great molten laver taken off the backs of the
oxen which showed the skill of the ancient Hiram, and did not admire the
despoiled aspect of the shrine of his capital. But if the King of Assyria or
his emissaries had (as the historian implies) cast greedy eyes on these
splendid objects of antiquity, the poor vassal could not refuse them. Better,
he may have thought, that these material ornaments should go to Nineveh
than that he should be forced to exact yet heavier burdens from an
impoverished people. His expedient is mentioned among his crimes, yet no
one blamed the pious Hezekiah when, under similar circumstances, he acted
in precisely the same manner.[476]
The Chronicler gives a darker aspect to his misdoings by saying that he cut
to pieces the vessels of the house of God, and made him altars in every
corner of Jerusalem, and bamoth to burn incense unto other gods in every
several city of Judah. He says, further, that he closed the great gates of the
Temple; put an end to the kindling of the lamps, the burning of incense, and
the daily offerings; and left the whole Temple to fall into ruin and neglect.
[477]
We know no more of him. He lived through an epoch marked by the
final crisis in the existence of the kingdom of Israel. Dark omens of every
kind were around him, and he seems to have been too frivolous to see them.
If he plumed himself on the removal of the two relentless invaders Rezin

and Pekah, he must have lived to feel that the terror of Assyria had come
appreciably nearer. Tiglath-Pileser had only helped Judah in furtherance of
his own designs, and his exactions came like a chronic distress after the
acuter crisis. Nor was there any improvement when he died in 727. He was
succeeded by Shalmaneser IV., and Shalmaneser IV. by Sargon in 722, the
year of the fall of Samaria. We know no more of Ahaz. The historian says
that he was buried with his fathers, and the Chronicler adds, as in the case
of Uzziah and other kings, that he was not permitted to rest in the
sepulchres of the kings.[478] He had sown the wind; his son Hezekiah had to
reap the whirlwind.[479]

Probable Dates.
b.c.

745. Accession of Tiglath-Pileser.
746. Death of Uzziah. Accession of Jotham. First vision of Isaiah (Isa.
vi.).
735. Accession of Ahaz. Syro-Ephraimitish war.
734-732. Siege and capture of Damascus, and ravage of Northern
Israel by Tiglath-Pileser. Visit of Ahaz to Damascus.
727. Accession of Shalmaneser IV.
722. Accession of Sargon. Capture of Samaria, and captivity of the Ten
Tribes.
720. Defeat of Sabaco by Sargon at Raphia.
715(?). Accession of Hezekiah.
711. Sargon captures Ashdod.
707. Sargon defeats Merodach-Baladan, and captures Babylon.
705. Murder of Sargon. Accession of Sennacherib.
701. Sennacherib besieges Ekron. Defeats Egypt at Altaqu. Invades
Judah, and spares Hezekiah. Invades Egypt, and sends the Rabshakeh
to Jerusalem. Disaster of Assyrians at Pelusium, and disappearance
from before Jerusalem.
697. Death of Hezekiah. Accession of Manasseh.
681. Death of Sennacherib.
608. Battle of Megiddo. Death of Josiah.

607. Fall of Nineveh and Assyria. Triumph of Babylon.
605. Battle of Carchemish. Defeat of Pharaoh Necho by
Nebuchadrezzar.
599. First deportation of Jews to Babylon by Nebuchadrezzar.
588. Destruction of Jerusalem. Second deportation.
538. Cyrus captures Babylon.
536. Decree of Cyrus. Return of Zerubbabel and the first Jewish exiles.
458. Return of Ezra.

CHAPTER XXV
HEZEKIAH

[480]
b.c. 715-686

2 Kings xviii

"For Ezekias had done the thing that pleased the Lord, and was strong
in the ways of David his father, as Esay the prophet, who was great
and faithful in his vision, had commanded him,"—Ecclus. xlviii. 22.

The reign of Hezekiah was epoch-making in many respects, but especially
for its religious reformation, and the relations of Judah with Assyria and
with Babylon. It is also most closely interwoven with the annals of Hebrew
prophecy, and acquires unwonted lustre from the magnificent activity and
impassioned eloquence of the great prophet Isaiah, who merits in many
ways the title of "the Evangelical Prophet," and who was the greatest of the
prophets of the Old Dispensation.
According to the notice in 2 Kings xviii. 2, Hezekiah was twenty-five years
old when he began to reign in the third year of Hoshea of Israel. This,
however, is practically impossible consistently with the dates that Ahaz
reigned sixteen years and became king at the age of twenty, for it would
then follow that Hezekiah was born when his father was a mere boy—and
this, although Hezekiah does not seem to have been the eldest son; for Ahaz
had burnt "his son," and, according to the Chronicler, more than one son, to
propitiate Moloch. Probably Hezekiah was a boy of fifteen when he began
to reign. The chronology of his reign of twenty-nine years is, unhappily,
much confused.
The historian of the Kings agrees with the Chronicler, and the son of Sirach,
in pronouncing upon him a high eulogy, and making him equal even to
David in faithfulness. There is, however, much difference in the method of

their descriptions of his doings. The historian devotes but one verse to his
reformation—which probably began early in his reign, though it occupied
many years. The Chronicler, on the other hand, in his three chapters
manages to overlook, if not to suppress, the one incident of the reformation
which is of the deepest interest. It is exactly one of those suppressions
which help to create the deep misgiving as to the historic exactness of this
biassed and late historian. It must be regarded as doubtful whether many of
the Levitic details in which he revels are or are not intended to be literally
historic. Imaginative additions to literal history became common among the
Jews after the Exile, and leaders of that day instinctively drew the line
between moral homiletics and literal history. It may be perfectly historical
that, as the Chronicler says, Hezekiah opened and repaired the Temple;
gathered the priests and the Levites together, and made them cleanse
themselves; offered a solemn sacrifice; reappointed the musical services;
and—though this can hardly have been till after the Fall of Samaria in 722
—invited all the Israelites to a solemn, but in some respects irregular,
passover of fourteen days. It may be true also that he broke up the
idolatrous altars in Jerusalem, and tossed their débris into the Kidron; and
(again after the deportation of Israel) destroyed some of the bamoth in
Israel as well as in Judah. If he reinstituted the courses of the priests, the
collection of tithes, and all else that he is said to have done,[481] he
accomplished quite as much as was effected in the reign of his great-
grandson Josiah. But while the Chronicler dwells on all this at such length,
what induces him to omit the most significant fact of all—the destruction of
the brazen serpent?
The historian tells us that Hezekiah "removed the bamoth"—the chapels on
the high places, with their ephods and teraphim—whether dedicated to the
worship of Jehovah or profaned by alien idolatry. That he did, or attempted,
something of this kind seems certain; for the Rabshakeh, if we regard his
speech as historical in its details, actually taunted him with impiety, and
threatened him with the wrath of Jehovah on this very account. Yet here we
are at once met with the many difficulties with which the history of Israel
abounds, and which remind us at every turn that we know much less about
the inner life and religious conditions of the Hebrews than we might infer
from a superficial study of the historians who wrote so many centuries after
the events which they describe. Over and over again their incidental notices

