EDITED BY THE REV.
Editor of "The Expositor"
AUTHORIZED EDITION, COMPLETE
AND UNABRIDGED
BOUND IN TWENTY-FIVE VOLUMES
NEW YORK
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
LAFAYETTE PLACE
1900
AUTHOR OF "GOSPELS OF YESTERDAY."
NEW YORK
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
LAFAYETTE PLACE
1900
I. | PAGE |
PROBLEMS OF SETTLEMENT AND WAR | 3 |
JUDGES I. 1-11. | |
II. | |
THE WAY OF THE SWORD | 18 |
JUDGES I. 12-26. | |
III. | |
AT BOCHIM: THE FIRST PROPHET VOICE | 31 |
JUDGES II. 1-5. | |
IV. | |
AMONG THE ROCKS OF PAGANISM | 45 |
JUDGES II. 7-23. | |
V. | |
THE ARM OF ARAM AND OF OTHNIEL | 61 |
JUDGES III. 1-11. | |
VI. | |
THE DAGGER AND THE OX-GOAD | 77 |
JUDGES III. 12-31. | |
THE SIBYL OF MOUNT EPHRAIM | 91 |
JUDGES IV. | |
VIII. | |
DEBORAH'S SONG: A DIVINE VISION | 106 |
JUDGES V. | |
IX. | |
DEBORAH'S SONG: A CHANT OF PATRIOTISM | 120 |
JUDGES V. | |
X. | |
THE DESERT HORDES; AND THE MAN AT OPHRAH | 135 |
JUDGES VI. 1-14. | |
XI. | |
GIDEON, ICONOCLAST AND REFORMER | 150 |
JUDGES VI. 15-32. | |
XII. | |
"THE PEOPLE ARE YET TOO MANY" | 164 |
JUDGES VI. 33-VII. 7. | |
XIII. | |
"MIDIAN'S EVIL DAY" | 178 |
JUDGES VII. 8-VIII. 21. | |
XIV. | |
GIDEON THE ECCLESIASTIC | 195 |
JUDGES VIII. 22-28. | |
XV. | |
ABIMELECH AND JOTHAM | 209 |
JUDGES VIII. 29-IX. 57. | |
GILEAD AND ITS CHIEF | 224 |
JUDGES X. I-XI. 11. | |
XVII. | |
THE TERRIBLE VOW | 239 |
JUDGES XI. 12-40. | |
XVIII. | |
SHIBBOLETHS | 254 |
JUDGES XII. 1-7. | |
XIX. | |
THE ANGEL IN THE FIELD | 266 |
JUDGES. XIII. 1-18. | |
XX. | |
SAMSON PLUNGING INTO LIFE | 279 |
JUDGES XIII. 24-XIV. 20. | |
XXI. | |
DAUNTLESS IN BATTLE, IGNORANTLY BRAVE | 293 |
JUDGES XV. | |
XXII. | |
PLEASURE AND PERIL IN GAZA | 307 |
JUDGES XVI. 1-3. | |
XXIII. | |
THE VALLEY OF SOREK AND OF DEATH | 319 |
JUDGES XVI. 4-31. | |
THE STOLEN GODS | 335 |
JUDGES XVII., XVIII. | |
XXV. | |
FROM JUSTICE TO WILD REVENGE | 348 |
JUDGES XIX.-XXI. | |
THE BOOK OF RUTH. | |
I. | |
NAOMI'S BURDEN | 363 |
RUTH I. 1-13. | |
II. | |
THE PARTING OF THE WAYS | 375 |
RUTH I. 14-19. | |
III. | |
IN THE FIELD OF BOAZ | 386 |
RUTH I. 19-II. 23. | |
IV. | |
THE HAZARDOUS PLAN | 397 |
RUTH III. | |
V. | |
THE MARRIAGE AT THE GATE | 408 |
RUTH IV. | |
Index | 421 |
It was a new hour in the history of Israel. To a lengthened period of serfdom there had succeeded a time of sojourn in tents, when the camp of the tribes, half-military, half-pastoral, clustering about the Tabernacle of Witness, moved with it from point to point through the desert. Now the march was over; the nomads had to become settlers, a change not easy for them as they expected it to be, full of significance for the world. The Book of Judges, therefore, is a second Genesis or Chronicle of Beginnings so far as the Hebrew commonwealth is concerned. We see the birth-throes of national life, the experiments, struggles, errors and disasters out of which the moral force of the people gradually rose, growing like a pine tree out of rocky soil.
If we begin our study of the book expecting to find
clear evidence of an established Theocracy, a spiritual
idea of the kingdom of God ever present to the mind,
ever guiding the hope and effort of the tribes, we shall
experience that bewilderment which has not seldom
fallen upon students of Old Testament history. Divide
the life of man into two parts, the sacred and the secular;
regard the latter as of no real value compared to the
Opening the story of the Judges, we find ourselves in a keen atmosphere of warlike ardour softened by scarcely an air of spiritual grace. At once we are plunged into military preparations; councils of war meet and the clash of weapons is heard. Battle follows battle. Iron chariots hurtle along the valleys, the hillsides bristle with armed men. The songs are of strife and conquest; the great heroes are those who smite the uncircumcised hip and thigh. It is the story of Jehovah's people; but where is Jehovah the merciful? Does He reign among them, or sanction their enterprise? Where amid this turmoil and bloodshed is the movement towards the far-off Messiah and the holy mountain where nothing shall hurt or destroy? Does Israel prepare for blessing all nations by crushing those that occupy the land he claims? Problems many meet us in Bible history; here surely is one of the gravest. And we cannot go with Judah in that first expedition; we must hold back in doubt till clearly we understand how these wars of conquest are necessary to the progress of the world. Then, even though the tribes are as yet unaware of their destiny and how it is to be fulfilled, we may go up with them against Adoni-bezek.
Canaan is to be colonised by the seed of Abraham,
Canaan and no other land. It is not now, as it was in
The old promise to Abraham has been kept before the minds of his descendants. The land to which they have moved through the desert is that of which he took earnest by the purchase of a grave. But the promise of God looks forward to the circumstances that are to accompany its fulfilment; and it is justified because the occupation of Canaan is the means to a great development of righteousness. For, mark the position which the Hebrew nation is to take. It is to be the central state of the world, in verity the Mountain of God's House for the world. Then observe how the situation of Canaan fits it to be the seat of this new progressive power. Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, lie in a rude circle around it. From its sea-board the way is open to the west. Across the valley of Jordan goes the caravan route to the East. The Nile, the Orontes, the Ægean Sea are not far off. Canaan does not confine its inhabitants, scarcely separates them from other peoples. It is in the midst of the old world.
Is not this one reason why Israel must inhabit
Palestine? Suppose the tribes settled in the highlands
of Armenia or along the Persian Gulf; suppose them
This, however, is but part of the problem which meets us in regard to the settlement in Canaan. There are the inhabitants of the land to be considered—these Amorites, Hittites, Jebusites, Hivites. How do we justify Israel in displacing them, slaying them, absorbing them? Here is a question first of evolution, then of the character of God.
Do we justify Saxons in their raid on Britain?
History does. They become dominant, they rule, they
slay, they assimilate; and there grows up British
nationality strong and trusty, the citadel of freedom
and religious life. The case is similar, yet there is a
difference, strongly in favour of Israel as an invading
people. For the Israelites have been tried by stern
discipline: they are held together by a moral law, a
religion divinely revealed, a faith vigorous though but
in germ. The Saxons worshipping Thor, Frea and
Woden sweep religion before them in the first rush of
As for the Canaanitish tribes, compare them now with what they were when Abraham and Isaac fed their flocks in the plain of Mamre or about the springs of Beersheba. Abraham found in Canaan noble courteous men. Aner, Eshcol and Mamre, Amorites, were his trusted confederates; Ephron the Hittite matched his magnanimity; Abimelech of Gerar "feared the Lord." In Salem reigned a king or royal priest, Melchizedek, unique in ancient history, a majestic unsullied figure, who enjoyed the respect and tribute of the Hebrew patriarch. Where are the successors of those men? Idolatry has corrupted Canaan. The old piety of simple races has died away before the hideous worship of Moloch and Ashtoreth. It is over degenerate peoples that Israel is to assert its dominance; they must learn the way of Jehovah or perish. This conquest is essential to the progress of the world. Here in the centre of empires a stronghold of pure ideas and commanding morality is to be established, an altar of witness for the true God.
So far we move without difficulty towards a justification
of the Hebrew descent on Canaan. Still, however,
when we survey the progress of conquest, the idea
struggling for confirmation in our minds that God was
King and Guide of this people, while at the same time
we know that all nations could equally claim Him as
their Origin, marking how on field after field thousands
were left dying and dead, we have to find an answer
We pass here beyond mere "natural evolution." It is not enough to say that there had to be a struggle for life among races and individuals. If natural forces are held to be the limit and equivalent of God, then "survival of the fittest" may become a religious doctrine, but assuredly it will introduce us to no God of pardon, no hope of redemption. We must discover a Divine end in the life of each person, a member it may be of some doomed race, dying on a field of battle in the holocaust of its valour and chivalry. Explanation is needed of all slaughtered and "waste" lives, untold myriads of lives that never tasted freedom or knew holiness.
The explanation we find is this: that for a human
life in the present stage of existence the opportunity of
struggle for moral ends—it may be ends of no great
dignity, yet really moral, and, as the race advances,
religious—this makes life worth living and brings to
every one the means of true and lasting gain. "Where
But the golden cord of Divine Providence has more
than one strand; and while the conflicts of life are
appointed for the discipline of men and nations in moral
vigour and in fidelity to such religious ideas as they
possess, the purer and stronger faith always giving
more power to those who exercise it, there is also in
In these wars of Israel we find many a story of judgment as well as a constant proving of the worth of man's religion and virtue. Neither was Israel always in the right, nor had those races which Israel overcame always a title to the power they held and the land they occupied. Jehovah was a stern arbiter among the combatants. When His own people failed in the courage and humility of faith, they were chastised. On the other hand, there were tyrants and tyrannous races, freebooters and banditti, pagan hordes steeped in uncleanness who had to be judged and punished. Where we cannot trace the reason of what appears mere waste of life or wanton cruelty, there lie behind, in the ken of the All-seeing, the need and perfect vindication of all He suffered to be done in the ebb and flow of battle, amid the riot of war.
Beginning now with the detailed narrative, we find
first a case of retribution, in which the Israelites served
the justice of God. As yet the Canaanite power was
It cannot be doubted that Israel had under Moses
received such an impulse in the direction of faith in
the one God, and such a conception of His character
and will, as declared the spiritual mission of the tribes.
The people were not all aware of their high destiny,
not sufficiently instructed to have a competent sense
of it; but the chiefs of the tribes, the Levites and the
heads of households, should have well understood the
part that fell to Israel among the nations of the world.
The ascendency which Israel secured in Canaan, or that which Britain has won in India, is not, to begin with, justified by superior strength, nor by higher intelligence, nor even because in practice the religion of the conquerors is better than that of the vanquished. It is justified because, with all faults and crimes that may for long attend the rule of the victorious race, there lie, unrealised at first, in conceptions of God and of duty the promise and germ of a higher education of the world. Developed in the course of time, the spiritual genius of the conquerors vindicates their ambition and their success. The world is to become the heritage and domain of those who have the secret of large and ascending life.
One moral lies on the surface here. We are naturally
anxious to gain a good position in life for ourselves,
and every consideration is apt to be set aside in favour
of that. Now, in a sense, it is necessary, one of the
first duties, that we gain each a citadel for himself.
Our influence depends to a great extent on the standing
we secure, on the courage and talent we show in
making good our place. Our personality must enlarge
itself, make itself visible by the conquest we effect and
the extent of affairs we have a right to control. Effort
on this line needs not be selfish or egoistic in a bad
sense. The higher self or spirit of a good man finds
Here, then, we find a necessity belonging to the spiritual no less than to the earthly life. But there lies close beside it the shadow of temptation and sin. Thousands of people put forth all their strength to gain a fortress for themselves, leaving others to fight the sons of Anak—the intemperance, the unchastity, the atheism of the time. Instead of triumphing over the earthly, they are ensnared and enslaved. The truth is, that a safe position for ourselves we cannot have while those sons of Anak ravage the country around. The Divine call therefore often requires of us that we leave a Jerusalem unconquered for ourselves, while we pass on with the hosts of God to do battle with the public enemy. Time after time Israel, though successful at Hebron, missed the secret and learnt in bitter sadness and loss how near is the shadow to the glory.
Give us men who fling themselves into the great struggle, doing what they can with Christ-born ardour, foot soldiers if nothing else in the army of the Lord of Righteousness.
The name Kiriath-sepher, that is Book-Town, has been supposed to point to the existence of a semi-popular literature among the pre-Judæan inhabitants of Canaan. We cannot build with any certainty upon a name; but there are other facts of some significance. Already the Phœnicians, the merchants of the age, some of whom no doubt visited Kiriath-sepher on their way to Arabia or settled in it, had in their dealings with Egypt begun to use that alphabet to which most languages, from Hebrew and Aramaic on through Greek and Latin to our own, are indebted for the idea and shapes of letters. And it is not improbable that an old-world Phœnician library of skins, palm-leaves or inscribed tablets had given distinction to this town lying away towards the desert from Hebron. Written words were held in half-superstitious veneration, and a very few records would greatly impress a district peopled chiefly by wandering tribes.
Nothing is insignificant in the pages of the Bible,
nothing is to be disregarded that throws the least light
upon human affairs and Divine Providence; and here
we have a suggestion of no slight importance. Doubt
has been cast on the existence of a written language
Kiriath-sepher has to be taken. Its inhabitants,
strongly entrenched, threaten the people who are
settling about Hebron and must be subdued; and
Caleb, who has come to his possession, adopts a
common expedient for rousing the ambitious young
men of the tribe. He has a daughter, and marriage
with her shall reward the man who takes the fortress.
It is not likely that Achsah objected. A courageous
and capable husband was, we may say, a necessity, and
her father's proposal offered a practical way of settling
her in safety and comfort. Customs which appear to
us barbarous and almost insulting have no doubt
justified themselves to the common-sense, if not fully to
the desires of women, because they were suited to the
exigencies of life in rude and stormy times. There is
this also, that the conquest of Kiriath-sepher was part
of the great task in which Israel was engaged, and
Achsah, as a patriotic daughter of Abraham, would feel
the pride of being able to reward a hero of the sacred
war. To the degree in which she was a woman of
character this would balance other considerations.
Still the custom is not an ideal one; there is too much
uncertainty. While the rivalry for her hand is going
on the maiden has to wait at home, wondering what
her fate shall be, instead of helping to decide it by her
own thought and action. The young man, again, does
not commend himself by honour, but only by courage
Achsah, no doubt, had her preference and her hope, though she dared not speak of them. As for modern feeling, it is professedly on the side of the heart in such a case, and modern literature, with a thousand deft illustrations, proclaims the right of the heart to its choice. We call it a barbarous custom, the disposition of a woman by her father, apart from her preference, to one who does him or the community a service; and although Achsah consented, we feel that she was a slave. No doubt the Hebrew wife in her home had a place of influence and power, and a woman might even come to exercise authority among the tribes; but, to begin with, she was under authority and had to subdue her own wishes in a manner we consider quite incompatible with the rights of a human being. Very slowly do the customs of marriage even in Israel rise from the rudeness of savage life. Abraham and Sarah, long before this, lived on something like equality, he a prince, she a princess. But what can be said of Hagar, a concubine outside the home-circle, who might be sent any day into the wilderness? David and Solomon afterwards can marry for state reasons, can take, in pure Oriental fashion, the one his tens, the other his hundreds of wives and concubines. Polygamy survives for many a century. When that is seen to be evil, there remains to men a freedom of divorce which of necessity keeps women in a low and unhonoured state.
Yet, thus treated, woman has always duties of the
first importance, on which the moral health and vigour
of the race depend; and right nobly must many a
Hebrew wife and mother have fulfilled the trust. It
There is another aspect of the picture, however, as
it unfolds itself. The success of Othniel in his attack
How Jewish, we may be disposed to say. May we
not also say, How thoroughly British? The virtue of
Achsah, is it not the virtue of a true British wife? To
urge her husband on and up in the social scale, to aid
him in every point of the contest for wealth and place,
to raise him and rise with him, what can be more
admirable? Are there opportunities of gaining the
favour of the powerful who have offices to give, the
liking of the wealthy who have fortunes to bequeath?
The managing wife will use these opportunities with
address and courage. She will light off her ass and
bow humbly before a flattered great man to whom she
prefers a request. She can fit her words to the occasion
and her smiles to the end in view. It is a poor spirit
that is content with anything short of all that may be
had: thus in brief she might express her principle of
duty. And so in ten thousand homes there is no question
whether marriage is a failure. It has succeeded.
There is a combination of man's strength and woman's
wit for the great end of "getting on." And in ten thousand
For a moment the history gives us a glimpse of
another domestic settlement. "The children of the
Kenite went up from the City of Palm Trees with the
children of Judah," and found a place of abode on the
southern fringe of Simeon's territory, and there they
seem to have gradually mingled with the tent-dwellers
of the desert. By-and-by we shall find one Heber the
Kenite in a different part of the land, near the Sea of
Galilee, still in touch with the Israelites to some extent,
while his people are scattered. Heber may have felt
the power of Israel's mission and career and judged it
wise to separate from those who had no interest in the
tribes of Jehovah. The Kenites of the south appear in
the history like men upon a raft, once borne near shore,
who fail to seize the hour of deliverance and are carried
away again to the wastes of sea. They are part of the
Zephath was the next fortress against which Judah and Simeon directed their arms. When the tribes were in the desert on their long and difficult march they attempted first to enter Canaan from the south, and actually reached the neighbourhood of this town. But, as we read in the Book of Numbers, Arad the king of Zephath fought against them and took some of them prisoners. The defeat appears to have been serious, for, arrested and disheartened by it, Israel turned southward again, and after a long détour reached Canaan another way. In the passage in Numbers the overthrow of Zephath is described by anticipation; in Judges we have the account in its proper historical place. The people whom Arad ruled were, we may suppose, an Edomite clan living partly by merchandise, mainly by foray, practised marauders, with difficulty guarded against, who having taken their prey disappeared swiftly amongst the hills.
In the world of thought and feeling there are many
Victories were gained by Judah in the land of the
Philistines, partial victories, the results of which were
not kept. Gaza, Ashkelon, Ekron were occupied for a
time; but Philistine force and doggedness recovered,
apparently in a few years, the captured towns.
Wherever they had their origin, these Philistines were
a strong and stubborn race, and so different from the
Israelites in habit and language that they never freely
mingled nor even lived peaceably with the tribes. At
Here the spiritual parallel is instructive. Conversion,
it may be said, carries the soul with a rush to the high
ground of faith. The Great Leader has gone before
preparing the way. We climb rapidly to fortresses
from which the enemy has fled, and it would seem that
victory is complete. But the Christian life is a constant
alternation between the joy of the conquered height
and the stern battles of the foe-infested plain. Worldly
custom and sensuous desire, greed and envy and base
appetite have their cities and chariots in the low ground
of being. So long as one of them remains the victory
of faith is unfinished, insecure. Piety that believes
itself delivered once for all from conflict is ever on the
verge of disaster. The peace and joy men cherish,
while as yet the earthly nature is unsubdued, the very
citadels of it unreconnoitred, are visionary and relaxing.
For the soul and for society the only salvation lies in
mortal combat—life-long, age-long combat with the
earthly and the false. Nooks enough may be found
A mark of the humanness and, shall we not also say, the divineness of this history is to be found in the frequent notices of other tribes than those of Israel. To the inspired writer it is not all the same whether Canaanites die or live, what becomes of Phœnicians or Philistines. Of this we have two examples, one the case of the Jebusites, the other of the people of Luz.
The Jebusites, after the capture of the lower city already recorded, appear to have been left in peaceful possession of their citadel and accepted as neighbours by the Benjamites. When the Book of Judges was written Jebusite families still remained, and in David's time Araunah the Jebusite was a conspicuous figure. A series of terrible events connected with the history of Benjamin is narrated towards the end of the Book. It is impossible to say whether the crime which led to these events was in any way due to bad influence exercised by the Jebusites. We may charitably doubt whether it was. There is no indication that they were a depraved people. If they had been licentious they could scarcely have retained till David's time a stronghold so central and of so much consequence in the land. They were a mountain clan, and Araunah shows himself in contact with David a reverend and kingly person.
As for Bethel or Luz, around which gathered notable
associations of Jacob's life, Ephraim, in whose territory
The high ideal of life, how often it fades from our
view! There are times when we realize our Divine
calling, when the strain of it is felt and the soul is on
fire with sacred zeal. We press on, fight on, true to
the highest we know at every step. We are chivalrous,
for we see the chivalry of Christ; we are tender and
faithful, for we see His tenderness and faithfulness.
Then we make progress; the goal can almost be
touched. We love, and love bears us on. We aspire,
and the world glows with light. But there comes a
change. The thought of self-preservation, of selfish
gain, has intruded. On pretext of serving God we are
hard to man, we keep back the truth, we use compromises,
we descend even to treachery and do things
which in another are abominable to us. So the fervour
departs, the light fades from the world, the goal recedes,
becomes invisible. Most strange of all is it that side
by side with cultured religion there can be proud
sophistry and ignorant scorn, the very treachery of the
One thought may link the various episodes we have considered. It is that of the end for which individuality exists. The home has its development of personality—for service. The peace and joy of religion nourish the soul—for service. Life may be conquered in various regions, and a man grow fit for ever greater victories, ever nobler service. But with the end the means and spirit of each effort are so interwoven that alike in home, and church, and society the human soul must move in uttermost faithfulness and simplicity or fail from the Divine victory that wins the prize.
From the time of Abraham on to the settlement in Canaan the Israelites had kept the faith of the one God. They had their origin as a people in a decisive revolt against polytheism. Of the great Semite forefather of the Jewish people, it has been finely said, "He bore upon his forehead the seal of the Absolute God, upon which was written, This race will rid the earth of superstition." The character and structure of the Hebrew tongue resisted idolatry. It was not an imaginative language; it had no mythological colour. We who have inherited an ancient culture of quite another kind do not think it strange to read or sing:
"Hail, smiling morn, that tip'st the hills with gold,
Whose rosy fingers ope the gates of day,
Who the gay face of nature dost unfold,
At whose bright presence darkness flies away."
These lines, however, are full of latent mythology.
The "smiling morn" is Aurora, the darkness that flies
away before the dawn is the Erebus of the Greeks.
Nothing of this sort was possible in Hebrew literature.
In it all change, all life, every natural incident are
ascribed to the will and power of one Supreme Being.
There are some who allege that this simple faith in one God, sole Origin and Ruler of nature and life, impoverished the thought and speech of the Hebrews. It was in reality the spring and safeguard of their spiritual destiny. Their very language was a sacred inheritance and preparation. From age to age it served a Divine purpose in maintaining the idea of the unity of God; and the power of that idea never failed their prophets nor passed from the soul of the race. The whole of Israel's literature sets forth the universal sway and eternal righteousness of Him who dwells in the high and lofty place, Whose name is Holy. In canto and strophe of the great Divine Poem, the glory of the One Supreme burns with increasing clearness, till in Christ its finest radiance flashes upon the world.
While the Hebrews were in Egypt, the faith inherited
from patriarchal times must have been sorely tried, and,
all circumstances considered, it came forth wonderfully
pure. "The Israelites saw Egypt as the Mussulman
Arab sees pagan countries, entirely from the outside,
perceiving only the surface and external things." They
indeed carried with them into the desert the recollection
But the danger to Israel's fidelity came when there
began to be intercourse with the people of Canaan, now
sunk from the purer thought of early times. Everywhere
in the land of the Hittites and Amorites, Hivites
and Jebusites, there were altars and sacred trees, pillars
and images used in idolatrous worship. The ark and
the altar of Divine religion, established first at Gilgal
near Jericho, afterwards at Bethel and then at Shiloh,
could not be frequently visited, especially by those who
settled towards the southern desert and in the far
north. Yet the necessity for religious worship of some
kind was constantly felt; and as afterwards the synagogues
gave opportunity for devotional gatherings
when the Temple could not be reached, so in the earlier
time there came to be sacred observances on elevated
There appears to have been a great gathering of the tribes at some spot near Bethel. We see the elders and heads of families holding council of war and administration, the thoughts of all bent on conquest and family settlement. Religion, the purity of Jehovah's worship, are forgotten in the business of the hour. How shall the tribes best help each other in the struggle that is already proving more arduous than they expected? Dan is sorely pressed by the Amorites. The chiefs of the tribe are here telling their story of hardship among the mountains. The Asherites have failed in their attack upon the sea-board towns Accho and Achzib; in vain have they pressed towards Zidon. They are dwelling among the Canaanites and may soon be reduced to slavery. The reports from other tribes are more hopeful; but everywhere the people of the land are hard to overcome. Should Israel not remain content for a time, make the best of circumstances, cultivate friendly intercourse with the population it cannot dispossess? Such a policy often commends itself to those who would be thought prudent; it is apt to prove a fatal policy.
This lamentation at Bochim is the second note of
religious feeling and faith in the Book of Judges. The
first is the consultation of the priests and the oracle
referred to in the opening sentence of the book.
Jehovah Who had led them through the wilderness was
their King, and unless He went forth as the unseen
Captain of the host no success could be looked for.
"They asked of Jehovah, saying, Who shall go up for
us first against the Canaanites, to fight against them?"
In this appeal there was a measure of faith which is
neither to be scorned nor suspected. The question
At Bochim, where the second note of religious feeling
is struck, a deeper and clearer note, we find the prophet
listened to. He revives the sense of duty, he kindles
a Divine sorrow in the hearts of the people. The
national assembly is conscience-stricken. Let us
allow this quick contrition to be the result, in part,
of superstitious fear. Very rarely is spiritual concern
quite pure. In general it is the consequences of transgression
rather than the evil of it that press on the
Here, again, if there is a difference between Israel
and Christian nations, it is not in favour of the latter.
Are modern senates ever overcome by conviction of
sin? Those who are in power seem to have no fear
that they may do wrong. Glorifying their blunders
and forgetting their errors, they find no occasion for
self-reproach, no need to sit in sackcloth and ashes.
Now and then, indeed, a day of fasting and humiliation
is ordered and observed in state; the sincere Christian
for his part feeling how miserably formal it is, how
far from the spontaneous expression of abasement and
remorse. God is called upon to help a people who
have not considered their ways, who design no amendment,
who have not even suspected that the Divine
blessing may come in still further humbling. And
turning to private life, is there not as much of self-justification,
as little of real humility and faith? The
shallow nature of popular Christianity is seen here,
that so few can read in disappointment and privation
anything but disaster, or submit without disgust and
rebellion to take a lower place at the table of Providence.
Our weeping is so often for what we longed to gain or
wished to keep in the earthly and temporal region, so
The scene at Bochim connects itself very notably with one nine hundred and fifty years later. The poor fragments of the exiled tribes have been gathered again in the land of their fathers. They are rebuilding Jerusalem and the Temple. Ezra has led back a company from Babylon and has brought with him, by the favour of Artaxerxes, no small treasure of silver and gold for the house of God. To his astonishment and grief he hears the old tale of alliance with the inhabitants of the land, intermarriage even of Levites, priests and princes of Israel with women of the Canaanite races. In the new settlement of Palestine the error of the first is repeated. Ezra calls a solemn assembly in the Temple court—"every one that trembles at the words of the God of Israel." Till the evening sacrifice he sits prostrate with grief, his garment rent, his hair torn and dishevelled. Then on his knees before the Lord he spreads forth his hands in prayer. The trespasses of a thousand years afflict him, afflict the faithful. "After all that is come upon us for our evil deeds, shall we again break Thy commandments, and join in affinity with the peoples that do these abominations? wouldest not Thou be angry with us till Thou hadst consumed us so that there should be no remnant nor any to escape?... Behold we are before Thee in our guiltiness; for none can stand before Thee because of this." The impressive lament of Ezra and those who join in his confessions draws together a great congregation, and the people weep very sore.
And yet it is with a reservation only we can enjoy
the success of those reformers who drew the sharp line
between Israel and his heathen neighbours, between
Jew and Gentile. The vehemence of reaction urged
the nation towards another error—Pharisaism. Nothing
could be purer, nothing nobler than the desire to make
Israel a holy people. But to inspire men with religious
zeal and yet preserve them from spiritual pride is
always difficult, and in truth those Hebrew reformers
did not see the danger. There came to be, in the
Bochim is a symbol. There the people wept for a
transgression but half understood and a peril they could
not rightly dread. There was genuine sorrow, there
was genuine alarm. But it was the prophetic word,
not personal experience, that moved the assembly. And
as at Florence, when Savonarola's word, shaking with
alarm a people who had no vision of holiness, left them
morally weaker as it fell into silence, so the weeping
at Bochim passed like a tempest that has bowed and
broken the forest trees. The chiefs of Israel returned
to their settlements with a new sense of duty and peril;
but Canaanite civilization had attractions, Canaanite
women a refinement which captivated the heart. And
the civilization, the refinement, were associated with
idolatry. The myths of Canaan, the poetry of Tammuz
We have spoken of Bochim as a symbol, and to us
it may be the symbol of this, that the very thing which
men put from them in horror and with tears, seeing
the evil, the danger of it, does often insinuate itself
into their lives. The messenger is heard, and while
he speaks how near God is, how awful is the sense
of His being! A thrill of keen feeling passes from soul
to soul. There are some in the gathering who have
more spiritual insight than the rest, and their presence
raises the heat of emotion. But the moment of revelation
and of fervour passes, the company breaks
up, and very soon those who have won no vision of
holiness, who have only feared as they entered into
the cloud, are in the common world again. The finer
strings of the soul were made to thrill, the conscience
was touched; but if the will has not been braced, if the
man's reason and resoluteness are not engaged by a
new conception of life, the earthly will resume control
and God will be less known than before. So there are
many cast down to-day, crying to God in trouble of
Again, there are cases that belong not to the history
of a day, but to the history of a life. One may say,
when he hears the strangely tempting voices that
whisper in the twilight streets, "Am I a dog that
from the holy traditions of my people and country I
should fall away to these?" At first he flies the distasteful
entreaty of the new nature-cult, its fleshly art
and song, its nefarious science. But the voices are
persistent. It is the perfecting of man and woman to
which they invite. It is not vice but freedom, brightness,
life and the courage to enjoy it they cunningly
propose. There is not much of sweetness; the voices
rise, they become stringent and overbearing. If the
man would not be a fool, would not lose the good of
the age into which he is born, he will be done with
unnatural restraints, the bondage of purity. Thus
It would be a mistake to suppose that the scene at
Bochim and the words which moved the assembly to
"And Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the
Lord, died, being an hundred and ten years old.
And they buried him in the border of his inheritance in
Timnath-heres, in the hill country of Ephraim, on the
north of the mountain of Gaash." So, long after the age
of Joshua, the historian tells again how Israel lamented
its great chief, and he seems to feel even more than did
the people of the time the pathos and significance of
the event. How much a man of God has been to his
generation those rarely know who stand beside his
grave. Through faith in him faith in the Eternal has
been sustained, many who have a certain piety of their
own depending, more than they have been aware, upon
their contact with him. A glow went from him which
insensibly raised to something like religious warmth
souls that apart from such an influence would have
been of the world worldly. Joshua succeeded Moses
as the mediator of the covenant. He was the living
witness of all that had been done in the Exodus and
at Sinai. So long as he continued with Israel, even in
the feebleness of old age, appearing, and no more, a
venerable figure in the council of the tribes, there was
a representative of Divine order, one who testified to
We know the great design that should have made
Israel a singular and triumphant example to the nations
of the world. The body politic was to have its unity
in no elected government, in no hereditary ruler, but
in the law and worship of its Divine King, sustained by
the ministry of priest and prophet. Every tribe, every
family, every soul was to be equally and directly
subject to the Holy Will as expressed in the law and
by the oracles of the sanctuary. The idea was that
order should be maintained and the life of the tribes
should go on under the pressure of the unseen Hand,
never resisted, never shaken off, and full of bounty
always to a trustful and obedient people. There might
be times when the head men of tribes and families
should have to come together in council, but it would be
only to discover speedily and carry out with one accord
the purpose of Jehovah. Rightly do we regard this
as an inspired vision; it is at once simple and majestic.
When a nation can so live and order its affairs it will
have solved the great problem of government still
exercising every civilized community. The Hebrews
never realized the theocracy, and at the time of the
settlement in Canaan they came far short of understanding
it. "Israel had as yet scarcely found time to
imbue its spirit deeply with the great truths which
The general survey or preface which we have before
us gives but one account of the disasters that befell the
Hebrew people—they "followed other gods, and provoked
the Lord to anger." And the reason of this
has to be considered. Taking a natural view of the
circumstances we might pronounce it almost impossible
for the tribes to maintain their unity when they were
fighting, each in its own district, against powerful
enemies. It seems by no means wonderful that nature
had its way, and that, weary of war, the people tended
to seek rest in friendly intercourse and alliance with
their neighbours. Were Judah and Simeon always to
Joshua and his generation having been gathered unto
their fathers, "there arose another generation which
knew not the Lord, nor yet the work which He had
wrought for Israel. And the children of Israel did
that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, and served
the Baalim." How common is the fall traced in these
brief, stern words, the wasting of a sacred testimony
that seemed to be deeply graven upon the heart of a
race! The fathers felt and knew; the sons have only
traditional knowledge and it never takes hold of them.
The link of faith between one generation and another
is not strongly forged; the most convincing proofs of
God are not recounted. Here is a man who has
learned his own weakness, who has drained a bitter
cup of discipline—how can he better serve his sons
than by telling them the story of his own mistakes and
sins, his own suffering and repentance? Here is one
One passage in the history of the past must have
The worship of the Baalim and Ashtaroth and the
place which this came to have in Hebrew life require
The worship connected with this horde of fanciful
beings is well known to have merited the strongest
language of detestation applied to it by the Hebrew
prophets. The ceremonies were a strange and degrading
blend of the licentious and the cruel, notorious even
in a time of gross and hideous rites. The Baalim were
supposed to have a fierce and envious disposition,
imperiously demanding the torture and death not only
of animals but of men. The horrible notion had taken
root that in times of public danger king and nobles
must sacrifice their children in fire for the pleasure
of the god. And while nothing of this sort was done
for the Ashtaroth their demands were in one aspect
even more vile. Self-mutilation, self-defilement were
acts of worship, and in the great festivals men and
women gave themselves up to debauchery which cannot
be described. No doubt some of the observances of
this paganism were mild and simple. Feasts there
were at the seasons of reaping and vintage which were
of a bright and comparatively harmless character; and
And why could not Israel rest in the debasement of
idolatry? Why did not the Hebrews abandon their
distinct mission as a nation and mingle with the races
they came to convert or drive away? They could not
rest; they could not mingle and forget. Is there ever
peace in the soul of a man who falls from early impressions
of good to join the licentious and the profane?
He has still his own personality, shot through with
recollections of youth and traits inherited from godly
ancestors. It is impossible for him to be at one with
his new companions in their revelry and vice. He
finds that from which his souls revolts, he feels disgust
We have found the writer of the Book of Judges
consistent and unfaltering in his condemnation of Israel;
he is equally consistent and eager in his vindication of
There is a crude religious sentimentalism to which
the Bible gives no countenance. Where we, mistaking
the meaning of providence because we do not rightly
believe in immortality, are apt to think with horror of
the miseries of men, the vigorous veracity of sacred
writers directs our thought to the moral issues of life
and the vast movements of God's purifying design.
Where we, ignorant of much that goes to the making
of a world, lament the seeming confusion and the
errors, the Bible seer discerns that the cup of red wine
poured out is in the hand of Almighty Justice and
The storm, the pestilence have a providential errand.
They urge men to prudence and effort; they prevent
communities from settling on their lees. But the hero
has a higher range of usefulness. It is not mere
prudence he represents, but the passion for justice.
For right against might, for liberty against oppression
he contends, and in striking his blow he compels his
generation to take into account morality and the will
of God. He may not see far, but at least he stirs
inquiry as to the right way, and though thousands die
in the conflict he awakens there is a real gain which
the coming age inherits. Such a one, however faulty
We do not affirm here that God approves or inspires all that is done by the leaders of a suffering people in the way of vindicating what they deem their rights. Moreover, there are claims and rights so-called for which it is impious to shed a drop of blood. But if the state of humanity is such that the Son of God must die for it, is there any room to wonder that men have to die for it? Given a cause like that of Israel, a need of the whole world which Israel only could meet, and the men who unselfishly, at the risk of death, did their part in the front of the struggle which that cause and that need demanded, though they slew their thousands, were not men of whom the Christian teacher needs be afraid to speak. And there have been many such in all nations, for the principle by which we judge is of the broadest application,—men who have led the forlorn hopes of nations, driven back the march of tyrants, given law and order to an unsettled land.
Judge after judge was "raised up"—the word is
true—and rallied the tribes of Israel, and while each
lived there were renewed energy and prosperity. But
the moral revival was never in the deeps of life and no
deliverance was permanent. It is only a faithful nation
that can use freedom. Neither trouble nor release from
trouble will certainly make either a man or a people
steadily true to the best. Unless there is along with
We come now to a statement of no small importance, which may be the cause of some perplexity. It is emphatically affirmed that God fulfilled His design for Israel by leaving around it in Canaan a circle of vigorous tribes very unlike each other, but alike in this, that each presented to the Hebrews a civilisation from which something might be learned but much had to be dreaded, a seductive form of paganism which ought to have been entirely resisted, an aggressive energy fitted to rouse their national feeling. We learn that Israel was led along a course of development resembling that by which other nations have advanced to unity and strength. As the Divine plan is unfolded, it is seen that not by undivided possession of the Promised Land, not by swift and fierce clearing away of opponents, was Israel to reach its glory and become Jehovah's witness, but in the way of patient fidelity amidst temptations, by long struggle and arduous discipline. And why should this cause perplexity? If moral education did not move on the same line for all peoples in every age, then indeed mankind would be put to intellectual confusion. There was never any other way for Israel than for the rest of the world.
