Ahab. Jericho. Jezreel. Jezebel. With this change of capital, a new era opened on Israel, which was continued on the accession of Omri's son Ahab. New cities were built in various parts of the kingdom.' Two especially are named, both remarkable for the beauty of their situation. One was rather a revival, than a creation. It was in the days of Ahab, that a daring architect of Bethel, named Hiel, ventured to raise Jericho from its ruins, in defiance of the curse of Joshua, which received its fulfilment in the death of the architect's eldest son at the beginning, and youngest son at the completion, of his design. The other was a new royal residence, erected by Ahab, at Jezreel, although not superseding his father's choice of Samaria. It was planted on a gentle eminence, in the very centre of the rich plain-the seed or sowing-place ' of God,'-from whence, doubtless, it derived its name; commanding the view of Carmel on the west, and the valley of the Jordan on the east. Towards this side, a high tower stood, commanding the eastern approach.3 The palace was built close on the city wall, above the gateway, and the windows of the seraglio looked out to the public street immediately within the gate. Within its walls, or forming a conspicuous part of the royal residence, was a palace built wholly or in part of ivory," a proof that the commerce of Solomon, by which elephants' tusks were brought from India, had not yet ceased; and an example of architecture that apparently spread to the dwellings of the Israelite aristocracy. In accordance with this growth in arts and luxury, Ahab is the first of the northern kings who appears to have practised 'polygamy. But over his harem presided a Queen who has thrown all her lesser rivals into the shade. For the first time the chief wife of an Israelite king was one of the old accursed Canaanite race. A new dynasty now sate on the Tyrian throne, founded by Eth-baal. He had, according to the Phoenician records, gained the crown by the murder of his brother, and he united to the royal dignity his former office of High Priest of Ashtaroth. The daughter of Ethbaal was JEZEBEL, a name of dreadful import to Israelitish ears, though in later ages it has reappeared under the innocent form of Isabella. The marriage of Ahab with this princess was one of those turning-points in the history of families where a new influence runs like poison through all its branches, and transforms it into another being. It has been conjectured by a German critic that the 45th Psalm, usually applied to the marriage of Solomon with the daughter of Pharaoh, was really written for the marriage of Ahab and Jezebel. The common opinion has quite enough in its favour to render needless an application so offensive to our modern notions. Yet there are expressions which suit this event better than any other the ivory palaces,'' the daughter of Tyre,'--and the absence of any allusions to Jerusalem. And there may have been at the time no more of evil omen to overcast the hopes of the Psalmist, than in the marriage feast of Solomon, or than in the alliance of David with Hiram. But the cloud soon began to gather. Jezebel was a woman in whom, with the reckless and licentious habits of an Oriental queen, were united the fiercest and sternest qualities inherent in the old Semitic race. Her husband, in whom generous and gentle feelings were not wanting, was yet of a weak and yielding character, which soon made him a tool in her hands. Even after his death, through the reigns of his sons, her presiding spirit was the evil genius of the dynasty. Through her daughter Athaliah-a daughter worthy of the motherher influence extended to the rival kingdom. The wild Josephus, Ant. viii. 13, §1; c. Apion. i. 18. licence of her life and the magical fascination of her arts or 1 her character, became a proverb in the nation. Round her and from her, in different degrees of nearness, is evolved the awful drama of the most eventful crisis of this portion of the Israelite history. 