reveal a condition of society and worship which violently collides with
what seems to be their general estimate. Who, for instance, would not infer
from this notice that in Judah, at any rate, the king's suppression of the
"high places," and above all of those which were idolatrous, had been
tolerably thorough? How much, then, are we amazed to find that Hezekiah
had not effectually desecrated even the old shrines which Solomon had
erected to Ashtoreth, Chemosh, and Milcom[482] "at the right hand of the
mount of corruption"—in other words, on one of the peaks of the Mount of
Olives, in full view of the walls of Jerusalem and of the Temple Hill!
"And he brake the images," or, as the R.V. more correctly renders it, "the
pillars," the matstseboth. Originally—that is, before the appearance of the
Deuteronomic and the Priestly Codes—no objection seems to have been felt
to the erection of a matstsebah. Jacob erected one of these baitulia or
anointed stones at Bethel, with every sign of Divine approval.[483] Moses
erected twelve round his altar at Sinai.[484] Joshua erected them in Shechem
and on Mount Ebal. Hosea, in one passage (iii. 4), seems to mention pillars,
ephods, and teraphim as legitimate objects of desire. Whether they have any
relation to obelisks, and what is their exact significance, is uncertain; but
they had become objects of just suspicion in the universal tendency to
idolatry, and in the deepening conviction that the second commandment
required a far more rigid adherence than it had hitherto received.
"And cut down the groves"—or rather the Asherim, the wooden, and
probably in some instances phallic, emblems of the nature-goddess
Asherah, the goddess of fertility.[485] She is sometimes identified with
Astarte, the goddess of the moon and of love; but there is no sufficient
ground for the identification. Some, indeed, doubt whether Asherah is the
name of a goddess at all. They suppose that the word only means a
consecrated pole or pillar, emblematic of the sacred tree.[486]
Then comes the startling addition, "And brake in pieces the brazen serpent
that Moses had made: for unto those days the children of Israel did burn
incense to it." This addition is all the more singular because the Hebrew
tense implies habitual worship. The story of the brazen serpent of the
wilderness is told in Num. xxi. 9; but not an allusion to it occurs anywhere,
till now—some eight centuries later—we are told that up to this time the
children of Israel had been in the habit of burning incense to it! Comparing

Num. xxi. 4, with xxxiii. 42, we find that the scene of the serpent-plague of
the Exodus was either Zalmonah ("the place of the image") or Punon, which
Bochart connects with Phainoi, a place mentioned as famous for copper-
mines.[487] Moses, for unknown reasons, chose it as an innocent and potent
symbol; but obviously in later days it subserved, or was mingled with, the
tendency to ophiolatry, which has been fatally common in all ages in many
heathen lands. It is indeed most difficult to understand a state of things in
which the children of Israel habitually burned incense to this venerable
relic, nor can we imagine that this was done without the cognisance and
connivance of the priests. Ewald makes the conjecture that the brazen
Saraph had been left at Zalmonah, and was an occasional object of Israelite
adoration in pilgrimage for the purpose. There is, however, nothing more
extraordinary in the prevalence of serpent-worship among the Jews than in
the fact that, "in the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem, we" (the
Jews), "and our fathers, our kings, and our princes, burnt incense unto the
Queen of Heaven."[488] If this were the case, the serpent may have been
brought to Jerusalem in the idolatrous reign of Ahaz. It shows an intensity
of reforming zeal, and an inspired insight into the reality of things, that
Hezekiah should not have hesitated to smash to pieces so interesting a relic
of the oldest history of his people, rather than see it abused to idolatrous
purposes.[489] Certainly, in conduct so heroic, and hatred of idolatry so
strong, the Puritans might well find sufficient authority for removing from
Westminster Abbey the images of the Virgin, which, in their opinion, had
been worshipped, and before which lamps had been perpetually burned. If
we can imagine an English king breaking to pieces the shrine of the
Confessor in the Abbey, or a French king destroying the sacred ampulla of
Rheims or the goupillon of St. Eligius, on the ground that many regarded
them with superstitious reverence, we may measure the effect produced by
this startling act of Puritan zeal on the part of Hezekiah.
"And he called it Nehushtan." If this rendering—in which our A.V. and R.V.
follow the LXX. and the Vulgate—be correct, Hezekiah justified the
iconoclasm by a brilliant play of words.[490] The Hebrew words for "a
serpent" (nachash) and for brass (nechosheth) are closely akin to each
other; and the king showed his just estimate of the relic which had been so
shamefully abused by contemptuously designating it—as it was in itself and
apart from its sacred historic associations—"nehushtan," a thing of brass.

The rendering, however, is uncertain, for the phrase may be impersonal
—"one" or "they" called it Nehushtan[491]—in which case the assonance
had lost any ironic connotation.[492]
For this act of purity of worship, and for other reasons, the historian calls
Hezekiah the best of all the kings of Judah, superior alike to all his
predecessors and all his successors. He regarded him as coming up to the
Deuteronomic ideal, and says that therefore "the Lord was with him, and he
prospered whithersoever he went forth."
The date of this great reformation is rendered uncertain by the impossibility
of ascertaining the exact order of Isaiah's prophecies. The most probable
view is that it was gradual, and some of the king's most effective measures
may not have been carried out till after the deliverance from Assyria. It is
clear, however, that the wisdom of Hezekiah and his counsellors began
from the first to uplift Judah from the degradation and decrepitude to which
it had sunk under the reign of Ahaz. The boy-king found a wretched state of
affairs at his accession. His father had bequeathed to him "an empty
treasury, a ruined peasantry, an unprotected frontier, and a shattered army";
[493]
but although he was still the vassal of Assyria, he reverted to the ideas
of his great-grandfather Uzziah. He strengthened the city, and enabled it to
stand a siege by improving the water-supply. Of these labours we have, in
all probability, a most interesting confirmation in the inscription by
Hezekiah's engineers, discovered in 1880, on the rocky walls of the
subterranean tunnel (siloh) between the spring of Gihon and the Pool of
Siloam.[494] He encouraged agriculture, the storage of produce, and the
proper tendance of flocks and herds, so that he acquired wealth which dimly
reminded men of the days of Solomon.
There is little doubt that he early meditated revolt from Assyria; for
renewed faithfulness to Jehovah had elevated the moral tone, and therefore
the courage and hopefulness, of the whole people. The Forty-Sixth Psalm,
whatever may be its date, expresses the invincible spirit of a nation which
in its penitence and self-purification began to feel itself irresistible, and
could sing:—

