brance of the invasion of the fierce nomadic hordes of Midian and of their unexpected flight. Tyre, Philistia, and even the distant Assyria, might naturally look with favor on an invasion that would cripple the reviving powers of Judah. The whirlwind of con fusion fitly represents the panic which overthrew the hostile army and sent them flying like stubble before the storm back to their native haunts.1 A still more decisive victory followed upon this retreat of the Moabites. The whole national force of Israel, combined with that of the neighbor nation of Edom, passed round the Dead Sea, and entered their southern territory. It is a campaign full of characteristic 2 incidents. The mighty sheep-master on the throne of Moab, with his innumerable flocks the arid country through which the allied forces have to pass the sudden apparition of the Prophet and the minstrel in the Israelitish army-the red light of the rising sun, reflected back from the red hills of Edom-the merci less devastation of the conquered territory, apparently at the instigation of the rival Edomite chief- the deadly hatred between him and the King of Moab the terrible siege of the royal fortress of Kir-haraseth, closing with the sacrifice of the heir to the throne, and the shudder of indignation which it caused - bring be fore us in a short compass the threads of the history of these rival kingdoms, each marked by its peculiar traditions and local circumstances, beyond any other single event of this period. 1 Ps. lxxxiii. 6, 7, 8, 9, 13. See Hengstenberg, who also refers Psalms xlvii. and xlviii. to this battle; but this is more doubtful. 22 Kings iii. 4-27. 3 Ibid. iii. 26. Comp. Amos ii. 1. 42 Kings iii. 26. It is possible 8 that the son of the King of Edom may be intended (see Dr. Pusey on Amos ii. 1); but the common inter pretation seems the most probable (Joseph Ant. ix. 3, § 2; Keil, Ewald; Thenius). Compare Micah vi. 6, 7. Thus far we have tracked the external history of the kingdom, so far as it is needed as a framework Internal of the religious struggle which was carried on struggle. within. That struggle was neither more nor less than the endeavor to maintain the true faith in One. God, against the Canaanite and Phoenician polytheism which had taken possession of the court of Judah. It was this which sunk the southern kingdom so far behind the level of the northern, when they first started asunder. It almost seemed as if there was something in the old heathen origin of Jerusalem which rendered its soil congenial to the revival of those old heathen impurities. It was like a seething caldron, of mingled blood and froth, "whose scum is therein and whose scum is not 66 gone out of it." The Temple was hemmed in by dark idolatries on every side. Mount Olivet was covered with heathen sanctuaries, monumental' stones, and pillars of Baal. Wooden statues of Astarte under the sacred trees, huge images of Moloch, appeared at every turn in the walks round Jerusalem. The valley of Hinnom now received that dreadful association of sacrificial fires and gloomy superstition which it never lost. The royal gardens of Tophet were used for the same purpose. Already the sights and sounds which there met the ear rendered the spot a byword for the funeral piles of the dead, and through the Rabbinical traditions the horror of this pagan Judaism - these decaying corpses, these ghastly fires of Ge-hinnom has passed on into all the languages of Christendom, and furnished the groundwork of the most trivial and the most terrible * images of suffering that modern Europe has received. If there 3 Ezek. xxiv. 6. * See Keil on 1 Kings xiv. 22. Jer. vii. 31, 32; xix 6, 11-14. 4 The fire of Ge-henna (Matt. v. 22, 29, 30; Luke xii. 5) corrupted into the French gêne. was a "holy city," there was also an "unholy city," within the walls of Zion, and the two were perpetually striving for mastery, throughout the whole history of the place. The last mention of Jerusalem which occurs in the sacred books is as "the great city which spirit"ually is called Sodom and Egypt." Such it was literally in the days of Rehoboam and Abijah. In this struggle the heathen Jerusalem was represented chiefly by two powerful princesses, each of foreign extraction, Maacah and Athaliah. Maacah. The free independent action of the Hebrew women, as seen in the cases of Miriam, Deborah, Michal, was not likely to be diminished when they were mounted on the throne. The influence of Bathsheba had secured the succession to Solomon. In the numerous