On the northward sea-board a quite different race,
the Zidonians, or Phœnicians, were in one sense better
neighbours to the Israelites, in another sense no better
friends. While the Philistines were haughty, aristocratic,
military, the Phœnicians were the great bourgeoisie
of the period, clever, enterprising, eminently
successful in trade. Like the other Canaanites and the
ancestors of the Jews, they were probably immigrants
from the lower Euphrates valley; unlike the others, they
brought with them habits of commerce and skill in
manufacture, for which they became famous along
the Mediterranean shores and beyond the Pillars
of Hercules. Between Philistine and Phœnician the
Hebrew was mercifully protected from the absorbing
interests of commercial life and the disgrace of
prosperous piracy. The conscious superiority of the
coast peoples in wealth and influence and the material
elements of civilisation was itself a guard to the Jews,
who had their own sense of dignity, their own claim to
assert. The configuration of the country helped the
separateness of Israel, especially so far as Phœnicia was
concerned, which lay mainly beyond the rampart of
Lebanon and the gorge of the Litâny; while with the
fortress of Tyre on the hither side of the natural
frontier there appears to have been for a long time no
intercourse, probably on account of its peculiar position.
But the spirit of Phœnicia was the great barrier.
Among the inland races with whom the Israelites are
said to have dwelt, the Amorites, though mentioned
along with Perizzites and Hivites, had very distinct
characteristics. They were a mountain people like the
Scottish Highlanders, even in physiognomy much
resembling them, a tall, white-skinned, blue-eyed race.
Warlike we know they were, and the Egyptian representation
of the siege of Dapur by Ramses II. shows
what is supposed to be the standard of the Amorites
Passing some tribes whose names imply rather
geographical than ethnical distinctions, we come to the
Hittites, the powerful people of whom in recent years
we have learned something. At one time these Hittites
were practically masters of the wide region from
Ephesus in the west of Asia Minor to Carchemish on the
Euphrates, and from the shores of the Black Sea to the
south of Palestine. They appear to us in the archives
of Thebes and the poem of the Laureate, Pentaur, as
the great adversaries of Egypt in the days of Ramses I.
and his successors; and one of the most interesting records
is of the battle fought about 1383 B.C. at Kadesh
on the Orontes, between the immense armies of the
two nations, the Egyptians being led by Ramses II.
Amazing feats were attributed to Ramses, but he was
For the characteristics of the Hittites, whose appearance and dress constantly suggest a Mongolian origin, we can now consult their monuments. A vigorous people they must have been, capable of government, of extensive organization, concerned to perfect their arts as well as to increase their power. Original contributors to civilization they probably were not, but they had skill to use what they found and spread it widely. Their worship of Sutekh or Soutkhu, and especially of Astarte under the name of Ma, who reappears in the Great Diana of Ephesus, must have been very elaborate. A single Cappadocian city is reported to have had at one time six thousand armed priestesses and eunuchs of that goddess. In Palestine there were not many of this distinct and energetic people when the Hebrews crossed the Jordan. A settlement seems to have remained about Hebron, but the armies had withdrawn; Kadesh on the Orontes was the nearest garrison. One peculiar institution of Hittite religion was the holy city, which afforded sanctuary to fugitives; and it is notable that some of these cities in Canaan, such as Kadesh-Naphtali and Hebron, are found among the Hebrew cities of refuge.
It was as a people at once enticed and threatened,
invited to peace and constantly provoked to war, that
Israel settled in the circle of Syrian nations. After the
Yet it is with nations as with men; those that have
Nothing yet found in the records of Babylon or
Assyria throws any light on the invasion of Cushan-rishathaim,
whose name, which seems to mean Cushan
of the Two Evil Deeds, may be taken to represent his
character as the Hebrews viewed it. He was a king
one of whose predecessors a few centuries before had
given a daughter in marriage to the third Amenophis
of Egypt, and with her the Aramæan religion to the
Nile valley. At that time Mesopotamia, or Aram-Naharaim,
was one of the greatest monarchies of western
Asia. Stretching along the Euphrates from the Khabour
river towards Carchemish and away to the highlands
of Armenia, it embraced the district in which Terah
and Abram first settled when the family migrated
from Ur of the Chaldees. In the days of the judges
of Israel, however, the glory of Aram had faded. The
It remains a question, however, why the Mesopotamian
king should have been allowed to traverse the
land of the Hittites, either by way of Damascus or the
desert route that led past Tadmor, in order to fall on
the Israelites; and there is this other question, What
led him to think of attacking Israel especially among
the dwellers in Canaan? In pursuing these inquiries
we have at least presumption to guide us. Carchemish
on the Euphrates was a great Hittite fortress commanding
the fords of that deep and treacherous river. Not
far from it, within the Mesopotamian country, was
Pethor, which was at once a Hittite and an Aramæan
town—Pethor the city of Balaam with whom the
Hebrews had had to reckon shortly before they entered
Canaan. Now Cushan-rishathaim, reigning in this
region, occupied the middle ground between the Hittites
and Assyria on the east, also between them and
Babylon on the south-east; and it is probable that he
was in close alliance with the Hittites. Suppose then
that the Hittite king, who at first regarded the Hebrews
with indifference, was now beginning to view them with
distrust or to fear them as a people bent on their own
ends, not to be reckoned on for help against Egypt, and
we can easily see that he might be more than ready to
assist the Mesopotamians in their attack on the tribes.
To this we may add a hint which is derived from
Balaam's connection with Pethor, and the kind of
advice he was in the way of giving to those who
consulted him. Does it not seem probable enough that
Here then we may trace the revival of a feud which seemed to have died away fifty years before. Neither nations nor men can easily escape from the enmity they have incurred and the entanglements of their history. When years have elapsed and strifes appear to have been buried in oblivion, suddenly, as if out of the grave, the past is apt to arise and confront us, sternly demanding the payment of its reckoning. We once did another grievous wrong, and now our fondly cherished belief that the man we injured had forgotten our injustice is completely dispelled. The old anxiety, the old terror breaks in afresh upon our lives. Or it was in doing our duty that we braved the enmity of evil-minded men and punished their crimes. But though they have passed away their bitter hatred bequeathed to others still survives. Now the battle of justice and fidelity has to be fought over again, and well is it for us if we are found ready in the strength of God.
And, in another aspect, how futile is the dream some
indulge of getting rid of their history, passing beyond
Attacked by Cushan of the Two Crimes the Israelites
were in evil case. They had not the consciousness of
Divine support which sustained them once. They had
forsaken Him whose presence in the camp made their
arms victorious. Now they must face the consequences
of their fathers' deeds without their fathers'
heavenly courage. Had they still been a united nation
full of faith and hope, the armies of Aram would have
assailed them in vain. But they were without the
spirit which the crisis required. For eight years the
northern tribes had to bear a sore oppression, soldiers
quartered in their cities, tribute exacted at the point
It was from the far south that help came in response to the piteous cry of the oppressed in the north; the deliverer was Othniel, who has already appeared in the history. After his marriage with Achsah, daughter of Caleb, we must suppose him living as quietly as possible in his south-lying farm, there increasing in importance year by year till now he is a respected chief of the tribe of Judah. In frequent skirmishes with Arab marauders from the wilderness he has distinguished himself, maintaining the fame of his early exploit. Better still, he is one of those who have kept the great traditions of the nation, a man mindful of the law of God, deriving strength of character from fellowship with the Almighty. "The Spirit of Jehovah came upon him and he judged Israel; and he went out to war, and Jehovah delivered Cushan-rishathaim king of Mesopotamia into his hand."
"He judged Israel and went out to war." Significant
is the order of these statements. The judging of
Israel by this man, on whom the Spirit of Jehovah was,
meant no doubt inquisition into the religious and moral
state, condemnation of the idolatry of the tribes and a
restoration to some extent of the worship of God. In
no other way could the strength of Israel be revived.
The people had to be healed before they could fight,
Judgment and then deliverance; judgment of the mistakes and sins men have committed, thereby bringing themselves into trouble; conviction of sin and righteousness; thereafter guidance and help that their feet may be set on a rock and their goings established—this is the right sequence. That God should help the proud, the self-sufficient out of their troubles in order that they may go on in pride and vainglory, or that He should save the vicious from the consequences of their vice and leave them to persist in their iniquity, would be no Divine work. The new mind and the right spirit must be put in men, they must hear their condemnation, lay it to heart and repent, there must be a revival of holy purpose and aspiration first. Then the oppressors will be driven from the land, the weight of trouble lifted from the soul.
Othniel the first of the judges seems one of the best.
He is not a man of mere rude strength and dashing
enterprise. Nor is he one who runs the risk of sudden
In modern times there would seem to be scarcely
any understanding of the fact that no man can do real
service as a political leader unless he is a fearer of
God, one who loves righteousness more than country,
and serves the Eternal before any constituency. Sometimes
a nation low enough in morality has been so far
awake to its need and danger as to give the helm, at
least for a time, to a servant of truth and righteousness
and to follow where he leads. But more commonly is
it the case that political leaders are chosen anywhere
rather than from the ranks of the spiritually earnest.
It is oratorical dash now, and now the cleverness of the
intriguer, or the power of rank and wealth, that catches
popular favour and exalts a man in the state. Members
of parliament, cabinet ministers, high officials need
have no devoutness, no spiritual seriousness or insight.
A nation generally seeks no such character in its
legislators and is often content with less than decent
morality. Is it then any wonder that politics are arid
and government a series of errors? We need men
who have the true idea of liberty and will set nations
nominally Christian on the way of fulfilling their
mission to the world. When the people want a spiritual
The world is served by men of very diverse kinds, and we pass now to one who is in strong contrast to Israel's first deliverer. Othniel the judge without reproach is followed by Ehud the regicide. The long peace which the country enjoyed after the Mesopotamian army was driven out allowed a return of prosperity and with it a relaxing of spiritual tone. Again there was disorganization; again the Hebrew strength decayed and watchful enemies found an opportunity. The Moabites led the attack, and their king was at the head of a federation including the Ammonites and the Amalekites. It was this coalition the power of which Ehud had to break.
We can only surmise the causes of the assault made
on the Hebrews west of Jordan by those peoples on
the east. When the Israelites first appeared on the
plains of the Jordan under the shadow of the mountains
of Moab, before crossing into Palestine proper, Balak
king of Moab viewed with alarm this new nation which
was advancing to seek a settlement so near his
territory. It was then he sent to Pethor for Balaam,
in the hope that by a powerful incantation or curse
the great diviner would blight the Hebrew armies and
But to Reuben, Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh was allotted the land from which the Amorites had been completely driven, a region extending from the frontier of Moab on the south away towards Hermon and the Argob; and these tribes entering vigorously on their possession could not long remain at peace with the bordering races. We can easily see how their encroachments, their growing strength would vex Moab and Ammon and drive them to plans of retaliation. Balaam had not cursed Israel; he had blessed it, and the blessing was being fulfilled. It seemed to be decreed that all other peoples east of Jordan were to be overborne by the descendants of Abraham; yet one fear wrought against another, and the hour of Israel's security was seized as a fit occasion for a vigorous sally across the river. A desperate effort was made to strike at the heart of the Hebrew power and assert the claims of Chemosh to be a greater god than He Who was reverenced at the sanctuary of the ark.
Or Amalek may have instigated the attack. Away
in the Sinaitic wilderness there stood an altar which
Moses had named Jehovah-Nissi, Jehovah is my
banner, and that altar commemorated a great victory
gained by Israel over the Amalekites. The greater
part of a century had gone by since the battle, but
the memory of defeat lingers long with the Arab—and
So the Hebrew tribes, partly by reason of an old
strife not forgotten, partly because they have gone on
vigorously adding to their territory, again suffer assault
and are brought under oppression, and the coalition
against them reminds us of confederacies that are in
full force to-day. Ammon and Moab are united against
the church of Christ, and Amalek joins in the attack.
The parable is one, we shall say, of the opposition the
church is constantly provoking, constantly experiencing,
not entirely to its own credit. Allowing that, in the
main, Christianity is truly and honestly aggressive, that
Now it is upon Christianity as approving all this
that the Moabites and Ammonites of our day are falling.
They are frankly worshippers of Chemosh and Milcom,
We have been assuming the unfaithfulness of Israel
to its duty and vocation. The people of God, instead
of commending His faith by their neighbourliness and
generosity, were, we fear, too often proud and selfish,
seeking their own things not the well-being of others,
sending no attractive light into the heathenism around.
Moab was akin to the Hebrews and in many respects
similar in character. When we come to the Book of
Ruth we find a certain intercourse between the two.
Ammon, more unsettled and barbarous, was of the
same stock. Israel, giving nothing to these peoples, but
taking all she could from them, provoked antagonism
all the more bitter that they were of kin to her, and
they felt no scruple when their opportunity came. Not
Ehud appears a deliverer. He was a Benjamite, a
man left-handed; he chose his own method of action,
and it was to strike directly at the Moabite king.
Eager words regarding the shamefulness of Israel's
subjection had perhaps already marked him as a leader,
and it may have been with the expectation that he would
do a bold deed that he was chosen to bear the periodical
tribute on this occasion to Eglon's palace. Girding a
long dagger under his garment on his right thigh, where
if found it might appear to be worn without evil intent,
he set out with some attendants to the Moabite head-quarters.
The narrative is so vivid that we seem able
to follow Ehud step by step. He has gone from the
neighbourhood of Jebus to Jericho, perhaps by the road
in which the scene of our Lord's parable of the Good
Samaritan was long afterwards laid. Having delivered
the tribute into the hands of Eglon he goes southward
a few miles to the sculptured stones at Gilgal, where
possibly some outpost of the Moabites kept guard.
There he leaves his attendants, and swiftly retracing
his steps to the palace craves a private interview with
the king and announces a message from God, at Whose
name Eglon respectfully rises from his seat. One flash
of the dagger and the bloody deed is done. Leaving
the king's dead body there in the chamber, Ehud bolts
the door and boldly passes the attendants, then quickening
his pace is soon beyond Gilgal and away by another
route through the steep hills to the mountains of
Ephraim. Meanwhile the murder is discovered and
Now this deed of Ehud's was clearly a case of assassination, and as such we have to consider it. The crime is one which stinks in our nostrils because it is associated with treachery and cowardice, the basest revenge or the most undisciplined passion. But if we go back to times of ruder morality and regard the circumstances of such a people as Israel, scattered and oppressed, waiting for a sign of bold energy that may give it new heart, we can easily see that one who chose to act as Ehud did would by no means incur the reprobation we now attach to the assassin. To go no farther back than the French Revolution and the deed of Charlotte Corday, we cannot reckon her among the basest—that woman of "the beautiful still countenance" who believed her task to be the duty of a patriot. Nevertheless, it is not possible to make a complete defence of Ehud. His act was treacherous. The man he slew was a legitimate king, and is not said to have done his ruling ill. Even allowing for the period, there was something peculiarly detestable in striking one to death who stood up reverently expecting a message from God. Yet Ehud may have thoroughly believed himself to be a Divine instrument.
This too we see, that the great just providence of the
Almighty is not impeached by such an act. No word
in the narrative justifies assassination; but, being done,
place is found for it as a thing overruled for good in the
See how life advances! God deals with the human
race according to a vast plan of discipline leading to
heights which at first appear inaccessible. Freedom is
one of the first of these, and only by way of it are the
We see it in the history of nations, those that have led the way and those that are following. The possessors of clear faith have won it in liberty. In Switzerland, in Scotland, in England, the order has been, first civil freedom, then Christian thought and vigour. Wallace and Bruce prepare the way for Knox; Boadicea, Hereward, the Barons of Magna Charta for Wycliffe and the Reformation; the men of the Swiss Cantons who won Morgarten and routed Charles the Bold were the forerunners of Zwingli and Farel. Israel, too, had its heroes of freedom; and even those who, like Ehud and Samson, did little or nothing for faith and struck wildly, wrongly for their country, did yet choose consciously to serve their people and were helpers of a righteousness and a holy purpose they did not know. When all has been said against them it remains true that the freedom they brought to Israel was a Divine gift.
It is to be remarked that Ehud did not judge Israel.
He was a deliverer, but nowise fitted to exercise high
office in the name of God. In some way not made
clear in the narrative he had become the centre of the
resolute spirits of Benjamin and was looked to by them
to find an opportunity of striking at the oppressors.
His calling, we may say, was human, not Divine; it was
Here is an example of what is possible to the obscure whose qualifications are not great, but who have spirit and firmness, who are not afraid of dangers and privations on the way to an end worth gaining, be it the deliverance of their country, the freedom or purity of their church, or the rousing of society against a flagrant wrong. Do the rich and powerful angrily refuse their patronage? Do they find much to say about the impossibility of doing anything, the evil of disturbing people's minds, the duty of submission to Providence and to the advice of wise and learned persons? Those who see the time and place for acting, who hear the clarion-call of duty, will not be deterred. Armed for their task with fit weapons—the two-edged dagger of truth for the corpulent lie, the penetrating stone of a just scorn for the forehead of arrogance, they have the right to go forth, the right to succeed, though probably when the stroke has told many will be heard lamenting its untimeliness and proving the dangerous indiscretion of Ehud and all who followed him.
Israel, then, appears in these stories of her iron age
as the cradle of the manhood of the modern world; in
Israel the true standard was lifted up for the people.
It is liberty put to a noble use that is the mark of
manhood, and in Israel's history the idea of responsibility
to the one living and true God takes form and
clearness as that alone which fulfils and justifies liberty.
Israel has a God Whose will man must do, and for the
doing of it he is free. If at the outset the vigour which
this thought of God infused into the Hebrew struggle
for independence was tempestuous; if Jehovah was
seen not in the majesty of eternal justice and sublime
magnanimity, not as the Friend of all, but as the unseen
King of a favoured people,—still, as freedom came,
there came with it always, in some prophetic word,
some Divine psalm, a more living conception of God
as gracious, merciful, holy, unchangeable; and notwithstanding
There arises now in Israel a prophetess, one of those rare women whose souls burn with enthusiasm and holy purpose when the hearts of men are abject and despondent; and to Deborah it is given to make a nation hear her call. Of prophetesses the world has seen but few; generally the woman has her work of teaching and administering justice in the name of God within a domestic circle and finds all her energy needed there. But queens have reigned with firm nerve and clear sagacity in many a land, and now and again a woman's voice has struck the deep note which has roused a nation to its duty. Such in the old Hebrew days was Deborah, wife of Lappidoth.
It was a time of miserable thraldom in Israel when
she became aware of her destiny and began the sacred
enterprise of her life. From Hazor in the north near
the waters of Merom Israel was ruled by Jabin, king
of the Canaanites—not the first of the name, for
Joshua had before defeated one Jabin king of Hazor,
and slain him. During the peace that followed Ehud's
triumph over Moab the Hebrews, busy with worldly
affairs, failed to estimate a danger which year by year
became more definite and pressing—the rise of the
Born before this time of oppression Deborah spent
There was not much prospect at such a time for a
Hebrew maiden whose lot it seemed to be, while yet
scarcely out of her childhood, to be married like the
But when in her native tribe the brave woman
Deborah's prophetical utterances are not to be tried
by the standard of the Isaian age. So tested some of
her judgments might fail, some of her visions lose their
charm. She had no clear outlook to those great
principles which the later prophets more or less fully
proclaimed. Her education and circumstances and her
intellectual power determined the degree in which she
could receive Divine illumination. One woman before
her is honoured with the name of prophetess, Miriam,
the sister of Moses and Aaron, who led the refrain of
the song of triumph at the Red Sea. Miriam's gift
appears limited to the gratitude and ecstasy of one day
of deliverance; and when afterwards on the strength
of her share in the enthusiasm of the Exodus she
ventured along with Aaron to claim equality with
Moses, a terrible rebuke checked her presumption.
Comparing Miriam and Deborah, we find as great an
advance from the one to the other as from Deborah to
Amos or Hosea. But this only shows that the inspiration
of one mind, intense and ample for that mind, may
come far short of the inspiration of another. God does
not give every prophet the same insight as Moses, for
the rare and splendid genius of Moses was capable of
an illumination which very few in any following age
have been able to receive. Even as among the Apostles
of Christ St. Peter shows occasionally a lapse from the
highest Christian judgment for which St. Paul has to
take him to task, and yet does not cease to be inspired,
It is simply impossible to account for this new beginning in Israel's history without a heavenly impulse; and through Deborah unquestionably that impulse came. Others were turning to God, but she broke the dark spell which held the tribes and taught them afresh how to believe and pray. Under her palm tree there were solemn searchings of heart, and when the head men of the clans gathered there, travelling across the mountains of Ephraim or up the wadies from the fords of Jordan, it was first to humble themselves for the sin of idolatry, and then to undertake with sacred oaths and vows the serious work which fell to them in Israel's time of need. Not all came to that solemn rendezvous. When is such a gathering completely representative? Of Judah and Simeon we hear nothing. Perhaps they had their own troubles with the wandering tribes of the desert; perhaps they did not suffer as the others from Canaanite tyranny and therefore kept aloof. Reuben on the other side Jordan wavered, Manasseh made no sign of sympathy; Asher, held in check by the fortress of Hazor and the garrison of Harosheth, chose the safe part of inaction. Dan was busy trying to establish a maritime trade. But Ephraim and Benjamin, Zebulun and Naphtali were forward in the revival, and proudly the record is made on behalf of her native tribe, "the princes of Issachar were with Deborah." Months passed; the movement grew steadily, there was a stirring among the dry bones, a resurrection of hope and purpose.
And with all the care used this could not be hid from
the Canaanites. For doubtless in not a few Israelite
Amid difficulty and discouragement enough, with
slender resources, the hope of Israel resting upon her,
Deborah's heart did not fail nor her head for affairs.
When the critical point was reached of requiring a
general for the war she had already fixed upon the
man. At Kadesh-Naphtali, almost in sight of Jabin's
fortress, on a hill overlooking the waters of Merom,
ninety miles to the north, dwelt Barak the son of
Abinoam. The neighbourhood of the Canaanite capital
and daily evidence of its growing power made Barak
ready for any enterprise which had in it good promise
Not doubting the word of God, Barak sees a difficulty.
For himself he has no prophetic gift; he is ready to
fight, but this is to be a sacred war. From the very first
he would have the men gather with the clear understanding
that it is for religion as much as for freedom
they are taking arms; and how may this be secured?
Only if Deborah will go with him through the country
proclaiming the Divine summons and promise of victory.
He is very decided on the point. "If thou wilt go
with me, then I will go: but if thou wilt not go with
me, I will not go." Deborah agrees, though she would
fain have left this matter entirely to men. She warns
him that the expedition will not be to his honour, since
The clans are at length gathered; the whole force
marches from Kedesh to the foot of Tabor to give
battle. And now Sisera, fully equipped, moves out of
Harosheth along the course of the Kishon, marching
well beneath the ridge of Carmel, his chariots thundering
in the van. Near Taanach he orders his front to be
formed to the north, crosses the Kishon and advances
on the Hebrews who by this time are visible beyond
Meanwhile Sisera, a coward at heart, more familiar
with the parade ground than fit for the stern necessities
of war, leaves his chariot and abandons his men to their
fate, his own safety all his care. Seeking that, it is
not to Harosheth he turns. He takes his way across
Gilboa toward the very region which Barak has left.
On a little plateau overlooking the Sea of Galilee, near
In her song Deborah describes and glories over the
execution of her country's enemy. "Blessed among
women shall Jael, the wife of Heber be; with the
hammer she smote Sisera; at her feet he curled up,
he fell." Exulting in every circumstance of the
tragedy, she adds a description of Sisera's mother
and her ladies expecting his return as a victor laden
with spoil, and listening eagerly for the wheels of that
chariot which never again should roll through the
streets of Harosheth. As to the whole of this passage,
our estimate of Deborah's knowledge and spiritual
insight does not require us to regard her praise and her
judgment as absolute. She rejoices in a deed which
has crowned the great victory over the master of nine
hundred chariots, the terror of Israel; she glories in
the courage of another woman, who single-handed
finished that tyrant's career; she does not make God
responsible for the deed. Let the outburst of her
enthusiastic relief stand as the expression of intense
feeling, the rebound from fear and anxiety of the
patriotic heart. We need not weight ourselves with
the suspicion that the prophetess reckoned Jael's deed
the outcome of a Divine thought. No: but we may
believe this of Jael, that she is on the side of Israel, her
A line of thought like this is entirely in harmony with the Arab character. The moral ideas of the desert are rigorous, and contempt rapidly becomes cruel. A tent woman has few elements of judgment, and, the balance turning, her conclusion will be quick, remorseless. Jael is no blameless heroine; neither is she a demon. Deborah, who understands her, reads clearly the rapid thoughts, the swift decision, the unscrupulous act and sees, behind all, the purpose of serving Israel. Her praise of Jael is therefore with knowledge; but she herself would not have done the thing she praises. All possible explanations made, it remains a murder, a wild savage thing for a woman to do, and we may ask whether among the tents of Zaanannim Jael was not looked on from that day as a woman stained and shadowed,—one who had been treacherous to a guest.
One point remains. Emphatically are we reminded that life continually brings us to sudden moments in which we must act without time for careful reflection, the spirit of our past flashing out in some quick deed or word of fate. Sisera's past drove him in panic over the hills to Zaanannim. Jael's past came with her to the door of the tent; and the two as they looked at each other in that tragic moment were at once, without warning, in a crisis for which every thought and passion of years had made a way. Here the self-pampering of a vain man had its issue. Here the woman, undisciplined, impetuous, catching sight of the means to do a deed, moves to the fatal stroke like one possessed. It is the sort of thing we often call madness, and yet such insanity is but the expression of what men and women choose to be capable of. The casual allowance of an impulse here, a craving there, seems to mean little until the occasion comes when their accumulated force is sharply or terribly revealed. The laxity of the past thus declares itself; and on the other hand there is often a gathering of good to a moment of revelation. The soul that has for long years fortified itself in pious courage, in patient well-doing, in high and noble thought, leaps one day, to its own surprise, to the height of generous daring or heroic truth. We determine the issue of crises which we cannot foresee.
The song of Deborah and Barak is twofold, the first portion, ending with the eleventh verse, a chant of rising hope and pious encouragement during the time of preparation and revival, the other a song of battle and victory throbbing with eager patriotism and the hot breath of martial excitement. In the former part God is celebrated as the Helper of Israel from of old and from afar; He is the spring of the movement in which the singer rejoices, and in His praise the strophes culminate. But human nature asserts itself after the great and decisive triumph in the vivid touches of the latter canto. In it more is told of the doings of men, and there is picturesque fiery exultation over the fallen. One might almost think that Deborah, herself childless, glories over the mother of Sisera in the utter desolation which falls on her when she hears the tidings of her son's defeat and death. Yet this mood ceases abruptly, and the song returns to Jehovah, Whose friends are lifted up to joy and strength by His availing help.
The main interest of the twofold song lies in its
religious colour, for here the pious ardour of the Israel
of the judges comes to finest expression. As a whole
1. The first religious note is struck in what may be called the opening Hallelujah, although the ejaculation, "Bless the Lord," is not, in Hebrew, that which afterwards became the great refrain of sacred song.
"For that leaders led in Israel,
For that the people offered themselves willingly:
Bless ye Jehovah."
Here is more than belief in Providence. It is faith
in the spiritual presence and power of God swaying
the souls of men. Has Deborah seen at last, after long
Common enough in our day is a profession of belief
in God as the source of every good desire and right
effort, as inspiring the charity of the generous, the
affection of the loving, the fidelity of the true. But if
our faith is deep and real it brings us much nearer
than we usually feel ourselves to be to Him Who is
the Life indeed. The existence and energy of God are
assured to those who have this insight. Every kindness
done by man to man is a testimony against
which denial of the Divine life has no power. Though
the intellect searching far afield makes out only as
2. The next passage may be called a prologue in the heavens. Partly historical, it is chiefly a vision of Jehovah's age-long work for His people. In words that flash and roll the song describes the glorious advent of the Most High, nature astir with His presence, the mountains shaking under His tread.
The seat of the Divine Majesty appears to the
It has been well said that for the Israel of ancient
times all natural phenomena—a storm, a hurricane or a
flood—had more than ordinary import. "Forbidden to
recognise and, as it were, grasp the God of heaven in
any material form, or to adore even in the heavens
themselves any constant symbols of His being and His
Now was there in this faith an element of reason, a correspondence with fact? Is it fancy and nothing else, the poetic flight of an ardent soul eager to rouse a nation? Have we here an arbitrary connection made between striking natural events and a Divine Person throned in the heavens Whose existence the prophetess assumes, Whose supposed claim to obedience haunts her mind? In such a question our age utters its scepticism.
An age it is of science, of positive science. Toiling
for centuries at the task of understanding the phenomenal,
research has at length assumed the right to
tell us what we must believe concerning the world—what
We hear the boast that no song of Hebrew seer can
withstand this modern wisdom, that the superstition
of Bible faith shall vanish like starlight before the
rising sun. To science every opinion shall submit.
But wait. It is dogmatism against belief after all,
authority against authority, and the one in a lower
region than the other, with vastly inferior sanctions.
Returning to Deborah's song and her vision of the
coming of God in the impetuous storm, we see the
The point is still in doubt among us whether the
good, the true, the right, are invincible. Those who
go forth in the service of God are often borne down by
the graceless multitude. From age to age the problem
of God's supremacy seems to remain in suspense, and
men are not afraid, in the name of foulest iniquity, to
try issues with the best. Be it so. The Divine work is
slow. Even the best need discipline that they may have
strength, and God is in no haste to carry His argument
against atheism. There is abundance of time. Those
3. Let it be allowed that we find the latter canto of Deborah's song expressive of faith rather than of clear morality, pointing to a spiritual future rather than exhibiting actual knowledge of the Divine character. We hear of the righteous acts of the Lord, and the note is welcome, yet most likely the thought is of retributive justice and punishment that overtakes the enemies of Israel. When the remnant of the nobles and the people come down—that remnant of brave and faithful men never wanting to Israel—the Lord comes down with them, their Guide and Strength. Meroz is cursed because the inhabitants do not go forth to the help of Jehovah. And finally there is glorying over Sisera because he is an enemy of Israel's Unseen King. There is trust, there is devotion, but no largeness of spiritual view.
We must, however, remember that a song full of the
spirit of battle and the gladness of victory cannot be
expected to breathe the ideal of religion. The mind
of the singer is too excited by the circumstances of
the time, the bustle, the triumph, to dwell on higher
themes. When fighting has to be done it is the main
business of the hour, cannot be aught else to those who
are engaged. A woman especially, strung to an unusual
For a parallel case we may turn to Oliver Cromwell.
In his letter after the storming of Bristol, a bloody
piece of work in which the mettle of the Parliamentary
force was put keenly to proof, Cromwell ascribes the
victory to God in these terms:—"They that have been
employed in this service know that faith and prayer
obtained this city for you. God hath put the sword in
the Parliament's hands for the terror of evil-doers
and the praise of them that do well." Of victory after
victory which left many a home desolate he speaks
as mercies to be acknowledged with all thankfulness.
"God exceedingly abounds in His goodness to us, and
Just now it is the fashion to depreciate as much as
possible the moral value of the old Hebrew faith. We
are assured in a tone of authority that Israel's Jehovah
was only another Chemosh, or, say, a respectable Baal,
a being without moral worth,—in fact, a mere name of
might worshipped by Israelites as their protector. The
history of the people settles this uncritical theory. If
the religion of Israel did not sustain a higher morality,
if the faith of Jehovah was purely secular, how came
Israel to emerge as a nation from the long conflict with
Moabites, Canaanites, Midianites and Philistines? The
Hebrews were not superior in point of numbers, unity
or military skill to the nations whose interest it was
to subdue or expel them. Some vantage ground the
Israelites must have had. What was it? Justice
between man and man, domestic honour, care for
human life, a measure of unselfishness,—these at least,
as well as the entire purity of their religious rites, were
their inheritance; through these the blessing of the
Eternal rested upon them. There could never be a
return to Him in penitence and hope without a return
to the duties and the faith of the sacred covenant. We
know therefore that while Deborah sings her song of
battle and exults over fallen Sisera there is latent in
her mind and the minds of her people a warmth of
moral purpose justifying their new liberty. This nation
We have already considered the song of Deborah as a declaration of God's working more broad and spiritual than might be looked for in that age. We now regard it as exhibiting different relations of men to the Divine purpose. There is a religious spirit in the whole movement here described. It begins in a revival of faith and obedience, prospers despite the coldness and opposition of many, grows in force and enthusiasm as it proceeds and finally is crowned with success. The church is militant in a literal sense; yet, fighting with carnal weapons, it is really contending for the glory of the Unseen King. There is a close parallel between the enterprise of Deborah and Barak and that which opens before the church of the present time. No forced accommodation is needed to gather from the song lessons of different kinds for our guidance and warning in the campaign of Christianity.
Here are Deborah herself, a mother in Israel, and the
leaders who take their places at the head of the armies
of God. Here also are the people willingly offering
themselves, imperilling their lives for religion and
freedom. The history of the past and the vision of
Jehovah as sole Ruler of nature and providence encourage
1. The leaders and head men of the tribes under Deborah and Barak, Deborah foremost in the great enterprise, her soul on fire with zeal for Israel and for God.
Deborah and Barak show throughout that spirit of
cordial agreement, that frank support of each other
Rarely, it must be confessed, is there entire harmony
among the leaders of affairs. Jealousy is too often
with them from the first. Suspicion lurks under the
council table, private ambitions and unworthy fears
make confusion when each should trust and encourage
another. The fine enthusiasm of a great cause does
not overcome as it ought the selfishness of human
nature. Moreover, varieties in disposition as between
the cautious and the impetuous, the more and the less
of sagacity or of faith, a failure in sincerity here, in
justice there, are separating influences constantly at
work. But when the pressing importance of the duties
entrusted to men by God governs every will, these
elements of division cease; leaders who differ in temperament
are loyal to each other then, each jealous of the
others' honour as servants of truth. In the Reformation,
for example, prosperity was largely due to the
fact that two such men as Luther and Melanchthon, very
different yet thoroughly united, stood side by side in the
thick of the conflict, Luther's impetuosity moderated
by the calmer spirit of the other, Melanchthon's craving
for peace kept from dangerous concession by the boldness
of his friend. Their mutual love and fidelity
Church leaders are responsible for not a little which they themselves condemn. Differences do not quickly arise among disciples when the teachers are modest, honourable, and brotherly. Paul cries, "Is Christ divided? Were ye baptized into the name of Paul? What is Apollos? What is Paul? Ministers by whom ye believed." When our leaders speak and feel in like manner there will be peace, not uniformity but something better. God's husbandry, God's building will prosper.
But it is declared to be jealousy for religion that
divides—jealousy for the pure doctrine of Christ—jealousy
for the true church. We try to believe it.
But then why are not all in that spirit of holy jealousy
found side by side as comrades, eagerly yet in cordial
brotherhood discussing points of difference, determined
that they will search together and help each other until
they find principles in which they can all rest? The
leaders of different Christian bodies do not appear like
Deborah and Barak engaged in a common enterprise,
but as chiefs of rival or even opposing armies. The
reason is that in this church and the other there has been
a foreclosing of questions, and the elected leaders are
almost all men who are pledged to the tribal decrees.
In the decisions of councils and synods, and not less
in the deliverances of learned doctors apologising each
To be sure something is said of tolerance. But that is
a purely political idea. Let it not be so much as named
in the assembly of God's people. Does Barak tolerate
Deborah? Does Moses tolerate Aaron? Does St.
Peter tolerate St. Paul? The disciples of Christ
tolerate each other, do they? What marvellous largeness
of soul! One or two, it appears, have been made
sole keepers of the ark but are prepared to tolerate the
embarrassing help of well-meaning auxiliaries. Neither
charity of that sort nor flabbiness of belief is asked.
Let each be strongly persuaded in his own mind of
that which he has learned from Christ. But where
Christ has not foreclosed inquiry and where sincere
Deborah was a mother in Israel, a nursing mother of the people in their spiritual childhood, with a mother's warm heart for the oppressed and weary flock. The nation needed a new birth, and that, by the grace of God, Deborah gave it in the sore travail of her soul. For many a year she suffered, prayed and entreated. Israel had chosen new gods and in serving them was dying to righteousness, dying to Jehovah. Deborah had to pour her own life into the half-dead, and compared to this effort the battle with the Canaanites was but a secondary matter. So is it always. The Divine task is that of the mother-like souls that labour for the quickening of faith and holy service. Great victories of Christian valour, patience and love are never won without that renewal of humanity; and everything is due to those who have guided the ignorant into knowledge, the careless to thought and the weak to strength through years of patient toil. They are not all prophets, not all known to the tribes: of many such the record waits hidden with their God until the day of revealing and rejoicing.
Yet Barak also, the Lightning Chief, has honourable
part. When the men are collected, men new-born into
life, he can lead them. They are Ironsides under him.
He rushes down from Tabor and they at his feet with
a vigour nothing can resist. If we have Deborah we
shall also have Barak, his army and his victory. The
promise is not for women only but for all in the
private ways and obscure settlements of life who labour
at the making of men. Every Christian has the responsibility
and joy of helping to prepare a way for the
2. We contrast next the people who offered themselves willingly, who "jeoparded their lives unto the death upon the high places of the field," and those who for one reason or another held aloof.