"God is our hope and strength,
A very present help in trouble.
Therefore will we not fear, though the earth be moved,
Though the hills be carried into the midst of the sea.
There is a river, the streams whereof make glad the city of
God,
The Holy City where dwells the Most High.
God is in the midst of her; therefore shall she not be shaken:
God shall help her, and that right early.
Heathens raged and kingdoms trembled:
He lifted His voice—the earth melted away.
Jehovah of Hosts is with us;
Elohim of Jacob is our refuge."[495]

It was no doubt the spirit of renewed confidence which led Hezekiah to
undertake his one military enterprise—the chastisement of the long-
troublesome Philistines. He was entirely successful. He not only won back
the cities which his father had lost,[496] but he also dispossessed them of their
own cities, even unto Gaza, which was their southernmost possession
—"from the tower of the watchman to the fenced city."[497] There can be no
doubt that this act involved an almost open defiance of the Assyrian King;
but if Hezekiah dreamed of independence, it was essential for him to be free
from the raids and the menace of a neighbour so dangerous as Philistia, and
so inveterately hostile. It is not improbable that he may have devoted to this
war the money which would otherwise have gone to pay the tribute to
Shalmaneser or Sargon, which had been continued since the date of the
appeal of Ahaz to Tiglath-Pileser II. When Sargon applied for the tribute
Hezekiah refused it, and even omitted to send the customary present.
It is clear that in this line of conduct the king was following the exhortations
of Isaiah. It showed no small firmness of character that he was able to
choose a decided course amid the chaos of contending counsels. Nothing but
a most heroic courage could have enabled him, at any period of his reign, to
defy that dark cloud of Assyrian war which ever loomed on the horizon, and
from which but little sufficed to elicit the destructive lightning-flash.

There were three permanent parties in the Court of Hezekiah, each
incessantly trying to sway the king to its own counsels, and each
representing those counsels as indispensable to the happiness, and even to
the existence, of the State.
I. There was the Assyrian party, urging with natural vehemence that the
fierce northern king was as irresistible in power as he was terrible in
vengeance. The fearful cruelties which had been committed at Beth-Arbel,
the devastation and misery of the Trans-Jordanic tribes, the obliteration and
deportation of the heavily afflicted districts of Zebulon, Naphtali, and the
way of the sea in Galilee of the nations, the already inevitable and imminent
destruction of Samaria and her king and the whole Northern Kingdom,
together with that certain deportation of its inhabitants of which the fatal
policy had been established by Tiglath-Pileser, would constitute weighty
arguments against resistance. Such considerations would appeal powerfully
to the panic of the despondent section of the community, which was only
actuated, as most men are, by considerations of ordinary political
expediency. The foul apparition of the Ninevites, which for five centuries
afflicted the nations, is now only visible to us in the bas-reliefs and
inscriptions unearthed from their burnt palaces. There they live before us in
their own sculptures, with their "thickset, sensual figures," and the
expression of calm and settled ferocity on their faces, exhibiting a frightful
nonchalance as they look on at the infliction of diabolical atrocities upon
their vanquished enemies. But in the eighth century before Christ they were
visible to all the eastern world in the exuberance of the most brutal parts of
the nature of man. Men had heard how, a century earlier, Assurnazipal
boasted that he had "dyed the mountains of the Nairi with blood like wool";
how he had flayed captive kings alive, and dressed pillars with their skins;
how he had walled up others alive, or impaled them on stakes; how he had
burnt boys and girls alive, put out eyes, cut off hands, feet, ears, and noses,
pulled out the tongues of his enemies, and "at the command of Assur his
god" had flung their limbs to vultures and eagles, to dogs and bears. The
Jews, too, must have realised with a vividness which is to us impossible the
cruel nature of the usurper Sargon. He is represented on his monuments as
putting out with his own hands the eyes of his miserable captives; while, to
prevent them from flinching when the spear which he holds in his hand is
plunged into their eye-sockets, a hook is inserted through their nose and lips
and held fast with a bridle. Can we not imagine the pathos with which this

party would depict such horrors to the tremblers of Judah? Would they not
bewail the fanaticism which led the prophets to seduce their king into the
suicidal policy of defying such a power? To these men the sole path of
national safety lay in continuing to be quiet vassals and faithful tributaries of
these destroyers of cities and treaders-down of foes.
II. Then there was the Egyptian party, headed probably by the powerful
Shebna, the chancellor.[498] His foreign name, the fact that his father is not
mentioned, and the question of Isaiah—"What hast thou here? and whom
hast thou here, that thou hast hewed thee out a sepulchre here?"—seem to
indicate that he was by birth a foreigner, perhaps a Syrian.[499] The prophet,
indignant at his powerful interference with domestic politics, threatens him,
in words of tremendous energy, with exile and degradation.[500] He lost his
place of chancellor, and we next find him in the inferior, though still
honourable, office of secretary (sopher, 2 Kings xviii. 18), while Eliakim
had been promoted to his vacant place (Isa. xxii. 21). Perhaps he may have
afterwards repented, and the doom have been lightened.[501] Circumstances
at any rate reduced him from the scornful spirit which seems to have marked
his earlier opposition to the prophetic counsels, and perhaps the powerful
warning and menace of Isaiah may have exercised an influence on his mind.
III. The third party, if it could even be called a party, was that of Isaiah and a
few of the faithful, aided no doubt by the influence of the prophecies of
Micah. Their attitude to both the other parties was antagonistic.
i. As regards the Assyrian, they did not attempt to minimise the danger. They
represented the peril from the kingdom of Nineveh as God's appointed
scourge for the transgressions of Judah, as it had been for the transgressions
of Israel.
Thus Micah sees in imagination the terrible march of the invader by Gath,
Akko, Beth-le-Aphrah, Maroth, Lachish, and Adullam. He plays with bitter
anguish on the name of each town as an omen of humiliation and ruin, and
calls on Zion to make herself bald for the children of her delight, and to
enlarge her baldness as the vultures, because they are gone into captivity.[502]
He turns fiercely on the greedy grandees, the false prophets, the blood-
stained princes, the hireling priests, the bribe-taking soothsayers, who were
responsible for the guilt which should draw down the vengeance. He ends

with the fearful prophecy—which struck a chill into men's hearts a century
later, and had an important influence on Jewish history—"Therefore,
because of you shall Zion be ploughed as a field, and Jerusalem become
ruins, and the hill of the Temple as heights in the wood";—though there
should be an ultimate deliverance from Migdal-Eder, and a remnant should
be saved.[503]
Similar to Micah's, and possibly not uninfluenced by it, is Isaiah's imaginary
picture of the march of Assyria, which must have been full of terror to the
poor inhabitants of Jerusalem.[504]

"He is come to Aiath!
He is passed through Migron!
At Michmash he layeth up his baggage:
They are gone over the pass:
'Geba,' they cry, 'is our lodging.'
Ramah trembleth:
Gibeah of Saul is fled!
Raise thy shrill cries, O daughter of Gallim!
Hearken, O Laishah! Answer her, O Anathoth!
Madmenah is in wild flight (?).
The inhabitants of Gebim gather their stuff to flee.
This very day shall he halt at Nob.
He shaketh his hand at the mount of the daughter of Zion,
The hill of Jerusalem."

