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The locusts.

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But in this prosperity there were some dark spots, of which the Historical Books report hardly anything, but of which the writings of the cotemporary Prophets are full, and which led the way to the rapid decline of the next period on which we shall have to enter. There was the tremendous, ever memorable, visitation of locusts. It came, like all such visitations, in the season of unusual drought, a drought which passed 1 over the country like flames of fire. The locusts came from the 2 north. The brightness of the eastern sky was suddenly darkened as if by thick clouds on the mountain tops. They moved like a gigantic army; they all seemed to be impelled by one mind, as if acting under one word of command;'3 they flew as if on horses and chariots from hill to hill; never breaking their ranks, they climbed over the walls of cities, into the windows of houses. The purple vine, the green figtree, the grey olive, the scarlet pomegranate, the golden corn, the waving palm, the fragrant citron, vanished before them, and the trunks and branches were left bare and white by their devouring teeth. What had been but a few moments before like the garden of Eden was turned into a desolate wilderness. The herds of cattle and flocks of sheep so dear to the shepherds of Judah, the husbandmen so dear to King Uzziah, were reduced to starvation. The flour and oil for the meat offerings' failed; even the Temple lost its accustomed sacrifices. It was a calamity so great that it seemed as though none could be greater. It had not been in their days nor in the days of their fathers; there had never

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'Amos iv. 6-9; Joel ii. 1-20. It must have been not earlier than the time of Joash, not later than the time of Uzziah.

2 Joel ii. 20. If this reading is correct (which Ewald doubts), it constitutes an exception to the usual direction of the flights of locusts. But it is hardly a sufficient ground

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'been the like, neither would there be any more after it, 'even to the years of many generations.'

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It must have been in the kingdom of Judah what the drought of Ahab's reign had been in the kingdom of Israel. It was a day of Divine judgment, a day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness. The harsh blast of the consecrated ram's horn called an assembly for an extraordinary fast. Not a soul was to be absent. Like the fiery cross, it convened old and young, men and women, mothers with infants at their breast, the bridegroom and the bride on their bridal day.3 All were there stretched in front

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of the altar. The altar itself presented the dreariest of The fast. all sights, a hearth without its sacred fire, a table spread without its sacred feast. The Priestly caste, instead of gathering as usual upon its steps and its platform, were driven, as it were, to the further space; they turned their backs to the dead altar, and lay prostrate gazing towards the Invisible Presence within the sanctuary. Instead of the hymns and music which, since the time of David, had entered into their prayers, there was nothing heard but the passionate sobs, and the loud dissonant howls such as only an Eastern hierarchy could utter. Instead of the mass of white mantles, which they usually presented, they were wrapt in black goat's hair sackcloth, twisted round them not with the brilliant sashes of the priestly attire, but with a rough girdle of the same texture, which they never unbound night or day." What they wore of their common dress was rent asunder or cast off. With bare breasts they waved their black drapery

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Joel i. 13; 1 Kings xxi. 27.

This is implied in the frequent
expression 'girt upon the loins.'
Amos viii. 10; Joel i. 8, 13; and
Joseph. B. J. ii. 15, §4.

This and one or more touches,
I have ventured to add from the
similar passage in Judith iv. 11-15.

towards the Temple, and shrieked aloud, 'Spare thy people, 'O Lord!'

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This visitation of locusts, if it did not of itself suggest any darker misfortunes, at any rate fell in with constant apprehensions of wars and invasions. Visions of the cruelty of the Ammonites,' fears of the faithlessness of Tyre,2 hovered along the horizon; and, along with these, a glimpse into the unknown world of Greece, to which Jewish children were sold as slaves by their merciless neighbours; a fate to them so dreadful from its uncertainty and distance; to us so interesting from its first combination of the two nations, the Hebrew and the Greek, then such entire strangers, but in the course of ages to become so intimately united in the same great cause. It was to repress these invasions and outrages that the constant preparations of war were heard in the arsenals of Uzziah, and it was probably the contrast between these necessary defences and the peaceful claims of his beloved husbandry, that suggested the war-cry: Beat your 'ploughshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into 6 spears; let the weak say, I am strong. . . . Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe; the press is full, the

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There was yet another calamity which left a deep impression on the cotemporary writers and on later tradition

The Earth-The Earthquake,' as it was emphatically called.5 The whole quake.