harem of Rehoboam the favorite queen was Maacah, the "daughter," or more probably the granddaughter, of his uncle Absalom, called after her own grandmother or great-grandmother, the Princess of Geshur. The beauty which Absalom had inherited (according to Jewish tradition) from this princess, descended to his daughter Tamar, and thence to her daughter Maacah, who acquired the same fascination first over her husband and then over her son, that her aunt Tamar had exercised over her brothers. "Rehoboam "loved Maacah above all his wives and concubines." When her son Abijah was chosen above all his brothers as successor, she filled the high office known in Jeru salem, as in the Turkish empire, by a peculiar name— the Queen Mother-Gebirah-"The Leader" the Sultana Valide; and her influence con Reforms of Asa. 1 Rev. xi. 8. 2 Chr. xi. 21. 1 Kings xv. 13; 2 Chr. xv. 16. The word is only used here, in 1 xxix. 2. LXX. hyovuévos. tinued through his reign and that of her grandson Asa. It was he who at last broke the fatal spell. He removed her from her office, and destroyed the private sanctuary, in which she seems to have ministered. The obscene wooden image which it contained was committed to the flames, in the valley of the Kedron.' From this moment Jerusalem began again to breathe freely. The polygamy of the court, which had lasted through both the preceding reigns, ceased; and the worship of the foreign divinities was forbidden. The worst form of licentious rites was partially extirpated, and the greatness of the achievement was commemorated by the renewal of a vow or treaty as in the earlier age, as if by a violent effort to bind the people to their better thoughts. This "Solemn League and Covenant" for the suppression of filthy and cruel rites, remote as it is from our age and feeling, breathed a more exalted spirit than that which, nearer to our own days (and no doubt in imitation of this earliest form of it), bound the Scottish nation to deadly war against a particular form of ecclesiastical government. Jehosha What Asa had begun, Jehoshaphat continued, by endeavoring, as it would seem, to supply some Reforms of . permanent counterpoise to the influences which phat. had so deeply degraded his kingdom. For the first time we distinctly hear of regular judicial and educational functions in the Jewish Church founded on the "Book of the Law."2 Words spoken, sung, shouted, with inspired force, we have heard before. This is the first recorded example, since the Decalogue, of such injunctions being committed to writing. In the commission which the King issued for the purpose of expound 16. 1) Kings xv. 13; 2 Chron. xv. 2 It is only mer tioned in 2 Chron. xvii. 7-9; xix. 5-11. VOL. 11. 28 1 ing the principles of "the Book of the Law," four great officers of the court and camp1 stand first, and the nine Levites and two priests are associated with them. The whole measure implies a sense of the moral needs of the nation. The stern address of the 82d Psalm to the judges of Israel, even if not actually called forth by this step, corresponds precisely with the appeal of Jehoshaphat. That Divine character, which in the Old Testament is ascribed to judges, even more than to kings, prophets, or priests, is solemnly made the foundation of the lesson conveyed to them. The Divine right by which they are to pronounce judgment is expressly mentioned, not as a warrant for their absolute authority, but as a necessity for their doing their duty. If we may safely interpret the indications given in the Chronicles, Jehoshaphat was here, as elsewhere, following up the great religious reaction which Asa had commenced, and which the only two prophets who appear during this crisis of the monarchy recommend. The aggregation of prophets in the kingdom of Samaria had kept alive the fire of the true religion there, even in the face of the severest persecutions. To supply this void in the kingdom of Jerusalem, the new spiritual and moral development now given to the Levitical priesthood could. not but have a peculiar importance. That importance was to be brought to light in an unexpected turn taken by this national strug Athaliah. B. C. 883. gle, a turn for which Jehoshaphat himself, by his alliance with the house of Omri, had unconsciously prepared the way. We have reached the eve of a great revolution and counter-revolution, which alone of all the events in the history of the kingdom of Judah possesses 1 The word Benhail = military offi- 2 Ps. lxxxii. 6. See Lecture XVII cer, 2 Chr. xvii. 7. |