Yet Isaiah, and the little band of prophets, in spite of their perils, did not
share the views of the Assyrian party or counsel submission. On the contrary,
even as they contemplate in imagination this terrific march of Sargon, they
threaten Assyria. The Assyrian might smite Judah, but God should smite the
Assyrians. He boasts that he will rifle the riches of the people as one robs the
eggs of a trembling bird, which does not dare to cheep or move the wing.[505]
But Isaiah tells him that he is but the axe boasting against the hewer, and the
wooden staff lifting itself up against its wielder. Burning should be scattered
over his glory. The Lord of hosts should lop his boughs with terror, and a
mighty one should hew down the crashing forest of his haughty Lebanon.

ii. Still more indignant were the true prophets against those who trusted in an
alliance with Egypt. From first to last Isaiah warned Ahaz, and warned
Hezekiah, that no reliance was to be placed on Egyptian promises—that
Egypt was but like the reed of his own Nile. He mocked the hopes placed on
Egyptian intervention as being no less sure of disannulment than a covenant
with death and an agreement with Sheol. This rebellious reliance on the
shadow of Egypt was but the weaving of an unrighteous web, and the adding
of sin to sin. It should lead to nothing but shame and confusion, and the
Jewish ambassadors to Zoan and Egypt should only have to blush for a
people that could neither help nor profit. And then branding Egypt with the
old insulting name of Rahab, or "Blusterer," he says,—

"Egypt helpeth in vain, and to no purpose.
Therefore have I called her 'Rahab, that sitteth still.'"

Indolent braggart—that was the only designation which she deserved!
Intrigue and braggadocio—smoke and lukewarm water,—this was all which
could be expected from her![506]
Such teaching was eminently distasteful to the worldly politicians, who
regarded faith in Jehovah's intervention as no better than ridiculous
fanaticism, and forgot God's wisdom in the inflated self-satisfaction of their
own. The priests—luxurious, drunken, scornful—were naturally with them.
Men were fine and stylish, and in their religious criticisms could not express
too lofty a contempt for any one who, like Isaiah, was too sincere to care for
the mere polishing of phrases, and too much in earnest to shrink from
reiteration. In their self-indulgent banquets these sleek, smug euphemists
made themselves very merry over Isaiah's simplicity, reiteration, and
directness of expression. With hiccoughing insolence they asked whether
they were to be treated like weaned babes; and then wagging their heads, as
their successors did at Christ upon the cross, they indulged themselves in a
mimicry, which they regarded as witty, of Isaiah's style and manner. With
him they said it is all,—

"Tsav-la-tsav, tsav-la-tsav,
Quav-la-quav, quav-la-quav,
Z'eir sham, Z'eir sham!"—

which may be imitated thus:—With him it is always "Bit and bit, bid and
bid, for-bid and for-bid, forbid and forbid, a lit-tle bit here, a lit-tle bit there."
[507]
Monosyllable is heaped on monosyllable; and no doubt the speakers
tipsily adopted the tones of fond mothers addressing their babes and
weanlings. Using the Hebrew words, one of these shameless roysterers
would say, "Tsav-la-tsav, tsav-la-tsav, quav-la-quav, quav-la-quav, Z'eir
sham, Z'eir sham,—that is how that simpleton Isaiah speaks." And then
doubtless a drunken laugh would go round the table, and half a dozen of
them would be saying thus, "Tsav-la-tsav, tsav-la-tsav," at once. They
derided Isaiah just as the philosophers of Athens derided St. Paul—as a mere
spermologos, "a seed-pecker!"[508] or "picker-up of learning's crumbs." Is all
this petty monosyllabism fit teaching for persons like us? Are we to be
taught by copybooks? Do we need the censorship of this Old Morality?
On whom, full of the fire of God, Isaiah turned, and told these scornful
tipsters, who lorded it over God's heritage in Jerusalem, that, since they
disdained his stammerings, God would teach them by men of strange lips
and alien tongue. They might mimic the style of the Assyrians also if they
liked; but they should fall backward, and be broken, and snared, and taken.
[509]

It must not be forgotten that the struggle of the prophets against these parties
was far more severe than we might suppose. The politicians of expediency
had supporters among the leading princes. The priests—whom the prophets
so constantly and sternly denounce—adhered to them; and, as usual, the
women were all of the priestly party (comp. Isa. xxxii. 9-20). The king,
indeed, was inclined to side with his prophet, but the king was terribly
overshadowed by a powerful and worldly aristocracy, of which the influence
was almost always on the side of luxury, idolatry, and oppression.
iii. But what had Isaiah to offer in the place of the policy of these worldly
and sacerdotal advisers of the king? It was the simple command "Trust in the
Lord." It was the threefold message "God is high; God is near; God is Love."
[510]
Had he not told Ahaz not to fear the "stumps of two smouldering
torches," when Rezin and Pekah seemed awfully dangerous to Judah? So he
tells them now that, though their sins had necessitated the rushing stroke of
Assyrian judgment, Zion should not be utterly destroyed. In Isaiah "the
calmness requisite for sagacity rose from faith." Mr. Bagehot might have

appealed to Isaiah's whole policy in illustration of what he has so well
described as the military and political benefits of religion. Monotheism is of
advantage to men not only "by reason of the high concentration of steady
feeling which it produces, but also for the mental calmness and sagacity
which surely springs from a pure and vivid conviction that the Lord
reigneth."[511] Isaiah's whole conviction might have been summed up in the
name of the king himself: "Jehovah maketh strong."
King Hezekiah, apparently not a man of much personal force, though of
sincere piety, was naturally distracted by the counsels of these three parties:
and who can judge him severely if, beset with such terrific dangers, he
occasionally wavered, now to one side, now to the other? On the whole, it is
clear that he was wise and faithful, and deserves the high eulogy that his
faith failed not. Naturally he had not within his soul that burning light of
inspiration which made Isaiah so sure that, even though clouds and darkness
might lower on every side, God was an eternal Sun, which flamed for ever in
the zenith, even when not visible to any eye save that of Faith.

CHAPTER XXVI
HEZEKIAH'S SICKNESS, AND THE EMBASSY FROM
BABYLON

2 Kings xx. 1-19

"Thou hast loved me out of the pit of nothingness."—Isa. xxxviii. 17
(A.V., margin).

"See the shadow of the dial
In the lot of every one
Marks the passing of the trial,
Proves the presence of the Sun."
E. B. Browning.

