Zerah. A.D. 947. Asa. Jehoshaphat. A.D. 915. the Ethiopian' came up from the south, and the decisive. battle was fought at Mareshah. The Book of Kings passes over the whole war in silence, and the place, the person, the numbers are too indistinct in the Chronicles to yield any certain results. Only we still welcome the peculiar spirit of the ancient Israelite warrior, the essence of religious courage: It is nothing with Thee to help, whether with 'many, or with them that have no power." The wars with the rival kingdom are more detailed. They much resemble those between the rival states of Greece or Italy. They chiefly raged round the frontier towns. Three of these Bethel, Jeshanah, and Ephrain or Ephron-were taken by Abijah, the first probably only for a short time.3 Then Ramah-within six miles of Jerusalem-became an Israelite Decelea; and, as such, Asa thought it worth while to purchase even Syrian aid, even with sacred treasures, to destroy it, and with the materials to fortify two of his own cities on the frontier, Geba and Mizpah. In the latter of these fortresses a well was sunk in case of siege, to which, three centuries later, a tragic incident attached itself. It is a fine use to which Bossuet has turned this military incident as illustrating the duty, not of rejecting the materials or the arguments collected by unbelievers or by heretics, but of employing them to build up the truth. Bâtissons les forteresses 'de Juda des débris et des ruines de celles de Samarie.' In a more startling form, involving a still wider lesson -if moral lessons may be deduced at all from these civil conflicts-certainly with larger historical results-this principle of mutual advantage was followed out by the King of Judah, who in external prosperity most nearly rivalled the grandeur of David, Jehoshaphat. He was to the kingdom 12 Chr. xiv. 9-15. 2 Ibid. 11; Ewald makes Psalm xxi. to be of this time. 32 Chr. xiii. 19. 2 Chr. xvi. 1-6; 1 Kings xv. 16-22. 5 Jer. xli. 9. See Lecture XL. Sermon 'Sur la Providence' (vol. xii. 400). 1 of Judah almost what Jeroboam II. was in this respect to the kingdom of Samaria. The wars with Israel were at once ended by the firm alliance, sealed by the intermarriages, which took place with the house of Omri. It was almost a reunion of the kingdoms. Jehoshaphat made peace with 'the King of Israel.' 2 'He was as Ahab and Jehoram; his horses' (so he adopted the new image which the increase of cavalry through these wars introduced into all the language, religious and secular, of this period) were as their 'horses, his chariots as their chariots, his people as their 'people.' Here and there a prophetic voice was raised against the alliance; here and there a calamity seemed to follow from it. But, on the whole, the result was such as to leave behind the recollection of a reign of proverbial splendour. 3 6 7 The fortifications which had been begun by Solomon, 5 carried on by Rehoboam, and with less vigour by Abijam and Asa, Jehoshaphat continued on the largest scale. He built palaces' (or 'castles') and cities of store' throughout Judah, and following the precedent wisely' set by Rehoboam, he placed in them his six younger sons as well as other princes,' chosen from the 'host.' Garrisons 9 were also placed there with treasures. 10 Besides these, he had special officers at Jerusalem. Their names are not otherwise famous, but the mere record of them shows the reviving importance of the kingdom of Judah. Through the conquest or vassalage of 11 Edom the door was opened to the commerce of the gulf of Elath. The 12 Kings viii. 18, 26; 2 Chr. xviii. 1. 21 Kings xxii. 44. Ibid. 4. 2 Kings iii. 13, 14; 2 Chr. xix. 2. 5 Biranioth. 2 Chr. xvii. 12; comp. xxvii. 4. 72 Chr. xxi. 2, 3. 10 Ibid. xvii. 12, xxi. 3. cc 2 War with port of Akaba, or Ezion-Geber, long discontinued, was once more alive with shipbuilders and sailors. But the enterprise was defeated; and a mystery hangs over the history of its failure.1 8 6 Of his external relations, it is twice stated that the fear of the Lord fell on all the kingdoms of the lands 'that were round about Judah, so that they made no war upon Jehoshaphat.' The Philistines who, probably in the two Egyptian invasions, had thrown off the yoke of Judah, again recognised his sovereignty by tribute.3 The nomad tribes paid him tribute in rams and goats. One great invasion he sustained. Moab, which maintained an independent rank, though subject to the northern kingdom, with its kindred tribes of Ammon and Edom, crossed the south-eastern border of Palestine, and encamped on the heights above the Dead Sea, by the palm-groves of Engedi." A sudden panic or jealousy dissolved the heterogeneous host in the very presence of the army of Judah, and the recollection of the expedition, accompanied as it had been by all the solemnities of a sacred war, lived long in the memory of the people. The opening in the hills where the spoil was collected and where the 'blessing,' the 'grace,' on its distribution was pronounced by the Levites, was known as the valley of Blessing.' The whole scene of the wild con'fusion of those vast multitudes in the solitude of the desert hills, their tumultuous flight, as though before a stroke of that Divine judgment of which the name of the victorious King was a pledge-appears to have given the name of Jeho-Shaphat in this double sense to the wide valley The Hebrew text of 1 Kings xxii. 47-50, seems at variance with that of 2 Chr. xx. 35-37. 