With united leaders there is a measure of unity among the tribes. Barak and Deborah summon all who are ready to strike for liberty, and there is a great muster. Yet there might be double the number. Those who refuse to take arms have many pretexts, but the real cause is want of heart. The oppression of Jabin does not much affect some Israelites, and so far as it does they would rather go on paying tribute than risk their lives, rather bear the ills they have than hazard anything in joining Barak. These holding back, the work has to be done by a comparatively small number, a remnant of the nobles and the people.
But a remnant is always found; there are men and
women who do not bow the knee to the Baal of worldly
fashion, who do not content their souls amid the fleshpots
of low servitude. They have to venture and
sacrifice much in a long and varying war, and oftentimes
their flesh and heart may almost fail. But a
great reward is theirs. While others are spiritless and
hopeless they know the zest of life, its real power and
joy. They know what believing means, how strong it
makes the soul. Their all is in the spiritual kingdom
which cannot be moved. God is the portion of their
souls, their gladness and glory. Those who stand by
and look on while the conflict rages may share to a
certain extent in the liberty that is won, for the gains
of Christian warfare are not limited, they are for all
mankind. There is a wider and better ordered life for
Different tribes are named that sent contingents
to the army of Barak. They are typical of different
churches, different orders of society that are forward
in the campaign of faith. The Hebrews who came most
readily at the battle call appear to have belonged to
districts where the Canaanite oppression was heavy,
the country that lay between Harosheth, the head-quarters
of Sisera, and Hazor the city of Jabin. So
in the Christian struggle of the ages the strenuous
part falls to those who suffer from the tyranny of
the temporal and see clearly the hopelessness of life
without religion. The gospel of Christ is peculiarly
precious to men and women whose lot is hard, whose
earthly future is clouded. Sacrifices for God's cause
are made as a rule by these. In His great purpose, in
His deep knowledge of the facts of life, our Lord joined
Himself to the poor and left with them a special
blessing. It is not that men who dwell in comfort are
independent of the gospel, but they are tempted to
think themselves so. In proportion as they are fenced
in amongst possessions and social claims they are apt,
though devout, to miss that very call which is the
message of the gospel to them. Well-meaning but
absorbed, they can rarely bestir themselves to hear
and do until some personal calamity or public disaster
awakens them to the truth of things. The steady support
of Christian ordinances and work in our day is
largely the honour of people who have their full share
The real army of faith is largely drawn from the
ranks of the toilers and the heavy laden. Yet not
entirely. We reckon many and fine exceptions. There
are rich who are less worldly than those who have
little. Many whose lot lies far from the shadow of
tyranny in green and pleasant valleys are first to
hear and quickest to answer every call from the Captain
of the Lord's host. Their possessions are nothing to
them. In the spiritual battle all is spent, knowledge,
influence, wealth, life. And if you look for the highest
examples of Christianity, a faith pure, keen and lovely,
a generosity that most clearly reveals the Master, a
passion for truth consuming all lower regards, you will
find them where culture has done its best for the mind
and the bounty of providence has kindled a gracious
humility and an abounding gentleness of heart. The
tawdry vanities of their fellows in rank and wealth
seem what they are to these, the gaudy toys of children
who have not yet seen the glory and the goal of life.
Among the tribes that held aloof from the great
conflict several are specially named. Messengers have
gone to the land of Reuben beyond Jordan, and carried
the fiery cross through Bashan. Dan has been summoned
and Asher from the haven of the sea. But
these have not responded. Reuben indeed has searchings
of heart. Some of the people remember the old
promise made at Shittim in the plain of Moab, that they
would help their brethren who crossed into Canaan,
never refusing assistance till the land was fully possessed.
Moses had solemnly charged them with that
duty, and they had bound themselves in covenant: "As
the Lord hath said unto thy servants, so will we do."
Could anything have been more seriously, more decisively
undertaken? Yet, when this hour of need came,
though the duty lay upon the conscience nothing was
done. Along the watercourses of Gilead and Bashan
there were flocks to tend, to protect from the Amalekites
and Midianites of the desert who would be sure to
make a raid in the absence of the fighting men. To
It is not to a religious festival that Deborah and
Barak have called the tribes. It is to serious and
dangerous duty. Yet the call of duty should come with
more power than any invitation even to spiritual enjoyment.
The great religious gathering has its use, its
charm. We know the attraction of the crowded convocation
in which Christian hope and enthusiasm are
re-kindled by stirring words and striking instances,
faith rising high as it views the wide mission of gospel
truth and hears from eloquent lips the story of a
modern day of Pentecost. To many, because their own
spiritual life burns dull, the daily and weekly routine
of things becomes empty, vain, unsatisfying. In the
common round even of valued religious exercise the
heat and promise of Christianity seem to be lacking.
In the convention they appear to be realized as nowhere
else, and the persuasion that God may be felt there in
a special manner is laying hold of Christian people.
They are right in their eager desire to be borne along
with the flood of redeeming grace; but we have need
to ask what the life of faith is, how it is best nourished.
To have a personal share in God's controversy with
evil, to have a place however obscure in the actual
struggle of truth with falsehood,—this alone gives confidence
in the result and power in believing. Those
who are in contact with spiritual reality because they
have their own testimony to bear, their own watch to
And the result is that where spiritual work waits
to be done there are but few to do it. Examine the
state of any Christian church, reckon up those who
are deeply interested in its efficiency, who make sacrifices
of time and means, and set against these the
half-hearted, who ignobly accept the religious provision
made for them and perhaps complain that it is not
so good as they would like, that progress is not so
rapid as they think it might be,—the one class far
outnumbers the other. As in Israel twice or three
times as many might have responded to Barak's call,
so in every church the resolute, the energetic and
devoted are few compared with those who are capable
of energy and devotion. It is sometimes maintained
that the worship of goodness and the Christian ideal
command the minds of men more to-day than ever
they did, and proof seems ready to hand. But, after
all, is it not religious taste rather than reverence that
grows? Self-culture leads many to a certain admiration
of Christ and a form of discipleship. Christian
worship is enjoyed and Christian philanthropy also,
but when the spiritual freedom of mankind calls for
some effort of the soul and life, we see what religion
means—a wave of the hand instead of enthusiasm, a
guinea subscription instead of thoughtful service.
Is it a Christian or a selfish culture which is content
Notice the history of the tribes that lag behind in the day of the Lord's summons. What do we hear of Reuben after this? "Unstable as water thou shalt not excel." Along with Gad Reuben possessed a splendid country, but these two faded away into a sort of barbarism, scarcely maintaining their separateness from the wild races of the desert. Asher in like manner suffered from the contact with Phœnicia and lost touch with the more faithful tribes. So it is always. Those who shirk religious duty lose the strength and dignity of religion. Though greatly favoured in place and gifts they fall into that spiritual impotence which means defeat and extinction.
"Curse ye Meroz, said the angel of the Lord, curse
ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof; because they came
not to the help of the Lord against the mighty." It is
a stern judgment upon those whose active assistance
was humanly speaking necessary in the day of battle.
The men only held back, held back in doubt, supposing
that it was vain for Hebrews to fling themselves
against the iron chariots of Sisera. Were they not
prudent, looking at the matter all round? Why should
a curse so heavy be pronounced on men who only
sought to save their lives? The reply is that secular
history curses such men, those of Sparta for example
to whom Athens sent in vain when the battle of
Marathon was impending; and further that Christ has
declared the truth which is for all time, "Whosoever
will save his life shall lose it." Erasmus was a wise
3. Jael, a type of the unscrupulous helpers of a good cause.
Long has the error prevailed that religion can be
helped by using the world's weapons, by acting in the
temper and spirit of the world. Of that mischievous
falsehood have been born all the pride and vainglory,
the rivalries and persecutions that darken the past
of Christendom, surviving in strange and pitiful forms
to the present day. If we shudder at the treachery
in the deed of Jael, what shall we say of that which
through many a year sent victims to inquisition-dungeons
and to the stake in the name of Christ?
And what shall we say now of that moral assassination
Jabin king of Canaan defeated and his nine hundred chariots turned into ploughshares we might expect Israel to make at last a start in its true career. The tribes have had their third lesson and should know the peril of infidelity. Without God they are weak as water. Will they not bind themselves now in a confederacy of faith, suppress Baal and Astarte worship by stringent laws and turn their hearts to God and duty? Not yet: not for more than a century. The true reformer has yet to come. Deborah's work is certainly not in vain. She passes through the land administering justice, commanding the destruction of heathen altars. The people leave their occupations and gather in crowds to hear her; they shout, in answer to her appeals, Jehovah is our King. The Levites are called to minister at the shrines. For a time there is something like religion along with improving circumstances. But the tide does not rise long nor far.
Some twenty years have passed, and what is to be
seen going on throughout the land? The Hebrews
have addressed themselves vigorously to their work in
field and town. Everywhere they are breaking up new
It is a temptation common to men to consider their
own existence and success a sort of Divine end in
serving which they do all that God requires of them.
The business of mere living and making life comfortable
absorbs them so that even faith finds its only use in
promoting their own happiness. The circle of the
year is filled with occupations. When the labour of
the field is over there are the houses and cities to
enlarge, to improve and furnish with means of safety
and enjoyment. One task done and the advantage of
it felt, another presents itself. Industry takes new
forms and burdens still more the energies of men.
Education, art, science become possible and in turn make
their demands. But all may be for self, and God may
be thought of merely as the great Patron satisfied with
Israel losing sight of its mission and its destiny
felt no need of faith and lost it; and with the loss
of faith came loss of vigour and alertness as on other
occasions. Having no sense of a common purpose
great enough to demand their unity the Hebrews were
again unable to resist enemies, and this time the
Midianites and other wild tribes of the eastern desert
found their opportunity. First some bands of them
came at the time of harvest and made raids on the
cultivated districts. But year by year they ventured
In the case of all who fall away from the purpose of life the means of bringing failure home to them and restoring the balance of justice are always at hand. Let a man neglect his fields and nature is upon him; weeds choke his crops, his harvests diminish, poverty comes like an armed man. In trade likewise carelessness brings retribution. So in the case of Israel: although the Canaanites had been subdued other foes were not far away. And the business of this nation was of so sacred a kind that neglect of it meant great moral fault and every fresh relapse into earthliness and sensuality after a revival of religion implied more serious guilt. We find accordingly a proportionate severity in the punishment. Now the nation is chastised with whips, but next time it is with scorpions. Now the iron chariots of Sisera hold the land in terror; then hosts of marauders spread like locusts over the country, insatiable, all-devouring. Do the Hebrews think that careful tilling of their fields and the making of wine and oil are their chief concern? In that they shall be undeceived. Not mainly to be good husbandmen and vine-dressers are they set here, but to be a light in the midst of the nations. If they cease to shine they shall no longer enjoy.
It was by the higher fords of Jordan, perhaps north
of the Sea of Galilee, that the Midianites fell on western
Canaan. Under their two great emirs Zebah and
Zalmunna, who seem to have held a kind of barbaric
state, troops of riders on swift horses and dromedaries
swept the shore of the lake and burst into the plain
of Jezreel. There were no doubt many skirmishes
Between the circumstances of this oppressed nation and the present state of the church there is a wide interval, and in a sense the contrast is striking. Is not the Christianity of our time strong and able to hold its own? Is not the mood of many churches of the present day properly that of elation? As year after year reports of numerical increase and larger contributions are made, as finer buildings are raised for the purposes of worship and work at home and abroad is carried on more efficiently, is it not impossible to trace any resemblance between the state of Israel during the Midianite oppression and the state of religion now? Why should there be any fear that Baal-worship or other idolatry should weaken the tribes, or that marauders from the desert should settle in their land?
And yet the condition of things to-day is not quite
unlike that of Israel at the time we are considering.
There are Canaanites who dwell in the land and carry
on their debasing worship. These too are days when
guerilla troops of naturalism, nomads of the primæval
desert, are sweeping the region of faith. Reckless
and irresponsible talk in periodicals and on platforms;
novels, plays and verses often as clever as they are
"Israel was brought very low because of Midian."
A traveller's picture of the present state of things on
the eastern frontier of Bashan enables us to understand
the misery to which the tribes were reduced
by seven years of rapine. "Not only is the country—plain
and hill-side alike—chequered with fenced fields,
but groves of fig-trees are here and there seen and
terraced vineyards still clothe the sides of some of
the hills. These are neglected and wild but not
fruitless. They produce great quantities of figs and
grapes which are rifled year after year by the Bedawin
in their periodical raids. Nowhere on earth is there
such a melancholy example of tyranny, rapacity and
misrule as here. Fields, pastures, vineyards, houses,
villages, cities are all alike deserted and waste. Even
"And the children of Israel cried unto the Lord"; the prodigals bethought them of their Father. Having come to the husks they remembered Him who fed His people in the desert. Again the wheel has revolved and from the lowest point there is an upward movement. The tribes of God look once more towards the hills from whence their help cometh. And here is seen the importance of that faith which had passed into the nation's life. Although it was not of a very spiritual kind, yet it preserved in the heart of the people a recuperative power. The majority knew little more of Jehovah than His name. But the name suggested availing succour. They turned to the Awful Name, repeated it and urged their need. Here and there one saw God as the infinitely righteous and holy and added to the wail of the ignorant a more devout appeal, recognizing the evils under which the people groaned as punitive and knowing that the very God to Whom they cried had brought the Midianites upon them. In the prayer of such a one there was an outlook towards holier and nobler life. But even in the case of the ignorant the cry to One higher than the highest had help in it. For when that bitter cry was raised self-glorifying had ceased and piety begun.
Ignorant indeed is much of the faith that still
expresses itself in so-called Christian prayer, almost
The first answer to the cry of Israel came in the
message of a prophet, one who would have been
despised by the nation in its self-sufficient mood but
The answer to prayer lies very near to him who cries for salvation. He has not to move a step. He has but to hear the inner voice of conscience. Is there a sense of neglect of duty, a sense of disobedience, of faults committed? The first movement towards salvation is set up in that conviction and in the hope that the evil now seen may be remedied. Forgiveness is implied in this hope, and it will become assured as the hope grows strong. The mistake is often made of supposing that answer to prayer does not come till peace is found. In reality the answer begins when the will is bent towards a better life, though that change may be accompanied by the deepest sorrow and self-humiliation. A man who earnestly reproaches himself for despising and disobeying God has already received the grace of the redeeming Spirit.
But to Israel's cry there was another answer. When
South-west from Shechem, among the hills of Manasseh at Ophrah of the Abiezrites, lived a family that had suffered keenly at the hands of Midian. Some members of the family had been slain near Tabor, and the rest had as a cause of war not only the constant robberies from field and homestead but also the duty of blood-revenge. The deepest sense of injury, the keenest resentment fell to the share of one Gideon, son of Joash, a young man of nobler temper than most Hebrews of the time. His father was head of a Thousand; and as he was an idolater the whole clan joined him in sacrificing to the Baal whose altar stood within the boundary of his farm. Already Gideon appears to have turned with loathing from that base worship; and he was pondering earnestly the cause of the pitiful state into which Israel had fallen. But the circumstances perplexed him. He was not able to account for facts in accordance with faith.
In a retired place on the hillside where a winepress
has been fashioned in a hollow of the rocks we first
see the future deliverer of Israel. His task for the
day is that of threshing out some wheat so that, as
soon as possible, the grain may be hid from the
Midianites; and he is busy with the flail, thinking
In a pause of his work, as he glances across the valley with anxious eye, suddenly he sees under an oak a stranger sitting staff in hand, as if he had sought rest for a little in the shade. Gideon scans the visitor keenly, but finding no cause for alarm bends again to his labour. The next time he looks up the stranger is beside him and words of salutation are falling from his lips—"Jehovah is with thee, thou mighty man of valour." To Gideon the words did not seem so strange as they would have seemed to some. Yet what did they mean? Jehovah with him? Strength and courage he is aware of. Sympathy with his fellow-Israelites and the desire to help them he feels. But these do not seem to him proofs of Jehovah's presence. And as for his father's house and the Hebrew people, God seems far from them. Harried and oppressed they are surely God-forsaken. Gideon can only wonder at the unseasonable greeting and ask what it means.
Unconsciousness of God is not rare. Men do not
attribute their regret over wrong, their faint longing
for the right to a spiritual presence within them and a
Divine working. The Unseen appears so remote, man
"Jehovah is with thee:" so ran the salutation.
Now, why insist as some do on that which is not
affirmed in the text? The form of the narrative must
be interpreted: and it does not require us to suppose
that Jehovah Himself, incarnate, speaking human words,
is upon the scene. The call is from Him, and indeed
Gideon has already a prepared heart, or he would not
listen to the messenger. But seven times in the brief
story the word Malakh marks a commissioned servant
as clearly as the other word Jehovah marks the Divine
will and revelation. After the man of God has vanished
from the hill swiftly, strangely, in the manner of his
coming, Gideon remains alive to Jehovah's immediate
"The Lord looked upon Gideon and said, Go in this thy might and save Israel from the hand of Midian: have not I sent thee?" It was a summons to stern and anxious work, and the young man could not be sanguine. He had considered and re-considered the state of things so long, he had so often sought a way of liberating his people and found none that he needed a clear indication how the effort was to be made. Would the tribes follow him, the youngest of an obscure family in Manasseh? And how was he to stir, how to gather the people? He builds an altar, Jehovah-shalom; he enters into covenant with the Eternal in high and earnest resolution, and with a sudden flash of prophet sight he sees the first thing to do. Baal's altar in the high place of Ophrah must be overthrown. Thereafter it will be known what faith and courage are to be found in Israel.
It is the call of God that ripens a life into power,
resolve, fruitfulness—the call and the response to it.
Continually the Bible urges upon us this great truth,
that through the keen sense of a close personal relation
But heroism is rare. We do not often commune with God nor listen with eager souls for His word. The world is always in need of men, but few appear. The usual is worshipped; the pleasure and profit of the day occupy us; even the sight of the cross does not rouse the heart. Speak, Heavenly Word! and quicken our clay. Let the thunders of Sinai be heard again, and then the still small voice that penetrates the soul. So shall heroism be born and duty done, and the dead shall live.
"The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valour:"—so has the prophetic salutation come to the young man at the threshing-floor of Ophrah. It is a personal greeting and call—"with thee"—just what a man needs in the circumstances of Gideon. There is a nation to be saved, and a human leader must act for Jehovah. Is Gideon fit for so great a task? A wise humility, a natural fear have held him under the yoke of daily toil until this hour. Now the needed signs are given; his heart leaps up in the pulses of a longing which God approves and blesses. The criticism of kinsfolk, the suspicious carping of neighbours, the easily affronted pride of greater families no longer crush patriotic desire and overbear yearning faith. The Lord is with thee, Gideon, youngest son of Joash, the toiler in obscure fields. Go in this thy might; be strong in Jehovah.
But the assurance must widen if it is to satisfy.
With me—that is a great thing for Gideon; that gives
him free air to breathe and strength to use the sword.
But can it be true? Can God be with one only in the
land? He seems to have forsaken Israel and sold His
people to the oppressor. Unless He returns to all in
There is here an example of largeness in heart and
mind which we ought not to miss, especially because
it sets before us a principle often unrecognised. It is
clear enough that Gideon could not enjoy freedom
unless his country was free, for no man can be safe in
an enslaved land; but many fail to see that spiritual
redemption in like manner cannot be enjoyed by one
unless others are moving towards the light. Truly
salvation is personal at first and personal at last; but
it is never an individual affair only. Each for himself
must hear and answer the Divine call to repentance;
each as a moral unit must enter the strait gate, press
along the narrow way of life, agonize and overcome.
But the redemption of one soul is part of a vast redeeming
purpose, and the fibres of each life are interwoven
with those of other lives far and wide. Spiritual
brotherhood is a fact but faintly typified by the brotherhood
of the Hebrews, and the struggling soul to-day,
like Gideon's long ago, must know God as the Saviour
of all men before a personal hope can be enjoyed worth
the having. As Gideon showed himself to have the
And the church of Christ must be filled with His Spirit, animated by His law of life, or be unworthy the name. It exists to unite men in the quest and realization of highest thought and purest activity. The church truly exists for all men, not simply for those who appear to compose it. Salvation and peace are with the church as with the individual believer, but only as her heart is generous, her spirit simple and unselfish. Doubtful and distressed as Gideon was the church of Christ should never be, for to her has been whispered the secret that the Abiezrite had not read, how the Lord is in the oppression and pain of the people, in the sorrow and the cloud. Nor is a church to suppose that salvation can be hers while she thinks of any outside with the least touch of Pharisaism, denying their share in Christ. Better no visible church than one claiming exclusive possession of truth and grace; better no church at all than one using the name of Christ for privilege and excommunication, restricting the fellowship of life to its own enclosure.
But with utmost generosity and humaneness goes
the clear perception that God's service is the sternest
of campaigns, beginning with resolute protest and
The idolatrous altar and false worship of one's
own clan, of one's own family—these need courage to
overturn and, more than courage, a ripeness of time
and a Divine call. A man must be sure of himself and
his motives, for one thing, before he takes upon him to
be the corrector of errors that have seemed truth to his
fathers and are maintained by his friends. Suppose
people are actually worshipping a false god, a world-power
which has long held rule among them. If one
would act the part of iconoclast the question is, By
what right? Is he himself clear of illusion and idolatry?
Has he a better system to put in place of the old? He
may be acting in mere bravado and self-display, flourishing
opinions which have less sincerity than those
which he assails. There were men in Israel who had
no commission and could have claimed no right to
throw down Baal's altar, and taking upon them such a
deed would have had short shrift at the hands of the
people of Ophrah. And so there are plenty among us
who if they set up to be judges of their fellow-men and
of beliefs which they call false, even when these are
false, deserve simply to be put down with a strong
Gideon was not unfit to render high service. He
We observe, however, that Gideon does not leave
Ophrah without an altar and a sacrifice. Destroy one
system without laying the foundation of another that
shall more than equal it in essential truth and practical
power, and what sort of deliverance have you effected?
Men will rightly execrate you. It is no reformation
that leaves the heart colder, the life barer and darker
than before; and those who move in the night against
superstition must be able to speak in the day of a
Living God who will vindicate His servants. It has
been said over and over again and must yet be repeated,
to overturn merely is no service. They that break
down need some vision at least of a building up, and
it is the new edifice that is the chief thing. The world
The morning sun showed the gap upon the hill
where the symbols had stood of Baal and Astarte, and
soon like an angry swarm of bees the people were
buzzing round the scattered stones of the old altar and
the rough new pile with its smoking sacrifice. Where
was he who ventured to rebuke the city? Very
indignant, very pious are these false Israelites. They
turn on Joash with the fierce demand, "Bring out thy
son that he may die." But the father too has come
to a decision. We get a hint of the same nature as
Gideon's, slow, but firm when once roused; and if
anything would rouse a man it would be this brutal
passion, this sudden outbreak of cruelty nursed by
heathen custom, his own conscience meanwhile testifying
that Gideon was right. Tush! says Joash, will
you plead for Baal? Will you save him? Is it
necessary for you to defend one whom you have worshipped
as Lord of heaven? Let him ply his lightnings
if he has any. I am tired of this Baal who has no
principles and is good only for feast-days. He that
pleads for Baal, let him be the man to die.—Unexpected
False religion is not always so easily exposed and
upset. Truth may be so mixed with the error of a
system that the moral sense is confused and faith
clings to the follies and lies conjoined with the truth.
And when we look at Judaism in contact with Christianity,
at Romanism in contact with the Protestant
spirit, we see how difficult it may be to liberate faith.
The Apostle Paul wielding the weapon of a singular
and keen eloquence cannot overcome the Pharisaism
of his countrymen. At Antioch, at Iconium he does
his utmost with scant success. The Protestant reformation
did not so swiftly and thoroughly establish
itself in every European country as in Scotland.
Where there is no pressure of outward circumstances
forcing new religious ideas upon men there must be
all the more a spirit of independent thought if any
salutary change is to be made in creed and worship.
Either there must be men of Berea who search the
Scriptures daily, men of Zurich and Berne with the
energy of free citizens, or reformation must wait on
some political emergency. And in effect conscience
rarely has free play, since men are seldom manly but
At Ophrah of the Abiezrites, though we cannot say
much for the nature of the faith in God which has
replaced idolatry, still the way is prepared for further
and decisive action. Men do not cease from worshipping
Now with this in view many will think it strange to
hear of the conversion of Abiezer. It is a great error
however to despise the day of small things. God gives
it and we ought to understand its use. Conversion
cannot possibly mean the same in every period of the
world's history; it cannot even mean the same in any
two cases. To recognise this would be to clear the
ground of much that hinders the teaching and the
success of the gospel. Where there has been long
familiarity with the New Testament, the facts of
Christianity and the high spiritual ideas it presents,
conversion properly speaking does not take place till
the message of Christ to the soul stirs it to its depths,
moves alike the reason and the will and creates
fervent discipleship. But the history of Israel and of
humanity moves forward continuously in successive
discoveries or revelations of the highest culminating in
the Christian salvation. To view Gideon as a religious
reformer of the same kind as Isaiah is quite a mistake.
There are some circles in which honesty and truth-speaking are evidence of a work of grace. To become honest and to speak truth in the fear of God is to be converted, in a sense, where things are at that pass. There are people who are so cold that among them enthusiasm for anything good may be called superhuman. Nobody has it. If it appears it must come from above. But these steps of progress, though we may describe them as supernatural, are elementary. Men have to be converted again and again, ever making one gain a step to another. The great advance comes when the soul believes enthusiastically in Christ, pledging itself to Him in full sight of the cross. This and nothing less is the conversion we need. To love freedom, righteousness, charity only prepares for the supreme love of God in Christ, in which life springs to its highest power and joy.
One answer certainly is that the nation at the stage
it has reached cannot as a whole esteem a better man,
cannot understand finer ideas. A hundred men of
more spiritual faith were possibly brooding over Israel's
state, ready to act as fearlessly as Gideon and to a
higher issue. But it could only have been after a
cleansing of the nation's life, a suppression of Baal-worship
It may seem well-nigh impossible in our day for any man to fail of the work he can do; if he has the will we think he can make the way. The inward call is the necessity, and when that is heard and the man shapes a task for himself the day to begin will come. Is that certain? Perhaps there are many now who find circumstance a web from which they cannot break away without arrogance and unfaithfulness. They could speak, they could do if God called them; but does He call them? On every side ring the fluent praises of the idols men love to worship. One must indeed be deft in speech and many other arts who would hope to turn the crowd from its folly, for it will only listen to what seizes the ear, and the obscure thinker has not the secret of pleasing. While those who see no visions lead their thousands to a trivial victory, many an uncalled Gideon toils on in the threshing-floor. The duties of a low and narrow lot may hold a man; the babble all around of popular voices may be so loud that nothing can make way against them. A certain slowness of the humble and patient spirit may keep one silent who with little encouragement could speak words of quickening truth. But the day of utterance never comes.
To these waiting in the market-place it is comparatively
a small thing that the world will not hire them.
Another day of hope and energy has dawned.
One hillside at least rises sunlit out of darkness
with the altar of Jehovah on its summit and holier
sacrifices smoking there than Israel has offered for
many a year. Let us see what elements of promise,
what elements of danger or possible error mingle with
the situation. There is a man to take the lead, a young
man, thoughtful, bold, energetic, aware of a Divine call
and therefore of some endowment for the task to be
done. Gideon believes Jehovah to be Israel's God and
Friend, Israel to be Jehovah's people. He has faith in
the power of the Unseen Helper. Baal is nothing, a
mere name—Bosheth, vanity. Jehovah is a certainty;
and what He wills shall come about. So far strength,
confidence. But of himself and the people Gideon is
not sure. His own ability to gather and command an
army, the fitness of any army the tribes can supply to
contend with Midian, these are as yet unproved. Only
one fact stands clear, Jehovah the supreme God with
Whom are all powers and influences. The rest is in
shadow. For one thing, Gideon cannot trace the connection
between the Most High and himself, between
the Power that controls the world and the power that
For the people generally this at least may be said, that they have wisdom enough to recognize the man of aptitude and courage though he belongs to one of the humblest families and is the least in his father's household. Drowning men indeed must take the help that is offered, and Israel is at present almost in the condition of a drowning man. A little more and it will sink under the wave of the Midianite invasion. It is not a time to ask of the rank of a man who has character for the emergency. And yet, so often is the hero unacknowledged, especially when he begins, as Gideon did, with a religious stroke, that some credit must be given to the people for their ready faith. As the flame goes up from the altar at Ophrah men feel a flash of hope and promise. They turn to the Abiezrite in trust and through him begin to trust God again. Yes: there is a reformation of a sort, and an honest man is at the head of it. So far the signs of the time are good.
Then the old enthusiasm is not dead. Almost Israel
had submitted, but again its spirit is rising. The
traditions of Deborah and Barak, of Joshua, of Moses,
of the desert march and victories linger with those
who are hiding amongst the caves and rocks. Songs
of liberty, promises of power are still theirs; they feel
that they should be free. Canaan is Jehovah's gift to
them and they will claim it. So far as reviving human
energy and confidence avail, there is a germ out of
Now have the heads of families and the chief men in Israel been active in rallying the tribes? Or have the people waited on their chiefs and the chiefs coldly held back?
There are good elements in the situation but others
not so encouraging. The secular leaders have failed;
and what are the priests and Levites doing? We hear
nothing of them. Gideon has to assume the double
office of priest and ruler. At Shiloh there is an altar.
There too is the ark, and surely some holy observances
are kept. Why does Gideon not lead the people to
Shiloh and there renew the national covenant through
the ministers of the tabernacle? He knows little of the
moral law and the sanctities of worship; and he is not
at this stage inclined to assume a function that is not
properly his. Yet it is unmistakable that Ophrah has
to be the religious centre. Ah! clearly there is opportunism
Such then is the state of matters so far as the tribes
are concerned at the time when Gideon sounds the
trumpet in Abiezer and sends messengers throughout
Manasseh, Zebulun, Asher and Naphtali. The tribes
are partly prepared for conflict, but they are weak and
still disunited. The muster of fighting men who gather
at the call of Gideon is considerable and perhaps
astonishes him. But the Midianites are in enormous
It is well that multitudes gather to the church to-day
for worship and enter themselves as members. But to
reckon all such as an army contending with infidelity
and wickedness—that would indeed be a mistake.
The mere tale of numbers gives no estimation of
strength, fighting strength, strength to resist and to
suffer. It is needful clearly to distinguish between
those who may be called captives of the church or
vassals simply, rendering a certain respect, and those
others, often a very few and perhaps the least regarded,
who really fight the battles. Our reckoning
at present is often misleading so that we occupy ground
which we cannot defend. We attempt to assail infidelity
with an ill-disciplined host, many of whom have no clear
faith, and to overcome worldliness by the co-operation
of those who are more than half-absorbed in the
pastimes and follies of the world. There is need to
look back to Gideon who knew what it was to fight.
While we are thankful to have so many connected with
Gideon for his work will have to make sharp division.
Three hundred who can dash fearlessly on the enemy
will be more to his purpose than two-and-thirty thousand
most of whom grow pale at the thought of battle,
and he will separate by-and-by. But first he seeks
another sign of Jehovah. This man knows that to do
anything worthy for his fellow-men he must be in living
touch with God. The idea has no more than elementary
form; but it rules. He, Gideon, is only an instrument,
and he must be well convinced that God is working
through him. How can he be sure? Like other
Israelites he is strongly persuaded that God appears
and speaks to men through nature; and he craves a
sign in the natural world which is of God's making
and upholding. Now to us the sign Gideon asked may
appear rude, uncouth and without any moral significance.
A fleece which is to be wet one morning while
the threshing-floor is dry, and dry next morning while
the threshing-floor is wet supplies the means of testing
the Divine presence and approval. Further it may be
alleged that the phenomena admit of natural explanation.
But this is the meaning. Gideon providing the
fleece identifies himself with it. It is his fleece, and if
God's dew drenches it that will imply that God's power
shall enter Gideon's soul and abide in it even though
Israel be dry as the dusty floor. The thought is at
once simple and profound, child-like and Hebrew-like,
Assured that yet another step in advance may be
taken, Gideon leads his forces northward and goes
into camp beside the spring of Harod on the slope of
Gilboa. Then he does what seems a strange thing for
a general on the eve of battle. The army is large but
utterly insufficient in discipline and morale for a pitched
battle with the Midianites. Men who have hastily
snatched their fathers' swords and pikes of which they
are half afraid are not to be relied upon in the heat
"Just for a handful of silver he left us,
Just for a riband to stick in his coat—
Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us,
Lost all the others she lets us devote....
We shall march prospering—not thro' his presence;
Songs may inspirit us—not from his lyre;
Deeds will be done—while he boasts his quiescence,
Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire."
In the same line of thought lies another reflection.
The men who had hastily snatched their fathers' swords
and pikes of which they were half afraid represent to
us certain modern defenders of Christianity—those who
carry edged weapons of inherited doctrine with which
they dare not strike home. The great battle-axes of
reprobation, of eternal judgment, of Divine severity
against sin once wielded by strong hands, how they
tremble and swerve in the grasp of many a modern dialectician.
The sword of the old creed, that once like
Excalibur cleft helmets and breastplates through, how
often it maims the hands that try to use it but want
alike the strength and the cunning. Too often we see
Ten thousand Israelites remain who according to
their own judgment are brave enough and prepared
for the fight; but the purpose of the commander is not
answered yet. He is resolved to have yet another
winnowing that shall leave only the men of temper like
his own, men of quick intelligence no less than zeal.
At the foot of the hill there flows a stream of water,
and towards it Gideon leads his diminished army as
if at once to cross and attack the enemy in camp.
Will they seize his plan and like one man act upon it?
Only on those who do can he depend. It is an effective
trial. With the hot work of fighting before them
the water is needful to all, but in the way of drinking
men show their spirit. The most kneel or lie down by
the edge of the brook that by putting their lips to the
water they may take a long and leisurely draught. A
Many are the commonplace incidents, the seemingly
small points in life that test the quality of men. Every
day we are led to the stream-side to show what we
are, whether eager in the Divine enterprise of faith or
slack and self-considering. Take any company of men
and women who claim to be on the side of Christ,
engaged and bound in all seriousness to His service.
But how many have it clearly before them that they
must not entangle themselves more than is absolutely
needful with bodily and sensuous cravings, that they
must not lie down to drink from the stream of pleasure
and amusement? We show our spiritual state by
the way in which we spend our leisure, our Saturday
afternoons, our Sabbaths. We show whether we are
fit for God's business by our use of the flowing stream
of literature, which to some is an opiate, to others a
pure and strengthening draught. The question simply
is whether we are so engaged with God's plan for our
We live in a time when people are piling up object after object that needs attention and entering into engagement after engagement that comes between them and the supreme duty of existence. They form so many acquaintances that every spare hour goes in visiting and receiving visits: yet the end of life is not talk. They are members of so many societies that they scarcely get at the work for which the societies exist: yet the end of life is not organizing. They see so many books, hear so much news and criticism that truth escapes them altogether: yet the end of life is to know and do the Truth. Civilization defeats its own use when it keeps us drinking so long at this and the other spring that we forget the battle. We mean to fight, we mean to do our part, but night falls while we are still occupied on the way. Yet our Master is one who restricted the earthly life to its simplest elements because only so could spiritual energy move freely to its mark.
In the incidents we have been reviewing voluntary
churches may find hints at least towards the justification
of their principle. The idea of a national church
is on more than one side intelligible and valid. Christianity
stands related to the whole body of the people,
bountiful even to those who scorn its laws, pleading on
their behalf with God, keeping an open door and sending
forth a perpetual call of love to the weak, the erring,
the depraved. The ideal of a national church is to
represent this universal office and realize this inclusiveness
of the Christian religion; and the charm is great.
On the other hand a voluntary church is the recognition
of the fact that while Christ stands related to all men
There is now with Gideon a select band of three hundred ready for a night attack on the Midianites. The leader has been guided to a singular and striking plan of action. It is however as he well knows a daring thing to begin assault upon the immense camp of Midian with so small a band, even though reserves of nearly ten thousand wait to join in the struggle; and we can easily see that the temper and spirit of the enemy were important considerations on the eve of so hazardous a battle. If the Midianites, Amalekites and Children of the East formed a united army, if they were prepared to resist, if they had posted sentinels on every side and were bold in prospect of the fight, it was necessary for Gideon to be well aware of the facts. On the other hand if there were symptoms of division in the tents of the enemy, if there were no adequate preparations, and especially if the spirit of doubt or fear had begun to show itself, these would be indications that Jehovah was preparing victory for the Hebrews.
Gideon is led to inquire for himself into the condition
of the Midianitish host. To learn that already his
name kindles terror in the ranks of the enemy will
Under cover of the night which made Midian seem
more awful the Hebrew chief and his servant left the
outpost on the slope of Gilboa and crept from shadow
to shadow across the space which separated them from
the enemy, vaguely seeking what quickly came. Lying
in breathless silence behind some bush or wall the
Hebrews heard one relating a dream to his fellow. "I
Now in every combination of godless men there is
a like feeling of insecurity, a like presage of disaster.
Those who are in revolt against justice, truth and the
religion of God have nothing on which to rest, no
In the course of our Lord's brief ministry the insecurity
of those who opposed Him was often shown.
The chief priests and scribes and lawyers whispered to
each other the fears and anxieties He aroused. In the
Sanhedrin the discussion about Him comes to the point,
"What do we? For this man doeth many signs. If
we let Him thus alone, all men will believe on Him:
and the Romans will come and take away both our
peace and our nation." The Pharisees say among
themselves, "Perceive ye how ye prevail nothing?
Behold the world is gone after Him." And what was
the reason, what was the cause of this weakness?