In the chaos of uncertainties which surrounds the chronology of King
Hezekiah's reign, it is impossible to fix a precise date to the sickness which
almost brought him to the grave. It has, however, been conjectured by some
Assyriologists that the story of this episode has been displaced, because it
seemed to break the continuity of the narrative of the Assyrian invasion; and
that, though it is placed in the Book of Kings after the deliverance from
Sennacherib, it really followed the earlier incursion of Sargon. This is
rendered more probable by Isaiah's promise (2 Kings xx. 6), "I will deliver
thee and this city out of the hand of the King of Assyria," and by the fact that
Hezekiah still possessed such numerous and splendid treasures to display to
the ambassadors of Merodach-Baladan. This could hardly have been the case
after he had been forced to pay a fine to the King of Assyria of all the silver
that was found in the house of the Lord, and in the treasures of the king's
house, to cut off the gold from the doors and pillars of the Temple, and even
to send as captives to Nineveh some of his wives, and of the eunuchs of his
palace.[512] The date "in those days" (2 Kings xx. 1) is vague and elastic, and
may apply to any time before or after the great invasion.

He was sick unto death. The only indication which we have of the nature of
his illness is that it took the form of a carbuncle or imposthume,[513] which
could be locally treated, but which, in days of very imperfect therapeutic
knowledge, might easily end in death, especially if it were on the back of the
neck. The conjecture of Witsius and others that it was a form of the plague
which they suppose to have caused the disaster to the Assyrian army has
nothing whatever to recommend it.
Seeing the fatal character of his illness, Isaiah came to the king with the dark
message, "Set thine house in order; for thou shalt die, and not live."
The message is interesting as furnishing yet another proof that even the most
positive announcements of the prophets were, and were always meant to be,
to some extent hypothetical and dependent on unexpressed conditions. This
was the case with the famous prophecy of Micah that Zion should be
ploughed down into a heap of ruins. It was never fulfilled; yet the prophet
lost none of his authority, for it was well understood that the doom which
would otherwise have been carried out had been averted by timely penitence.
But the message of Isaiah fell with terrible anguish on the heart of the
suffering king. He had hoped for a better fate. He had begun a great religious
reformation. He had uplifted his people, at least in part, out of the moral
slough into which they had fallen in the days of his predecessor. He had
inspired into his threatened capital something of his own faith and courage.
Surely he, if any man, might claim the old promises which Jehovah in His
loving-kindness and truth had sworn to his father David and his father
Abraham, that he being delivered out of the hand of his enemies should
serve God without fear, walking in holiness and righteousness before Him all
the days of his life. He was but a young man still—perhaps not yet thirty
years old; further, not only would he leave behind him an unfinished work,
but he was childless,[514] and therefore it seemed as if with him would end
the direct line of the house of David, heir to so many precious promises. He
has left us—it is preserved in the Book of Isaiah—the poem which he wrote
on his recovery, but which enshrines the emotion of his agonising
anticipations[515]:—
"I said, In the noontide of my days I shall go into the gates of Sheol.
I am deprived of the residue of my years.
I said, I shall not see Yah, Yah, in the land of the living,

I shall behold no man more, when I am among them that cease to be.
Mine habitation is removed, and is carried away from me like a shepherd's
tent.
Like a weaver I have rolled up my life; he will cut me from the thrum.

Like a swallow or a crane, so did I chatter;
I did mourn as a dove; mine eyes fail with looking upward.
O Lord, I am oppressed; be Thou my surety."
We must remember, as we contemplate his utter prostration of soul, that he
was not blessed, as we are, with the sure and certain hope of the resurrection
to eternal life. All was dim and dark, to him in the shadowy world of eidola
beyond the grave, and many a century was to elapse before Christ brought
life and immortality to light. To enter Sheol meant to Hezekiah to pass
beyond the cheerful sunshine of earth and the felt presence of God. No more
worship, no more gladness there!
"For Sheol cannot praise Thee, Death cannot celebrate Thee;
They that go down into the pit cannot hope for Thy truth."
On every ground, therefore, the feelings of Hezekiah, had he not been a
worshipper of God, might have been like those of Mycerinus, and, like that
legendary Egyptian king, he might have cursed God before he died.

"My father loved injustice, and lived long;
I loved the good he scorned and hated wrong—
The gods declare my recompense to-day.
I looked for life more lasting, rule more high;
And when six years are measured, lo, I die!
Yet surely, O my people, did I ween
Man's justice from the all-just gods was given,
A light that from some upper point did beam,
Some better archetype whose seat was heaven:
A light that, shining from the blest abodes,

Did shadow somewhat of the life of gods."
The indignation of Mycerinus often finds an echo on Pagan tombstones, as
in the famous epitaph on the grave of the girl Procope:—

"I, Procope, lift up my hands against the gods,
Who took me hence undeserving,
Aged nineteen years."

It was far otherwise with Hezekiah. There was anguish in his heart, but no
rebellion or defiance. He wept sore; he turned his face to the wall and wept;
[516]
but as he wept he also prayed, and said,—
"O Lord, remember now how I have walked before Thee in truth, and with a
perfect heart, and have done that which is good in Thy sight."
Isaiah, after delivering his dark message, and doubtless adding to it such
words of human consolation as were possible—if under such circumstances
any were possible—had left the king's chamber. On every ground his
feelings must have been almost as overwhelmed with sorrow as those of the
king. Hezekiah was personally his friend, and the hope of his nation.
Doubtless the prophet's prayers rose as fervently and as effectually as those
of Luther, which snatched his friend Melanchthon back from the very gates
of death. By the time that he had reached the middle of the court,[517] he felt
borne in upon him, by that Divine intuition which constituted his prophetic
call, the certainty that God would withdraw the immediate doom which he
had been commissioned to announce. It has been conjectured by some that
the conviction was deepened in his mind by observing on the steps of Ahaz
one of those remarkable but rare effects of refraction—or, as some have
conjectured, of a solar eclipse, involving an obscuration of the upper limb of
the sun—which had seemed to take the advancing shadow ten steps
backwards; and that this was to him a sign from heaven of the promise of
God and the prolongation of the king's life. Awestruck and glad, he hastened
back into the presence of the dying king with the life-giving message that
God had heard his prayer, and seen his tears, and would add fifteen years to
his life, and would defend him, and deliver him and Jerusalem out of the
hand of the King of Assyria. And this should be the sign to him from
Jehovah—Jehovah would bring again the shadow ten steps up the stairs of