2 The first indication of her influence was the establishment of the Phoenician worship on a grand scale in the court of Ahab. To some extent this was the natural consequence of the depravation of the public worship of JEHOVAH, by Jeroboam; which seems under Omri to have taken a more directly idolatrous turn. But still the change from a symbolical worship of the One True God, with the innocent rites of sacrifice and prayer, to the cruel and licentious worship of the Phoenician divinities, was a prodigious step downwards, and left traces in northern Palestine which no subsequent reformations were able entirely to obliterate. Two sanctuaries were established; one for each of the great Phoenician deities, at each of the two new capitals of the kingdom. The sanctuary of Ashtaroth, with its accustomed grove, was under Jezebel's special sanction, at the palace of Jezreel. Four hundred priests or prophets ministered to it, and were supported at her table.3 A still more remarkable sanctuary was dedicated to Baal, on the hill of Samaria. It was of a size sufficient to contain all the worshippers of Baal that the northern kingdom could furnish. Four hundred and fifty prophets frequented it. In the interior was a kind of inner fastness or adytum, in which were seated or raised on pillars the figures carved in wood of the Phoenician deities as they were seen, in vision, centuries later, by Jezebel's fellow-countryman, Hannibal, in the sanctuary of Gades. In the centre was Baal, the Sun-god: around him were the inferior divinities. In front of the temple, stood on a stone pillar the figure of Baal alone.2 cution. As far as this point of the history, the effect of the heathen worship was not greater than it had been in Jerusalem. But there soon appeared to be a more energetic spirit at work than had ever come forth from the palace of Solomon or Rehoboam. Now arose the first of a long series of like events in ecclesiastical history—the first GREAT PERSECUTION The Perse-the first persecution on a large scale, which the Church had witnessed in any shape. The extermination of the Canaanites, however bloody, and unlike the spirit of Christian times, had yet been in the heat of war and victory. Those who remained in the land were unmolested in their religious worship, as they were in their tenure of property and of office. It was reserved for the heathen Jezebel to exemplify the principle of persecution in its most direct form. To her, and not to Moses or Joshua, the bitter intolerance of modern times must look back as its legitimate ancestress. The first beginnings of the persecution are not recorded. A chasm occurs in the sacred narrative, which must have contained the story, only known to us through subsequent allusions, how the persecutors passed from hill to hill, destroying the many altars which rose, as in the south, so in the north of Palestine, to the One True God-how the Prophets who had hitherto held their own in Israel were hunted down as the chief enemies of the new religion. Now began those hidings in caves and dens of the earth-the numerous caverns of the limestone rocks of Palestine-the precursors of the history of the Catacombs and the Covenanters. A hundred fugitives might have been seen, broken ELIJAH. up into two companies, guided by the friendly hand of the chief minister of Ahab's court-the Sebastian of this Jewish Diocletian-and hid in spacious caverns, probably amongst the clefts of Carmel. It might have seemed as if, in the kingdom of Israel, -down to this time a refuge from the idolatrous court of Judah-the last remnants of the true religion were to perish. But the blessing which had been pronounced on the new kingdom was still mightier than its accompanying curse. It was at this crisis, that there appeared the very chief of the Prophets. Alone, alone, alone,'-so thrice over is the word emphatically repeated 2-the loftiest sternest spirit of the True Faith raised up face to face with the proudest and fiercest spirit of the old Asiatic Paganism, against Jezebel rose up Elijah3 the Tishbite. He stood alone against Jezebel. He stands alone in many senses amongst the Prophets. Nursed in the bosom of Israel, the Prophetical portion, if one may so say, of the chosen People, vindicating the true religion from the nearest danger of overthrow, setting at defiance by invisible power the whole forces of the Israelite kingdom, he reached a height equal to that of Moses and Samuel, in the traditions of his country. He was the Prophet, for whose return in later years his countrymen have looked with most eager hope. The last Prophet of the Old Dispensation clung to this consolation in the decline of the State. In the Gospel history we find this expectation constantly excited in each successive appearance of a new Prophet. It was a fixed belief of the Jews that he had appeared again and again, as an Arabian merchant, to wise and good Rabbis at their prayers or on their journeys. A seat is still placed for him to superintend 1 1 Kings xviii. 13; compare Amos 2 1 Kings xviii. 22, xix. 10, 14. 4 Malachi iv. 5. 5 Matt. xi. 14, xvi. 14; Luke ix. 8; John i. 21, 25, &c. |