Prophetic imagery of the time is coloured by the anticipations or recollections of this memorable event. Mountains and valleys are cleft asunder, and melt as in a 6 furnace; the earth heaving like the rising waters of the Nile; the sea bursting over the land; the ground shaking and sliding, as, with a succession of shocks, its solid framework reels to and

1 Amos i. 13.

2 Ibid. 9.

Joel iii. 6.

4 Joel iii. 9-13.

5 Amos i. 1.

• Micah i. 4.

fro like a drunkard. The day is overclouded by thick darkness, without a glimmering of light. There is the roar as of a lion from the caverns of Jerusalem. There is an overthrow like that which overthrew the cities of the plain.1

It is strange that of this great convulsion the sole trace discoverable in the Historical 2 Books is to be found in a combination of incidents preserved only in the later narratives of Josephus and of the Chronicles, but which, if they can be trusted, serve to fix its general date and its special results at Jerusalem.

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It was on some great national solemnity that Uzziah elated, according to the chronicler, by his successes, but certainly in conformity with the precedents of David and Solomon-entered the Temple, clothed, according to Josephus, in priestly attire, with the intention of offering incense on the golden altar within the sacred building. Whether it was that, in the changes that had elapsed since the reign of Solomon, the custom had dropped, or whether Uzziah entered upon it in a haughty and irritating spirit, or whether the Priestly order, since their accession of power through the influence of Jehoiada, claimed more than their predecessors had claimed in former times, it is said that the High Priest Azariah, with eighty colleagues, positively forbade the King's entrance, on the ground that this was a privilege peculiar to the Priestly office. At this moment, according to Josephus, the shock of the earthquake broke upon the city. Its more distant effects were visible long afterwards. A huge mass of the mountain on the south-east of Jerusalem rolled down to the spring of Enrogel, and blocked up the approaches of

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1 Amos i. 2, iii. 8, ix. 5; Zech. xiv. 5, 6.

22 Kings xv. 5 gives only the leprosy of the King, and omits not only the account of his exclusion from the Temple, but the subsequent allusions in 2 Chr. xxvi. 21, xxvii. 2.

Ant. ix. 10, §4.

2 Chr. xxvi. 16-21.

5 The name of Azariah the Priest is found nowhere else than in 2 Chr. xxvi. 17, 20, amongst the High Priests of this time. See 1 Chr. vi. 11.

The growth of the Priest

hood.

The nobles.

the valley of the Kedron and the royal gardens. Its immediate effect, if rightly reported, was still more striking. As has happened in like calamities, even in Jerusalem itself, the solid building of the Temple rocked, its roof 1 opened, the darkness of its inner recess was suddenly lighted up by the full blaze of the sun; and as the King looked up towards it, a leprous disfigurement mounted into his face, and rendered necessary that exclusion which, on the ground of his royal descent, had been doubtful. He retired at once from the Temple-never again to enter it-and for the remainder of his life, as one of the accursed race, remained secluded within the public infirmary. His grave was apart from the royal vaults, in the adjacent field.2

This incident, however interpreted, is the culminating point of the collision, more or less plainly indicated, between the king and the nobles on the one side and the Priesthood on the other, and coincides with the increase of power which, as we have seen, had been accruing since the reign of Joash, and which is confirmed by the contemporary descriptions of the grandeur of the Temple ceremonial. Numbers of victims, fed up for the purpose of sacrifice, were constantly brought to the Temple,-rams, bullocks, lambs, goats. New moons and sabbaths, and solemn assemblies, were faithfully observed.3 On occasion of national visitations, the Temple, as we have seen, was filled with worshippers; the Priest, for the first time in the history, occupying the most prominent place in the worship.

It is probable that this was part of the great and beneficial reaction which must have taken place under Joash and Jehoiada against the licentious and half-pagan worship, which, with the exception of the two reigns of Asa and Jehoshaphat, had prevailed in the kingdom of Judah. It

1 See Sinai and Palestine, chap. iii. 184.

2 $2 Chr. xxvii. 23.

Isa. i. 13, 14.
Joel i. 9, 13, ii. 17.

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