Ahaz. To this sign—if it was visible from the chamber-window—he called
the attention of the astonished king.[518]
We here naturally follow the narrative of Isaiah himself, as more
authoritative than that of the historian of the Kings as to details in which
they differ.[519] Not only is it quite in accordance with all that we know of
history that slight variations should occur in the traditions of long-past times,
but the text of the Book of Kings suggests some difficulty. There we read
that Hezekiah asked Isaiah what should be the sign of the promise—not
mentioned in Isaiah—that he should go up to the House of the Lord the third
day. Isaiah then asked him whether the sign should be that the shadow
should advance ten steps, or recede ten steps. But there is no interrogation in
the Hebrew, which rather means, "The shadow hath advanced ten steps ... if
it shall recede ten steps?" or if we insert the interrogation in the first clause,
"Hath the shadow advanced ten steps?"[520] The king's natural answer to so
strange an alternative would be that for the shadow to advance ten steps was
nothing; whereas its retrogression would be a sign indeed. Then Isaiah cried
unto Jehovah, and the shadow went backward. In the obvious divergence of
details we naturally follow Isaiah himself; and if it be a true and understood
rule of all theology, "Miracula non sunt multiplicanda præter necessitatem,"
the miracle in this case—in the opportuneness of its occurrence, and the
issues which it inspired—was none the less a miracle because it was carried
out in direct accordance with God's unseen, perpetual, miraculous
Providence, which none but unbelievers will nickname Chance. That we are
here dealing with an historic incident is certain; and they who see and
acknowledge God in all history find no difficulty at all in seeing His dealings
with men in striking interpositions. But these, by the analogy of His whole
Divine economy, would naturally be out in accordance with natural laws.
The words rendered "the sun-dial of Ahaz" mean no more than "the steps
[ma'aloth] of Ahaz." Ahaz evidently was a king of æsthetic tastes, who was
fond of introducing foreign novelties and curiosities into Jerusalem.[521]
Steps, with a staff on the top of them as a gnomon, to serve as sun-dials had
been invented at Babylon, and Ahaz may probably have become acquainted
with their form and use when he paid his visit to Tiglath-Pileser at
Damascus. No one could blame him—it was indeed a meritorious act—to
introduce to his people so useful an invention. The word "hour" first occurs
in Dan. iii. 6, and it was doubtless from Babylon that the Hebrews borrowed

the division of days into hours. This is the earliest instance in the Bible of the
mention of any instrument to measure time. That the recession of the shadow
could be caused by refraction is certain, for it has been observed in modern
days. Thus, as is mentioned by Rosenmüller, on March 27th, 1703, Père
Romauld, prior of the monastery at Metz, noticed that the shadow on his dial
deviated an hour and a half, owing to refraction in the higher regions of the
atmosphere.[522] Or again, according to Mr. Bosanquet, the same effect might
have been produced by the darkening shadow of an eclipse. But while he
appealed to Divine indications the great prophet did not neglect natural
remedies. He ordered that a cake of figs should be laid on the imposthume. It
was a recognised and an efficient remedy, still recommended, centuries later,
by Dioscorides, by Pliny, and by St. Jerome. By God's blessing on man's
therapeutic care, the king was speedily rescued from the gates of death.
Constantly in Scripture what we call the miraculous and what we call the
providential are mingled together. To those who regard the providential as a
constant miracle, the question of the miraculous becomes subordinate.[523]
With intense joy and gratitude the king hailed the respite which God had
granted him. In fifteen years much might be done, much might be hoped for.
All this he acknowledged with deep feeling in the song which he wrote on
his recovery.

"I shall go as in solemn procession[524] all my years because of the bitterness
of my soul.
O Lord, by these things men live,
And wholly therein is the life of my spirit.
Behold, it was for my peace that I had great bitterness;
But Thou hast loved my soul from the pit of nothingness:
For Thou hast cast all my sins behind Thy back.

The Lord is ready to save me;
Therefore will we sing my songs to the stringed instruments
All the days of our life in the house of the Lord."[525]

"The wonder done in the land" was, according to the Chronicler, one of the
grounds for the embassy which, after his recovery, Hezekiah received from
Merodach-Baladan, the patriot prince of Babylon. The other ostensible
object of the embassy was to send letters and a present in congratulation for
the king's restoration to health. But the real object lay deeper, out of sight. It
was to secure a southern alliance for Babylon against the incessant tyranny
of Nineveh.

Merodach-Baladan is mentioned in the inscriptions of Sargon.[526] He is
described as "Merodach-Baladan, son of Baladan, King of Sumîr and Accad,
king of the four countries, and conqueror of all his enemies." There had been
long struggles, lasting indeed for centuries, between the city on the
Euphrates and the city on the Tigris. Sometimes one, sometimes the other,
had been victorious. Babylon—on the monuments Kur-Dunyash—had its
original Accadian name of Ca-dinirra, which, like its Semitic equivalent Bal-
el, means "Gate of God." Kalah (Larissa and Birs Nimroud) had been built
by Shalmaneser I. before b.c. 1300. His son conquered Babylon, but not
permanently; for in some later raid the Babylonians got possession of his
signet-ring, with its proud inscription, "Conqueror of Kur-Dunyash," and it
was not recovered by the Assyrians till six centuries later, when it fell into
the hands of Sennacherib. About 1150 Nebuchadrezzar I. of Babylon thrice
invaded Assyria, but there was again peace and alliance in 1100. Merodach-
Baladan I. reigned before 900. The king who now sought the friendship of
Hezekiah was the second of the name. He seized or recovered the throne of
Babylon in 721, after the death of Shalmaneser, perhaps because Sargon was
a usurper of dubious descent. He helped the Elamites against Assyria. Sargon
was compelled to retreat to Assyria, but returned in 712, and drove
Merodach-Baladan to flight. He was captured and taken to Assyria. But on
the murder of Sargon in 705, he again managed to seize the throne of
Babylon, killed the viceroy who had been set up, and became king for six
months. After this, Sennacherib invaded his country, defeated him, and drove
him once more to flight. He was perhaps killed by his successor.
Whether his overtures to Hezekiah took place before his defeat by Sargon, or
after his escape, is uncertain. In either case he doubtless sent a splendid
embassy, for Babylon was far-famed for its golden magnificence as "the
glory of kingdoms" and "the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency."[527] At that
time the Jews knew but little of the far-off city which was destined to be so