Intense devotion to the law and the institutions of
religion animated those Israelites yet sufficed not to
Passing from this supreme evidence that the wrong can never be the strong, look at those ignorant and unhappy persons who combine against the laws of society. Their suspicions of each other are proverbial, and ever with them is the feeling that sooner or later they will be overtaken by the law. They dream of that and tell each other their dreams. The game of crime is played against well-known odds. Those who carry it on are aware that their haunts will be discovered, their gang broken up. A bribe will tempt one of their number and the rest will have to go their way to the cell or the gallows. Yet with the presage of defeat wrought into the very constitution of the mind and with innumerable proofs that it is no delusion, there are always those amongst us who attempt what even in this world is so hazardous and in the larger sweep of moral economy is impossible. In selfishness, in oppression and injustice, in every kind of sensuality men adventure as if they could ensure their safety and defy the day of reckoning.
Gideon is now well persuaded that the fear of
disaster is not for Israel. He returns to the camp and
forthwith prepares to strike. It seems to him now the
easiest thing possible to throw into confusion that
great encampment of Midian. One bold device rapidly
It was not long after midnight, the middle watch had
been newly set, when the three companies reached
their stations. The orders had been well seized and
all went precisely as Gideon had conceived. With
crash and tumult and flare of torches there came the
battle-shout—"Sword of Jehovah and of Gideon."
The Israelites had no need to press forward; they
stood every man in his place, while fear and suspicion
did the work. The host ran and cried and fled. To
and fro among the tents, seeing now on this side now
on that the menacing flames, turning from the battle-cry
here to be met in an opposite quarter by the wild
dissonance of the horns, the surprised army was thrown
1. There is in this narrative a lesson as to equipment
for the battle of life and the service of God
somewhat like that which we found in the story of
Shamgar, yet with points of difference. We are reminded
here of what may be done without wealth,
without the material apparatus that is often counted
necessary. The modern habit is to make much of tools
and outfit. The study and applications of science have
brought in a fashion of demanding everything possible
in the way of furniture, means, implements. Everywhere
this fashion prevails, in the struggle of commerce
and manufacture, in literature and art, in teaching and
2. We have been reading a story of panic and defeat, and we may be advised to find in it a hint of the fate that is to overtake Christianity when modern criticism has finally ordered its companies and provided them with terrifying horns and torches. Or certain Christians may feel that the illustration fits the state of alarm in which they are obliged to live. Is not the church like that encampment in the valley, exposed to the most terrible and startling attacks on all sides, and in peril constantly of being routed by unforeseen audacities, here of Ingersoll, Bakunin, Bebel, there of Huxley or Renan? Not seldom still, though after many a false alarm, the cry is raised, "The church, the faith—in danger!"
Once for all—the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ is
3. Without pursuing this suggestion we pass to another raised by the conduct of the men of Ephraim. They obeyed the call of Gideon when he hastily summoned them to take the lower fords of Jordan within their own territory and prevent the escape of the Midianites. To them it fell to gain a great victory, and especially to slay two subordinate chiefs, Oreb and Zeeb, the Crow and the Wolf. But afterwards they complained that they had not been called at first when the commander was gathering his army. We are informed that they chode with him sharply on this score, and it was only by his soft answer which implied a little flattery that they were appeased. "What have I now in comparison with you? Is not the gleaning of the grapes of Ephraim better than the vintage of Abiezer?"
The men of Ephraim were not called at first along
with Manasseh, Zebulun, Asher and Naphtali. True.
But why? Was not Gideon aware of their selfish
indifference? Did he not read their character? Did
he not perceive that they would have sullenly refused
to be led by a man of Manasseh, the youngest son of
Joash of Abiezer? Only too well did the young chief
know with whom he had to deal. There had been
fighting already between Israel and the Midianites.
Did Ephraim help then? Nay: but secure in her
mountains that tribe sullenly and selfishly held aloof.
Do we not often see something like this? There are people who will not hazard position or profit in identifying themselves with an enterprise while the issue is doubtful, but desire to have the credit of connection with it if it should succeed. They have not the humanity to associate themselves with those who are fighting in a good cause because it is good. In fact they do not know what is good, their only test of value being success. They lie by, looking with half-concealed scorn on the attempts of the earnest, sneering at their heat either in secret or openly, and when one day it becomes clear that the world is applauding they conceive a sudden respect for those at whom they scoffed. Now they will do what they can to help,—with pleasure, with liberality. Why were they not sooner invited? They will almost make a quarrel of that, and they have to be soothed with fair speeches. And people who are worldly at heart push forward in this fashion when Christian affairs have success or éclat attached to them, especially where religion wears least of its proper air and has somewhat of the earthly in tone and look. Christ pursued by the Sanhedrin, despised by the Roman is no person for them to know. Let Him have the patronage of Constantine or a de' Medici and they are then assured that He has claims which they will admit—in theory. More than that needs not be expected from men and women "of the world." "Messieurs, surtout, pas de zèle." Above all, no zeal: that is the motto of every Ephraim since time began. Wait till zeal is cooling before you join the righteous cause.
Penuel and Succoth lay in the way between the
wilderness in which the Midianites dwelt and the
valleys of western Palestine. The men of these cities
feared that if they aided Gideon they would bring on
themselves the vengeance of the desert tribes. Yet
where do we see the lowest point of unfaith and
meanness, in Ephraim or Succoth? It is perhaps
hard to say which are the least manly: those contrive
to join the conquering host and snatch the credit of
victory; these are not so clever, and while they are
as eager to make things smooth for themselves the
thorns and briars are more visibly their portion. To
share the honour of a cause for which you have done
very little is an easy thing in this world, though an honest
5. Yet another word of instruction is found in the
appeal of Gideon: "Give, I pray you, loaves of bread
unto the people that follow me, for they be faint and
I am pursuing after Zebah and Zalmunna." Well has
the expression "Faint yet pursuing" found its place
as a proverb of the religious life. We are called to
"On, chariot! on, soul!
Ye are all the more fleet.
Be alone at the goal
Of the strange and the sweet!"
6. Finally let us glance at the fate of Zebah and Zalmunna, not without a feeling of admiration and of pity for the rude ending of these stately lives.
The sword of Jehovah and of Gideon has slain its
thousands. The vast desert army has been scattered
like chaff, in the flight, at the fords, by the rock Oreb
and the winepress Zeeb, all along the way by Nobah
and Jogbehah, and finally at Karkor, where having
We hear Gideon command his son Jether to fall upon the captive chiefs, who brilliant and stately once lie disarmed, bound and helpless. The indignity is not to our mind. We would have thought more of Gideon had he offered freedom to these captives "fallen on evil days," men to be admired not hated. But probably they do not desire a life which has in it no more of honour. Only let the Hebrew leader not insult them by the stroke of a young man's sword. The great chiefs would die by a warrior's blow. And Jether cannot slay them; his hand falters as he draws the sword. These men who have ruled their tens of thousands have still the lion look that quails. "Rise thou and fall upon us," they say to Gideon: "for as the man is, so is his strength." And so they die, types of the greatest earthly powers that resist the march of Divine Providence, overthrown by a sword which even in faulty weak human hands has indefeasible sureness and edge.
"As the man is, so is his strength." It is another
of the pregnant sayings which meet us here and there
On all sides the application may be seen. In the home and its varied incidents of education, sickness, discipline; in society high and low; in politics, in literature. As the man or woman is in simple allegiance to God and clear resolution there is strength to endure, to govern, to think and every way to live. Otherwise there can only be instability, foolishness, blundering selfishness, a sad passage to inanition and decay.
The great victory of Gideon had this special significance,
that it ended the incursions of the wandering
races of the desert. Canaan offered a continual lure to
the nomads of the Arabian wilderness, as indeed the
eastern and southern parts of Syria do at the present
time. The hazard was that wave after wave of Midianites
and Bedawin sweeping over the land should destroy
agriculture and make settled national life and civilization
impossible. And when Gideon undertook his work
the risk of this was acute. But the defeat inflicted on
the wild tribes proved decisive. "Midian was subdued
before the children of Israel, and they lifted up their
heads no more." The slaughter that accompanied the
overthrow of Zebah and Zalmunna, Oreb and Zeeb
became in the literature of Israel a symbol of the
destruction which must overtake the foes of God.
"Do thou to thine enemies as unto Midian"—so runs
the cry of a psalm—"Make their nobles like Oreb and
Zeeb: yea, all their princes like Zebah and Zalmunna,
who said, Let us take to ourselves in possession the
habitations of God." In Isaiah the remembrance gives
a touch of vivid colour to the oracle of the coming
Wonderful, Prince of Peace. "The yoke of his burden
On his return from the campaign the wish of the
people was expressed to Gideon that he should assume
the title of king. The nation needed a settled government,
a centre of authority which would bind the tribes
together, and the Abiezrite chief was now clearly marked
as a man fit for royalty. He was able to persuade as
well as to fight; he was bold, firm and prudent. But
Along with his devotion to God it is quite likely that
the caution of Gideon had much to do with his resolve.
He had already found some difficulty in dealing with the
Ephraimites, and he could easily foresee that if he became
king the pride of that large clan would rise strongly
against him. If the gleaning of the grapes of Ephraim
was better than the whole vintage of Abiezer, as Gideon
had declared, did it not follow that any elder of the great
central tribe would better deserve the position of king
than the youngest son of Joash of Abiezer? The men
of Succoth and Penuel too had to be reckoned with.
Before Gideon could establish himself in a royal seat
he would have to fight a great coalition in the centre
But there was another reason for his decision which may have had even more weight. Like many men who have distinguished themselves in one way, his real ambition lay in a different direction. We think of him as a military genius. He for his part looked to the priestly office and the transmission of Divine oracles as his proper calling. The enthusiasm with which he overthrew the altar of Baal, built the new altar of Jehovah and offered his first sacrifice upon it survived when the wild delights of victory had passed away. The thrill of awe and the strange excitement he had felt when Divine messages came to him and signs were given in answer to his prayer affected him far more deeply and permanently than the sight of a flying enemy and the pride of knowing himself victor in a great campaign. Neither did kingship appear much in comparison with access to God, converse with Him and declaration of His will to men. Gideon appears already tired of war, with no appetite certainly for more, however successful, and impatient to return to the mysterious rites and sacred privileges of the altar. He had good reason to acknowledge the power over Israel's destiny of the Great Being Whose spirit had come upon him, Whose promises had been fulfilled. He desired to cultivate that intercourse with Heaven which more than anything else gave him the sense of dignity and strength. From the offer of a crown he turned as if eager to don the robe of a priest and listen for the holy oracles that none beside himself seemed able to receive.
"He made an ephod and put it in his city, even
in Ophrah." A strong but not spiritual religiousness,
we have said, is the chief note of Gideon's character.
It may be objected that such a one, if he seeks ecclesiastical
office, does so unworthily; but to say so is an
uncharitable error. It is not the devout temper alone
that finds attraction in the ministry of sacred things;
nor should a love of place and power be named as
the only other leading motive. One who is not devout
may in all sincerity covet the honour of standing for
God before the congregation, leading the people in
worship and interpreting the sacred oracles. A vulgar
explanation of human desire is often a false one; it
is so here. The ecclesiastic may show few tokens of
the spiritual temper, the other-worldliness, the glowing
and simple truth we rightly account to be the proper
But the ecclesiastic must have the ephod. The man who feels the dignity of religion more than its humane simplicity, realizing it as a great movement of absorbing interest, will naturally have regard to the means of increasing dignity and making the movement impressive. Gideon calls upon the people for the golden spoils taken from the Midianites, nose-rings, earrings and the like, and they willingly respond. It is easy to obtain gifts for the outward glory of religion, and a golden image is soon to be seen within a house of Jehovah on the hill at Ophrah. Whatever form it had, this figure was to Gideon no idol but a symbol or sign of Jehovah's presence among the people, and by means of it, in one or other of the ways used at the time, as for example by casting lots from within it, appeal was made to God with the utmost respect and confidence. When it is supposed that Gideon fell away from his first faith in making this image the error lies in overestimating his spirituality at the earlier stage. We must not think that at any time the use of a symbolic image would have seemed wrong to him. It was not against images but against worship of false and impure gods that his zeal was at first directed. The sacred pole was an object of detestation because it was a symbol of Astarte.
In some way we cannot explain the whole life of
But while we try to understand we are not to miss
the warning which comes home to us through this
chapter of religious history. Pure and, for the time,
even elevated in the motive, Gideon's attempt at priestcraft
led to his fall. For a while we see the hero
acting as judge at Ophrah and presiding with dignity
at the altar. His best wisdom is at the service of the
people and he is ready to offer for them at new moon
or harvest the animals they desire to consecrate and
consume in the sacred feast. In a spirit of real faith
and no doubt with much sagacity he submits their
inquiries to the test of the ephod. But "the thing
became a snare to Gideon and his house," perhaps in
Reviewing the story of Gideon's life we find this clear lesson, that within certain limits he who trusts and obeys God has a quite irresistible efficiency. This man had, as we have seen, his limitations, very considerable. As a religious leader, prophet or priest, he was far from competent; there is no indication that he was able to teach Israel a single Divine doctrine, and as to the purity and mercy, the righteousness and love of God, his knowledge was rudimentary. In the remote villages of the Abiezrites the tradition of Jehovah's name and power remained, but in the confusion of the times there was no education of children in the will of God: the Law was practically unknown. From Shechem where Baal-Berith was worshipped the influence of a degrading idolatry had spread, obliterating every religious idea except the barest elements of the old faith. Doing his very best to understand God, Gideon never saw what religion in our sense means. His sacrifices were appeals to a Power dimly felt through nature and in the greater epochs of the national history, chastising now and now friendly and beneficent.
Yet, seriously limited as he was, Gideon when he
had once laid hold of the fact that he was called by the
unseen God to deliver Israel went on step by step to
Now this is the very conception of life which we in
our far wider knowledge are apt to miss, which nevertheless
it is our chief business to grasp and carry into
practice. You stand there, a man instructed in a
thousand things of which Gideon was ignorant, instructed
especially in the nature and will of God Whom
Christ has revealed. It is your privilege to take a
broad survey of human life, of duty, to look beyond
the present to the eternal future with its infinite possibilities
of gain and loss. But the danger is that year
after year all thought and effort shall be on your own
account, that with each changing wind of circumstance
you change your purpose, that you never understand
God's demand nor find the true use of knowledge, will
and life in fulfilling that. Have you a Divine task to
effect? You doubt it. Where is anything that can
be called a commission of God? You look this way
and that for a little, then give up the quest. This year
finds you without enthusiasm, without devotion even
as you have been in other years. So life ebbs away
and is lost in the wide flat sands of the secular and
trivial, and the soul never becomes part of the strong
A century ago Englishmen were as little devout as
they are to-day; they were even less spiritual, less
moved to fine issues. They had their scepticisms too,
their rough ignorant prejudices, their giant errors and
perversities. "We have gained vastly," as Professor
Seeley says, "in breadth of view, intelligence and
refinement. Probably what we threw aside could not
be retained; what we adopted was forced upon us by
the age. Nevertheless, we had formerly what I may
call a national discipline, which formed a firm, strongly-marked
national character. We have now only
materials, which may be of the first quality, but have
not been worked up. We have everything except
You live, let us say, among those who doubt God, doubt whether there is any redemption, whether the whole Christian gospel and hope are not in the air, dreams, possibilities, rather than facts of the Eternal Will. The storm-wind blows and you hear its roaring: that is palpable fact, divine or cosmic. Its errand will be accomplished. Great rivers flow, great currents sweep through the ocean. Their mighty urgency who can doubt? But the spiritual who can believe? You do not feel in the sphere of the moral, of the spiritual the wind that makes no sound, the current that rolls silently charged with sublime energies, effecting a vast and wonderful purpose. Yet here are the great facts; and we must find our part in that spiritual urgency, do our duty there, or lose all. We must launch out on the mighty stream of redemption or never reach eternal light, for all else moves down to death. Christ Himself is to be victorious in us. The glory of our life is that we can be irresistible in the region of our duty, irresistible in conflict with the evil, the selfishness, the falsehood given us to overthrow. To realize that is to live. The rest is all mere experiment, getting ready for the task of existence, making armour, preparing food, otherwise, at the worst, a winter's morning before inglorious death.
One other thing observe, that underlying Gideon's
desire to fill the office of priest there was a dull perception
of the highest function of one man in relation to
others. It appears to the common mind a great thing
Now in a dim way the priestly function presented
itself to Gideon and allured him. Sufficient for it he
was not, and his ephod became a snare. Neither could
he grasp the wisdom of heaven nor understand the
needs of men. In his hands the sacred art did not
prosper, he became content with the appearance and
the gain. It is so with many who take the name
of priests. In truth on one side the term and all it
The history we are tracing moves from man to man; the personal influence of the hero is everything while it lasts and confusion follows on his death. Gideon appears as one of the most successful Hebrew judges in maintaining order. While he was there in Ophrah religion and government had a centre "and the country was in quietness forty years." A man far from perfect but capable of mastery held the reins and gave forth judgment with an authority none could challenge. His burial in the family sepulchre in Ophrah is specially recorded as if it had been a great national tribute to his heroic power and skilful administration.
The funeral over, discord began. A rightful ruler there was not. Among the claimants of power there was no man of power. Gideon left many sons, but not one of them could take his place. The confederation of cities half Hebrew, half Canaanite with Shechem at their head, of which we have already heard, held in check while Gideon lived, now began to control the politics of the tribes. By using the influence of this league a usurper who had no title whatever to the confidence of the people succeeded in exalting himself.
We cannot tell how far there was reason for saying
that the family of Gideon were aiming at an aristocracy.
They may have had some vague purpose of the kind.
The suggestion, at all events, was cunning and had its
effect. The people of Shechem had stored considerable
treasure in the sanctuary of Baal, and by public vote
seventy pieces of silver were paid out of it to Abimelech.
The money was at once used by him in hiring a band of
A villainous coup d'état this. From Gideon overthrowing Baal and proclaiming Jehovah to Abimelech bringing up Baal again with hideous fratricide—it is a wretched turn of things. Gideon had to some extent prepared the way for a man far inferior to himself, as all do who are not utterly faithful to their light and calling; but he never imagined there could be so quick and shocking a revival of barbarism. Yet the ephod-dealing, the polygamy, the immorality into which he lapsed were bound to come to fruit. The man who once was a pure Hebrew patriot begat a half-heathen son to undo his own work. As for the Shechemites, they knew quite well to what end they had voted those seventy pieces of silver; and the general opinion seems to have been that the town had its money's worth, a life for each piece and, to boot, a king reeking with blood and shame. Surely it was a well-spent grant. Their confederation, their god had triumphed. They made Abimelech king by the oak of the pillar that was in Shechem.
It is the success of the adventurer we have here,
that common event. Abimelech is the oriental adventurer
and uses the methods of another age than ours;
yet we have our examples, and if they are less scandalous
The Bible, most entirely honest of books, frankly
sets before us this adventurer, Abimelech, in the midst
of the judges of Israel, as low a specimen of "success"
as need be looked for; and we trace the well-known
means by which such a person is promoted. "His
mother's brethren spake of him in the ears of all the
men of Shechem." That there was little to say, that
he was a man of no character mattered not the least.
The thing was to create an impression so that Abimelech's
scheme might be introduced and forced. So far
he could intrigue and then, the first steps gained, he
could mount. But there was in him none of the
mental power that afterwards marked Jehu, none of
the charm that survives with the name of Absalom. It
was on jealousy, pride, ambition he played as the most
jealous, proud and ambitious; yet for three years the
Hebrews of the league, blinded by the desire to have
And by this sovereignty the Israelites who acknowledged it were doubly and trebly compromised. Not only did they accept a man without a record, they believed in one who was an enemy to his country's religion, one therefore quite ready to trample upon its liberty. This is really the beginning of a worse oppression than that of Midian or of Jabin. It shows on the part of Hebrews generally as well as those who tamely submitted to Abimelech's lordship a most abject state of mind. After the bloody work at Ophrah the tribes should have rejected the fratricide with loathing and risen like one man to suppress him. If the Baal-worshippers of Shechem would make him king there ought to have been a cause of war against them in which every good man and true should have taken the field. We look in vain for any such opposition to the usurper. Now that he is crowned, Manasseh, Ephraim and the North regard him complacently. It is the world all over. How can we wonder at this when we know with what acclamations kings scarcely more reputable than he have been greeted in modern times? Crowds gather and shout, fires of welcome blaze; there is joy as if the millennium had come. It is a king crowned, restored, his country's head, defender of the faith. Vain is the hope, pathetic the joy.
There is no man of spirit to oppose Abimelech in the
field. The duped nation must drink its cup of misrule
and blood. But one appears of keen wit, apt and
trenchant in speech. At least the tribes shall hear
what one sound mind thinks of this coronation. Jotham,
as we saw, escaped the slaughter at Ophrah. In the
rear of the murderer he has crossed the hills and he
It is a piece of satire of the best order, brief, stinging,
true. The craving for a king is lashed and then the
wonderful choice of a ruler. Jotham speaks as an
anarchist, one might say, but with God understood
as the centre of law and order. It is a vision of the
Theocracy taking shape from a keen and original mind.
He figures men as trees growing independently, dutifully.
And do trees need a king? Are they not set
in their natural freedom each to yield fruit as best it
can after its kind? Men of Shechem, Hebrews all,
if they will only attend to their proper duties and do
quiet work as God wills, appear to Jotham to need a
king no more than the trees. Under the benign course
of nature, sunshine and rain, wind and dew, the trees
have all the restraint they need, all the liberty that is
good for them. So men under the providence of God,
adoring and obeying Him, have the best control, the
only needful control, and with it liberty. Are they
not fools then to go about seeking a tyrant to rule
them, they who should be as cedars of Lebanon, willows
Again the fable is directed against Abimelech. What
was this man to whom Shechem had sworn fealty?
An olive, a fig-tree, fruitful and therefore to be sought
after? Was he a vine capable of rising on popular
support to useful and honourable service? Not he.
It was the bramble they had chosen, the poor grovelling
jagged thorn-bush that tears the flesh, whose end is to
feed the fire of the oven. Who ever heard of a good
or heroic deed Abimelech had done? He was simply
a contemptible upstart, without moral principle, as
ready to wound as to flatter, and they who chose him
for king would too soon find their error. Now that
he had done something, what was it? There were
Israelites among the crowd that shouted in his honour.
Had they already forgotten the services of Gideon so
completely as to fall down before a wretch red-handed
from the murder of their hero's sons? Such a beginning
We find instruction in the parable by regarding the answers put into the mouth of this tree and that when they are invited to wave to and fro over the others. There are honours which are dearly purchased, high positions which cannot be assumed without renouncing the true end and fruition of life. One for example who is quietly and with increasing efficiency doing his part in a sphere to which he is adapted must set aside the gains of long discipline if he is to become a social leader. He can do good where he is. Not so certain is it that he will be able to serve his fellows well in public office. It is one thing to enjoy the deference paid to a leader while the first enthusiasm on his behalf continues, but it is quite another thing to satisfy all the demands made as years go on and new needs arise. When any one is invited to take a position of authority he is bound to consider carefully his own aptitudes. He needs also to consider those who are to be subjects or constituents and make sure that they are of the kind his rule will fit. The olive looks at the cedar and the terebinth and the palm. Will they admit his sovereignty by-and-by though now they vote for it? Men are taken with the candidate who makes a good impression by emphasizing what will please and suppressing opinions that may provoke dissent. When they know him, how will it be? When criticism begins, will the olive not be despised for its gnarled stem, its crooked branches and dusky foliage?
The fable does not make the refusal of olive and fig-tree
The fable of Jotham, in so far as it flings sarcasm at
the persons who desire eminence for the sake of it and
not for the good they will be able to do, is an example
of that wisdom which is as unpopular now as ever it
has been in human history, and the moral needs every
day to be kept full in view. It is desire for distinction
and power, the opportunity of waving to and fro over
the trees, the right to use this handle and that to their
We pass here, however, beyond the meaning Jotham
desired to convey, for, as we have seen, he would have
justified every one in refusing to reign. And certainly
if society could be held together and guided without
the exaltation of one over another, by the fidelity of
each to his own task and brotherly feeling between
man and man, there would be a far better state of
things. But while the fable expounds a God-impelled
anarchy, the ideal state of mankind, our modern schemes,
omitting God, repudiating the least notion of a supernatural
fount of life, turn upon themselves in hopeless
confusion. When the divine law rules every life we
shall not need organised governments; until then entire
freedom in the world is but a name for unchaining
every lust that degrades and darkens the life of man.
Far away, as a hope of the redeemed and Christ-led
race, there shines the ideal Theocracy revealed to the
greater minds of the Hebrew people, often re-stated,
never realised. But at present men need a visible
centre of authority. There must be administrators
and executors of law, there must be government and
legislation till Christ reigns in every heart. The movement
which resulted in Abimelech's sovereignty was
the blundering start in a series of experiments the
Abimelech maintained himself in power for three years, no doubt amid growing dissatisfaction. Then came the outburst which Jotham had predicted. An evil spirit, really present from the first, rose between Abimelech and the men of Shechem. The bramble began to tear themselves, a thing they were not prepared to endure. Once rooted however it was not easily got rid of. One who knows the evil arts of betrayal is quick to suspect treachery, the false person knows the ways of the false and how to fight them with their own weapons. A man of high character may be made powerless by the disclosure of some true words he has spoken; but when Shechem would be rid of Abimelech it has to employ brigands and organise robbery. "They set liers in wait for him in the mountains who robbed all that came along that way," the merchants no doubt to whom Abimelech had given a safe conduct. Shechem in fact became the head-quarters of a band of highwaymen whose crimes were condoned or even approved in the hope that one day the despot would be taken and an end put to his misrule.
It may appear strange that our attention is directed
to these vulgar incidents, as they may be called, which
were taking place in and about Shechem. Why has the
historian not chosen to tell us of other regions where
some fear of God survived and guided the lives of men,
And yet the narrative before us has its value from
the religious point of view. It shows the disastrous
result of that coalition with idolaters into which the
Hebrews about Shechem entered, it illustrates the
danger of co-partnery with the worldly on worldly terms.
The confederacy of which Shechem was the centre
is a type of many in which people who should be
guided always by religion bind themselves for business
or political ends with those who have no fear of God
before their eyes. Constantly it happens in such
cases that the interests of the commercial enterprise
or of the party are considered before the law of righteousness.
The business affair must be made to
succeed at all hazards. Christian people as partners
of companies are committed to schemes which imply
Sabbath work, sharp practices in buying and selling,
Against Abimelech the adventurer there arose another
of the same stamp, Gaal son of Ebed, that is the
Abhorred, son of a slave. In him the men of Shechem
put their confidence such as it was. At the festival
of vintage there was a demonstration of a truly barbarous
sort. High carousal was held in the temple
of Baal. There were loud curses of Abimelech and
Gaal made a speech. His argument was that this
Abimelech, though his mother belonged to Shechem,
was yet also the son of Baal's adversary, far too much
Zebul, prefect of the city, who was present, heard all this with anger. He was of Abimelech's party still and immediately informed his chief, who lost no time in marching on Shechem to suppress the revolt. According to a common plan of warfare he divided his troops into four companies and in the early morning these crept towards the city, one by a track across the mountains, another down the valley from the west, the third by way of the Diviners' Oak, the fourth perhaps marching from the plain of Mamre by way of Jacob's well. The first engagement drove the Shechemites into their city, and on the following day the place was taken, sacked and destroyed. Some distance from Shechem, probably up the valley to the west, stood a tower or sanctuary of Baal around which a considerable village had gathered. The people there, seeing the fate of the lower town, betook themselves to the tower and shut themselves up within it. But Abimelech ordered his men to provide themselves with branches of trees, which were piled against the door of the temple and set on fire, and all within were smothered or burned to the number of a thousand.
At Thebez, another of the confederate cities, the
pretender met his death. In the siege of the tower
which stood within the walls of Thebez the horrible
expedient of burning was again attempted. Abimelech
directing the operations had pressed close to the door
when a woman cast an upper millstone from the
One turns from these scenes of bloodshed and cruelty with loathing. Yet they show what human nature is, and how human history would shape itself apart from the faith and obedience of God. We are met by obvious warnings; but so often does the evidence of divine judgment seem to fail, so often do the wicked prosper that it is from another source than observation of the order of things in this world we must obtain the necessary impulse to higher life. It is only as we wait on the guidance and obey the impulses of the Spirit of God that we shall move towards the justice and brotherhood of a better age. And those who have received the light and found the will of the Spirit must not slacken their efforts on behalf of religion. Gideon did good service in his day, yet failing in faithfulness he left the nation scarcely more earnest, his own family scarcely instructed. Let us not think that religion can take care of itself. Heavenly justice and truth are committed to us. The Christ-life generous, pure, holy must be commended by us if it is to rule the world. The persuasion that mankind is to be saved in and by the earthly survives, and against that most obstinate of all delusions we are to stand in constant resolute protest, counting every needful sacrifice our simple duty, our highest glory. The task of the faithful is no easier to-day than it was a thousand years ago. Men and women can be treacherous still with heathen cruelty and falseness; they can be vile still with heathen vileness, though wearing the air of the highest civilization. If ever the people of God had a work to do in the world they have it now.
The scene of the history shifts now to the east of Jordan, and we learn first of the influence which the region called Gilead was coming to have in Hebrew development from the brief notice of a chief named Jair who held the position of judge for twenty-two years. Tola, a man of Issachar, succeeded Abimelech, and Jair followed Tola. In the Book of Numbers we are informed that the children of Machir son of Manasseh went to Gilead and took it and dispossessed the Amorites which were therein; and Moses gave Gilead unto Machir the son of Manasseh. It is added that Jair the son or descendant of Manasseh went and took the towns of Gilead and called them Havvoth-jair; and in this statement the Book of Numbers anticipates the history of the judges.
Gilead is described by modern travellers as one of
the most varied districts of Palestine. The region is
mountainous and its peaks rise to three and even four
thousand feet above the trough of the Jordan. The
southern part is beautiful and fertile, watered by the
Jabbok and other streams that flow westward from
the hills. "The valleys green with corn, the streams
fringed with oleander, the magnificent screens of yellow-green
To the north and east of Gilead lie Bashan and that extraordinary volcanic region called the Argob or the Lejah where the Havvoth-jair or towns of Jair were situated. The traveller who approaches this singular district from the north sees it rising abruptly from the plain, the edge of it like a rampart about twenty feet high. It is of a rude oval shape, some twenty miles long from north to south, and fifteen in breadth, and is simply a mass of dark jagged rocks, with clefts between in which were built not a few cities and villages. The whole of this Argob or Stony Land, Jephthah's land of Tob, is a natural fortification, a sanctuary open only to those who have the secret of the perilous paths that wind along savage cliff and deep defile. One who established himself here might soon acquire the fame and authority of a chief, and Jair, acknowledged by the Manassites as their judge, extended his power and influence among the Gadites and Reubenites farther south.
But plenty of corn and wine and oil and the advantage
of a natural fortress which might have been held
We have found reason to suppose that during the many turmoils of the north the tribes of Judah and Simeon and to some extent Ephraim were pleased to dwell secure in their own domains, giving little help to their kinsfolk. Deborah and Barak got no troops from the south, and it was with a grudge Ephraim joined in the pursuit of Midian. Now the time has come for the harvest of selfish content. Supposing the people of Judah to have been specially engaged with religion and the arranging of worship—that did not justify their neglect of the political troubles of the north. It was a poor religion then, as it is a poor religion now, that could exist apart from national well-being and patriotic duty. Brotherhood must be realised in the nation as well as in the church, and piety must fulfil itself through patriotism as well as in other ways.
No doubt the duties we owe to each other and to
the nation of which we form a part are imposed by
natural conditions which have arisen in the course of
history, and some may think that the natural should
give way to the spiritual. They may see the interests
of a kingdom of this world as actually opposed to
We are told that the Israelites of Gilead worshipped
the gods of the Phœnicians and Syrians, of the Moabites
and of the Ammonites. Whatever religious rites took
And the process goes on among ourselves. Through
the principles that culture means artistic freedom and
that worship is a form of art we arrive at taste or
liking as the chief test. Intensity of feeling is craved
and religion must satisfy that or be despised. It is the
very error that led Hebrews to the feasts of Astarte
and Adonis, and whither it tends we can see in the old
history. Turning from the strong earnest gospel which
grasps intellect and will to shows and ceremonies that
please the eye, or even to music refined and devotional
that stirs and thrills the feelings, we decline from the
reality of religion. Moreover a serious danger threatens
us in the far too common teaching which makes little of
truth everything of charity. Christ was most charitable,
but it is through the knowledge and practice of truth
He offers freedom. He is our King by His witness-bearing
Again, the religious so far as they have wisdom and strength are required to be pioneers, which they can never be in following fancy or taste. Here nothing but strenuous thought, patient faithful obedience can avail. Hebrew history is the story of a pioneer people and every lapse from fidelity was serious, the future of humanity being at stake. Each Christian society and believer has work of the same kind not less important, and failures due to intellectual sloth and moral levity are as dishonourable as they are hurtful to the human race. Some of our heretics now are more serious than Christians, and they give thought and will more earnestly to the opinions they try to propagate. While the professed servants of Christ, who should be marching in the van, are amusing themselves with the accessories of religion, the resolute socialist or nihilist reasoning and speaking with the heat of conviction leads the masses where he will.
Those who now fall away from faith are in worse case by far than Israel. They have no thought of a real power that can befriend them. It is to mere abstractions they have given the divine name. In sin and sorrow alike they remain with ideas only, with bare terms of speculation in which there is no life, no strength, no hope for the moral nature. They are men and have to live; but with the living God they have entirely broken. In trouble they can only call on the Abyss or the Immensities, and there is no way of repentance though they seek it carefully with tears. At heart therefore they are pessimists without resource. Sadness deep and deadly ever waits upon such unbelief, and our religion to-day suffers the gloom because it is infected by the uncertainties and denials of an agnosticism at once positive and confused.
Another paganism, that of gathering and doing in
To Israel troubled and contrite came as on previous
occasions a prophetic message; and it was spoken by
one of those incisive ironic preachers who were born
from time to time among this strangely heathen,
strangely believing people. It is in terms of earnest
And notice to what state of mind the Hebrews were
brought. Renewing their confession they said, "Do
thou unto us whatsoever seemeth good unto Thee."
They would be content to suffer now at the hand of
God whatever He chose to inflict on them. They themselves
would have exacted heavy tribute of a subject
It is idle to suppose that Israelites who persistently
lapsed into paganism could at any time, because they
repented, find the spiritual thoughts they had lost.
True those thoughts were at the heart of the national
life, there always even when least felt. But thousands
of Hebrews even in a generation of reviving faith died
with but a faint and shadowy personal understanding
of Jehovah. Everything in the Book of Judges goes to
show that the mass of the people were nearer the level
of their neighbours the Moabites and Ammonites than
the piety of the Psalms. A remarkable ebb and flow
are observable in the history of the race. Look at
some facts and there seems to be decline. Samson is
below Gideon, and Gideon below Deborah; no man of
leading until Isaiah can be named with Moses. Yet
ever and anon there are prophetic calls and voices out
of a spiritual region into which the people as a whole
do not enter, voices to which they listen only when distressed
and overborne. Worldliness increases, for the
world opens to the Hebrew; but it often disappoints,
and still there are some to whom the heavenly secret
is told. The race as a whole is not becoming more
We cannot say that when Israel repented it was in the love of holiness so much as in the desire for liberty. The ways of the heathen were followed readily, but the supremacy of the heathen was ever abominable to the vigorous Israelite. By this national spirit however God could find the tribes, and a special feature of the deliverance from Ammon is marked where we read: "The people, the princes of Gilead said one to the other, What man is he that will begin to fight against the children of Ammon? He shall be head over all the inhabitants of Gilead." Looking around for the fit leader they found Jephthah and agreed to invite him.
Now this shows distinct progress in the growth of
the nation. There is, if nothing more, a growth in
practical power. Abimelech had thrust himself upon
the men of Shechem. Jephthah is chosen apart from
any ambition of his own. The movement which made
him judge arose out of the consciousness of the
Gileadites that they could act for themselves and were
bound to act for themselves. Providence indicated the
At the start we are not prepossessed in favour of
Jephthah. There is some confusion in the narrative
which has led to the supposition that he was a foundling
of the clan. But taking Gilead as the actual name of
his father, he appears as the son of a harlot, brought up
in the paternal home and banished from it when there
were legitimate sons able to contend with him. We
get thus a brief glance at a certain rough standard
of morals and see that even polygamy made sharp
exclusions. Jephthah, cast out, betakes himself to the
land of Tob and getting about him a band of vain
fellows or freebooters becomes the Robin Hood or
Rob Roy of his time. There are natural suspicions
of a man who takes to a life of this kind, and yet the
progress of events shows that though Jephthah was a
sort of outlaw his character as well as his courage must
have commended him. He and his men might occasionally
seize for their own use the cattle and corn of
Israelites when they were hard pressed for food. But
it was generally against the Ammonites and other
enemies their raids were directed, and the modern
instances already cited show that no little magnanimity
Jephthah was not at first disposed to believe in the good faith of those who gave him the invitation. Among the heads of households who came he saw his own brothers who had driven him to the hills. He must have more than suspected that they only wished to make use of him in their emergency and, the fighting over, would set him aside. He therefore required an oath of the men that they would really accept him as chief and obey him. That given he assumed the command.
And here the religious character of the man begins
to appear. At Mizpah on the verge of the wilderness
where the Israelites, driven northward by the victories
of Ammon, had their camp there stood an ancient cairn
or heap of stones which preserved the tradition of a
sacred covenant and still retained the savour of sanctity.