22 Chr. xvii. 10, xx. 29. Ibid. 11. Maonites (LXX. Miraîo, 2 Chr. XX. 1); see 1 Chr. iv. 4. 5 1 Kings xvii. 11; 1 Chr. ix. 4. Compare 2 Kings iii. 4. 72 Chr. xxi. 1, 2. Evil, disturbing, spirits. See Ewald, iii. 476. down which the host fled, and to have furnished the Prophet Joel in the next generation with the imagery in which he described the Divine judgment on the surrounding heathens. Again, he seems to see them gathered in the fatal valley. Again, they sit like the fields of corn waving for the sickle; Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of ' decision.' And it is a conjecture full of probability, that the 83rd Psalm was sung, it may be, by Jahaziel the Levite, on this very occasion. No other event is so likely to have evoked the remembrance of the invasion of the fierce nomadic hordes of Midian and of their unexpected flight. Tyre, Philistia, and even the distant Assyria, might naturally look with favour on an invasion that would cripple the reviving powers of Judah. The whirlwind of confusion fitly represents the panic which overthrew the hostile army and sent them flying like stubble before the storm back to their native haunts.2 A still more decisive victory followed upon this retreat of the Moabites. The whole national force of Israel, combined with that of the neighbour nation of Edom, passed round the Dead Sea, and entered their southern territory. It is a campaign full of characteristic3 incidents. The mighty sheepmaster on the throne of Moab, with his innumerable flocksthe arid country through which the allied forces have to pass -the sudden apparition of the Prophet and the minstrel in the Israelitish army-the red light of the rising sun, reflected back from the red hills of Edom,-the merciless devastation of the conquered territory, apparently at the instigation of the rival Edomite chief-the deadly hatred between him and the King of Moab-the terrible siege of the royal fortress of Kir-haraseth, closing with the sacrifice 1 Joel iii. 2. 4 2 Ps. lxxxiii. 6, 7, 8, 9, 13. See Hengstenberg, who also refers Psalms xlvii. and xlviii. to this battle, but this is more doubtful. Ibid. iii. 26. Compare Amos ii. 1. Internal struggle. of the heir to the throne,' and the shudder of indignation which it caused-bring before us in a short compass the threads of the history of these rival kingdoms, each marked by its peculiar traditions and local circumstances, beyond any other single event of this period. Thus far we have tracked the external history of the kingdom, so far as it is needed as a framework of the religious struggle which was carried on within. That struggle was neither more nor less than the endeavour to maintain the true faith in One God, against the Canaanite and Phoenician polytheism which had taken possession of the court of Judah. It was this which sunk the southern kingdom so far behind the level of the northern, when they first started asunder. It almost seemed as if there was something in the old heathen origin of Jerusalem which rendered its soil congenial to the revival of those old heathen impurities. It was like a seething cauldron, of mingled blood and froth, 'whose scum is therein and whose scum is not gone out of ' it.' The Temple was hemmed in by dark idolatries on every side. Mount Olivet was covered with heathen sanctuaries, monumental 3 stones, and pillars of Baal. Wooden statues of Astarte under the sacred trees, huge images of Moloch, appeared at every turn in the walks round Jerusalem. The valley of Hinnom now received that dreadful association of sacrificial fires and gloomy superstition which it never lost. The royal gardens of Tophet were used for the same purpose. Already the sights and sounds which there met the ear rendered the spot a byword for the funeral piles of the dead, and through the Rabbinical traditions the horror 4 12 Kings iii. 26. It is possible that the son of the King of Edom may be intended (see Dr. Pusey on Amos ii. 1); but the common interpretation seems the most probable (Joseph. Ant. ix. 3, §2; Keil; Ewald; Thenius). Compare Micah vi. 6, 7. 2 Ezek. xxiv. 6. See Keil on 1 Kings xiv. 22. 2 Kings xxiii. 10; Isa. xxx. 33; Jer. vii. 31, 32, xix. 6, 11-14. |