closely interwoven with their future fortunes, as it was mingled with their
oldest and dimmest traditions.[528] Apart from the magnificence of the
presents brought to him, it was not unnatural that Hezekiah should regard
this embassy with intense satisfaction. It was flattering to the power of his
little kingdom that its alliance should be sought by the far-off and powerful
capital on the great river;[529] it was still more encouraging to know that the
frightful Nineveh had a strong enemy not far from her own frontier.
Merodach-Baladan's ambassadors would be sure to inform Hezekiah that
their lord had flung off the authority of Sargon, had kept him at bay for many
years, and was still the undisputed king of the dominions snatched from the
common enemy. It might have seemed reasonable that Hezekiah, for his part,
should desire to leave the most favourable impression of his wealth and
power on the mind of his distant and magnificent ally. He "hearkened unto"
the ambassadors, or, more properly, "he was glad of them" (R.V.),[530] and
"showed them all the house of his spicery and other treasures, his precious
unguents, his armoury, his bullion, plate, and the whole resources of his
kingdom." The Chronicler regards this as ingratitude to God. He says that
"Hezekiah rendered not again according unto the benefits done unto him; for
his heart was lifted up: therefore there was wrath upon him, and upon Judah
and Jerusalem." It is a severe judgment of later times, and the historian of the
Kings pronounces no such censure. Nevertheless, he records the stern
sentence pronounced by Isaiah. The prophet had seen through the secret
diplomacy of the Babylonian ambassadors, and knew that the real object of
their mission was to induce his king to revolt against Assyria in reliance on
an arm of flesh. He came to ask Hezekiah whose these men were, whence
they came, and what they had said. The king told him who they were, and
how he had received them; but he did not think it wise to reveal their secret
proposals. If Isaiah had so vehemently reproved all negotiations with Egypt,
there was little probability that he would sanction the overtures of Babylon.
He saw in Hezekiah's conduct a vein of ostentatious elation, a swerving from
theocratic faith; and with remarkable prophetic insight convinced the king of
the error and impolicy of his proceedings, by announcing that the final and,
in fact, irrevocable captivity of Judah would ultimately come, not from
Nineveh, the fierce enemy, whose cloud of war was lurid on the horizon, but
from Babylon, the apparently weaker friend, who was now making overtures
of amity. With what heartrending grief must the king have heard the doom
that the display of his treasures would prove to be in the future an incentive

to the cupidity of the kings of Babylon, and that they would sweep away all
those precious things to the banks of the Euphrates with such final overthrow
that even the descendants of David should be sunk to the infinite degradation
of being eunuchs in the palace of the King of Babylon.[531] The doom seems
to have been fulfilled in part in the reign of Hezekiah's son, and more
fearfully in the days of his great-grandchildren.[532]
The king's pride was humbled to the dust. In the spirit of Job—"The Lord
gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord"[533]—
he resigned himself without a murmur to the will of Heaven, and exclaimed
that all which God did must be well done. At least God granted him a respite.
Peace and truth would be in his own days; for that let him be thankful. They
were words of humble resignation, uttered by one who had learnt to believe
that whatever God decreed was just and right.
It would be unjust to measure the feelings of those far centuries by those of
our own day, and there was none of the gross selfishness in the words of
Hezekiah which led Nero to quote the line—

"When I am dead, let earth be mixed with fire";

or which led Louis XIV. to say—

"Après moi le déluge."

We may perhaps trace in his exclamation something of the fatalism which
gives a touch of apathy to the submissiveness of the Oriental. Some, too,
have imagined that his distress was tinged by a gleam of happiness at the
implicit promise that he should have a son. His wife's name was Hephzibah
("My delight is in her"), and within two years she brought forth the firstborn
son, whose career, indeed, was dark and evil, but who became in due time an
ancestor of the promised Messiah. The name "Manasseh" given him by his
parents recalled the child born to Joseph in the land of his exile who had
caused him to forget his sorrows.[534] Hezekiah had the spirit which says,—

"That which Thou blessest is most good,
And unblest good is ill;
And all is right which seems most wrong,

So it be Thy sweet will."

CHAPTER XXVII
HEZEKIAH AND ASSYRIA

b.c. 701

2 Kings xviii. 13—xix. 37.

Ἀλλ' ὁ σοφώτατος βασιλεὺς οὐχ ὅπλα ταῖς ἐκείνων βλασφημίαις, ἀλλὰ
προσευχὴν καὶ δάκρυα καὶ σάκκον ἀντέταξεν.—Theodoret.

"When, sudden—how think ye the end?
Did I say 'without friend'?
Say rather from marge to blue marge
The whole sky grew his targe,
With the sun's self for visible boss,
While an Arm ran across
Which the earth heaved beneath like a breast,
Where the wretch was safe pressed."
Browning.

Although during a few memorable scenes the relations of Judah with Assyria
in the reign of Hezekiah leap into fierce light, many previous details are
unfortunately left in the deepest obscurity—an obscurity all the more
impenetrable from the lack of certain dates. It will perhaps help to simplify
our conceptions if we first sketch what is known of Assyria from the
cuneiform inscriptions, and then fill up the sketch of those scenes which are
more minutely delineated in the Book of Kings and in the prophecies of
Isaiah.
Sargon—perhaps a successful general of royal blood, though he never calls
himself the son of any one[535]—seems to have usurped the throne on the
death of Shalmaneser IV., during the siege of Samaria in b.c. 722. He took
Samaria, deported its inhabitants, and repeopled it from the Assyrian
dominions. "In their place," he says, in his tablets in the halls of his palace at

Khorsabad, "I settled the men of countries conquered [by my hand]."[536] In
720 he suppressed a futile attempt at revolt, headed by a pretender named
Yahubid, in Hamath, which he reduced to "a heap of ruins." For some years
after this he was occupied mainly on his northern frontiers, but he tells us
that until 711 tribute continued to come in from Judah and Philistia.
Meanwhile, these terrified and oppressed feudatories, writhing under the
remorseless dominion of Nineveh, naturally began to listen to the intrigues
of Egypt, whose interest it was to create a bulwark between herself and the
invasion of the armies which were the abhorrence of the world. Under the
influence of Sabaco, which gave new strength and unity to Egypt, she
succeeded in seducing Ashdod from its allegiance to Sargon. Sargon at once
deposed Azuri, King of Ashdod, and put his brother Ahimit in his place. The
Ashdodites soon after deposed Ahimit, and elected in his place Jaman, who
was in alliance with Sabaco.[537] This revolt was evidently favoured by
Judah, Edom, and Moab; for Sargon says that they, as well as the people of
Philistia, "were speaking treason." The rebellion was crushed by Sargon's
promptitude.[538] He tells his own tale thus:—
"In the wrath of my heart I did not divide my army, and I did not diminish
the ranks, but I marched against Ashdod with my warriors, who did not
separate themselves from the traces of my sandals. I besieged, I took Ashdod
and Gunt-Asdodim. I then re-established these towns. I placed [in them] the
people whom my arms had conquered, I put over them my lieutenant as
governor. I regarded them as Assyrians, and they practised obedience."[539]
Sargon does not, however, seem to have conducted this campaign in person;
for we read in Isa. xx. 1 that he sent his Turtan—i.e., his commander-in-
chief,[540] whose name seems to have been Zir-bâni—to Ashdod, who fought
against it and took it. The wretched Philistines had put their trust in Sabaco.
"The people," says Sargon, "and their evil chiefs sent their presents to
Pharaoh, King of Egypt, a prince who could not save them, and besought his
alliance." Isaiah had for three years been indicating how vain this policy was
by one of those acted parables which so powerfully affect the Eastern mind.
He had, by the word of the Lord, stripped the shoes from on his feet and the
upper robe of sackcloth from his loins, and walked, "naked and barefoot, for
a sign and portent against Egypt and Ethiopia," to indicate that even thus
should the people of Egypt and Ethiopia be carried away as captives, naked
and barefoot, by the kings of Assyria. Egypt was the boast of one party at

