1 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 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 'spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt.' Such it was lite rally 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. 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 favourite queen was Maacah, the daughter,' or more probably the grand- Maacah. daughter, 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. 6 Rehoboam loved Maacah above all his wives and con'cubines.' 93 When her son Abijah was chosen above all his brothers as successor, she filled the high office known in Jerusalem, as in the Turkish empire, by a peculiar name The fire of Ge-henna (Matt. v. 22, 29, 30; Luke xii. 5) corrupted into the French gêne. 2 Rev. xi. 8. Reforms of the Queen Mother-Gebirah-The Asa. Reforms of phat. Leader'-the Sul tana Valide; and her influence continued 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.2 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 feelings, 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. What Asa had begun, Jehoshaphat continued, by endeavouring, as it would seem, to supply some permanent counterpoise to the influences which 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.'3 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 expounding the principles 11 Kings xv. 13; 2 Chr. xv. 16. The word is only used here, in 2 Kings x. 13, and in Jer. xiii. 18, xxix. 2. LΧΧ. ἡγουμένος. 1 Kings xv. 13; 2 Chr. xv. 16. It is only mentioned in 2 Chr. xvii. 7-9, xix. 5–11. of the Book of the Law,' four great officers of the court and camp' 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 82nd 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 un- Athaliah. expected turn taken by this national struggle-a turn for A.D. 883. 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 the dramatic interest belonging to so many other parts of the sacred story, and which is told with a vividness of detail, implying its lasting significance, and 1 The word Benhail = military officer, 2 Chr. xvii. 7. 2 Ps. lxxxii. 6. See Lecture XVII. contrasting remarkably with the scanty outlines of the earlier reigns. The friendly policy of the two royal houses had culminated in the marriage of Jehoram, the son of Jehoshaphat, with Athaliah, the daughter of Ahab. In her, the fierce determined energy which ran through the Phoenician princes and princesses of that generation—Jezebel, Dido, Pygmalion -was fully developed. Already in her husband's reign, the worship of Baal was restored; and when the tidings reached Jerusalem of the overthrow of her father's house, of the dreadful end of her mother, and of the fall of her ancestral religion in Samaria, instead of daunting her resolute spirit, it moved her to a still grander effort.2 It was a critical moment for the house of David. Once from a struggle within the royal household itself, a second time from an invasion of Arabs, a third time from the revolution in the massacres of Jehu's accession, the dynasty had been thinned and thinned, till all the outlying branches of those vast polygamous households had been reduced to the single family of Ahaziah.3 Ahaziah himself had perished with his uncle on the plain of Esdraelon, and now, when 'Athaliah saw that Ahaziah was dead, she arose and destroyed all the seed-royal.' The whole race of David seemed to be swept away. Whoever the princes were who were called her sons,' they joined with her in opposition to the fallen dynasty. The worship of Baal, uprooted by Jehu in Samaria, sprang up in Jerusalem with renewed vigour, as in its native soil. The adherents of Baal, exiled from the northern kingdom, no doubt took refuge in the south. The Temple became a quarry for the rival sanctuary. 6 12 Kings viii. 18, 26; 2 Chr. xxi. 6, xxii. 2. 22 Kings xi. 2; 2 Chr. xxii. 10. Joseph. Ant. ix. 7, §1. 62 Chr. xxiv. 7. By such a daring act the half-Jewish Queen of Abys sinia, Esther, secured her power (Harris, Ethiopian Highlands, iii. 6). The stones and the sacred vessels were employed to build or to adorn the Temple of Baal, which rose, as it would seem,' even within the Temple precincts, with its circle of statues, and its sacred altars, before which ministered the only priest of that religion, whose name has been preserved to usMattan. But as, before, the Pagan worship had co-existed with the established worship in the Temple, so now the ancient worship continued side by side with that of the Pagan sanctuary. There was no persecution of the Priests in Judah corresponding to that of the Prophets in Israel; and at the head of the priesthood was a man of commanding position and character who, by a union without precedent, had (at least according to one account) intermarried with the royal family. His wife, Jehosheba,2 was the daughter of Joram. In the general massacre of the princes, one boy, still a babe in arms, had been rescued by Jehosheba. The child and nurse had first been concealed in the store-room of mattresses in the palace, and then in the Temple under the protection of her husband Jehoiada and with her own children. He was known as the king's son.'3 The light of David' was burnt down to its socket, but there it still flickered. The stem of Jesse was cut down to the very roots; one tender shoot was all that remained. On him rested the whole hope of carrying on the lineage of David. For six years they waited. In the seventh year of Athaliah's reign, Jehoiada prepared his measures for his great stroke. Every step was taken in accordance with the usages which had 12 Kings xi. 18; 2 Chr. xxiii. 17, 18. 2 Jehosheba in 2 Kings xi. 2, Jehoshabeath in 2 Chr. xxii. 11. The same variation appears in the names of the two other celebrated priestesses, Elisheba the wife of Aaron (called in the LXX. Elisabeth), and Elisabeth the wife of Zechariah. Both have the same meaning-'the 'oath of Jehovah' or 'of God.' Josephus (Ant. ix.7, §2) makes her the daughter of Joram, not by Athaliah-duoĦáтρia Οχοσία. She is called the wife of Jehoiada in 2 Chr. xxii. 11 only. 2 Kings xi. 12; 2 Chr. xxiii. 3. 2 Kings xi. 4; 2 Chr. xxiii. 1. |