There it was that Jacob fleeing from Padan-aram on
his way back to Canaan was overtaken by Laban, and
there raising the Cairn of Witness they swore in the
sight of Jehovah to be faithful to each other. The
belief still lingered that the old monument was a place
of meeting between man and God. To it Jephthah
repaired at this new point in his life. No more an
adventurer, no more an outlaw, but the chosen leader
of eastern Israel, "he spake all his words before
Thus we pass from doubt of Jephthah to the hope
that the banished man, the free-booter will yet prove
to be an Israelite indeed, of sterling character, whose
religion, very rude perhaps, has a deep strain of reality
and power. Jephthah at the cairn of Mizpah lifting
up his hands in solemn invocation of the God of Jacob
reminds us that there are great traditions of the past
of our nation and of our most holy faith to which we
are bound to be true, that there is a God our witness
and our judge in Whose strength alone we can live and
do nobly. For the service of humanity and the maintenance
of faith we need to be in close touch with the
brave and good of other days and in the story of their
lives find quickening for our own. Along the same
line and succession we are to bear our testimony, and
no link of connection with the Divine Power is to be
missed which the history of the men of faith supplies.
Yet as our personal Helper especially we must know
At every stage of their history the Hebrews were
capable of producing men of passionate religiousness.
And this appears as a distinction of the group
of nations to which they belong. The Arab of the
present time has the same quality. He can be excited
to a holy war in which thousands perish. With the
battle-cry of Allah and his Prophet he forgets fear.
He presents a different mingling of character from the
Saxon,—turbulence and reverence, sometimes apart,
then blending—magnanimity and a tremendous want
of magnanimity; he is fierce and generous, now
rising to vivid faith, then breaking into earthly passion.
We have seen the type in Deborah. David is the same
and Elijah; and Jephthah is the Gileadite, the border
Arab. In each of these there is quick leaping at life
and beneath hot impulse a strain of brooding thought
with moments of intense inward trouble. As we follow
the history we must remember the kind of man it
presents to us. There is humanity as it is in every
race, daring in effort, tender in affection, struggling
with ignorance yet thoughtful of God and duty, triumphing
here, defeated there. And there is the Syrian with
the heat of the sun in his blood and the shadow of
So soon as Jephthah begins to act for his people, marks of a strong character are seen. He is no ordinary leader, not the mere fighter the elders of Gilead may have taken him to be. His first act is to send messengers to the king of Ammon saying, What hast thou to do with me that thou art come to fight against my land? He is a chief who desires to avert bloodshed—a new figure in the history.
Natural in those times was the appeal to arms, so
natural, so customary that we must not lightly pass
this trait in the character of the Gileadite judge. If
we compare his policy with that of Gideon or Barak
we see of course that he had different circumstances
to deal with. Between Jordan and the Mediterranean
the Israelites required the whole of the land in order
to establish a free nationality. There was no room
for Canaanite or Midianite rule side by side with their
own. The dominance of Israel had to be complete
and undisturbed. Hence there was no alternative
to war when Jabin or Zebah and Zalmunna attacked
the tribes. Might had to be invoked on behalf of
right. On the other side Jordan the position was
different. Away towards the desert behind the mountains
of Bashan the Ammonites might find pasture for
their flocks, and Moab had its territory on the slopes
of the lower Jordan and the Dead Sea. It was not
necessary to crush Ammon in order to give Manasseh,
Gad and Reuben space enough and to spare. Yet
there was a rare quality of judgment shown by the
man who although called to lead in war began with
Now in one aspect this may appear an error in policy, and the Hebrew chief will seem especially to blame when he makes the admission that the Ammonites hold their land from Chemosh their god. Jephthah has no sense of Israel's mission to the world, no wish to convert Ammon to a higher faith, nor does Jehovah appear to him as sole King, sole object of human worship. Yet, on the other hand, if the Hebrews were to fight idolatry everywhere it is plain their swords would never have been sheathed. Phœnicia was close beside; Aram was not far away; northward the Hittites maintained their elaborate ritual. A line had to be drawn somewhere and, on the whole, we cannot but regard Jephthah as an enlightened and humane chief who wished to stir against his people and his God no hostility that could possibly be avoided. Why should not Israel conquer Ammon by justice and magnanimity, by showing the higher principles which the true religion taught? He began at all events by endeavouring to stay the quarrel, and the attempt was wise.
The king of Ammon refused Jephthah's offer to
negotiate. He claimed the land bounded by the Arnon,
the Jabbok and Jordan as his own and demanded
that it should be peaceably given up to him. In reply
Jephthah denied the claim. It was the Amorites, he
said, who originally held that part of Syria. Sihon
The full account given of these messages sent by
Jephthah shows a strong desire on the part of the
narrator to vindicate Israel from any charge of unnecessary
warfare. And it is very important that this
should be understood, for the inspiration of the historian
is involved. We know of nations that in sheer lust
of conquest have attacked tribes whose land they did
not need, and we have read histories in which wars
unprovoked and cruel have been glorified. In after
times the Hebrew kings brought trouble and disaster
on themselves by their ambition. It would have been
well if David and Solomon had followed a policy like
Jephthah's rather than attempted to rival Assyria and
Egypt. We see an error rather than a cause of boasting
when David put garrisons in Syria of Damascus:
strife was thereby provoked which issued in many a
sanguinary war. The Hebrews should never have
earned the character of an aggressive and ambitious
people that required to be kept in check by the kingdoms
around. To this nation, a worldly nation on the
whole, was committed a spiritual inheritance, a spiritual
task. Is it asked why being worldly the Hebrews
ought to have fulfilled a spiritual calling? The answer
is that their best men understood and declared the
Divine will, and they should have listened to their best
men. Their fatal mistake was, as Christ showed, to
deride their prophets, to crush and kill the messengers
of God. And many other nations likewise have
missed their true vocation being deluded by dreams
of vast empire and earthly glory. To combat idolatry
The temperate messages of the Hebrew chief to the king of Ammon proved to be of no avail: war alone was to settle the rival claims. And this once clear Jephthah lost no time in preparing for battle. As one who felt that without God no man can do anything, he sought assurance of divine aid; and we have now to consider the vow which he made, ever interesting on account of the moral problem it involves and the very pathetic circumstances which accompanied its fulfilment.
The terms of the solemn engagement under which
Jephthah came were these:—"If Thou wilt indeed
deliver the children of Ammon into mine hand, then
it shall be that whatsoever" (Septuagint and Vulgate,
"whosoever") "cometh forth of the doors of my
house to meet me when I return in peace from the
children of Ammon shall be the Lord's, and I will
offer it (otherwise, him) for a burnt offering." And
here two questions arise; the first, what he could have
meant by the promise; the second, whether we can
justify him in making it. As to the first, the explicit
designation to God of whatever came forth of the doors
of his house points unmistakably to a human life as
the devoted thing. It would have been idle in an
emergency like that in which Jephthah found himself,
with a hazardous conflict impending that was to decide
the fate of the eastern tribes at least, to anticipate the
appearance of an animal, bullock, goat or sheep, and
promise that in sacrifice. The form of words used in
Now we should like to find more knowledge and a
What did the Gileadite know? What ought he to
have known? We see in his vow a fatalistic strain;
he leaves it to chance or fate to determine who shall
meet him. There is also an assumption of the right
to take into his own hands the disposal of a human
life; and this, though most confidently claimed, was
entirely a factitious right. It is one which mankind
has ceased to allow. Further the purpose of offering a
human being in sacrifice is unspeakably horrible to us.
But how differently these things must have appeared in
the dim light which alone guided this man of lawless life
in his attempt to make sure of God and honour Him!
We have but to consider things that are done at the
present day in the name of religion, the lifelong
His vow made, the chief went forth to battle leaving in his home one child only, a daughter beautiful, high-spirited, the joy of her father's heart. She was a true Hebrew girl and all her thought was that he, her sire, should deliver Israel. For this she longed and prayed. And it was so. The enthusiasm of Jephthah's devotion to God was caught by his troops and bore them on irresistibly. Marching from Mizpah in the land of Bashan they crossed Manasseh, and south from Mizpeh of Gilead, which was not far from the Jabbok, they found the Ammonites encamped. The first battle practically decided the campaign. From Aroer to Minnith, from the Jabbok to the springs of Arnon, the course of flight and bloodshed extended, until the invaders were swept from the territory of the tribes. Then came the triumphant return.
And he? A sudden horror checks his heart. He
stands arrested, cold as stone, with eyes of strange
dark trouble fixed upon the gay young figure that welcomes
him to home and rest and fame. She flies to
his arms, but they do not open to her. She looks at
him, for he has never repulsed her—and why now?
He puts forth his hands as if to thrust away a dreadful
sight, and what does she hear? Amid the sobs of
We are dealing with the facts of life. For a time let us put aside the reflections that are so easy to make about rash vows and the iniquity of keeping them. Before this anguish of the loving heart, this awful issue of a sincere but superstitious devotion we stand in reverence. It is one of the supreme hours of humanity. Will the father not seek relief from his obligation? Will the daughter not rebel? Surely a sacrifice so awful will not be completed. Yet we remember Abraham and Isaac journeying together to Moriah, and how with the father's resignation of his great hope there must have gone the willingness of the son to face death if that last proof of piety and faith is required. We look at the father and daughter of a later date and find the same spirit of submission to what is regarded as the will of God. Is the thing horrible—too horrible to be dwelt upon? Are we inclined to say,
"... 'Heaven heads the count of crimes
With that wild oath?' She renders answer high,
'Not so; nor once alone, a thousand times
I would be born and die.'"
It has been affirmed that "Jephthah's rash act,
springing from a culpable ignorance of the character
of God, directed by heathen superstition and cruelty
poured an ingredient of extreme bitterness into his cup
of joy and poisoned his whole life." Suffering indeed
there must have been for both the actors in that pitiful
To Jephthah and his daughter the vow was sacred,
irrevocable. The deliverance of Israel by so signal
and complete a victory left no alternative. It would
have been well if they had known God differently; yet
better this darkly impressive issue which went to the
The wailing of Jephthah's daughter rings in our ears
bearing with it the anguish of many a soul tormented
in the name of that which is most sacred, tormented
by mistakes concerning God, the awful theory that He
is pleased with human suffering. The relics of that
hideous Moloch-worship which polluted Jephthah's
faith, not even yet purged away by the Spirit of Christ,
continue and make religion an anxiety and life a kind
of torture. I do not speak of that devotion of thought
and time, eloquence and talent to some worthless cause
which here and there amazes the student of history and
human life,—the passionate ardour, for example, with
which Flora Macdonald gave herself up to the service
of a Stuart. But religion is made to demand sacrifices
compared to which the offering of Jephthah's daughter
Christ was made a sacrifice for us. Yes: He sacrificed
everything except His own eternal life and power; He
sacrificed ease and favour and immediate success for
the manifestation of God. So He achieved the fulness
of personal might and royalty. And every sacrifice
His religion calls us to make is designed to secure
that enlargement and fulness of spiritual individuality in
the exercise of which we shall truly serve God and our
fellows. Does God require sacrifice? Yes, unquestionably—the
sacrifice which every reasonable being
must make in order that the mind, the soul may be
strong and free, sacrifice of the lower for the higher,
sacrifice of pleasure for truth, of comfort for duty, of
the life that is earthly and temporal for the life that is
heavenly and eternal. And the distinction of Christianity
is that it makes this sacrifice supremely reasonable
because it reveals the higher life, the heavenly
hope, the eternal rewards for which the sacrifice is to
There are not a few popularly accepted guides in
religion who fatally misconceive the doctrine of sacrifice.
They take man-made conditions for Divine opportunities
and calls. Their arguments come home not to the
selfish and overbearing, but to the unselfish and long-suffering
members of society, and too often they are
more anxious to praise renunciation—any kind of it,
for any purpose, so it involve acute feeling—than to
magnify truth and insist on righteousness. It is women
chiefly these arguments affect, and the neglect of pure
truth and justice with which women are charged is in
no small degree the result of false moral and religious
teaching. They are told that it is good to renounce and
suffer even when at every step advantage is taken of
their submission and untruth triumphs over generosity.
They are urged to school themselves to humiliation and
loss not because God appoints these but because
human selfishness imposes them. The one clear and
damning objection to the false doctrine of self-suppression
is here: it makes sin. Those who yield where
they should protest, who submit where they should
argue and reprove, make a path for selfishness and
injustice and increase evil instead of lessening it.
They persuade themselves that they are bearing the
cross after Christ; but what in effect are they doing?
The missionary amongst ignorant heathen has to bear
to the uttermost as Christ bore. But to give so-called
Christians a power of oppression and exaction is to
turn the principles of religion upside down and hasten
the doom of those for whom the sacrifice is made.
When we meddle with truth and righteousness even in
While Jephthah and his Gileadites were engaged in the struggle with Ammon jealous watch was kept over all their movements by the men of Ephraim. As the head tribe of the house of Joseph occupying the centre of Palestine Ephraim was suspicious of all attempts and still more of every success that threatened its pride and pre-eminence. We have seen Gideon in the hour of his victory challenged by this watchful tribe, and now a quarrel is made with Jephthah who has dared to win a battle without its help. What were the Gileadites that they should presume to elect a chief and form an army? Fugitives from Ephraim who had gathered in the shaggy forests of Bashan and among the cliffs of the Argob, mere adventurers in fact, what right had they to set up as the protectors of Israel? The Ephraimites found the position intolerable. The vigour and confidence of Gilead were insulting. If a check were not put on the energy of the new leader might he not cross the Jordan and establish a tyranny over the whole land? There was a call to arms, and a large force was soon marching against Jephthah's camp to demand satisfaction and submission.
The pretext that Jephthah had fought against
One may well ask, Where is Ephraim's fear of God?
Why has there been no consultation of the priests at
Shiloh by the tribe under whose care the sanctuary
is placed? The great Jewish commentary affirms that
the priests were to blame, and we cannot but agree.
If religious influences and arguments were not used
to prevent the expedition against Gilead they should
have been used. The servants of the oracle might
have understood the duty of the tribes to each other
and of the whole nation to God and done their utmost
to avert civil war. Unhappily, however, professed
interpreters of the divine will are too often forward
in urging the claims of a tribe or favouring the arrogance
of a class by which their own position is upheld. As
on the former occasion when Ephraim interfered, so in
this we scarcely go beyond what is probable in supposing
that the priests declared it to be the duty of faithful
Israelites to check the career of the eastern chief and
so prevent his rude and ignorant religion from gaining
dangerous popularity. Bishop Wordsworth has seen
a fanciful resemblance between Jephthah's campaign
against Ammon and the revival under the Wesleys
and Whitefield which as a movement against ungodliness
put to shame the sloth of the Church of England. He
Let it be allowed that Ephraim, a strong tribe, the
guardian of the ark of Jehovah, much better instructed
than the Gileadites in the divine law, had a right to
maintain its place. But the security of high position lies
in high purpose and noble service; and an Ephraim
ambitious of leading should have been forward on every
occasion when the other tribes were in confusion and
trouble. When a political party or a church claims to
be first in regard for righteousness and national well-being
it should not think of its own credit or continuance
in power but of its duty in the war against
injustice and ungodliness. The favour of the great, the
admiration of the multitude should be nothing to either
church or party. To rail at those who are more
generous, more patriotic, more eager in the service of
truth, to profess a fear of some ulterior design against
the constitution or the faith, to turn all the force of
influence and eloquence and even of slander and menace
against the disliked neighbour instead of the real
enemy, this is the nadir of baseness. There are
Civil war, at all times lamentable, appears peculiarly
so when the cause of it lies in haughtiness and distrust.
We have found however that, beneath the surface,
there may have been elements of division and ill-will
serious enough to require this painful remedy. The campaign
may have prevented a lasting rupture between
the eastern and western tribes, a separation of the
stream of Israel's religion and nationality into rival
currents. It may also have arrested a tendency to
ecclesiastical narrowness, which at this early stage
would have done immense harm. It is quite true that
Gilead was rude and uninstructed, as Galilee had the
reputation of being in the time of our Lord. But the
leading tribes or classes of a nation are not entitled
to overbear the less enlightened, nor by attempts at
tyranny to drive them into separation. Jephthah's
victory had the effect of making Ephraim and the other
western tribes understand that Gilead had to be
reckoned with, whether for weal or woe, as an integral
and important part of the body politic. In Scottish
history, the despotic attempt to thrust Episcopacy on
the nation was the cause of a distressing civil war; a
people who would not fall in with the forms of religion
that were in favour at head-quarters had to fight for
liberty. Despised or esteemed they resolved to keep
and use their rights, and the religion of the world owes
a debt to the Covenanters. Then in our own times,
We pass now to the end of the campaign and the scene at the fords of Jordan, when the Gileadites, avenging themselves on Ephraim, used the notable expedient of asking a certain word to be pronounced in order to distinguish friend from foe. To begin with, the slaughter was quite unnecessary. If bloodshed there had to be, that on the field of battle was certainly enough. The wholesale murder of the "fugitives of Ephraim," so called with reference to their own taunt, was a passionate and barbarous deed. Those who began the strife could not complain; but it was the leaders of the tribe who rushed on war, and now the rank and file must suffer. Had Ephraim triumphed the defeated Gileadites would have found no quarter; victorious they gave none. We may trust, however, that the number forty-two thousand represents the total strength of the army that was dispersed and not those left dead on the field.
The expedient used at the fords turned on a defect or peculiarity of speech. Shibboleth perhaps meant stream. Of each man who came to the stream of Jordan wishing to pass to the other side it was required that he should say Shibboleth. The Ephraimites tried but said Sibboleth instead, and so betraying their west-country birth they pronounced their own doom. The incident has become proverbial and the proverbial use of it is widely suggestive. First, however, we may note a more direct application.
Again, there are words somewhat rude, somewhat
coarse, which in carefully ordered speech a man may
not use; but they fall from his lips in moments of
unguarded freedom or excitement. The man does not
speak "half in the language of Ashdod"; he particularly
avoids it. Yet now and again a lapse into the Philistine
dialect, a something muttered rather than spoken
betrays the secret of his nature. It would be harsh to
condemn any one as inherently bad on such evidence.
The early habits, the sins of past years thus unveiled
may be those against which he is fighting and praying.
Yet, on the other hand, the hypocrisy of a life may
terribly show itself in these little things; and every one
will allow that in choosing our companions and friends
we ought to be keenly alive to the slightest indications
Here, however, one of the most interesting and, for
our time, most important points of application is to
be found in the self-disclosure of writers—those who
produce our newspapers, magazines, novels, and the
like. Touching on religion and on morals certain of
these writers contrive to keep on good terms with
the kind of belief that is popular and pays. But
now and again, despite efforts to the contrary, they
come on the Shibboleth which they forget to pronounce
aright. Some among them who really care nothing for
Christianity and have no belief whatever in revealed
religion, would yet pass for interpreters of religion and
guides of conduct. Christian morality and worship
they barely endure; but they cautiously adjust every
phrase and reference so as to drive away no reader
and offend no devout critic; that is, they aim at doing
so; now and again they forget themselves. We catch
a word, a touch of flippancy, a suggestion of licence,
a covert sneer which goes too far by a hairsbreadth.
The evil lies in this that they are teaching multitudes
to say Sibboleth along with them. What they say is so
pleasant, so deftly said, with such an air of respect for
moral authority that suspicion is averted, the very elect
are for a time deceived. Indeed we are almost driven
to think that Christians not a few are quite ready to
accept the unbelieving Sibboleth from sufficiently distinguished
lips. A little more of this lubricity and
there will have to be a new and resolute sifting at the
fords. The propaganda is villainously active and without
intelligent and vigorous opposition it will proceed
But there are Shibboleths of party, and we must be
careful lest in trying others we use some catchword
of our own Gilead by which to judge their religion
or their virtue. The danger of the earnest, alike in
religion, politics and philanthropy, is to make their
own favourite plans or doctrines the test of all worth
and belief. Within our churches and in the ranks of
social reformers distinctions are made where there
should be none and old strifes are deepened. There
are of course certain great principles of judgment.
Christianity is founded on historical fact and revealed
truth. "Every spirit which confesseth that Jesus
Christ is come in the flesh is of God." In such a
saying lies a test which is no tribal Shibboleth. And
on the same level are others by which we are constrained
at all hazards to try ourselves and those who
speak and write. Certain points of morality are vital
and must be pressed. When a writer says, "In
mediæval times the recognition that every natural
impulse in a healthy and mature being has a claim
to gratification was a victory of unsophisticated nature
over the asceticism of Christianity"—we use no
Shibboleth-test in condemning him. He is judged and
found wanting by principles on which the very existence
Passing from cases like this, observe others in which a measure of dogmatism must be allowed to the ardent. Where there are no strong opinions strenuously held and expressed little impression will be made. The prophets in every age have spoken dogmatically; and vehemence of speech is not to be denied to the temperance reformer, the apostle of purity, the enemy of luxurious self-indulgence and cant. Moral indignation must express itself strongly; and in the dearth of moral conviction we can bear with those who would even drag us to the ford and make us utter their Shibboleth. They go too far, people say: perhaps they do; but there are so many who will not move at all except in the way of pleasure.
Now all this is clear. But we must return to the
danger of making one aspect of morality the sole test
of morals, one religious idea the sole test of religion
and so framing a formula by which men separate
themselves from their friends and pass narrow bitter
judgments on their kinsfolk. Let sincere belief and
strong feeling rise to the prophetic strain; let there be
ardour, let there be dogmatism and vehemence. But
beyond urgent words and strenuous example, beyond
the effort to persuade and convert there lie arrogance
and the usurpation of a judgment which belongs to
God alone. In proportion as a Christian is living the
life of Christ he will repel the claim of any other man
however devout to force his opinion or his action. All
attempts at terrorism betray a lack of spirituality. The
Amidst pedants, critics, hot and bitter partisans, we
see Christ moving in divine freedom. Fine is the
subtlety of His thought in which the ideas of spiritual
liberty and of duty blend to form one luminous strain.
Fine are the clearness and simplicity of that daily life in
which He becomes the way and the truth to men. It
is the ideal life, beyond all mere rules, disclosing the
law of the kingdom of heaven; it is free and powerful
because upheld by the purpose that underlies all
activity and development. Are we endeavouring to
realize it? Scarcely at all: the bonds are multiplying
not falling away; no man is bold to claim his right,
nor generous to give others their room. In this age
of Christ we seem neither to behold nor desire His
manhood. Shall this always be? Shall there not
arise a race fit for liberty because obedient, ardent,
true? Shall we not come in the unity of the faith and
of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect
For a little we must return to Jephthah, who after his great victory and his strange dark act of faith judged Israel but six years. He appears in striking contrast to other chiefs of his time and even of far later times in the purity of his home life, the more notable that his father set no example of good. Perhaps the legacy of dispeace and exile bequeathed to him with a tainted birth had taught the Gileadite, rude mountaineer as he was, the value of that order which his people too often despised. The silence of the history which is elsewhere careful to speak of wives and children sets Jephthah before us as a kind of puritan, with another and perhaps greater distinction than the desire to avoid war. The yearly lament for his daughter kept alive the memory not only of the heroine but of one judge in Israel who set a high example of family life. A sad and lonely man he went those few years of his rule in Gilead, but we may be sure that the character and will of the Holy One became more clear to him after he had passed the dreadful hill of sacrifice. The story is of the old world, terrible; yet we have found in Jephthah a sublime sincerity, and we may believe that such a man though he never repented of his vow would come to see that the God of Israel demanded another and a nobler sacrifice, that of life devoted to His righteousness and truth.
In our ignorance not in our knowledge, in our blindness
not in our light we call nature secular and
think of the ordinary course of events as a series of
cold operations, governed by law and force, having
nothing to do with divine purpose and love. Oftentimes
we think so, and suffer because we do not understand.
It is a pitiful error. The natural could not
exist, there could be neither substance nor order without
the over-nature which is at once law and grace.
Vitality, movement are not an efflorescence heralding
decay—as to the atheist; they are not the activity of
an evil spirit—as sometimes to confused and falsely instructed
faith. They are the outward and visible action
of God, the hem of the vesture on which we lay hold
and feel Him. In the seen and temporal there is a
constant presence maintaining order, giving purpose
and end. Were it otherwise man could not live an
hour; even in selfishness and vileness he is a creature
of two worlds which yet are one, so closely are they
interwoven. At every point natural and supernatural
are blended, the higher shaping the development of the
lower, accomplishing in and through the lower a great
spiritual plan. This it is which gives depth and weight
No surprise, therefore, is excited by the modes of speech and thought we come upon as we read Scripture. The surprise would be in not coming upon them. If we found the inspired writers divorcing God from the world and thinking of "nature" as a dark chamber of sin and torture echoing with His curse, there would be no profit in studying this old volume. Then indeed we might turn from it in discontent and scorn, even as some cast it aside just because it is the revelation of God dwelling with men upon the earth.
But what do the writers of faith mean when they
tell of divine messengers coming to peasants at labour
in the fields, speaking to them of events common to
the race—the birth of some child, the defeat of a rival
tribe—as affairs of the spiritual even more than of the
temporal region? The narratives simple yet daring
which affirm the mingling of divine purpose and action
with human life give us the deepest science, the one
real philosophy. Why do we have to care and suffer
for each other? What are our sin and sorrow?
These are not material facts; they are of quite another
range. Always man is more than dust, better or worse
than clay. Human lives are linked together in a
gracious and awful order the course of which is now
clearly marked, now obscurely traceable; and if it were
in our power to revive the history of past ages, to mark
the operation of faith and unbelief among men, issuing
in virtue and nobleness on the one hand, in vice and
lethargy on the other, we should see how near heaven
is to earth, how rational a thing is prophecy, not only
In more than one story of the Bible the motherhood of a simple peasant woman is a cause of divine communications and supernatural hopes. Is this amazing, incredible? What then is motherhood itself? In the coming and care of frail existences, the strange blending in one great necessity of the glad and the severe, the honourable and the humiliating, with so many possibilities of failure in duty, of error and misunderstanding ere the needful task is finished, death ever waiting on life, and agony on joy—in all this do we not find such a manifestation of the higher purpose as might well be heralded by words and signs? Only the order of God and His redemption can explain this "nature." Right in the path of atheistic reasoners, and of others not atheists, lie facts of human life which on their theory of naturalism are simply confounding, too great at once for the causes they admit and the ends they foresee. And if reason denies the possibility of prediction relating to these facts we need not wonder. Without philosophy or faith the range of denial is unlimited.
From the quaint and simple narrative before us the
imaginative rationalist turns away with the one word—"myth."
His criticism is of a sort which for all its
ease and freedom gives the world nothing. We desire
to know why the human mind harbours thoughts of
the kind, why it has ideas of God and of a supernatural
order, and how these work in developing the race.
Have they been of service? Have they given strength
and largeness to poor rude lives and so proved a great
Here are two Hebrew peasants, in a period of Philistine domination more than a thousand years before the Christian era. Of their condition we know only what a few brief sentences can tell in a history concerned chiefly with the facts of a divine order in which men's lives have an appointed place and use. It is certain that a thorough knowledge of this Danite family, its own history and its part in the history of Israel, would leave no difficulty for faith. Belief in the fore-ordination of all human existence and the constant presence of God with men and women in their endurance, their hope and yearning would be forced upon the most sceptical mind. The insignificance of the occasion marked by a prediction given in the name of God may astonish some. But what is insignificant? Wherever divine predestination and authority extend, and that is throughout the whole universe, nothing can properly be called insignificant. The laws according to which material things and forces are controlled by God touch the minutest particles of matter, determine the shape of a dew-drop as certainly as the form of a world. At every point in human life, the birth of a child in the poorest cottage as well as of the heir to an empire, the same principles of heredity, the same disposition of affairs to leave room for that life and to work out its destiny underlie the economy of the world.
A life is to appear. It is not an interposition or
interpolation. No event, no life is ever thrust into an
age without relation to the past; no purpose is formed
in the hour of a certain prophecy. For Samson as for
every actor distinguished or obscure upon the stage of
The personality of the messenger was carefully
concealed. "A man of God whose countenance was
like that of an angel of God very terrible"—so runs
the pathetic, suggestive description; but the hour was
too intense for mere curiosity. The honest mind does
not ask the name and social standing of a messenger
but only—Does he speak God's truth? Does he open
life? There are few perhaps, to-day, who are simple
and intelligent enough for this; few, therefore, to whom
divine messages come. It is the credentials we are
anxious about, and the prophet waits unheard while
people are demanding his family and tribe, his college
The child that was to be born, a gift of God, a divine charge, was promised to these parents. And in the case of every child born into the world there is a divine predestination which whether it has been recognized by the parents or not gives dignity to his existence from the first. There are natural laws and spiritual laws, the gathering together of energies and needs and duties which make the life unique, the care of it sacred. It is a new force in the world—a new vessel, frail as yet, launched on the sea of time. In it some stores of the divine goodness, some treasures of heavenly force are embarked. As it holds its way across the ocean in sunshine or shadow, this life will be watched by the divine eye, breathed gently upon by the summer airs or buffeted by the storms of God. Does heaven mind the children? "In heaven their angels do always behold the face of My Father."
In the marvellous ordering of divine providence
nothing is more calculated than fatherhood and motherhood
to lift human life into the high ranges of experience
and feeling. Apart from any special message
or revelation, assuming only an ordinary measure of
thoughtfulness and interest in the unfolding of life,
there is here a new dignity the sense of which connects
the task of those who have it with the creative energy
of God. Everywhere throughout the world we can
"A link among the days to knit
The generations each to each."
The father has a sacred trust, a new and nobler duty to which his manhood is entirely pledged in the sight of that great God who is the Father of all spirits, doubly and trebly pledged to truth and purity and courage. It is the coronation of life; and the child, drawing father and mother to itself, is rightly the object of keenest interest and most assiduous care.
The interest lies greatly in this, that to the father and
mother first, then to the world there may be untold
possibilities of good in the existence which has begun.
Apart from any prophecy like that given regarding
Samson we have truly what may be called a special
promise from God in the dawning energy of every
child-life. By the cradle surely, if anywhere, hope
sacred and heavenly may be indulged. With what
earnest glances will the young eyes look by-and-by
from face to face. With what new and keen love will
the child-heart beat. Enlarging its grasp from year to
year the mind will lay hold on duty and the will address
itself to the tasks of existence. This child will be a
heroine of home, a helper of society, a soldier of the
truth, a servant of God. Does the mother dream long
dreams as she bends over the cradle? Does the
father, one indeed amongst millions, yet with his
special distinction and calling, imagine for the child
a future better than his own? It is well. By the
highest laws and instincts of our humanity it is right
and good. Here men and women, the rudest and
We observe the anxiety of Manoah and his wife to learn the special method of training which should fit their child for his task. The father's prayer so soon as he heard of the divine annunciation was, "O Lord, let the man of God whom Thou didst send come again unto us and teach us what we shall do unto the child that shall be born." Conscious of ignorance and inexperience, feeling the weight of responsibility, the parents desired to have authoritative direction in their duty, and their anxiety was the deeper because their child was to be a deliverer in Israel. In their home on the hillside, where the cottages of Zorah clustered overlooking the Philistine plain, they were frequently disturbed by the raiders who swept up the valley of Sorek from Ashdod and Ekron. They had often wondered when God would raise up a deliverer as of old, some Deborah or Gideon to end the galling oppression. Now the answer to many a prayer and hope was coming, and in their own home the hero was to be cradled. We cannot doubt that this made them feel the pressure of duty and the need of wisdom. Yet the prayer of Manoah was one which every father has need to present, though the circumstances of a child's birth have nothing out of the most ordinary course.
To each human mind are given powers which require
special fostering, peculiarities of temperament and
feeling which ought to be specially considered. One
way will not serve in the upbringing of two children.
Even the most approved method of the time, whether
that of private tutelage or public instruction, may thwart
individuality; and if the way be ignorant and rough
the original faculty will at its very springing be distorted.
The special method of training for the child Samson is described in the words, "He shall be a Nazirite unto God." The mother was to drink no strong drink nor eat any unclean thing. Her son was to be trained in the same rigid abstinence; and always the sense of obligation to Jehovah was to accompany the austerity. The hair neither cut nor shaven but allowed to grow in natural luxuriance was to be the sign of the separated life. For the hero that was to be, this ascetic purity, this sacrament of unshorn hair were the only things prescribed. Perhaps there was in the command a reference to the godless life of the Israelites, a protest against their self-indulgence and half-heathen freedom. One in the tribe of Dan would be clear of the sins of drunkenness and gluttony at least, and so far ready for spiritual work.
Now it is notable enough to find thus early in history
the example of a rule which even yet is not half understood
to be the best as well as the safest for the guidance
of appetite and the development of bodily strength.
The absurdities commonly accepted by mothers and by
those who only desire some cover for the indulgence of
It is not of course to be supposed that there was nothing out of the common in Samson's bodily vigour. Restraint of unhealthy and injurious appetite was not the only cause to which his strength was due. Yet as the accompaniment of his giant energy the vow has great significance. And to young men who incline to glory in their strength, and all who care to be fit for the tasks of life the significance will be clear. As for the rest whose appetites master them, who must have this and that because they crave it, their weakness places them low as men, nowhere as examples and guides. One would as soon take the type of manly vigour from a paralytic as from one whose will is in subjection to the cravings of the flesh.
It soon becomes clear in the course of the history
that while some forms of evil were fenced off by
Naziritism others as perilous were not. The main part
of the devotion lay in abstinence, and that is not
So is it always. One kind of exercise, discipline, obedience, virtue will not suffice. We need to be temperate and also pure, we need to keep from self-indulgence but also from niggardliness if we are to be men. We have to think of the discipline of mind and soul as well as soundness of body. He is only half a man, however free from glaring faults and vices, who has not learned the unselfishness, the love, the ardour in holy and generous tasks which Christ imparts. To abstain is a negative thing; the positive should command us—the highest manhood, holy, aspiring, patient, divine.
Of all who move before us in the Book of Judges
Samson is pre-eminently the popular hero. In
rude giant strength and wild daring he stands alone
against the enemies of Israel contemptuous of their
power and their plots. It is just such a man who
catches the public eye and lives in the traditions of a
country. Most Hebrews of the time minded piety and
culture as little as did the Norsemen when they first
professed Christianity. Both races liked manliness
and feats of daring and could pardon much to one who
flung his enemies and theirs to the ground with god-like
strength of arm, and in the narrative of Samson's
exploits we trace this note of popular estimation. He
is a singular hero of faith, quite akin to those half-converted
half-savage chiefs of the north who thought
the best they could do for God was to kill His enemies
and bound themselves by fierce oaths in the name of
Christ to hack and slaughter. For the separateness
from others, the isolation which marked Samson's
whole career the reasons are evident. His vow of
Naziritism, for one thing, kept him apart. Others were
their own men, he was Jehovah's. His radiant health
and uncommon physical energy even in boyhood were
Of the early life of the great Danite judge there is no
record save that he grew and the Lord blessed him.
The parents whose home on the hill-side he filled with
boisterous glee must have looked on the lad with
something like awe—so different was he from others,
so great were the hopes based on his future. Doubtless
they did their best for him. The consecration of his
life to God they deeply impressed on his mind and
taught him as well as they could the worship of the
But even before manhood Samson had times of
deeper feeling than people in general would have
looked for. Boisterous hot-blooded impetuous natures
grievously wanting in decorum and sagacity are not
always superficial; and there were occasions when the
Spirit of the Lord began to move Samson. He felt
the purpose of his vow, saw the serious work to which
So far we have the merest hints by which to go, but
the narrative becomes more detailed when it approaches
the time of Samson's marriage. A strange union it is
for a hero of Israel. What made him think of going
down among the Philistines for a wife? How can
the sacred writer say that the thing was of the Lord?
Let us try to understand the circumstances. Between
the people of Zorah and the villagers of Timnah a few
miles down the valley on the other side who, though
Philistines, were presumably not of the fighting sort
As we pass with Samson and his parents down to
Timnah we cannot but agree with Manoah in his
objection, "Is there never a woman among the daughters
of thy brethren or among all my people that thou
goest to take a wife of the uncircumcised Philistines?"
It was emphatically one of those cases in which liking
should not have led. An impetuous man is not to be
excused; much less those who claim to be exceedingly
rational and yet go against reason because of what
they call love—or, worse, apart from love. General
Returning to Samson's case, he would possibly have said that he wished an adventurous marriage, that to wed a Danite woman would have in it too little risk, would be too dull, too commonplace a business for him, that he wanted a plunge into new waters. It is in this way, one must believe, many decide the great affair. So far from thinking they put thought away; a liking seizes them and in they leap. Yet in the best considered marriage that can be made is there not quite enough of adventure for any sane man or woman? Always there remain points of character unknown, unsuspected, possibilities of sickness, trouble, privation that fill the future with uncertainty, so far as human vision goes. It is, in truth, a serious undertaking for men and women, and to be entered upon only with the distinct assurance that divine providence clears the way and invites our advance. Yet again we are not to be suspicious of each other, probing every trait and habit to the quick. Marriage is the great example and expression of the trust which it is the glory of men and women to exercise and to deserve, the great symbol on earth of the confidences and unions of immortality. Matter of deep thankfulness it is that so many who begin the married life and end it on a low level, having scarcely a glimpse of the ideal, though they fail of much do not fail of all, but in some patience, some courage and fidelity show that God has not left them to nature and to earth. And happy are they who adventure together on no way of worldly policy or desire but in the pure love and heavenly faith which link their lives for ever in binding them to God.
On the way to Timnah the young man had an
adventure which was to play an important part in his
life. Turning aside out of the road he found himself
suddenly confronted by a lion which, doubtless as
much surprised as he was by the encounter, roared
against him. The moment was not without its peril;
but Samson was equal to the emergency and springing
on the beast "rent it as he would have rent a kid."
At Timnah, where life was perhaps freer than in a
Hebrew town, Samson appears to have seen the woman
who had caught his fancy; and he now found her,
Philistine as she was, quite to his mind. It must
have been by a low standard he judged, and many
possible topics of conversation must have been carefully
avoided. Under the circumstances, indeed, the difficulty
of understanding each other's language may have been
their safety. Certainly one who professed to be a
fearer of God, a patriotic Israelite had to shut his
eyes to many facts or thrust them from sight when he
determined to wed this daughter of the enemy. But
when we choose we can do much in the way of keeping
things out of view which we do not wish to see.