Jerusalem, and Ethiopia, which had now become master of Egypt under
Sabaco, was their expectation; but Isaiah's public self-humiliation showed
how utterly their hopes should come to nought.[541] Before the outbreak at
Ashdod, Sargon had suppressed a revolt of Hanun, or Hanno, King of Gaza,
and Egypt and Assyria first met face to face at Raphia (about b.c. 720),
where Sabaco fought in person with an Egyptian contingent, at a spot half-
way between Gaza and the "river of Egypt."[542] Sabaco, whom Sargon calls
"the Sultan of Egypt" (Siltannu Muzri), had been defeated, and fled
precipitately, but Sargon was not then sufficiently free from other
complications to advance to the Nile. The hoarded vengeance of Assyria was
inflicted upon Egypt nearly a century later by Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal.
In the two suppressions of revolt at Ashdod, Sargon or his Turtan must have
come perilously near Jerusalem, and perhaps he may have inflicted sufficient
damage to admit of the boast that he had "conquered" Judæa. If so, his
military vanity made him guilty of an exaggeration.
Far more serious to Sargon was the revolt of Merodach-Baladan, King of
Chaldæa. Babylon had always been a rival of Nineveh in the competition for
world-wide dominion, and for twelve years, as Sargon says, Merodach-
Baladan had been "sending ambassadors"[543]—to Hezekiah among others—
in the patient effort to consolidate a formidable league. Elam and Media
were with him; and at a solemn banquet, for which they had "spread the
carpets,"[544] and eaten and drank, the cry had risen, "Arise, ye princes!
anoint the shield." Standing in ideal vision on his watch-tower, Isaiah saw
the sweeping rush of the Assyrian troops on their horses and camels on their
way to Babylon. What should come of it? The answer is in the words,
"Fallen, fallen is Babylon, and all the images of her gods he [Sargon] hath
broken to the ground." Alas! there is no hope from Babylon or its embassy!
Would that Isaiah could have held out a hope! But no, "O my threshed one,
son of my threshing-floor, that which I have heard from the Lord of hosts,
the God of Israel, that have I declared unto you."[545] And so it came to pass.
The brave Babylonian was defeated. In 709 Sargon occupied his palace, took
Dur-yakin, to which he had fled for refuge, and made himself Lord
Paramount as far as the Persian Gulf. It was his last great enterprise. He built
and adorned his palaces, and looked forward to long years of peace and
splendour; but in 705 the dagger-thrust of an assassin—a malcontent of the

town of Kullum—found its way to his heart; and Sennacherib reigned in his
stead.
Sennacherib—Sin-ahi-irba ("Sin, the moon-god, has multiplied brothers")
[546]
—was one of the haughtiest, most splendid, and most powerful of all the
kings of Assyria, though the petty state of Judah, relying on her God, defied
and flouted him. The son of a mighty conqueror, at the head of a magnificent
army, he regarded himself as the undisputed lord of the world.[547] Born in
the purple, and bred up as crown prince, his primary characteristic was an
overweening pride and arrogance, which shows itself in all his inscriptions.
He calls himself "the Great King, the Powerful King, the King of the
Assyrians, of the nations of the four regions, the diligent ruler, the favourite
of the Great Gods, the observer of sworn faith, the guardian of law, the
establisher of monuments, the noble hero, the strong warrior, the first of
kings, the punisher of unbelievers, the destroyer of wicked men."[548] He was
mighty both in war and peace. His warlike glories are attested by Herodotus,
by Polyhistor, by Abydenus, by Demetrius, and by his own annals. His
peaceful triumphs are attested by the great palace which he erected at
Nineveh, and the magnificent series of sculptured slabs with which he
adorned it; by his canals and aqueducts, his gateways and embankments, his
Bavian sculpture, and his stêlê at the Nahr-el-Kelb. He was a worthy
successor of his father Sargon, and of the second Tiglath-Pileser—active in
his military enterprises, indefatigable, persevering, full of resource.[549]
On one of his bas-reliefs we see this magnificent potentate seated on his
throne, holding two arrows in his right hand, while his left grasps the bow. A
rich bracelet clasps each of his brawny arms. On his head is the jewelled
pyramidal crown of Assyria, with its embroidered lappets. His dark locks
stream down over his shoulders, and the long, curled beard flows over his
breast. His strongly marked, sensual features wear an aspect of unearthly
haughtiness. He is clad in superbly broidered robes, and his throne is
covered with rich tapestries, and bas-reliefs of Assyrians or captives, who,
like the Greek caryatides, uphold its divisions with their heads and arms.
Yet all this glory faded into darkness, and all this colossal pride crumbled
into dust. Sennacherib not only died, like his father, by murder, but by the
murderous hands of his own sons, and after the shattering of all his immense
pretensions—a defeated and dishonoured man.

One of his invasions of Judæa occupies a large part of the Scripture
narrative.[550] It was the fourth time of that terrible contact between the great
world-power which symbolised all that was tyrannic and idolatrous, and the
insignificant tribe which God had chosen for His own inheritance.
In the reign of Ahaz, about b.c. 732, Judah had come into collision with
Tiglath-Pileser II.
Under Shalmaneser IV. and Sargon, the Northern Kingdom had ceased to
exist in 722.
Under Sargon, Judah had been harassed and humbled, and had witnessed the
suppression of the Philistian revolt, and of the defeat of the powerful Sabaco
at Raphia about 720.
Now came the fourth and most overwhelming calamity. If the patriots of
Jerusalem had placed any hopes in the disappearance of the ferocious
Sargon, they must speedily have recognised that he had left behind him a no
less terrible successor.
Sennacherib reigned apparently twenty-four years (b.c. 705-681). On his
accession he placed a brother, whose name is unknown, on the vice-regal
throne of Babylon, and contented himself with the title of King of the
Assyrians. This brother was speedily dethroned by a usurper named Hagisa,
who only reigned thirty days, and was then slain by the indefatigable
Merodach-Baladan, who held the throne for six months. He was driven out
by Belibus, who had been trained "like a little dog" in the palace of Nineveh,
[551]
but was now made King of Sumîr and Accad—i.e., of Babylonia.
Sennacherib entered the palace of Babylon and carried off the wife of
Merodach and endless spoil in triumph, while Merodach fled into the land of
Guzumman, and (like the Duke of Monmouth) hid himself "among the
marshes and reeds," where the Assyrians searched for him for five days, but
found no trace of him. After three years (702-699) Belibus proved faithless,
and Sennacherib made his son Assur-nadin-sum viceroy of Babylon.
His second campaign was against the Medes in Northern Elam.
His third (701) was against the Khatti (the Hittites)—i.e., against Phœnicia
and Palestine.[552] He drove King Luli from Sidon "by the mere terror of the
splendour of my sovereignty," and placed Tubalu (i.e., Ithbaal) in his place,