Persons who are at daggers drawn on fifty points
show the greatest possible affability when it is their
interest to be at one. Love gets over difficulties and so
does policy. Occasions are found when the anxiously
There is an interval of some months after the marriage
has been arranged and the bridegroom is on his way
once more down the valley to Timnah. As he passes
the scene of his encounter with the lion he turns
aside to see the carcase and finds that bees have made
it their home. Vultures and ants have first found it and
devoured the flesh, then the sun has thoroughly dried
the skin and in the hollow of the ribs the bees have
settled. At considerable risk Samson possesses himself
of some of the combs and goes on eating the
honey, giving a portion also to his father and mother.
It is again a type, and this time of the sweetness to
be found in the recollection of virtuous energy and overcoming.
Not that we are to be always dwelling on
our faithfulness even for the purpose of thanking God
Who gave us moral strength. But when circumstances
recall a trial and victory it is surely matter of proper
joy to remember that here we were strong enough to be
true, and there to be honest and pure when the odds
We are not finished with the lion; he next appears
covertly, in a riddle. Samson has shown himself a
strong man; now we hear him speak and he proves a
wit. It is the wedding festival, and thirty young men
have been gathered—to honour the bridegroom, shall
we say?—or to watch him? Perhaps from the first
there has been suspicion in the Philistine mind, and
it seems necessary to have as many as thirty to one in
order to overawe Samson. In the course of the feast
there might be quarrels, and without a strong guard
on the Hebrew youth Timnah might be in danger. As
the days went by the company fell to proposing riddles
and Samson, probably annoyed by the Philistines who
watched every movement, gave them his, on terms quite
fair, yet leaving more than a loophole for discontent
"Out of the eater came forth meat;
Out of the strong came forth sweetness."
Now in itself this is simply a curiosity of old-world
table-talk. It is preserved here mainly because of its
bearing on following events; and certainly the statement
which has been made that it contained a gospel
for the Philistines is one we cannot endorse. Yet
like many witty sayings the riddle has a range of
meaning far wider than Samson intended. Adverse
influences conquered, temptation mastered, difficulties
overcome, the struggle of faithfulness will supply
us not only with happy recollections but also with
arguments against infidelity, with questions that confound
the unbeliever. One who can glory in tribulations
that have brought experience and hope, in bonds and
imprisonments that have issued in a keener sense of
liberty, who having nothing yet possesses all things—such
a man questioning the denier of divine providence
cannot be answered. Invigoration has come
out of that which threatened life and joy out of that
which made for sorrow. The man who is in covenant
with God is helped by nature; its forces serve him;
he is fed with honey from the rock and with the finest
of the wheat. When out of the mire of trouble and
the deep waters of despondency he comes forth braver,
more hopeful, strongly confident in the love of God,
Given a man of strong passions and uninstructed
conscience, wild courage and giant energy, with
the sense of a mission which he has to accomplish
against his country's enemies so that he reckons
himself justified in doing them injury or killing them
in the name of God, and you have, no complete hero,
but a real and interesting man. Such a character,
however, does not command our admiration. The
enthusiasm we feel in tracing the career of Deborah
or Gideon fails us in reviewing these stories of revenge
in which the Hebrew champion appears as cruel and
reckless as an uncircumcised Philistine. When we see
Samson leaving the feast by which his marriage has
been celebrated and marching down to Ashkelon where
in cold blood he puts thirty men to death for the sake
of their clothing, when we see a country-side ablaze
with the standing corn which he has kindled, we are as
indignant with him as with the Philistines when they
burn his wife and her father with fire. Nor can we
find anything like excuse for Samson on the ground
of zeal in the service of pure religion. Had he been
a fanatical Hebrew mad against idolatry his conduct
might find some apology; but no such clue offers.
1. For one thing this stands out as a clear principle
that a man has his life to live, his work to do, alone
if others will not help, imperfectly if not in the best
fashion, half-wrongly if the right cannot be clearly seen.
This world is not for sleep, is not for inaction and
sloth. "Whatsoever thy hand finds to do, do it with
thy might." A thousand men in Dan, ten thousand in
Judah did nothing that became men, sat at home while
their grapes and olives grew, abjectly sowed and reaped
their fields in dread of the Philistines, making no
attempt to free their country from the hated yoke.
Samson, not knowing rightly how to act, did go to
work and, at any rate, lived. Among the dull spiritless
Israelites of the day, three thousand of whom actually
came on one occasion to beseech him to give himself
up and bound him with ropes that he might be safely
passed over to the enemy, Samson with all his faults
looks like a man. Those men of Dan and Judah would
slay the Philistines if they dared. It is not because
We are not at present stating the complete motive of human activity nor setting forth the ideal of life. To that we shall come afterwards. But before you can have ideal action you must have action. Before you can have life of a fine and noble type you must have life. Here is an absolute primal necessity; and it is the key to both evolutions, the natural and the spiritual. First the human creature must find its power and capability and must use these to some end, be it even a wrong end, rather than none; after this the ideal is caught and proper moral activity becomes possible. We need not look for the full corn in the ear till the seed has sprouted and grown and sent its roots well into the soil. With this light the roll of Hebrew fame is cleared and we can trace freely the growth of life. The heroes are not perfect; they have perhaps barely caught the light of the ideal; but they have strength to will and to do, they have faith that this power is a divine gift, and they having it are God's pioneers.
The need is that men should in the first instance live
so that they may be faithful to their calling. Deborah
looking round beheld her country under the sore
oppression of Jabin, saw the need and answered to it.
Others only vegetated; she rose up in human stature
resolute to live. That also was what Gideon began to
do when at the divine call he demolished the altar on
the height of Ophrah; and Jephthah fought and endured
Now the hindrances to life are these—first, slothfulness, the disposition to drift, to let things go; second, fear, the restriction imposed on effort of body or of mind by some opposing force ingloriously submitted to; third, ignoble dependence on others. The proper life of man is never reached by many because they are too indolent to win it. To forecast and devise, to try experiments, pushing out in this direction and that is too much for them. Some opportunity for doing more and better lies but a mile away or a few yards; they see but will not venture upon it. Their country is sinking under a despot or a weak and foolish government; they do nothing to avert ruin, things will last their time. Or again, their church is stirred with throbs of a new duty, a new and keen anxiety; but they refuse to feel any thrill, or feeling it a moment they repress the disturbing influence. They will not be troubled with moral and spiritual questions, calls to action that make life severe, high, heroic. Often this is due to want of physical or mental vigour. Men and women are overborne by the labour required of them, the weary tale of bricks. Even from youth they have had burdens to bear so heavy that hope is never kindled. But there are many who have no such excuse. Let us alone, they say, we have no appetite for exertion, for strife, for the duties that set life in a fever. The old ways suit us, we will go on as our fathers have gone. The tide of opportunity ebbs away and they are left stranded.
Next, and akin, there is fear, the mood of those who
hear the calls of life but hear more clearly the threatenings
of sense and time. Often it comes in the form of
And lastly there is ignoble dependence on others.
So many will not exert themselves because they wait
for some one to come and lift them up. They do not
think, nor do they understand that instruction brought
to them is not life. No doubt it is the plan of God
to help the many by the instrumentality of the few, a
whole nation or world by one. Again and again we
have seen this illustrated in Hebrew history, and elsewhere
the fact constantly meets us. There is one
Luther for Europe, one Cromwell for England, one
Knox for Scotland, one Paul for early Christianity.
But at the same time it is because life is wanting,
because men have the deadly habit of dependence that
the hero must be brave for them and the reformer must
Now we see in Samson a man who in his degree lived. He had strength like the strength of ten; he had also the consecration of his vow and the sense of a divine constraint and mandate. These things urged him to life and made activity necessary to him. He might have reclined in careless ease like many around. But sloth did not hold him nor fear. He wanted no man's countenance nor help. He lived. His mere exertion of power was the sign of higher possibilities.
Live at all hazards, imperfectly if perfection is not
attainable, half-wrongly if the right cannot be seen.
Is this perilous advice? From one point of view it
may seem very dangerous. For many are energetic in
so imperfect a way, in so blundering and false a way
that it might appear better for them to remain quiet,
practically dead than degrade and darken the life of the
race by their mistaken or immoral vehemence. You
read of those traders among the islands of the Pacific
who, afraid that their nefarious traffic should suffer if
missionary work succeeded, urged the natives to kill
the missionaries or drive them away, and when they
had gained their end quickly appeared on the scene to
exchange for the pillaged stores of the mission-house
muskets and gunpowder and villainous strong drink.
May it not be said that these traders were living out
their lives as much as the devoted teachers who had
risked everything for the sake of doing good? Napoleon
I., when the scheme of empire presented itself to
One has to confess the difficulty of the problem, the danger of praising mere vigour. Yet if there is risk on the one side the risk on the other is greater: and truth demands risk, defies peril. It is unquestionable that any family of men when it ceases to be enterprising and energetic is of no more use in the economy of things. Its land is a necropolis. The dead cannot praise God. The choice is between activity that takes many a wrong direction, hurrying men often towards perdition, yet at every point capable of redemption, and on the other hand inglorious death, that existence which has no prospect but to be swallowed up of the darkness. And while such is the common choice there is also this to be noted that inertness is not certainly purer than activity though it may appear so merely by contrast. The active life compels us to judge of it; the other a mere negation calls for no judgment, yet is in itself a moral want, an evil and injury. Conscience being unexercised decay and death rule all.
Men cannot be saved by their own effort and vigour.
Most true. But if they make no attempt to advance
towards strength, dominion and fulness of existence,
they are the prey of force and evil. Nor will it suffice
2. We come, however, to the compensating principle of responsibility—the law of Duty which stands over energy in the range of our life. No man, no race is justified by force or as we sometimes say by doing. It is faith that saves. Samson has the rude material of life; but though his action were far purer and nobler it could not make him a spiritual man: his heart is not purged of sin nor set on God.
Granted that the time was rough, chaotic, cloudy,
that the idea of injuring the Philistines in every possible
way was imposed on the Danite by his nation's abject
state, that he had to take what means lay in his power
for accomplishing the end. But possessed of energy
he was deficient in conscience, and so failed of noble
life. This may be said for him that he did not turn
against the men of Judah who came to bind him and
give him up. Within a certain range he understood
his responsibility. But surely a higher life than he
lived, better plans than he followed were possible to
one who could have learned the will of God at Shiloh,
who was bound to God by a vow of purity and had
that constant reminder of the Holy Lord of Israel. It
is no uncommon thing for men to content themselves
with one sacrament, one observance which is reckoned
Generally there is one clear principle which, if a man
held to it, would keep him right in the main. It may
not be of a very high order, yet it will prepare the way
for something better and meanwhile serve his need.
And for Samson one simple law of duty was to keep
clear of all private relations and entanglements with
the Philistines. There was nothing to hinder him from
seeing that to be safe and right as a rule of life. They
were Israel's enemies and his own. He should have
been free to act against them: and when he married
a daughter of the race he forfeited as an honourable
man the freedom he ought to have had as a son of
Israel. Doubtless he did not understand fully the evil
of idolatry nor the divine law that Hebrews were to
keep themselves separate from the worshippers of
false gods. Yet the instincts of the race to which he
belonged, fidelity to his forefathers and compatriots
made their claim upon him. There was a duty too
which he owed to himself. As a brave strong man
he was discredited by the line of action which he followed.
His honour lay in being an open enemy to
Conscience has originated in fear and is to decay with ignorance, say some. Already that extraordinary piece of folly has been answered. Conscience is the correlative of power, the guide of energy. If the one decays, so must the other. Living strongly, energetically, making experiments, seeking liberty and dominion, pressing towards the higher we are ever to acknowledge the responsibility which governs life. By what we know of the divine will we are to order every purpose and scheme and advance to further knowledge. There are victories we might win, there are methods by which we might harass those who do us wrong. One voice says Snatch the victories, go down by night and injure the foe, insinuate what you cannot prove, while the sentinels sleep plunge your spear through the heart of a persecuting Saul. But another voice asks, Is this the way to assert moral life? Is this the line for a man to take? The true man swears to his own hurt, suffers and is strong, does in the face of day what he has it in him to do and, if he fails, dies a true man still. He is not responsible for obeying commands of which he is ignorant, nor for mistakes which he cannot avoid. One like Samson is clean-handed in what it would be unutterably base for us to do. But close beside every man are such guiding ideas as straightforwardness, sincerity, honesty. Each of us knows his duty so far and cannot deceive himself by supposing that God will excuse him in acting, even for what he counts a good end, as a cheat and a hypocrite. In politics the rule is as clear as in companionship, in war as in love.
It has not been asserted that Samson was without
Israel must be firm and coherent if it is to win liberty
from the Philistines. Christians must stand by each
other steadily if they are to overcome infidelity and
rescue the slaves of sin. The feats of a man who holds
aloof from the church because he is not willing to be
bound by its rules count for little in the great warfare
of the age. Many there are among our literary men,
politicians and even philanthropists who strike in now
3. Looking at Samson's efforts during the first part
of his career and observing the want of seriousness and
wisdom that marred them, we may say that all he did
was to make clear and deep the cleft between Philistines
and Hebrews. When he appears on the scene there
are signs of a dangerous intermixture of the two races,
and his own marriage is one. The Hebrews were apparently
inclined to settle down in partial subjection to the
Philistines and make the best they could of the situation,
hoping perhaps that by-and-by they might reach a
state of comfortable alliance and equality. Samson
may have intended to end that movement or he may
not. But he certainly did much to end it. After the
first series of his exploits, crowned by the slaughter at
Lehi, there was an open rupture with the Philistines
which had the best effect on Hebrew morals and religion.
It was clear that one Israelite had to be reckoned with
whose strong arm dealt deadly blows. The Philistines
drew away in defeat. The Hebrews learned that they
needed not to remain in any respect dependent or afraid.
This kind of division grows into hatred; but, as things
were, dislike was Israel's safety. The Philistines did
harm as masters; as friends they would have done even
more. Enmity meant revulsion from Dagon-worship
and all the social customs of the opposed race. For this
It is no slight service those do who as critics of parties and churches show them clearly where they stand, who are to be reckoned as enemies, what alliances are perilous. There are many who are exceedingly easy in their beliefs, too ready to yield to the Zeit Geist that would obliterate definite belief and with it the vigour and hope of mankind. Alliance with Philistines is thought of as a good, not a risk, and the whole of a party or church may be so comfortably settling in the new breadth and freedom of this association that the certain end of it is not seen. Then is the time for the resolute stroke that divides party from party, creed from creed. A reconciler is the best helper of religion at one juncture; at another it is the Samson who standing alone perhaps, frowned on equally by the leaders and the multitude, makes occasion to kindle controversy and set sharp variance between this side and that. Luther struck in so. His great act was one that "rent Christendom in twain." Upon the Israel which looked on afraid or suspicious he forced the division which had been for centuries latent. Does not our age need a new divider? You set forth to testify against Philistines and soon find that half your acquaintances are on terms of the most cordial friendship with them, and that attacks upon them which have any point are reckoned too hot and eager to be tolerated in society. To the few who are resolute duty is made difficult and protest painful: the reformer has to bear the sins and even the scorn of many who should appear with him.
By courage and energy Samson so distinguished himself in his own tribe and on the Philistine border that he was recognized as judge. Government of any kind was a boon, and he kept rude order, as much perhaps by overawing the restless enemy as by administering justice in Israel. Whether the period of twenty years assigned to Samson's judgeship intervened between the fight at Lehi and the visit to Gaza we cannot tell. The chronology is vague, as might be expected in a narrative based on popular tradition. Most likely the twenty years cover the whole time during which Samson was before the public as hero and acknowledged chief.
Samson went down to Gaza, which was the principal
Philistine city situated near the Mediterranean coast
some forty miles from Zorah. For what reason did he
venture into that hostile place? It may, of course,
have been that he desired to learn by personal inspection
what was its strength, to consider whether it
might be attacked with any hope of success; and if
that was so we would be disposed to justify him. As
the champion and judge of Israel he could not but feel
the danger to which his people were constantly exposed
But we are obliged to doubt whether Samson had in
view any scheme against the Philistine power; and we
may be sure that he was on no mission for the good of
Gaza. Of a patriotic or generous purpose there is no
trace; the motive is unquestionably of a different kind.
From his youth this man was restless, adventurous, ever
We imagine then that in default of any excitement
such as he craved in the towns of his own land
he turned his eyes to the Philistine cities which presented
a marked contrast. There life was energetic
and gay, there many pleasures were to be had. New
colonists were coming in their swift ships and the
streets presented a scene of constant animation. The
strong eager man, full of animal passion, found the life
he craved in Gaza where he mingled with the crowds
and heard tales of strange existence. Nor was there
wanting the opportunity for enjoyment which at home
A constant peril this of seeking excitement, especially
in an age of high civilization. The means of variety
and stimulus are multiplied, and ever the craving
outruns them, a craving yielded to, with little or no
resistance, by many who should know better. The
moral teacher must recognize the desire for variety and
excitement as perhaps the chief of all the hindrances he
has now to overcome. For one who desires duty there
are scores who find it dull and tame and turn from it,
without sense of fault, to the gaieties of civilized society
in which there is "nothing wrong" as they say, or at
least so little of the positively wrong that conscience is
easily appeased. The religious teacher finds the demand
for "brightness" and variety before him at every turn;
he is indeed often touched by it himself and follows
with more or less of doubt a path that leads straight
from his professed goal. "Is amusement devilish?"
asks one. Most people reply with a smile that life
must be lively or it is not worth having. And the
Philistinism that attracts them with its dash and gaudiness
is not far away nor hard to reach. It is not
necessary to go across to the Continent where the
brilliance of Vienna or Paris offers a contrast to the
grey dulness of a country village; nor even to London
With Samson, as there was less of faith and law to
fling aside, there was less hardening of heart. He was
half a heathen always, more conscious of bodily than of
moral strength, reliant on that which he had, indisposed
to seek from God the holy vigour which he valued
little. At Gaza where moral weakness endangered
life his well-knit muscles released him. We see him
Here is represented what may at first be quite
possible to one who has gone into a place of temptation
and danger. There is for a time a power of resolution
and action which when the peril of the hour is felt may
be brought into use. Out of the house which is like
the gate of hell, out of the hands of vile tempters
it is possible to burst in quick decision and regain
liberty. In the valley of Sorek it may be otherwise,
but here the danger is pressing and rouses the will.
Yet the power of rising suddenly against temptation,
of breaking from the company of the impure is not
to be reckoned on. It is not of ourselves we can be
strong and resolute enough, but of grace. And can
a man expect divine succour in a harlot's den? He
thinks he may depend upon a certain self-respect, a
certain disgust at vile things and dishonourable life.
But vice can be made to seem beautiful, it can overcome
the aversion springing from self-respect and the
best education. In the history of one and another of
the famous and brilliant, from the god-like youth of
Macedon to the genius of yesterday the same unutterably
sad lesson is taught us; we trace the quick descent
of vice. Self-respect? Surely to Goethe, to George
Sand, to Musset, to Burns that should have remained,
a saving salt. But it is clear that man has not the
power of preserving himself. While he says in his
Samson heard the trampling of feet in the streets and was warned of physical danger. When midnight came he lost no time. But he was too late. The liberty he regained was not the liberty he had lost. Before he entered that house in Gaza, before he sat down in it, before he spoke to the woman there he should have fled. He did not; and in the valley of Sorek his strength of will is not equal to the need. Delilah beguiles him, tempts him, presses him with her wiles. He is infatuated; his secret is told and ruin comes.
Moral strength, needful decision in duty to self and society and God—few possess these because few have the high ideal before them, and the sense of an obligation which gathers force from the view of eternity. We live, most of us, in a very limited range of time. We think of to-morrow or the day beyond; we think of years of health and joy in this world, rarely of the boundless after-life. To have a stain upon the character, a blunted moral sense, a scar that disfigures the mind seems of little account because we anticipate but a temporary reproach or inconvenience. To be defiled, blinded, maimed for ever, to be incapacitated for the labour and joy of the higher world does not enter into our thought. And many who are nervously anxious to appear well in the sight of men are shameless when God only can see. Moral strength does not spring out of such imperfect views of obligation. What availed Samson's fidelity to the Nazirite vow when by another gate he let in the foe?
The common kind of religion is a vow which covers
two or three points of duty only. The value and glory
Or, taking another case, one may be able to say, I
am not avaricious, I have fidelity, I would not desert a
friend nor speak a falsehood for any bribe; I am pure;
for courage and patriotism you may rely upon me:—here
are surely signs of real strength. Yet that man
may be wanting in the divine faithfulness on which
every virtue ultimately depends. With all his good
qualities he may have no root in the heavenly, no
spiritual faith, ardour, decision. Let him have great
opposition to encounter, long patience to maintain,
generosity and self-denial to exercise without prospect
of quick reward—and will he stand? In the final test
nothing but fidelity to the Highest, tried and sure
fidelity to God can give a man any right to the confidence
of others. That chain alone which is welded
with the fire of holy consecration, devotion of heart
and strength and mind to the will of God is able to
bear the strain. If we are to fight the battles of life
and resist the urgency of its temptations the whole
divine law as Christ has set it forth must be our
Nazirite vow and we must count ourselves in respect of
every obligation the bondmen of God. Duty must not
be a matter of self-respect but of ardent aspiration.
The way of our life may lead us into some Gaza full of
enticements, into the midst of those who make light
of the names we revere and the truths we count most
sacred. Prosperity may come with its strong temptations
to pride and vainglory. If we would be safe it
must be in the constant gratitude to God of those who
feel the responsibility and the hope that are kindled at
the cross, as those who have died with Christ and now
live with Him unto God. In this redeemed life it may
In the experience of Samson in the valley of Sorek we find another warning. We learn the persistence with which spiritual enemies pursue those whom they mark for their prey. It has been said that the adversaries of good are always most active in following the best men with their persecutions. This we take leave to deny. It is when a man shows some weakness, gives an opportunity for assault that he is pressed and hunted as a wounded lion by a tribe of savages. The occasion was given to the Philistines by Samson's infatuation. Had he been a man of stern purity they would have had no point of attack. But Delilah could be bribed. The lords of the Philistines offered her a large sum to further their ends, and she, a willing instrument, pressed Samson with her entreaties. Baffled again and again she did not rest till the reward was won.
We can easily see the madness of the man in treating
lightly, as if it were a game he was sure to win, the
solicitations of the adventuress. "The Philistines be
upon thee, Samson"—again and again he heard that
threat and laughed at it. The green withes, the new
ropes with which he was bound were snapped at will.
Even when his hair was woven into the web he could
go away with web and beam and the pin with which
So it often is. The wiles of the spirit of this world are woven very cunningly. First the "over-scrupulous" observance of religious ordinances is assailed. The tempter succeeds so far that the Sabbath is made a day of pleasure: then the cry is raised, "The Philistines be upon thee." But the man only laughs. He feels himself quite strong as yet, able for any moral task. Another lure is framed—gambling, drinking. It is yielded to moderately, a single bet by way of sport, one deep draught on some extraordinary occasion. He who is the object of persecution is still self-confident. He scorns the thought of danger. A prey to gambling, to debauchery? He is far enough from that. But his weakness is discovered. Satanic profit is to be made out of his fall; and he shall not escape.
It is true as ever it was that the friendship of the
world is a snare. When the meshes of time and sense
close upon us we may be sure that the end aimed at
is our death. The whole world is a valley of Sorek to
weak man, and at every turn he needs a higher than
himself to guard and guide him. He is indeed a
Samson, a child in morals, though full-grown in muscle.
There are some it is true who are able to help, who
if they were beside in the hour of peril would interpose
with counsel and warning and protection. But
a time comes to each of us when he has to go alone
through the dangerous streets. Then unless he holds
straight forward, looking neither to right hand nor left,
The strong bold man who has blindly fought his battles and sold himself to the traitress and to the enemy,
"Eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves,"
the sport and scorn of those who once feared him, is a mournful object. As we look upon him there in his humiliation, his temper and power wasted, his life withered in its prime, we almost forget the folly and the sin, so much are we moved to pity and regret. For Samson is a picture, vigorous in outline and colour, of what in a less striking way many are and many more would be if it were not for restraints of divine grace. A fallen hero is this. But the career of multitudes without the dash and energy ends in the like misery of defeat; nothing done, not much attempted, their existence fades into the sere and yellow leaf. There has been no ardour to make death glorious.
Every man has his defects, his besetting sins, his
dangers. It is in the consciousness of our own that
we approach with sorrow the last scenes of the eventful
history of Samson. Who dares cast a stone at him?
"A little onward lend thy guiding hand
To these dark steps, a little further on.
For yonder bank hath choice of sun or shade;
There I am wont to sit when any chance
Relieves me from my task of servile toil.
O dark, dark, dark amid the blaze of noon,
Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse
Without all hope of day:"
so we hear him bewail his lot. And we, perchance,
feeling weakness creep over us while bonds of circumstance
still hold us from what we see to be our divine
calling,—we compassionate ourselves in pitying him;
or, if we are as yet strong and buoyant, our history
before us, plans for useful service of our time clearly
in view, have we not already felt the symptoms of
moral infirmity which make it doubtful whether we
shall reach our goal? There are many hindrances,
and even the brave unselfish man who never loiters
in Gaza or in the treacherous valley may find his way
barred by obstacles he cannot remove. But in the case
of most the hindrances within are the most numerous
and powerful. This man who should effect much for
his age is held by love which blinds him, that other
by hatred which masters him. Now covetousness,
now pride is the deterrent. Many begin to know themselves
and the difficulty of doing great tasks for God
and man when noontide is past and the day has begun
to decline. Great numbers have only dreamed of
attempting something and have never bestirred themselves
to act. So it is that Samson's defeat appears
a symbol of the pathetic human failure. To many his
character is full of sad interest, for in it they see what
What has Samson lost when he has revealed his secret to Delilah? Observe him when he goes forth from the woman's house and stands in the sunlight. Apart from the want of his waving locks he seems the same and is physically the same; muscle and sinew, bone and nerve, stout-beating heart and strong arm, Samson is there. And his human will is as eager as ever; he is a bold daring man this morning as he was last evening, with the same dream of "breaking through all" and bearing himself as king. But he is more lonely than ever before; something has gone from his soul. A heavy sense of faithlessness to one prized distinction and known duty oppresses him. Shake thyself as at other times, poor rash Samson, but know in thy heart that at last thou art powerless: the audacity of faith is no longer thine. Thou art the natural man still, but that is not enough, the spiritual sanction gone. The Philistines, half afraid, gather about thee ten to one; they can bind now and lead captive for thou hast lost the girdle which knit thy powers together and made thee invincible. The consciousness of being God's man is gone—the consciousness of being true to that which united thee in a rude but very real bond to the Almighty. Thou hast scorned the vow which kept thee from the abyss, and with the knowledge of utter moral baseness comes physical prostration, despair, feebleness, ruin. Samson at last knows himself to be no king at all, no hero nor judge.
It is common to think the spiritual of little account,
faith in God of little account. Suppose men give that
up; suppose they no longer hold themselves bound by
But hope and love are not so necessary to the full
tide of human vigour, are not so potent in stirring the
powers of manhood as the friendship of God, the consciousness
that made by God for ends of His we have
Him as our stay. Indeed without this consciousness
manhood never finds its strength. This gives a hope
far higher and more sustaining than any of a personal
or temporal kind. It makes us strong by virtue of the
finest and deepest affection which can possibly move
us; and more than that it gives to life full meaning,
proper aim and justification. A man without the sense
of a divine origin and election has no standing-ground;
he is so to speak without the right of existence, he has
no claim to be heard in speaking and to have a place
among those who act. But he who feels himself to be
in the world on God's business, to be God's servant,
The spiritual loss, the loss of living faith, is the great
one: but is it for that we generally pity ourselves or
any person known to us? Life and freedom are dear,
the ability to put forth energy at our will, the sense
of capacity; and it is the loss of these in outward and
visible ranges that most moves us to grief. We commiserate
the strong man whose exploits in the world
seem to be over, as we pity the orator whose power of
speech is gone, the artist who can no more handle the
brush, the eager merchant whose bargaining is done.
We give our sympathy to Samson, because in the
midst of his days he has fallen overcome by treachery,
because the cruelty of enemies has afflicted him. Yet,
looking at the truth of things, the real cause of pity is
deeper than any of these and different. A man who
is still in living touch with God can suffer the saddest
deprivations and retain a cheerful heart, unbroken
courage and hope. Suppose that Samson, surprised
by his enemies while he was about some worthy task,
had been seized, deprived of his sight, bound with
fetters of iron and consigned to prison. Should we
then have had to pity him as we must when he is
taken, a traitor to himself, the dupe of a deceiver, with
And how pathetic the touch: "He wist not that the
Lord had departed from him." For a little time he
failed to realize the spiritual disaster he had brought
on himself. For a little time only; soon the dark
conviction seized him. But worse still would have
been his case if he had remained unconscious of loss.
This sense of weakness is the last boon to the sinner.
God still does this for him, poor headstrong child of
nature as he would fain be, living by and for himself:
he is not permitted. Whether he will own it or not
he shall be weak and useless until he returns to God
and to himself. Often indeed we find the enslaved
Samson refusing to allow that anything is wrong with
him. Out of sight of the world, in some very secret
What a pitiful thing it is to see men in this plight
trying in vain to go about as if nothing had happened
and they were as fit as ever for their places in society
and in the church! We do not speak solely of sins like
those into which Samson and David fell. There are
others, scarcely reckoned sins, which as surely result
in moral weakness perceived or unperceived, in the
loss of God's countenance and support. Our covenant
is to be pure and also merciful; let one fail in mercifulness,
let there be a harsh pitiless temper cherished
in secret, and this as well as impurity will make him
morally weak. Our covenant is to be generous as
well as honest; let a man keep from the poor and
from the church what he ought to give, and he will
lose his strength of soul as surely as if he cheated another
in trade, or took what was not his own. But
we distinguish between sin and default and think of
the latter as a mere infirmity which has no ill effect.
There is no acknowledgment of loss even when it has
become almost complete. The man who is not generous
Do we wonder that more is not effected by our organizations, religious and other, which seem so powerful, quite capable of Christianising and reforming the world? The reason is that many of the professed religious and benevolent, who appear zealous and strenuous, are dying at heart. The Lord may not have departed from them utterly; they are not dead; there is still a rootlet of spiritual being. But they cannot fight; they cannot help others; they cannot run in the way of God's commandments. Are we not bound to ask ourselves how we stand, whether any failure in our covenant-keeping has made us spiritually weak. If we are paltering with eternal facts, if between us and the one Source of Life there is a widening distance surely the need is urgent for a return to Christian honour and fidelity which will make us strong and useful.
And there is something here in the story of Samson
that bids us think hopefully of a new way and a new
life. In the misery to which he was reduced there
came to him with renewed acceptance of his vow a
fresh endowment of vigour. It is the divine healing,
the grace of the long-suffering Father which are thus
We pass now to consider a point suggested by the
terms in which the Philistines triumphed over their
captured foe. When the people saw him they praised
their God: for they said, Our god hath delivered into
our hand our enemy, and the destroyer of our country
which hath slain many of us. Here the ignorant religiousness
and gratitude of Philistines to a god which
was no God might provoke a smile were it not for the
consideration that under the clear light of Christianity
equal ignorance is often shown by those who profess
to be piously grateful. You say it was the bribe which
the Philistine lords offered to Delilah and her treachery
and Samson's sin that put him in the enemy's hand.
You say, Surely the most ignorant man in Gaza must
have seen that Dagon had nothing whatever to do with
the result. And yet it is very common to ascribe to
God what is nowise His doing. There are indeed
times when we almost shudder to hear God thanked
We are told of the tribal gods of those old Syrians—Baal,
Melcarth, Sutekh, Milcom and the rest—each
adored as master and protector by some people or race.
Piously the devotees of each god acknowledged his
hand in every victory and every fortunate circumstance,
at the same time tracing to his anger and their own
neglect of duty to him all calamities and defeats.
May it not be said that the belief of many still is in
a tribal god, falsely called by the name of Jehovah, a
god whose chief function is to look after their interests
whoever may suffer, and take their side in all quarrels
whoever may be in the right? Men make for themselves
the rude outline of a divinity who is supposed to
be indifferent or hostile to every circle but their own,
suspicious of every church but their own, careless of
the sufferings of all but themselves. In two countries
that are at war prayers for success will ascend in
almost the same terms to one who is thought of as a
national protector, not to the Father of all; each side
is utterly regardless of the other, makes no allowance
in prayer for the possibility that the other may be in
the right. The thanksgivings of the victors too will be
mixed with glorying almost fiendish over the defeated,
whose blood, it may be, dyed in pathetic martyrdom
their own hill-sides and valleys. In less flagrant cases,
where it is only a question of gain or loss in trade, of
getting some object of desire, the same spirit is shown.
God is thanked for bestowing that of which another,
perhaps more worthy, is deprived. It is not to the
kindness of Heaven, but rather to the proving severity
of God, we may say, that the result is due. Looking
on with clear eyes we see something very different
Next look at the ignoble task to which Samson is put by the Philistines, a type of the ignominious uses to which the hero may be doomed by the crowd. The multitude cannot be trusted with a great man.
In the prison at Gaza the fallen chief was set to grind
corn, to do the work of slaves. To him, indeed, work
was a blessing. From the bitter thoughts that would
have eaten out his heart he was somewhat delivered by
the irksome labour. In reality, as we now perceive,
no work degrades; but a man of Samson's type and
period thought differently. The Philistine purpose was
to degrade him; and the Hebrew captive would feel in
the depths of his hot brooding nature the humiliating
doom. Look then at the parallels. Think of a great
statesman placed at the head of a nation to guide its
policy in the line of righteousness, to bring its laws
into harmony with the principles of human freedom
and divine justice—think of such a one, while labouring
at his sacred task with all the ardour of a noble heart,
called to account by those whose only desire is for
better trade, the means of beating their rivals in some
market or bolstering up their failing speculations. Or
see him at another time pursued by the cry of a class
that feels its prescriptive rights invaded or its position
threatened. Take again a poet, an artist, a writer, a
With the very highest too it is not afraid to inter-meddle. Christ Himself is not safe. The Philistines of to-day are doing their utmost to make His name inglorious. For what else is the modern cry that Christianity should be chiefly about the business of making life comfortable in this world and providing not only bread but amusement for the crowd? The ideas of the church are not practical enough for this generation. To get rid of sin—that is a dream; to make men fearers of God, soldiers of truth, doers of righteousness at all hazards—that is in the air. Let it be given up; let us seek what we can reach; bind the name of Christ and the Spirit of Christ in chains to the work of a practical secularism, and let us turn churches into pleasant lounging places and picture galleries. Why should the soul have the benefit of so great a name as that of the Son of God? Is not the body more? Is not the main business to have houses and railways, news and enjoyment? The policy of undeifying Christ is having too much success. If it make way there will soon be need for a fresh departure into the wilderness.
The last scene of Samson's history awaits us—the
gigantic effort, the awful revenge in which the Hebrew
champion ended his days. In one sense it aptly
It is impossible to allow this for a moment. Not Milton's apology for Samson, not the authority of all the illustrious men who have drawn the parallel can keep us from deciding that this was a case of vengeance and self-murder not of noble devotion. We have no sense of vindicated principle when we see that temple fall in terrible ruin, but a thrill of disappointment and keen sorrow that a servant of Jehovah should have done this in His name. The lords of the Philistines, all the serens or chiefs of the hundred cities are gathered in the ample porch of the building. True, they are assembled at an idolatrous feast; but this idolatry is their religion which they cannot choose but exercise for they know of no better, nor has Samson ever done one deed or spoken one word that could convince them of error. True, they are met to rejoice over their enemy and they call for him in cruel vainglory to make them sport. Yet this is the man who for his sport and in his revenge once burned the standing corn of a whole valley and more than once went on slaying Philistines till he was weary. True, Samson as a patriotic Israelite views these people as enemies. Yet it was among them he first sought a wife and afterwards pleasure. And now, if he decides to die that he may kill a thousand enemies at once, is the self-chosen death less an act of suicide?
As we have already said, much is written about self-sacrifice
which is sheer mockery of truth, most falsely
sentimental. Men and women are urged to the notion
that if they can only find some pretext for renouncing
freedom, for curbing and endangering life, for stepping
aside from the way of common service that they may
give up something in an uncommon way for the sake
of any person or cause, good will come of it. The
doctrine is a lie. The sacrifice of Christ was not of
that kind. It was under the influence of no blind
desire to give up His life, but first under the pressure
of a supreme providential necessity, then in renunciation
of the earthly life for a clearly seen and personally
embraced divine end, the reconciliation of man to God,
the setting forth of a propitiation for the sin of the
world—for this it was He died. He willed to be our
Saviour; having so chosen He bowed to the burden
that was laid upon Him. "It pleased the Lord to
Suffering for itself is no end and never can be to God or to Christ or to a good man. It is a necessity on the way to the ends of righteousness and love. If personality is not a delusion and salvation a dream there must be in every case of Christian renunciation some distinct moral aim in view for every one concerned, and there must be at each step, as in the action of our Lord, the most distinct and unwavering sincerity, the most direct truthfulness. Anything else is a sin against God and humanity. We entreat would-be moralists of the day to comprehend before they write of "self-sacrifice." The sacrifice of the moral judgment is always a crime, and to preach needless suffering for the sake of covering up sin or as a means of atoning for past defects is to utter most unchristian falsehood.
Samson threw away a life of which he was weary
and ashamed. He threw it away in avenging a cruelty;
but it was a cruelty he had no reason to call a wrong.
"O God, that I might be avenged!"—that was no
prayer of a faithful heart. It was the prayer of
envenomed hatred, of a soul still unregenerate after
trial. His death was indeed self-sacrifice—the sacrifice
of the higher self, the true self, to the lower. Samson
should have endured patiently, magnifying God. Or we
can imagine something not perfect yet heroic. Had
he said to those Philistines, My people and you have
been too long at enmity. Let there be an end of it.
Avenge yourselves on me, then cease from harassing
Israel,—that would have been like a brave man. But it
is not this we find. And we close the story of Samson
The portion of the Book of Judges which begins with the seventeenth chapter and extends to the close is not in immediate connection with that which has gone before. We read (ch. xviii. 30) that "Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of Manasseh, he and his sons were priests to the tribe of Dan until the day of the captivity of the land." But the proper reading is, "Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of Moses." It would seem that the renegade Levite of the narrative was a near descendant of the great law-giver. So rapidly did the zeal of the priestly house decline that in the third or fourth generation after Moses one of his own line became minister of an idol temple for the sake of a living. It is evident, then, that in the opening of the seventeenth chapter we are carried back to the time immediately following the conquest of Canaan by Joshua, when Othniel was settling in the south and the tribes were endeavouring to establish themselves in the districts allotted to them. The note of time is of course far from precise, but the incidents are certainly to be placed early in the period.
We are introduced first to a family living in Mount
Ephraim consisting of a widow and her son Micah
We have here a very significant revelation of the state of religion. The indignation of Moses had burned against the people when at Sinai they made a rude image of gold, sacrificed to it and danced about it in heathen revel. We are reading of what took place say a century after that scene at the foot of Sinai, and already those who desire to show their devotion to the Eternal, very imperfectly known as Jehovah, make teraphim and molten images to represent Him. Micah has a sort of private chapel or temple among the buildings in his courtyard. He consecrates one of his sons to be priest of this little sanctuary. And the historian adds in explanation of this, as one keenly aware of the benefits of good government under a God-fearing monarch—"In those days there was no king in Israel. Every man did that which was right in his own eyes."
We need not take for granted that the worship in
this hill-chapel was of the heathen sort. There was
probably no Baal, no Astarte among the images; or,
if there was, it may have been merely as representing
a Syrian power prudently recognised but not adored.
In one of the highland valleys towards the north of Ephraim's territory Micah had his castle and his ecclesiastical establishment—state and church in germ. The Israelites of the neighbourhood, who looked up to the well-to-do farmer for protection, regarded him all the more that he showed respect for religion, that he had this house of gods and a private priest. They came to worship in his sanctuary and to inquire of the ecclesiastic, who in some way endeavoured to discover the will of God by means of the teraphim and ephod. The ark of the covenant was not far away for Bethel and Gilgal were both within a day's journey. But the people did not care to be at the trouble of going so far. They liked better their own local shrine and its homelier ways; and when at length Micah secured the services of a Levite the worship seemed to have all the sanction that could possibly be desired.
It need hardly be said that God is not confined to
a locality, that in those days as in our own the
true worshipper could find the Almighty on any hill-top,
in any dwelling or private place, as well as at the
accredited shrine. It is quite true, also, that God
makes large allowance for the ignorance of men and
their need of visible signs and symbols of what is
unseen and eternal. We must not therefore assume
at once that in Micah's house of idols, before the
The wandering Levite from Bethlehem-judah is one,
we must believe, of many Levites, who having found
no inheritance because the cities allotted to them were
as yet unconquered spread themselves over the land
seeking a livelihood, ready to fall in with any local
customs of religion that offered them position and
employment. The Levites were esteemed as men
acquainted with the way of Jehovah, able to maintain
that communication with Him without which no business
But the coming of the Levite was to have results Micah did not foresee. Jonathan had lived in Bethlehem, and some ten or twelve miles westward down the valley one came to Zorah and Eshtaol, two little towns of the tribe of Dan of which we have heard. The Levite had apparently become pretty well known in the district and especially in those villages to which he went to offer sacrifice or perform some other religious rite. And now a series of incidents brought certain old acquaintances to his new place of abode.
Even in Samson's time the tribe of Dan, whose
territory was to be along the coast west from Judah,
was still obliged to content itself with the slopes of the
hills, not having got possession of the plain. In the
earlier period with which we are now dealing the Danites
Months pass without any more tidings of the Danites
until one day a great company is seen following the
hill-road near Micah's farm. There are six hundred
men girt with weapons of war with their wives and
children and cattle, a whole clan on the march, filling
the road for miles and moving slowly northward. The
five men have indeed succeeded after a fashion. Away
between Lebanon and Hermon in the region of the
sources of Jordan they have found the sort of district
they went to seek. Its chief town Laish stood in the
midst of fertile fields with plenty of wood and water.
It was a place, according to their large report, where
was "no want of anything that is in the earth." Moreover
the inhabitants, who seem to have been a Phœnician
colony, dwelt by themselves quiet and secure
Men who go forth to steal land are quite fit to
attempt the strange business of stealing gods—that is
appropriating to themselves the favour of divine powers
and leaving other men destitute. The Danites as
they pass Micah's house hear from their spies of the
priest and the images that are in his charge. "Do
you know that there is in these houses an ephod and
teraphim and a graven image and a molten image?
Now therefore consider what ye have to do." The
hint is enough. Soon the court of the farmstead is
invaded, the images are brought out and the Levite
Jonathan, tempted by the offer of being made priest
to a clan, is fain to accompany the marauders. Here
is confusion on confusion. The Danites are thieves,
brigands, and yet they are pious; so pious that they
steal images to assist them in worship. The Levite
agrees to the theft and accepts the offer of priesthood
under them. He will be the minister of a set of thieves
to forward their evil designs, and they knowing him to
As we have said, these circumstances are no doubt recounted in order to show how dangerous it was to separate from the pure order of worship at the sanctuary. In after times this lesson was needed, especially when the first king of the northern tribes set his golden calves the one at Bethel, the other at Dan. Was Israel to separate from Judah in religion as well as in government? Let there be a backward look to the beginning of schism in those extraordinary doings of the Danites. It was in the city founded by the six hundred that one of Jeroboam's temples was built. Could any blessing rest upon a shrine and upon devotions which had such an origin, such an history?
May we find a parallel now? Is there a constituted
religious authority with which soundness of belief and
acceptable worship are so bound up that to renounce
the authority is to be in the way of confusion and error,
schism and eternal loss? The Romanist says so.
Those who speak for the Papal church never cease to
cry to the world that within their communion alone are
truth and safety to be found. Renounce, they say, the
apostolic and divine authority which we conserve and
all is gone. Is there anarchy in a country? Are the
forces that make for political disruption and national
decay showing themselves in many lands? Are
monarchies overthrown? Are the people lawless and
wretched? It all comes of giving up the Catholic
order and creed. Return to the one fold under the
one Shepherd if you would find prosperity. And there
are others who repeat the same injunction, not indeed
denying that there may be saving faith apart from their
With Jewish ordinances we Christians have nothing to do when we are judging as to religious order and worship now. There is no central shrine, no exclusive human authority. Where Christ is, there is the temple; where He speaks, the individual conscience must respond. The work of salvation is His alone, and the humblest believer is His consecrated priest. When our Lord said, "The hour cometh and now is when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth"; and again, "Where two or three are gathered together in My name there am I in the midst of them"; when He as the Son of God held out His hands directly to every sinner needing pardon and every seeker after truth, when He offered the one sacrifice upon the cross by which a living way is opened into the holiest place, He broke down the walls of partition and with the responsibility declared the freedom of the soul.
And here we reach the point to which our narrative applies as an illustration. Micah and his household worshipping the images of silver, the Levite officiating at the altar, seeking counsel of Jehovah by ephod and teraphim, the Danites who steal the gods, carry off the priest and set up a new worship in the city they build—all these represent to us types and stages of what is really schism pitiful and disastrous—that is, separation from the truth of things and from the sacred realities of divine faith. Selfish untruth and infidelity are schism, the wilderness and outlawry of the soul.
1. Micah and his household, with their chapel of
images, their ephod and teraphim represent those who
fall into the superstition that religion is good as insuring
2. The Levite represents an unworthy worldly
ministry. With sadness must confession be made that
there are in every church pastors unspiritual, worldlings
in heart whose desire is mainly for superiority of
rank or of wealth, who have no vision of Christ's cross
and battle except as objective and historical. Here,
most happily, the cases of complete worldliness are
rare. It is rather a tendency we observe than a
developed and acknowledged state of things. Very few
3. Once more we have with us to-day, very much
with us, certain Danites of science, politics and the
press who, if they could, would take away our God
and our Bible, our Eternal Father and spiritual hope,
not from a desire to possess but because they hate to
see us believing, hate to see any weight of silver given
to religious uses. Not a few of these are marching as
they think triumphantly to commanding and opulent
positions whence they will rule the thought of the
world. And on the way, even while they deride and
detest the supernatural, they will have the priest go
with them. They care nothing for what he says; to
listen to the voice of a spiritual teacher is an absurdity
of which they would not be guilty; for to their own
vague prophesying all mankind is to give heed, and
their interpretations of human life are to be received as
the bible of the age. Of the same order is the socialist
who would make use of a faith he intends to destroy
and a priesthood whose claim is offensive to him on
his way to what he calls the organization of society.
In his view the uses of Christianity and the Bible are
temporal and earthly. He will not have Christ the
We might here refer to the injustice practised by one and another band of our modern Israel who do not scruple to take from obscure and weak households of faith the sacraments and Christian ministry, the marks and rights of brotherhood. We can well believe that those who do this have never looked at their action from the other side, and may not have the least idea of the soreness they leave in the hearts of humble and sincere believers.
In fine, the Danites with the images of Micah went
their way and he and his neighbours had to suffer the
loss and make the best of their empty chapel where no
oracle thenceforth spoke to them. It is no parable, but
a very real example of the loss that comes to all who
have trusted in forms and symbols, the outward signs
instead of the living power of religion. While we
repel the arrogance that takes from faith its symbolic
props and stays we must not let ourselves deny that
the very rudeness of an enemy may be an excellent
discipline for the Christian. Agnosticism and science
and other Danite companies sweep with them a good
deal that is dear to the religious mind and may leave
it very distressed and anxious—the chapel empty, the
oracle as it may appear lost for ever. With the symbol
the authority, the hope, the power seem to be lost irrecoverably.
What now has faith to rest upon? But
the modern spirit with its resolution to sweep away
every unfact and mere form is no destroyer. Rather
does it drive the Christian to a science, a virtue far
These last chapters describe a general and vehement outburst of moral indignation throughout Israel, recorded for various reasons. A vile thing is done in one of the towns of Benjamin and the fact is published in all the tribes. The doers of it are defended by their clan and fearful punishment is wrought upon them, not without suffering to the entire people. Like the incidents narrated in the chapters immediately preceding, these must have occurred at an early stage in the period of the judges, and they afford another illustration of the peril of imperfect government, the need for a vigorous administration of justice over the land. The crime and the volcanic vengeance belong to a time when there was "no king in Israel" and, despite occasional appeals to the oracle, "every man did that which was right in his own eyes." In this we have one clue to the purpose of the history.
The crime of Gibeah brought under our notice here
connects itself with that of Sodom and represents a
phase of immorality which, indigenous to Canaan,
mixed its putrid current with Hebrew life. There are
traces of the same horrible impurity in the Judah of
Rehoboam and Asa; and in the story of Josiah's reign
It may be asked how, while polygamy was practised
among the Israelites, the sin of Gibeah could rouse
such indignation and awaken the signal vengeance of
the united tribes. The answer is to be found partly in
the singular and dreadful device which the indignant
husband used in making the deed known. The ghastly
symbols of outrage told the tale in a way that was
fitted to stir the blood of the whole country. Everywhere
the hideous thing was made vivid and a sense
of utmost atrocity was kindled as the dissevered members
were borne from town to town. It is easy to see
that womanhood must have been stirred to the fieriest
indignation, and manhood was bound to follow. What
woman could be safe in Gibeah where such things
were done? And was Gibeah to go unpunished? If
so, every Hebrew city might become the haunt of
miscreants. Further there is the fact that the woman
so foully murdered, though a concubine, was the concubine
of a Levite. The measure of sacredness with
which the Levites were invested gave to this crime,
frightful enough in any view, the colour of sacrilege.
How degenerate were the people of Gibeah when
The doubt will yet remain whether there could have
been so much purity of life or respect for purity as to
sustain the public indignation. Some may say, Is there
not here a sufficient reason for questioning the veracity
of the narrative? First, however, let it be remembered
that often where morals are far from reaching the level
of pure monogamic life distinctions between right and
wrong are sharply drawn. Acquaintance with phases
of modern life that are most painful to the mind
sensitively pure reveals a fixed code which none may
infringe without bringing upon themselves reprobation,
perhaps more vehement than in a higher social grade
visits the breach of a higher law. It is the fact that
concubinage has its unwritten acknowledgment and
protecting customs. There is marriage that is only
a name; there is concubinage that gives the woman
more rights than one who is married. Against the
immorality and the gross evils of cohabitation is to
be set this unwritten law. And arguing from popular
feeling in our great cities we reach the conclusion that
in ancient Israel where concubinage prevailed there was
a wide and keen feeling as to the rights of concubines
and the necessity of upholding them. Many
women must have been in this relation, below those
And here we are led to a point which demands clear
statement and recognition. It has been too readily
supposed that polygamy is always a result of moral
decline and indicates a low state of domestic purity.
It may, in truth, be a rude step of progress. Has it
been sufficiently noted that in those countries in which
the name of the mother not of the father descended to
the children the reason may be found in universal or
almost universal unchastity? In Egypt at one time the
law gave to women, especially to mothers, peculiar
rights; but to praise Egyptian civilization for this
reason and hold up its treatment of women as an
example to the nineteenth century is an extraordinary
venture. The Israelites, however lax, were doubtless in
advance of the society of Thebes. Among the Canaanites
the moral degradation of women, whatever freedom
may have gone with it, was so terrible that the Hebrew
with his two or three wives and concubines, but with
a morality otherwise severe, must have represented a
new and holier social order as well as a new and holier
religion. It is therefore not incredible but appears
simply in accordance with the instincts and customs
proper to the Hebrew people that the sin of Gibeah
should provoke overwhelming indignation. There is
no pretence of purity, no hypocritical anger. The
feeling is sound and real. Perhaps in no other matter
of a moral kind would there have been such intense
and unanimous exasperation. A point of justice or of
belief would not have so moved the tribes. The better
The time was that of fresh feeling, unwarped by those customs which in the guise of civilisation and refinement afterwards corrupted the nation. And we may see the prophetic or hortatory use of the narrative for an after age in which doings as vile as those at Gibeah were sanctioned by the court and protected even by religious leaders. It would be hoped by the sacred historian that this tale of the fierce indignation of the tribes might rouse afresh the same moral feeling. He would fain stir a careless people and their priests by the exhibition of this tumultuous vengeance. Nor can we say that the necessity for the impressive lesson has ceased. In the heart of our large cities vices as vile as those of Gibeah are heard muttering in the nightfall, life as abandoned lurks and festers creating a social gangrene.
Recognise, then, in these chapters a truth for all time
boldly drawn out—the great truth as to moral reform
and national purity. Law will not cure moral evils;
a statute book the purest and noblest will not save.
Those who by the impulse of the Spirit gathered the
various traditions of Israel's life knew well that on
a living conscience in men everything depended, and
they at least indicate the further truth which many
of ourselves have not grasped, that the early and rude
workings of conscience, producing stormy and terrible
results, are a necessary stage of development. As
there must be energy before there can be noble energy,
so there must be moral vigour, it may be rude, violent,
ignorant, a stream rushing out of barbarian hills,
The church finds here a perpetual mission of influence. Her doctrine is but half her message. From the doctrine as from an eternal fount must go life-giving moral heat in every range, and the Spirit is ever with her to make the word like a fire. Her duty is wide as righteousness, great as man's destiny; it is never ended, for each generation comes in a new hour with new needs. The church, say some, is finishing its work; it is doomed to be one of the broken moulds of life. But the church that is the instructor of conscience and kindles the flame of righteousness has a mission to the ages. We are far yet from that day of the Lord when all the people shall be prophets; and until then how can the world live without the church? It would be a body without a soul.
Conscience the oracle of life, conscience working
badly rather than held in chains of mere rule without
spontaneity and inspiration, moral energy widespread
Now the people of Gibeah were not all vile. The
wretches whose crime called for judgment were but the
rabble of the town. And we can see that the tribes
But what is the issue? The oracle decrees an immediate attack on Gibeah in the face of all Benjamin which has shown the temper of heathenism by refusing to give up the criminals. Once and again there is trial of battle which ends in defeat of the allied tribes. The wrong triumphs; the people have to return humbled and weeping to the Sacred Presence and sit fasting and disconsolate before the Lord.
Not without the suffering of the entire community is a great evil to be purged from a land. It is easy to execute a murderer, to imprison a felon. But the spirit of the murderer, of the felon, is widely diffused, and that has to be cast out. In the great moral struggle year after year the better have not only the openly vile but all who are tainted, all who are weak in soul, loose in habit, secretly sympathetic with the vile, arrayed against them. There is a sacrifice of the good before the evil are overcome. In vicarious suffering many must pay the penalty of crimes not their own ere the wide-reaching wickedness can be seen in its demonic power and struck down as the cruel enemy of the people.
When an assault is made on some vile custom the
The tide turned and there came another danger,
that which waits on ebullitions of popular feeling. A
crowd roused to anger is hard to control, and the tribes
having once tasted vengeance did not cease till Benjamin
was almost exterminated. The slaughter extended
not only to the fighting men, but to women and
children. The six hundred who fled to the rock-fort
of Rimmon appear as the only survivors of the clan.
Justice overshot its mark and for one evil made another.
Those who had most fiercely used the sword viewed
the result with horror and amazement, for a tribe was
lacking in Israel. Nor was this the end of slaughter.
Next for the sake of Benjamin the sword was drawn
The warning conveyed here is intensely keen. It
is that men, made doubtful by the issue of their actions
whether they have done wisely, may fly to the resolution
to justify themselves and may do so even at the
expense of justice; that a nation may pass from the
right way to the wrong and then, having sunk to
extraordinary baseness and malignity, may turn writhing
and self-condemned to add cruelty to cruelty in the
attempt to still the upbraidings of conscience. It is
that men in the heat of passion which began with
resentment against evil may strike at those who have
not joined in their errors as well as those who truly
deserve reprobation. We stand, nations and individuals,
in constant danger of dreadful extremes, a kind of
insanity hurrying us on when the blood is heated
by strong emotion. Blindly attempting to do right we
do evil, and again, having done the evil we blindly
strive to remedy it by doing more. In times of moral
darkness and chaotic social conditions, when men are
In private life the story has an application against wild and violent methods of self-vindication. Many a man, hurried on by a just anger against one who has done him wrong, sees to his horror after a sharp blow is struck that he has broken a life and thrown a brother bleeding to the dust. One wrong thing has been done perhaps more in haste than vileness of purpose, and retribution, hasty, ill-considered, leaves the moral question tenfold more confused. When all is reckoned we find it impossible to say where the right is, where the wrong.
Passing to the final expedient adopted by the chiefs
of Israel to rectify their error—the rape of the women
at Shiloh—we see only to how pitiful a pass moral
blundering brings those who fall into it: other moral
teaching there is none. We might at first be disposed
to say that there was extraordinary want of reverence
for religious order and engagements when the men of
Benjamin were invited to make a sacred festival the
occasion of taking what the other tribes had solemnly
vowed not to give. But the festival at Shiloh must
But the scenes certainly change in the course of this narrative with extraordinary swiftness. Fierce indignation is followed by pity, weeping for defeat by tears for too complete a victory. Horrible bloodshed wastes the cities and in a month there is dancing in the plain of Shiloh not ten miles from the field of battle. Chaotic indeed are the morality and the history; but it is the disorder of social life in its early stages, with the vehemence and tenderness, the ferocity and laughter of a nation's youth. And, all along, the Book of Judges bears the stamp of veracity as a series of records because these very features are to be seen—this tumult, this undisciplined vehemence in feeling and act. Were we told here of decorous solemn progress at slow march, every army going forth with some stereotyped invocation of the Lord of Hosts, every leader a man of conventional piety supported by a blameless priesthood and orderly sacrifices, we should have had no evidence of truth. The traditions preserved here, whoever collected them, are singularly free from that idyllic colour which an imaginative writer would have endeavoured to give.
At the last, accordingly, the book we have been
reading stands a real piece of history, proving itself
over every kind of suspicion a true record of a people
chosen and guided to a destiny greater than any other
race of man has known. A people understanding its
call and responding with eagerness at every point?
Leaving the Book of Judges and opening the
story of Ruth we pass from vehement out-door
life, from tempest and trouble into quiet domestic
scenes. After an exhibition of the greater movements
of a people we are brought, as it were, to a cottage
interior in the soft light of an autumn evening, to obscure
lives passing through the cycles of loss and comfort,
affection and sorrow. We have seen the ebb and flow
of a nation's fidelity and fortune, a few leaders appearing
clearly on the stage and behind them a multitude
indefinite, indiscriminate, the thousands who form the
ranks of battle and die on the field, who sway together
from Jehovah to Baal and back to Jehovah again.
What the Hebrews were at home, how they lived in
the villages of Judah or on the slopes of Tabor the
narrative has not paused to speak of with detail. Now
there is leisure after the strife and the historian can
describe old customs and family events, can show us
the toiling flockmaster, the busy reapers, the women
with their cares and uncertainties, the love and labour
of simple life. Thunderclouds of sin and judgment
have rolled over the scene; but they have cleared
away and we see human nature in examples that
Bethlehem is the scene, quiet and lonely on its high
ridge overlooking the Judæan wilderness. The little city
never had much part in the eager life of the Hebrew
people, yet age after age some event notable in history,
some death or birth or some prophetic word drew the
eyes of Israel to it in affection or in hope; and to us
the Saviour's birth there has so distinguished it as one
of the most sacred spots on earth that each incident
in the fields or at the gate appears charged with predictive
meaning, each reference in psalm or prophecy has
tender significance. We see the company of Jacob on a
journey through Canaan halt by the way near Ephrath,
which is Bethlehem, and from the tents there comes
a sound of wailing. The beloved Rachel is dead. Yet
she lives in a child new-born, the mother's Son of
Sorrow, who becomes to the father Benjamin, Son of the
Right Hand. The sword pierces a loving heart, but
hope springs out of pain and life out of death. Generations
pass and in these fields of Bethlehem we see
Ruth gleaning, Ruth the Moabitess, a stranger and
foreigner who has sought refuge under the shadow of
Jehovah's wings; and at yonder gate she is saved from
want and widowhood, finding in Boaz her goël and
menuchah, her redeemer and rest. Later, another
birth, this time within the walls, the birth of one long
despised by his brethren, gives to Israel a poet and a
king, the sweet singer of divine psalms, the hero of
a hundred fights. And here again we see the three
mighty men of David's troop breaking through the
Philistine host to fetch for their chief a draught from
the cool spring by the gate. Prophecy, too, leaves
Jephthah had scattered Ammon behind the hills and the Hebrews dwelt in comparative peace and security. The sanctuary at Shiloh was at length recognised as the centre of religious influence; Eli was in the beginning of his priesthood, and orderly worship was maintained before the ark. People could live quietly about Bethlehem, although Samson, fitfully acting the part of champion on the Philistine border, had his work in restraining the enemy from an advance. Yet all was not well in the homesteads of Judah, for drought is as terrible a foe to the flockmaster as the Arab hordes, and all the south lands were parched and unfruitful.
We are to follow the story of Elimelech, his wife
Naomi and their sons Mahlon and Chilion whose home
at Bethlehem is about to be broken up. The sheep
are dying in the bare glens, the cattle in the fields.
From the soil usually so fertile little corn has been
With thoughts like these men often leave the land of their birth, the scenes of early faith, and oftener still without any pressure of necessity or any purpose of returning. Emigration appears to be forced upon many in these times, the compulsion coming not from Providence but from man and man's law. It is also an outlet for the spirit of adventure which characterizes some races and has made them the heirs of continents. Against emigration it would be folly to speak, but great is the responsibility of those by whose action or want of action it is forced upon others. May it not be said that in every European land there are persons in power whose existence is like a famine to a whole country-side? Emigration is talked of glibly as if it were no loss but always gain, as if to the mass of men the traditions and customs of their native land were mere rags well parted with. But it is clear from innumerable examples that many lose what they never find again, of honour, seriousness and faith.
The last thing thought of by those who compel
emigration and many who undertake it of their own
We may believe that the Bethlehemite if he made a
mistake in removing to Moab acted in good faith and
did not lose his hope of the divine blessing. Probably
he would have said that Moab was just like home.
The people spoke a language similar to Hebrew, and
like the tribes of Israel they were partly husbandmen
partly keepers of cattle. In the "Field of Moab," that
is the upland canton bounded by the Arnon on the
north, the mountains on the east and the Dead Sea
precipices on the west, people lived very much as they
did about Bethlehem, only more safely and in greater
Already we have a picture of wayworn human lives
tried on one side by the rigour of nature, on the other
by unsympathetic fellow-creatures, and the picture
becomes more pathetic as new touches are added to it.
Elimelech died; the young men married women of
Moab; and in ten years only Naomi was left, a widow
with her widowed daughters-in-law. The narrative
adds shadow to shadow. The Hebrew woman in her
bereavement, with the care of two lads who were somewhat
indifferent to the religion she cherished, touches
our sympathies. We feel for her when she has to
consent to the marriage of her sons with heathen
women, for it seems to close all hope of return to her
own land and, sore as this trial is, there is a deeper
trouble. She is left childless in the country of exile.
Yet all is not shadow. Life never is entirely dark
unless with those who have ceased to trust in God and
care for man. While we have compassion on Naomi
Far better the service of others in spiritual things than
a life of mere personal ease and comfort. We count up
our pleasures, our possessions and gains and think that
in these we have the evidence of the divine favour.
Do we as often reckon the opportunities given us of
helping our neighbours to believe in God, of showing
patience and fidelity, of having a place among those
who labour and wait for the eternal kingdom? It is
here that we ought to trace the gracious hand of God
preparing our way, opening for us the gates of life.
When shall we understand that circumstances which
remove us from the experience of poverty and pain
remove us also from precious means of spiritual service
and profit? To be in close personal touch with the
poor, the ignorant and burdened is to have simple
every-day openings into the region of highest power
and gladness. We do something enduring, something
that engages and increases our best powers when we
guide, enlighten and comfort even a few souls and plant
Her two sons taken away, Naomi felt no tie binding her to Moab. Moreover in Judah the fields were green again and life was prosperous. She might hope to dispose of her land and realize something for her old age. It seemed therefore her interest and duty to return to her own country; and the next picture of the poem shows Naomi and her daughters-in-law travelling along the northward highway towards the ford of Jordan, she on her way home, they accompanying her. The two young widows are almost decided when they leave the desolate dwelling in Moab to go all the way to Bethlehem. Naomi's account of the life there, the purer faith and better customs attract them, and they love her well. But the matter is not settled; on the bank of Jordan the final choice will be made.
There are hours which bring a heavy burden of responsibility
to those who advise and guide, and such an
hour came now to Naomi. It was in poverty she was
returning to the home of her youth. She could promise
to her daughters-in-law no comfortable easy life there,
for, as she well knew, the enmity of Hebrews against
Moabites was apt to be bitter and they might be scorned
as aliens from Jehovah. So far as she was concerned
nothing could have been more desirable than their
company. A woman in poverty and past middle life
Naomi's advantage lay in securing the companionship of Ruth and Orpah, and religious considerations added their weight to her own desire. Her very regard and care for these young women seemed to urge as the highest service she could do them to draw them out of the paganism of Moab and settle them in the country of Jehovah. So while she herself would find reward for her patient efforts these two would be rescued from the darkness, bound in the bundle of life. Here, perhaps, was her strongest temptation; and to some it may appear that it was her duty to use every argument to this end, that she was bound as one who watched for the souls of Ruth and Orpah to set every fear, every doubt aside and to persuade them that their salvation depended on going with her to Bethlehem. Was this not her sacred opportunity, her last opportunity of making sure that the teaching she had given them should have its fruit?
Strange it may seem that the author of the Book of
Ruth is not chiefly concerned with this aspect of the
case, that he does not blame Naomi for failing to set
spiritual considerations in the front. The narrative
indeed afterwards makes it clear that Ruth chose the
good part and prospered by choosing it, but here the
writer calmly states without any question the very
temporal and secular reasons which Naomi pressed on
"The Lord grant you that ye may find rest, each of you in the house of her husband." That the two young widows should return each to her mother's house and marry again in Moab is Naomi's urgent advice to them. The times were rude and wild. A woman could be safe and respected only under the protection of a husband. Not only was there the old-world contempt for unmarried women, but, we may say, they were an impossibility; there was no place for them in the social life. People did not see how there could be a home without some man at the head of it, the house-band in whom all family arrangements centred. It had not been strange that in Moab Hebrew men should marry women of the land; but was it likely Ruth and Orpah would find favour at Bethlehem? Their speech and manners would be despised and dislike once incurred prove hard to overcome. Besides, they had no property to commend them.
Evidently the two were very inexperienced. They
had little thought of the difficulties, and Naomi, therefore,
had to speak very strongly. In the grief of
bereavement and the desire for a change of scene they
had formed the hope of going where there were good
men and women like the Hebrews they knew, and
Looking around us now we see multitudes of women
for whom there appears to be no room, no vocation.
Up to a certain point, while they were young, they had
no thought of failure. Then came a time when Providence
appointed a task; there were parents to care for,
daily occupations in the house. But calls for their
service have ceased and they feel no responsibility
sufficient to give interest and strength. The world has
moved on and the movement has done much for women,
yet all do not find themselves supplied with a task and
a place. Around the occupied and the distinguished
circles perpetually a crowd of the helpless, the aimless,
the disappointed, to whom life is a blank, offering no
path to a ford of Jordan and a new future. Yet half
the needful work is done for these when they are made
to feel that among the possible ways they must choose
one for themselves and follow it; and all is done when
they are shown that in the service of God, which is the
service also of mankind, a task waits them fitted to
engage their highest powers. Across into the region
of religious faith and energy they may decide to pass,
there is room in it for every life. Disappointment will
We journey along with others for a time, enjoying
their fellowship and sharing their hopes, yet
with thoughts and dreams of our own that must sooner
or later send us on a separate path. But decision is
so difficult to many that they are glad of an excuse
for self-surrender and are only too willing to be led by
some authority, deferring personal choice as long as
possible. Let an ecclesiastic or a strong-minded companion
lay down for them the law of right and wrong
and point the path of duty and they will obey, welcoming
the relief from moral effort. Not seeing clearly, not
disciplined in judgment, they crave external human
guidance. The teachers of submission find many
disciples not because they speak truth but because
they meet the indolence of the human will with a
crutch instead of a stimulus; they succeed by pampering
weakness and making ignorance a virtue. A
time comes, however, when the method will not serve.
There are moments when the will must be exercised in
choosing between one path and another, advance and
retreat; and the alternative is too sharp to allow any
escape. If the person is to live at all as a human
being he has to decide whether he will go on in such
To Orpah the arguments of Naomi were persuasive. Her mother lived in Moab, and to her mother's house she could return. There the customs prevailed which from childhood she had followed. She would have liked to go with Naomi, but her interest in the Hebrew woman and the land and law of Jehovah did not suffice to draw her forward. Orpah saw the future as Naomi painted it, not indeed very attractive if she returned to her native place, but with far more uncertainty and possible humiliation if she crossed the dividing river. She kissed Naomi and Ruth and took the southward road alone, weeping as she went, often turning for yet another sight of her friends, passing at every step into an existence that could never be the old life simply taken up again, but would be coloured in all its experience by what she had learned from Naomi and that parting which was her own choice.
The others did not greatly blame her, and we, for
our part, may not reproach her. It is unnecessary to
suppose that in returning to her kinsfolk and settling
down to the tasks that offered in her mother's house
she was guilty of despising truth and love and renouncing
the best. We may reasonably imagine her
henceforth bearing witness for a higher morality and
affirming the goodness of the Hebrew religion among
her friends and acquaintances. Ruth goes where
affection and duty lead her; but for Orpah too it may
be claimed that in love and duty she goes back. She
is not one who says, Moab has done nothing for me;
Moab has no claim upon me; I am free to leave my
And Ruth:—memorable for ever is her decision, charming for ever the words in which it is expressed. "Behold," said Naomi, "thy sister-in-law is gone back unto her people, and unto her god: return thou after thy sister-in-law." But Ruth replied, "Intreat me not to leave thee, and to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me." Like David's lament over Jonathan these words have sunk deep into the human heart. As an expression of the tenderest and most faithful friendship they are unrivalled. The simple dignity of the iteration in varying phrase till the climax is reached beyond which no promise could go, the quiet fervour of the feeling, the thought which seems to have almost a Christian depth—all are beautiful, pathetic, noble. From this moment a charm lingers about Ruth and she becomes dearer to us than any woman of whom the Hebrew records tell.
Dignified and warm affection is the first characteristic
of Ruth and close beside it we find the strength of
a firm conclusion as to duty. It is good to be capable
of clear resolve, parting between this and that of opposing
considerations and differing claims. Not to rush
One may act in error, as perhaps Elimelech and
Orpah acted, yet the life be the stronger for the mistaken
decision; only there must be no repentance for
having exercised the power of judgment and of choice.
Women are particularly prone to go back on themselves
in false repentance. They did what they could not but
think to be duty; they carefully decided on a path in
loyalty to conscience; yet too often they will reproach
themselves because what they desired and hoped has
not come about. We cannot imagine Ruth in after
years, even though her lot had remained that of the
poor gleaner and labourer, returning upon her decision
and weeping in secret as if the event had proved her
high choice a foolish one. Her mind was too firm
and clear for that. Yet this is what numbers of women
are doing, burdening their souls, making that a crime
in which they should rather practise themselves. Our
decisions, even when they are made with all the
wisdom and information we can command in thorough
sanity and sincerity, may be, often are very faulty;
and do we expect that Providence will perpetually
interfere to bring a perfect result out of the imperfect?
Only in the perfect order of God, through the perfect
work of Christ and the perfect operation of the Holy
Spirit is the glorious consummation of human history
"Then welcome each rebuff
That turns earth's smoothness rough,
Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go!
Be our joys three parts pain!
Strive, and hold cheap the strain;
Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!"
In religion there is no escape from personal decision;
no one can drift to salvation with companions or with
a church. In art, in literature, in ordinary morality it
is possible to possess something without any special
effort. The atmosphere of cultured society, for instance,
holds in solution the knowledge and taste which have
been gained by a few and may pass in some measure
to those who associate with them, though personally
these have studied and acquired very little. Any one
who observes how a new book is talked of will see the
process. But the supreme nature of religion and its
unique part in human development are seen here, that
it demands high and sustained personal effort, the
constant action of the will; that indeed every spiritual
gain must result from the vital activity of the individual
mind choosing to enter and enter yet farther the kingdom
of divine revelation and grace. As it is expressed
in the Epistle to the Hebrews: "We desire that every
one of you do show the same diligence to the full
assurance of hope unto the end: that ye be not slothful,
but followers of them who through faith and patience
Like many women Ruth was moved greatly by love. Was her love justified? Did it rightly govern her to the extent her words imply? "Whither thou goest, I will go: thy people shall be my people: where thou diest I will die, and there will I be buried." It is beautiful to see such love: but how was it earned?
Surely by years of patient faithful help; not by a few
cheap words and caresses, a few facile promises; not
by beauty of face, gaiety of temper. The love that has
nothing but these to found upon is not enough for
a life-companionship. But if there is honour, clear
sincerity of soul, generosity of nature; if there is brave
devotion to duty, there love can rest without fear,
reproach or hazard. When these cast their light on
your way, love then, love freely and strongly; you are
safe. It is indeed called love where these are not—but
only in ignorance and lightness: the heart has been
Lastly and chiefly the answer of Ruth implies a
religious change—conversion. She renounces Chemosh
and turns in faith and hope to the God of Israel, and
this is the striking feature of her choice. Dimly seen,
the grace and righteousness of the Most High touched
her soul, commanded her reverence, drew her to follow
one who was His servant and could recount the wonderful
story of His people. Surely it is a supreme
event in any life when this vision of the Best allures
the mind and engages the will, even though knowledge
of God be as yet very imperfect. And the reliance of
Ruth upon the little she felt and knew of God, her clear
resolution to seek rest under His wings appear in
striking contrast with the reluctance, the unconcern,
Ruth's life properly began when at Naomi's side she passed through the waters, the very waters of baptism to her. There, with the purple mountains of Moab and the precipices of the Dead Sea shore behind, she sent her last look to Orpah and the past, and saw before her the steep narrow ascent through the Judæan hills. With rising faith, with growing love she moved to the fulfilment of womanhood in realizing the soul's highest power and privilege. The upward path was hard to weary feet and all was not to be easy for Ruth in the Bethlehem of which she had dreamed; but fully committed and pledged to the new life she went forward. How much is missed when the choice to serve God is not unreservedly made, and there is not that full consecration of which Ruth's decision may be a type.
Of this loss we see examples on every side. To
remain in the low ground by the river, still within
reach of some paganism that fascinates even after profession
and baptism—this is the end of religious feeling
with many. Where the narrow way of discipleship
leads they will not adventure; it is too bare, confining
and severe. They will not believe that freedom for the
human soul is found by that path alone; they refuse
Life has many partings, and we have all had our
experience of some which without fault on either side
separate those well fitted to serve and bless each other.
Over matters of faith, questions of political order and
even social morality separations will occur. There
may be no lack of faithfulness on either side when
at a certain point widely divergent views of duty are
taken by two who have been friends. One standing
only a little apart from the other sees the same light
reflected from a different facet of the crystal, streaming
out in a different direction. As it would be altogether
a mistake to say that Orpah took the way of worldly
selfishness, Ruth only going in the way of duty, so it
is entirely a mistake to accuse those who part with us
on some question of faith or conduct and think of them
as finally estranged. A little more knowledge and we
would see with them or they with us. Some day they
Yet one difference between men reaches to the roots of life. The company of those who keep the straight way and press on towards the light have the most sorrowful recollection of some partings. They have had to leave comrades and brethren behind who despised the quest of holiness and immortality and had nothing but mockery for the Friend and Saviour of man. The shadows of estrangement falling between those who are of Christ's company are nothing compared with the dense cloud which divides them from men pledged to what is earthly and ignoble; and so the reproach of sectarian division coming from irreligious persons needs not trouble those who have as Christians an eternal brotherhood.
There are divisions sharp and dreadful, not always
at some river which clearly separates land from land.
They may be made in the street where parting seems
temporary and casual. They may be made in the
very house of God. While some members of a family
are responding with joy to a divine appeal, one may
Weary and footsore the two travellers reached Bethlehem at length, and "all the city was moved about them." Though ten years had elapsed, many yet remembered as if it had been yesterday the season of terrible famine and the departure of the emigrants. Now the women lingering at the well, when they see the strangers approaching, say as they look in the face of the elder one, "Is this Naomi?" What a change is here! With husband and sons, hoping for a new life across in Moab, she went away. Her return has about it no sign of success; she comes on foot, in the company of one who is evidently of an alien race, and the two have all the marks of poverty. The women who recognize the widow of Elimelech are somewhat pitiful, perhaps also a little scornful. They had not left their native land nor doubted the promise of Jehovah. Through the famine they had waited, and now their position contrasts very favourably with hers. Surely Naomi is far down in the world since she has made a companion of a woman of Moab. Her poverty is against the wayfarer, and to those who know not the story of her life that which shows her goodness and faithfulness appears a cause of reproach and reason of suspicion.
And Naomi appears to accept the judgment they
have formed. Very touching is the lament in which
she takes her position as one whom God has rebuked,
whom it is no wonder, therefore, that old friends
despise. She almost makes excuse for those who look
down upon her from the high ground of their imaginary
virtue and wisdom. Indeed she has the same belief as
they that poverty, the loss of land, bereavement and
every kind of affliction are marks of God's displeasure.
For, what does she say? "Call me not Naomi,
Pleasant, call me Mara, Bitter, for the Almighty hath
dealt very bitterly with me.... The Lord hath testified
against me and the Almighty hath afflicted me."
Such was the Hebrew thought, the purpose of God in
It is perhaps difficult for us to realize even by an imaginative effort this condition of soul—the sense of banishment, darkness, outlawry which came to the Hebrew whenever he fell into distress or penury. And yet we ourselves retain the same standard of judgment in our common estimate of life; we still interpret things by an ignorant unbelief which causes many worthy souls to bow in a humiliation Christians should never feel. Do not the loneliness, the poverty, the testimony of Christ teach us something altogether different? Can we still cherish the notion that prosperity is an evidence of worth and that the man who can found a family must be a favourite of the heavenly powers? Judge thus and the providence of God is a tangle, a perplexing darkening problem which, believe as you may, must still overwhelm. Wealth has its conditions; money comes through some one's cleverness in work and trading, some one's inventiveness or thrift, and these qualities are reputable. But nothing is proved regarding the spiritual tone and nature of a life either by wealth or by the want of it. And surely we have learned that loss of friends and loneliness are not to be reckoned the punishment of sin. Often enough we hear the warning that wealth and worldly position are not to be sought for themselves, and yet, side by side with this warning, the implication that a high place and a prosperous life are proofs of divine blessing.
In Bethlehem Naomi found the half-ruined cottage still belonging to her, and there she and Ruth took up their abode. But for a living what was to be done? The answer came in the proposal of Ruth to go into the fields where the barley harvest was proceeding and glean after the reapers. By great diligence she might gather enough day by day for the bare sustenance that contents a Syrian peasant, and afterwards some other means of providing for herself and Naomi might be found. The work was not dignified. She would have to appear among the waifs and wanderers of the country, with women whose behaviour exposed them to the rude gibes of the labourers. But whatever plan Naomi vaguely entertained was hanging in abeyance, and the circumstances of the women were urgent. No kinsman came forward to help them. Loath as she was to expose Ruth to the trials of the harvest-field, Naomi had to let her go. So it was Ruth who made the first move, Ruth the stranger who brought succour to the Hebrew widow when her own people held aloof and she herself knew not how to act.
Now among the farmers whose barley was falling
before the sickle was the land-owner Boaz, a kinsman
of Elimelech, a man of substance and social importance,
The great operations which some in these days think
fit to carry on, more for their own glory certainly than
the good of their country or countrymen, entirely preclude
anything like friendship between the chief and
the multitude of his subordinates. It is impossible
that a man who has a thousand under him should know
and consider each, and there would be too much pretence
in saying, "God be with you," on entering a yard
or factory when otherwise no feeling is shown with
which the name of God can be connected. Apart
altogether from questions as to wealth and its use
Boaz the farmer had not more in hand than he could attend to honestly, and everything under his care was well ordered. He had a foreman over the reapers, and from him he required an account of the stranger whom he saw gleaning in the field. There were to be no hangers-on of loose character where he exercised authority; and in this we justify him. We like to see a man keeping a firm hand when we are sure that he has a good heart and knows what he is doing. Such a one is bound within the range of his power to have all done rightly and honourably, and Boaz pleases us all the better that he makes close inquiry regarding the woman who seeks the poor gains of a common gleaner.
Of course in a place like Bethlehem people knew
each other, and Boaz was probably acquainted with
most whom he saw about; at once, therefore, the new
figure of the Moabite woman attracted his attention.
Great was the surprise of the lonely gleaner when
the rich man came to her side and gave her a word of
comfortable greeting. "Hearest thou not, my daughter?
Go not to glean in another field, but abide here fast by
my maidens." Nothing had been done to make Ruth
feel at home in Bethlehem until Boaz addressed her.
She had perhaps seen proud and scornful looks in the
street and at the well, and had to bear them meekly,
silently. In the fields she may have looked for something
of the kind and even feared that Boaz would dismiss
her. A gentle person in such circumstances is
exceedingly grateful for a very small kindness, and it
was not a slight favour that Boaz did her. But in
making her acknowledgments Ruth did not know what
had prepared her way. The truth was that she had
met with a man of character who valued character, and
her faithfulness commended her. "It hath been fully
Is it on such a ground you draw to others? Is your
interest won by kindly dispositions and fidelity of
temper? Do you love those who are sincere and
patient in their duties, content to serve where service
is appointed by God? Are you attracted by one who
cherishes a parent, say a poor mother, in the time of
feebleness and old age, doing all that is possible to
smooth her path and provide for her comfort? Or
have you little esteem for such a one, for the duties so
faithfully discharged, because you see no brilliance or
beauty, and there are other persons more clever and
successful on their own account, more amusing because
they are unburdened? If so, be sure of your own
ignorance, your own undutifulness, your own want of
principle and heart. Character is known by character,
and worth by worth. Those who are acquainted with
you could probably say that you care more for display
than for honour, that you think more of making a fine
figure in society than of showing generosity, forbearance
integrity at home. The good appreciate goodness,
the true honour truth. One important lesson of the
Book of Ruth lies here, that the great thing for young
women, and for young men also, is to be quietly
faithful in the service, however humble, to which God
has called them and the family circle in which He has
set them. Not indeed because that is the line of
promotion, though Ruth found it so; every Ruth does
not obtain favour in the eyes of a wealthy Boaz. So
honourable and good a man is not to be met on every
We must take the course of this narrative as symbolic. The book has in it the strain of a religious idyl. The Moabite who wins the regard of this man of Judah represents those who, though naturally strangers to the covenant of promise, receive the grace of God and enter the circle of divine blessing—even coming to high dignity in the generations of the chosen people. It is idyllic, we say, not an exhibition of every-day fact; yet the course of divine justice is surely more beautiful, more certain. To every Ruth comes the Heavenly Friend Whose are all the pastures and fields, all the good things of life. The Christian hope is in One Who cannot fail to mark the most private faithfulness, piety and love hidden like violets among the grass. If there is not such a One, the Helper and Vindicator of meek fidelity, virtue has no sanction and well-doing no recompense.
The true Israelite Boaz accepts the daughter of an
alien and unfriendly people on account of her own
character and piety. "The Lord recompense thy work,
and a full reward be given thee of the Lord, the God
of Israel, under Whose wings thou art come to take
refuge." Such is the benediction which Boaz invokes
on Ruth, receiving her cordially into the family circle
of Jehovah. Already she has ceased to be a stranger
and a foreigner to him. The boundary walls of race
are overstepped, partly, no doubt, by that sense of kinship
which the Bethlehemite is quick to acknowledge.
For Naomi's sake and for Elimelech's as well as her
own he craves divine protection and reward for the
daughter of Moab. Yet the beautiful phrase he employs,
full of Hebrew confidence in God, is an acknowledgment
Not for Israel only in the time of its narrowness
was the lesson given. We need it still. The justification
and redemption of God are not restricted to
those who have certain traditions and beliefs. Even
as a Moabite woman brought up in the worship of
Chemosh, with many heathen ideas still in her mind,
has her place under the wings of Jehovah as a soul
seeking righteousness, so from countries and regions of
life which Christian people may consider a kind of rude
heathen Moab many in humility and sincerity may
be coming nigh to the kingdom of God. It was so in
our Lord's time, and it is so still. All along the true
religion of God has been for reconciliation and brotherhood
among men, and it was possible for many Israelites
to do what Naomi did in the way of making effectual the
promise of God to Abraham that in his seed all families
of the earth should be blessed. There never was a
middle wall of partition between men except in the
thought of the Hebrew. He was separated that he
might be able to convert and bless, not that he might
stand aloof in pride. The wall which he built Christ
has broken down that the servants of His gospel may
go freely forth to find everywhere brethren in common
Hope came to Naomi when Ruth returned with
the ephah of barley and her story of the rich
man's hearty greeting. God was remembering His
handmaiden; He had not shut up His tender mercies.
Through His favour Boaz had been moved to kindness,
and the house of Elimelech would yet be raised from
the dust. The woman's heart, clinging to its last hope,
was encouraged. Naomi was loud in her praises of
Jehovah and of the man who had with such pious
readiness befriended Ruth. And the young woman
had due encouragement. She heard no fault-finding, no
complaint that she had made too little of her chance.
The young sometimes find it difficult to serve the old,
and those who have come down in the world are very
apt to be discontented and querulous; what is done for
them is never rightly done, never enough. It was not
so here. The elder woman seems to have had nothing
but gratitude for the gentle effort of the other. And so
the weeks of barley-harvest and of wheat-harvest went
by, Ruth busy in the fields of Boaz, gleaning behind
his maidens, helped by their kindness—for they knew
better than to thwart their master—and cheered at
home by the pleasure of her mother-in-law. An idyl?
Yes: one that might be enacted, with varying circumstances,
But, one may ask, why did Boaz, so well inclined to be generous, knowing these women to be deserving of help, leave them week after week without further notice and aid? Could he reckon his duty done when he allowed Ruth to glean in his fields, gave her a share of the refreshment provided for the reapers, and ordered them to pull some ears from the bundles that she might the more easily fill her arms? For friendships sake even, should he not have done more?
We keep in mind, for one thing, that Boaz, though a kinsman, was not the nearest relation Naomi had in Bethlehem. Another was of closer kin to Elimelech, and it was his duty to take up the widow's case in accordance with the custom of the time. The old law that no Hebrew family should be allowed to lapse had deep root and justification. How could Israel maintain itself in the land of promise and become the testifying people of God if families were suffered to die out and homesteads to be lost? One war after another drained away many active men of the tribes. Upon those who survived lay the serious duty of protecting widows, upholding claims to farm and dwelling and raising up to those who had died a name in Israel. The stress of the time gave sanction to the law; without it Israel would have decayed, losing ground and power in the face of the enemy. Now this custom bound the nearest kinsman of Naomi to befriend her and, at least, to establish her claim to a certain parcel of land near Bethlehem. As for Boaz, he had to stand aside and give the goël his opportunity.
And another reason is easily seen for his not hastening
As time went by and harvest drew to a close, Naomi
grew impatient. Anxious about Ruth's future she
wished to see something done towards establishing her
in safety and honour. "My daughter-in-law," we hear
her say, "shall I not seek rest—a menuchah or asylum
for thee, that it may be well with thee?" No goël or
redeemer has appeared to befriend Naomi and reinstate
her, or Ruth as representing her dead son, in the rights
of Elimelech. If those rights are not to lapse, something
Now let us remember the position of the two widows,
lonely, with no prospect before them but hard toil that
would by-and-by fail, unable to undertake anything on
their own account, and still regarded with indifference
if not suspicion by the people of Bethlehem. There is
no asylum for Ruth except in the house of a husband.
If Naomi dies she will be worse than destitute, morally
under a cloud. To live by herself will be to lead a
life of constant peril. It is, we may say, a desperate
resource on which Naomi falls. Boaz is probably
already married, has perhaps more wives than one.
True, he has room in his house for Ruth; he can
easily provide for her; and though the customs of the
age are strained somewhat we must partly admit
excuse. Still the venture is almost entirely suggested
and urged by worldly considerations, and for the sake
of them great risk is run. Instead of gaining a husband
Ruth may completely forfeit respect. Boaz, so far
from entertaining her appeal to his kinship and generosity,
may drive her from the threshing-floor. It is one
We ask why Naomi did not first approach the proper goël, the kinsman nearer than Boaz, on whom she had an undeniable claim. And the answer occurs that he did not seem in respect of disposition or means so good a match as Boaz. Or why did she not go directly to Boaz and state her desire? She was apparently not averse from grasping at the result, compromising him, or running the risk of doing so in order to gain her end. We cannot pass the point without observing that, despite the happy issue of this plot, it is a warning not an example. These secret, underhand schemes are not to our liking; they should in no circumstances be resorted to. It was well for Ruth that she had a man to deal with who was generous, not irascible, a man of character who had fully appreciated her goodness. The scheme would otherwise have had a pitiful result. The story is one creditable in many respects to human nature, and the Moabite acting under Naomi's direction appears almost blameless; yet the sense of having lowered herself must have cast its shadow. A risk was run too great by far for modesty and honour.
To compromise ourselves by doing that which savours
of presumption, which goes too far even by a hair's-breadth
in urging a claim is a bad thing. Better
remain without what we reckon our rights than lower
our moral dignity in pressing them. Independence of
character, perfect honour and uprightness are too precious
by far to be imperilled even in a time of serious
difficulty. To-day we can hardly turn in any direction
without seeing instances of risky compromise often
ending in disaster. To obtain preferment one will
It would be shirking one of the plain applications of
the incidents before us if we passed over the compromises
so many women make with self-respect and
purity. Ruth, under the advice of one whom she
knew to be a good woman, risked something: with us
now are many who against the entreaty of all true
friends adventure into dangerous ways, put themselves
into the power of men they have no reason to trust.
And women in high place, who should set an example
of fidelity to the divine order and understand the
honour of womanhood, are rather leading the dance of
freedom and risk. To keep a position or win a position
in the crowd called society some will yield to any
fashion, go all lengths in the license of amusement, sit
unblushing at plays that serve only one end, give
themselves and their daughters to embraces that
degrade. The struggle to live is spoken of sometimes
as an excuse for women. But is it the very poor only
who compromise themselves? Something else is going
on beside the struggle to find work and bread. People
are forgetting God, thrusting aside the ideas of the soul
To compromise ourselves is bad: close beside lies the danger of compromising others; and this too is illustrated by the narrative. Boaz acted in generosity and honour, told Ruth plainly that a kinsman nearer than himself stood between them, made her a most favourable promise. But he sent her away in the early morning "before one could recognise another." The risk to which she had exposed him was one he did not care to face. While he made all possible excuses for her and was in a sense proud of the trust she had reposed in him, still he was somewhat alarmed and anxious. The narrative is generous to Ruth; but this is not concealed. We see very distinctly a touch of something caught in heathen Moab.
On the more satisfactory side of the picture is the
confidence so unreservedly exercised, justified so thoroughly.
It is good to be among people who deserve
trust and never fail in the time of trial. Take them at
Let us not fail, however, to observe where honour
like this may be found, where alone it is to be found.
Common is the belief that absolute fidelity may exist
in soil cleared of all religious principle. You meet
people who declare that religion is of no use. They
have been brought up in religion, but they are tired
of it. They have given up churches and prayers and
are going to be honourable without thought of God,
on the basis of their own steadfast virtue. We shall
not say it is impossible, or that women like Ruth may
not rely upon men who so speak. But a single word
of scorn cast on religion reveals so faulty a character
that it is better not to confide in the man who utters
it. He is in the real sense an atheist, one to whom
nothing is sacred. About some duties he may have
a sentiment; but what is sentiment or taste to build
upon? For one to trust where reputation is concerned,
where moral well-being is involved a soul must be
found whose life is rooted in the faith of God. True
enough, we are under the necessity of trusting persons
for whom we have no such guarantee. Fortunately,
however, it is only in matters of business, or municipal
affairs, or parliamentary votes, things extraneous to our
May we depend upon love in the absence of religious faith? Some would fain conjure with that word; but love is a divine gift when it is pure and true; the rest is mere desire and passion. Do you suppose because an insincere worldly man has a selfish passion for you that you can be safe with him? Do you think because a worldly woman loves you in a worldly way that your soul and your future will be safe with her? Find a fearer of God, one whose virtues are rooted where alone they can grow, in faith, or live without a wife, a husband. It is presupposed that you yourself are a fearer of God, a servant of Christ. For, unless you are, the rule operates on the other side and you are one who should be shunned. Besides, if you are a materialist living in time and sense and yet look for spiritual graces and superhuman fidelity, your expectation is amazing, your hope a thing to wonder at.
True, hypocrites exist, and we may be deceived just
because of our certainty that religion is the only root
of faithfulness. A man may simulate religion and
deceive for a time. The young may be sadly deluded,
a whole community betrayed by one who makes the
divinest facts of human nature serve his own wickedness
awhile. He disappears and leaves behind him
broken hearts, shattered hopes, darkened lives. Has
religion, then, nothing to do with morality? The very
ruin we lament shows that the human heart in its depth
testifies to an intimate and eternal connection with the
Of the people of ordinary virtue what shall be said?—those who are neither perfectly faithful nor disgracefully unfaithful, neither certain to be staunch and true nor ready to betray and cast aside those who trust them. Large is the class of men whose individuality is not of a moral kind, affable and easy, brisk and clever but not resolute in truth and right. Are we to leave these where they are? If we belong to their number are we to stay among them? Must they get on as best they can with each other, neither blessed nor condemned? For them the gospel is provided in its depth and urgency. Theirs is the state it cannot tolerate nor leave untouched, unaffected. If earth is good enough for you, so runs the divine message to them, cling to it, enjoy its dainties, laugh in its sunlight—and die with it. But if you see the excellence of truth, be true; if you hear the voice of the eternal Christ, arise and follow Him, born again by the word of God which liveth and abideth for ever.
A simple ceremony of Oriental life brings to a climax the history which itself closes in sweet music the stormy drama of the Book of Judges. With all the literary skill and moral delicacy, all the charm and keen judgment of inspiration the narrator gives us what he has from the Spirit. He has represented with fine brevity and power of touch the old life and custom of Israel, the private groups in which piety and faithfulness were treasured, the frank humanity and divine seriousness of Jehovah's covenant. And now we are at the gate of Bethlehem where the head men are assembled and according to the usage of the time the affairs of Naomi and Ruth are settled by the village court of justice. Boaz gives a challenge to the goël of Naomi, and point by point we follow the legal forms by which the right to redeem the land of Elimelech is given up to Boaz and Ruth becomes his wife.
Why is an old custom presented with such minuteness?
We may affirm the underlying suggestion to be
that the ways described were good ways which ought
to be kept in mind. The usage implied great openness
and neighbourliness, a simple and straightforward
method of arranging affairs which were of moment to
More than one reason may be found for supposing
the book to have been written in Solomon's time,
probably the latter part of his reign when laws and
ordinances had multiplied and were being enforced in
endless detail by a central authority; when the manners
of the nations around, Chaldea, Egypt, Phœnicia, were
overbearing the primitive ways of Israel; when luxury
was growing, society dividing into classes and a proud
imperialism giving its colour to habit and religion.
If we place the book at this period we can understand
the moral purpose of the writer and the importance of
his work. He would teach people to maintain the spirit
of Israel's past, the brotherliness, the fidelity in every
relation that were to have been all along a distinction
of Hebrew life because inseparably connected with the
obedience of Jehovah. The splendid temple on Moriah
was now the centre of a great priestly system, and from
temple and palace the national and, to a great extent,
the personal life of all Israelites was largely influenced,
Nor is the lesson without its value now. We are
not to go back on the past in mere antiquarian curiosity,
the interest of secular research. Labour which goes to
revive the story of mankind in remote ages has its value
only when it is applied to the uses of the moralist and
the prophet. We have much to learn again that has
been forgotten, much to recall that has escaped the
memory of the race. Through phases of complex
civilization in which the outward and sensuous are
pursued the world has to pass to a new era of more
simple and yet more profound life, to a social order
fitted for the development of spiritual power and grace.
And the church is well directed by the Book of God.
Her inquiry into the past is no affair of intellectual
curiosity, but a research governed by the principles that
have underlain man's life from the first and a growing
apprehension of all that is at stake in the multiform
energy of the present. Amid the bustle and pressure
of those endeavours which Christian faith itself may
induce our minds become confused. Thinkers and
doers are alike apt to forget the deliverances knowledge
ought to effect, and while they learn and attempt much
they are rather passing into bondage than finding life.
Our research seems more and more to occupy us with
the manner of things, and even Bible Archæology is
exposed to this reproach. As for the scientific comparers
of religion they are mostly feeding the vanity
of the age with a sense of extraordinary progress and
enlightenment, and themselves are occasionally heard to
The scene at the gate shows Boaz energetically
conducting the case he has taken up. Private considerations
urged him to bring rapidly to an issue the
affairs of Naomi and Ruth since he was involved, and
again he commends himself as a man who, having a
task in hand, does it with his might. His pledge to
Ruth was a pledge also to his own conscience that no
suspense should be due to any carelessness of his; and
in this he proved himself a pattern friend. The great
man often shows his greatness by making others wait
at his door. They are left to find the level of their
insignificance and learn the value of his favour. So
the grace of God is frustrated by those who have the
opportunity and should covet the honour of being His
instruments. Men know that they should wait patiently
on God's time, but they are bewildered when they have
to wait on the strange arrogance of those in whose
hands Providence has placed the means of their succour.
And many must be the cases in which this fault of man
Boaz was also open and straightforward in his transactions. His own wish is pretty clear. He seems as anxious as Naomi herself that to him should fall the duty of redeeming her burdened inheritance and reviving her husband's name. Possibly without any public discussion, by consulting with the nearer kinsman and urging his own wish or superior ability he might have settled the affair. Other inducements failing, the offer of a sum of money might have secured to him the right of redemption. But in the light of honour, in the court of his conscience, the man was unable thus to seek his end; and besides the town's people had to be considered; their sense of justice had to be satisfied as well as his own.
Often it is not enough that we do a thing from
the best of motives; we must do it in the best way,
for the support of justice or purity or truth. While
private benevolence is one of the finest of arts, the
Christian is not unfrequently called to exercise another
which is more difficult and not less needful in society.
Required at one hour not to let his left hand know
what his right hand doeth, at another he is required in
all modesty and simplicity to take his fellows to witness
that he acts for righteousness, that he is contending for
some thought of Christ's, that he is not standing in the
outer court among those who are ashamed but has taken
his place with the Master at the judgment bar of the
world. Again, when a matter in which a Christian is
Even in this little affair at Bethlehem the good man
will have everything done with perfect openness and
honour and will stand by the result whether it meet
his hopes or disappoint them. At the town-gate, the
common meeting-place for conversation and business,
Boaz takes his seat and invites the goël to sit beside
him and also a jury of ten elders. The court thus
constituted, he states the case of Naomi and her desire
to sell a parcel of land which belonged to her husband.
When Elimelech left Bethlehem he had, no doubt,
borrowed money on the field, and now the question is
whether the nearest kinsman will pay the debt and
beyond that the further value of the land so that the
widow may have something to herself. Promptly the
Now this marriage-custom is not ours, but at the time, as we have seen, it was a sacred rule, and the goël was morally bound by it. He could have insisted on redeeming the land as his right. To do so was therefore his duty, and to a certain extent he failed from the ideal of a kinsman's obligation. But the position was not an easy one. Surely the man was justified in considering the children he already had and their claims upon him. Did he not exercise a wise prudence in refusing to undertake a new obligation? Moreover the circumstances were delicate and dispeace might have been caused in his household if he took the Moabite woman. It is certainly one of those cases in which a custom or law has great weight and yet creates no little difficulty, moral as well as pecuniary, in the observance. A man honest enough and not ungenerous may find it hard to determine on which side duty lies. Without, however, abusing this goël we may fairly take him as a type of those who are more impressed by the prudential view of their circumstances than by the duties of kinship and hospitality. If in the course of providence we have to decide whether we will admit some new inmate to our home worldly considerations must not rule either on the one side or the other.
And what of the duty to Christ, His church, His
poor? Would to God some people were afraid to leave
their children wealthy, were afraid of having God
inquire for His portion. A shadow rests on the inheritance
that has been guarded in selfish pride against the
just claims of man, in defiance of the law of Christ.
Yet let one be sure that his liberality is not mixed with
a carnal hope. What do we think of when we declare
that God's recompense to those who give freely comes
in added store of earthly treasure, the tithe returned
ten and twenty and a hundred fold? By what law of
the material or spiritual world does this come about?
Certainly we love a generous man, and the liberal
shall stand by liberal things. But surely God's purpose
is to make us comprehend that His grace does not
The marriage of Ruth at which we now arrive appears at once as the happy termination of Naomi's solicitude for her, the partial reward of her own faithfulness and the solution so far as she was concerned of the problem of woman's destiny. The idea of the spiritual completion of life for woman as well as man, of the woman being able to attain a personal standing of her own with individual responsibility and freedom was not fully present to the Hebrew mind. If unmarried, Ruth would have remained, as Naomi well knew and had all along said, without a place in society, without an asylum or shelter. This old-world view of things burdens the whole history, and before passing on we must compare it with the state of modern thought on the question.
The incompleteness of the childless widow's life
which is an element of this narrative, the incompleteness
of the life of every unmarried woman which
appears in the lament for Jephthah's daughter and
elsewhere in the Bible as well as in other records of the
ancient world had, we may say, a two-fold cause. On
the one hand there was the obvious fact that marriage
has a reason in physical constitution and the order of
human society. On the other hand heathen practices
and constant wars made it, as we have seen, impossible
for women to establish themselves alone. A woman
Now it may appear that the problem of woman's
place, so far from approaching solution in Christian
times, has rather fallen into greater confusion; and
many are the attacks made from one point of view and
another upon the present condition of things. By the
nature school of revolutionaries physical constitution is
made a starting-point in argument and the reasoning
sweeps before it every hindrance to the completion
of life on that side for women as for men. Christian
marriage is itself assailed by these as an obstacle in
the path of evolution. They find women, thanks to
Christianity, no longer unable to establish themselves
in life; but against Christianity which has done this
But the problem is not more confused; it is solved, as all other problems are by Christ. Penetrating and arrogant voices of the day will cease and His again be heard Whose terrible and gracious doctrine of personal responsibility in the supernatural order is already the heart of human thought and hope. There is turmoil, disorder, vile and foolish experimenting; but the remedy is forward not behind. Christ has opened the spiritual kingdom, has made it possible for every soul to enter. For each human being now, man and woman, life means spiritual overcoming, spiritual possession, and can mean nothing else. It is altogether out of date, an insult to the conscience and common sense of mankind, not to speak of its faith, to go back on the primitive world and the ages of a lower evolution and fasten down to sensuousness a race that has heard the liberating word, Repent, believe and live. The incompleteness of a human being lies in subjection to passion, in existing without moral energy, governed by the earthly and therefore without hope or reason of life. To the full stature of heavenly power the woman has her way open through the blood of the cross, and by a path of loneliness and privation, if need be, she may advance to the highest range of priestly service and blessing.
Yet suppose Ruth had not been married to Boaz or to any other good and wealthy man, would she have been less admirable and deserving? We attribute nothing to accident. In the providence of God Boaz was led to an admiration for Ruth and Naomi's plan succeeded. But it might have been otherwise. There is nothing, after all, so striking in her faith that we should expect her to be singled out for special honour; and she is not. The divine reward of goodness is the peace of God in the soul, the gladness of fellowship with Him, the opportunity of learning His will and dispensing His grace. It is interesting to note that Ruth's son Obed was the father of Jesse and the grandfather of David. But was Ruth not also the ancestress of the sons of Zeruiah, of Absalom, Adonijah and Rehoboam? Even though looking down the generations we see the Messiah born of her line, how can that glorify Ruth? or, if it does, how shall we explain the want of glory of many an estimable and godly woman who fighting a battle harder than Ruth's, with clearer faith in God, lived and died in some obscure village of Naphtali or dragged out a weary widowhood on the borders of the Syrian desert?
Achsah, 20.
Adoni-bezek, 12.
Adventurer, the, 211.
Agnosticism, 156.
Altars, local, 338.
Amalek, 78.
Amorites, 64.
Angel of Jehovah, 147.
Ascendency of races, 14.
Astarte, 52.
Baal, 52.
Baal-berith, the modern, 221.
Baal-peor, 51.
Balaam, 70.
Barak, the Lightning Chief, 99;
agreement with Deborah, 122.
Barbarism, the new, 140.
Bethlehem, 364.
Canaan, its population, 6;
central position, 6;
degeneracy of its people, 8;
god of, 52.
Character, national, 205;
of Arabs, 239;
decision of, 378.
Charity, careless, 399.
Christ, the Strengthener, 42, 43;
and the inquirer, 124;
and the church, 152, 177;
critics of, 154;
personal pledge to, 160, 383;
enemies of, 181;
priesthood of, 208;
kingship of, 228;
sacrifice of, 251, 332;
manliness of, 264;
the temple, 343;
His teaching as to wealth, 388.
Christianity secularized, 330.
Church, the opposition to, 79, 82;
leaders in, 123;
custody of truth by, 124;
world in, 133;
elation of, 139;
right spirit of, 152;
confusion in, 171;
national, 176;
attacks upon, 186;
perpetual duty of, 353.
Completeness of life, 416.
Compromise, 88, 402;
with heathens, 98.
Concentration, 175;
and breadth, 275.
Conscience, correlative of power, 303;
and life, 353, 354;
insanity of, 357.
Conversion, 27, 159;
imperfect, 41;
helped by circumstances, 158;
complete, 160;
Ruth's, 381.
Co-partnery, with the world, 220;
between Hebrew and Philistine, 284.
Creed, the old, 172.
Culture, 20, 88;
affecting religion, 228.
Custom, old, why recorded, 408.
Danite migration, 340.
Date of Book of Ruth, 409.
Deborah, 91;
inspiration of, 96, 102, 108;
her wisdom, 100;
not unmerciful, 117;
her judgeship, 135.
Dependents, duty to, 414.
Dependence, ignoble, 297.
Divine judgment, 11;
of Meroz the prudent, 132.
Divine Vindicator, the, 394.
Doubt, religious, 26.
Earth-force in man, 149.
Ecclesiasticism, 167, 201.
Education, 273.
Ehud, 83.
Emigration, 366.
Entanglements, base, 301.
Equipment for life, 184.
Evil, despotic, 287.
Evolution, spiritual, 4, 85, 109.
Ezra, 38.
Faint yet pursuing, 191.
Faith, development of, 4;
conflicts of, 27;
link between generations, 49;
army of, 128;
recuperative power of, 141;
power through, 203;
ebb and flow of, 233;
saves, not doing, 300;
courage forced on, 347.
Fidelity depends on religion, 405.
Fittest, survival of, 9.
Fleece, Gideon's, 169.
Freedom, cradle of faith, 85, 86, 90;
right of the rude, 258.
Free-lance, 304.
Gibeah, crime of, 348
Gideon, 144;
his fleece, 169;
his three hundred, 173;
kingship refused by, 196;
his caution, 197;
desire for priesthood, 198;
his ephod-dealing, 202;
a storm of God, 204.
Gilead, its vigour, 235.
God with man, 146.
Goël, duty of, 398.
Gospel, at the gates of, 420.
Heathenism, rites of, 53.
Hebrews, language of, 31;
intermixture with Canaanites, 68;
national spirit of, 234.
Heroism, 149.
History, key to, 5, 295.
Hittites, 65.
Honey from the carcase, 289.
Humanity, priesthood of, 208.
Ideal, of life, 29;
for Israel, 48, 242.
Idolatry, 33;
unpardonable, 49.
Intolerance, moral, 354.
Israel, mission of, 13;
oppressed by Cushan-rishathaim, 72;
by Jabin, 92;
by Midianites, 137;
tribes of, 97, 132, 167;
its idea of Jehovah, 107, 118;
superiority of, 55, 69, 90.
Jael, 103, 134;
her tragic moment, 105.
Jealousy, tribal, 255.
Jebusites, 28.
Jephthah, the outlaw, 235;
chosen leader, 236;
his peaceful policy, 240;
his vow, 243;
his daughter, 247.
Jerusalem, 15.
Joshua, 45.
Jotham's parable, 214.
Judges, their vindication, 57.
Justice, passion for, 58;
human effort for, 104;
should be open, 412.
Kenites, 24.
Kingship, refused by Gideon, 196.
Kiriath-sepher, 18.
Leaders, uncalled, 163.
Leadership, incomplete, 161.
Levites, 338.
Life, the law of, 294, 299;
hindrances to, 296;
fear hindering, 297;
complete, 314.
Literature, 19;
Danites of, 345, 346.
Love, 380.
Luz, 28.
Marriage, 20;
a failure? 24;
rash experiments in, 284.
Marriages, mixed, 38.
Master-strokes in providence, 158.
Meroz, 132.
Micah, 335.
Midianites, 137, 195.
Missionary spirit, 137.
Moab, 77, 367.
Moderatism, 166.
Monotheism, 32.
Moral intolerance, 354.
Moses, 13, 19.
Motherhood, 268.
National church, 176.
Nature, God revealed in, 111-15;
and supernatural, 266.
Nature-cult, 42, 418.
Nazirite vow, 276.
Nomadism, religious, 25.
Opportunism, 166.
Organized vice, 179.
Orpah, 376.
Othniel, 22, 73.
Parentage, 271.
Past, the, returning, 71;
lessons of, 410.
Pastors, unspiritual, 344.
Patriotism, religious, 226.
Personal ends engrossing, 136.
Personality, 15;
in religion, 379.
Pessimism, 230.
Pharisaism, 39;
danger of, 356.
Philistines, 26, 62.
Philistinism, 310, 329.
Phœnicians, 63.
Polygamy, 21, 351.
Polytheism, its development, 54.
Prayer, 142, 143, 231.
Predestination, 269.
Priesthood, Gideon's desire for, 198;
true, 206;
Roman Catholic, 246.
Prophets, unrecognized, 162;
their preparation, 270.
Prosperity, misunderstood, 388.
Providence, imperfect instruments of, 58, 84.
Public office, 216.
Purity, 350.
Reconciliation, religion always for, 395.
Reformer, his character, 153.
Reformation, the true, 155.
Religion, emotional, 130;
and the state, 36, 75.
Remnant, the godly, 126, 131.
Repentance, imperfect, 40.
Responsibility, 300;
in advising, 370.
Retribution, 138.
Rights and duties, 30, 256.
Ruth, her choice, 377;
conversion of 381;
goodness commending her, 392;
her danger, 401;
her marriage, 416.
Sacred places, 33.
Salvation, personal, 151.
Samson, his loneliness, 279;
boyhood of, 280;
character of, 281;
his marriage, 290;
his riddle, 291;
no reformer, 308.
Schism, 342, 345.
Science, dogmatism of, 112;
Danites of, 345.
Self-respect, 312.
Self-sacrifice, 249, 331, 333.
Self-suppression, 16, 251, 375.
Self-vindication, 358.
Separations in life, 383.
Shechem, 210.
Shibboleths, of reform, 262;
allowable, 263;
Christ used none, 264.
Sibboleths, of egotism, 260;
of bad habit, 260;
of literature, 261.
Sisera, 101.
Spiritual brotherhood, 151;
strength, 321, 324;
service, 369;
pauperism, 400.
Strength and character, 193.
Struggle, the law of existence, 10.
Success, sanctified, 80;
succeeding, 189.
Succoth and Penuel, 190.
Supernatural in human life, 267.
Temptation, 287;
process of, 317.
Theocracy, 3, 46;
Jotham's idea of, 214, 218.
Tribal religion, 328.
Truth and charity, 228.
Unscrupulous helpers, 133.
Veracity of the narrative, 359.
Vicarious suffering, 355.
Voluntary churches, 176.
Wars of conquest, 5.
Women, treatment of, 21;
their freedom, 22;
duties of, 125;
social bondage of, 372;
helpless, 373;
submission preached to, 375;
problems in their life, 416, 418.
Wrong never strong, 182.
Zephath, 25.
Variations in spelling have been preserved except in obvious cases of typographical error. Hyphenation is inconsistent.
vi vii viii ix 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360 361 363 364 365 366 367 368 369 370 371 372 373 374 375 376 377 378 379 380 381 382 383 384 385 386 387 388 389 390 391 392 393 394 395 396 397 398 399 400 401 402 403 404 405 406 407 408 409 410 411 412 413 414 415 416 417 418 419 420 421 422 423 424