In The Levant 16

In The Levant 16

Though the Israelites during their occupation of the hill-country of

Palestine were not concerned in the great dynastic struggles of the

Orient, they were not, however, at peace. Either the tribes were

fighting among themselves or they were involved in sanguinary fights

with the petty heathen chiefs about them. We get a lively picture of the

habits of the time in a sentence in the second book of Samuel: "And

it came to pass, after the year was expired, at the time when kings go

forth to battle, that David sent Joab and his servants with him, and all

Israel; and they destroyed the children of Ammon, and besieged Rabbah."

It was a pretty custom. In that season when birds pair and build their

nests, when the sap mounts in the trees and travellers long to go into

far countries, kings felt a noble impulse in their veins to go out

and fight other kings. But this primitive simplicity was mingled with

shocking barbarity; David once put his captives under the saw, and there

is nothing to show that the Israelites were more moved by sentiments

of pity and compassion than their heathen neighbors. There was

occasionally, however, a grim humor in their cruelty. When Judah

captured King Adoni-bezek, in Bezek, he cut off his great toes and his

thumbs. Adoni-bezek, who could appreciate a good thing, accepted the

mutilation in the spirit in which it was offered, and said that he had

himself served seventy kings in that fashion; "threescore and ten kings,

having their thumbs and great toes cut off, gathered their meat under my

table."

 

From the death of Joshua to the fall of Samaria, the history of the Jews

is largely a history of civil war. From about seven hundred years before

Christ, Palestine was essentially a satrapy of the Assyrian kings, as it

was later to become one of the small provinces of the Roman empire. At

the time when Sennacherib was waiting before Jerusalem for Hezekiah to

purchase his withdrawal by stripping the gold from the doors of the

Temple, the foundations of a city were laid on the banks of the Tiber,

which was to extend its sway over the known world, to whose dominion the

utmost power of Jerusalem was only a petty sovereignty, and which was

destined to rival Jerusalem itself as the spiritual capital of the

earth.

 

If we do not find in the military power or territorial consequence of

the Jews an explanation of their influence in the modern world, still

less do we find it in any faithfulness to a spiritual religion, the

knowledge of which was their chief distinction among the tribes about

them. Their lapses from the worship of Jehovah were so frequent, and of

such long duration, that their returns to the worship of the true God

seem little more than breaks in their practice of idolatry. And these

spasmodic returns were due to calamities, and fears of worse judgments.

Solomon sanctioned by national authority gross idolatries which had

been long practised. At his death, ten of the tribes seceded from the

dominion of Judah and set up a kingdom in which idolatry was made and

remained the state religion, until the ten tribes vanished from the

theatre of history. The kingdom of Israel, in order to emphasize its

separation from that of Judah, set up the worship of Jehovah in the

image of a golden calf. Against this state religion of image-worship

the prophets seem to have thought it in vain to protest; they contented

themselves with battling against the more gross and licentious

idolatries of Baal and Ashtaroth; and Israel always continued the

idol-worship established by Jeroboam. The worship of Jehovah was the

state religion of the little kingdom of Judah, but during the period of

its existence, before the Captivity, I think that only four of its kings

were not idolaters. The people were constantly falling away into the

heathenish practices of their neighbors.

 

If neither territorial consequence nor religious steadfastness gave the

Jews rank among the great nations of antiquity, they would equally fail

of the consideration they now enjoy but for one thing, and that is,

after all, the chief and enduring product of any nationality; we mean,

of course, its literature. It is by that, that the little kingdoms

of Judah and Israel hold their sway over the world. It is that which

invests ancient Jerusalem with its charm and dignity. Not what the Jews

did, but the songs of their poets, the warnings and lamentations of

their prophets, the touching tales of their story-tellers, draw us to

Jerusalem by the most powerful influences that affect the human mind.

And most of this unequalled literature is the product of seasons of

turbulence, passion, and insecurity. Except the Proverbs and Song of

Solomon, and such pieces as the poem of Job and the story of Ruth, which

seem to be the outcome of literary leisure, the Hebrew writings were all

the offspring of exciting periods. David composed his Psalms--the most

marvellous interpreters of every human aspiration, exaltation, want, and

passion--with his sword in his hand; and the prophets always appear to

ride upon a whirlwind. The power of Jerusalem over the world is as truly

a literary one as that of Athens is one of art. That literature was

unknown to the ancients, or unappreciated: otherwise contemporary

history would have considered its creators of more consequence than it

did.

 

We speak, we have been speaking, of the Jerusalem before our era, and of

the interest it has independent of the great event which is, after all,

its chief claim to immortal estimation. It becomes sacred ground to us

because there, in Bethlehem, Christ was born; because here--not in

these streets, but upon this soil--he walked and talked and taught

and ministered; because upon Olivet, yonder, he often sat with his

disciples, and here, somewhere,--it matters not where,--he suffered

death and conquered death.

 

This is the scene of these transcendent events. We say it to ourselves

while we stand here. We can clearly conceive it when we are at a

distance. But with the actual Jerusalem of to-day before our eyes, its

naked desolation, its superstition, its squalor, its vivid contrast to

what we conceive should be the City of our King, we find it easier to

feel that Christ was born in New England than in Judæa.

 

 

 

 

V.--GOING DOWN TO JERICHO.

 

|IT is on a lovely spring morning that we set out through the land of

Benjamin to go down among the thieves of Jericho, and to the Jordan and

the Dead Sea. For protection against the thieves we take some of them

with us, since you cannot in these days rely upon finding any good

Samaritans there.

 

For some days Abd-el-Atti has been in mysterious diplomatic relations

with the robbers of the wilderness, who live in Jerusalem, and farm out

their territory. "Thim is great rascals," says the dragoman; and it is

solely on that account that we seek their friendship: the real Bedawee

is never known to go back on his word to the traveller who trusts him,

so long as it is more profitable to keep it than to break it. We are

under the escort of the second sheykh, who shares with the first sheykh

the rule of all the Bedaween who patrol the extensive territory from

Hebron to the fords of the Jordan, including Jerusalem, Bethlehem,

Mar Saba, and the shores of the Dead Sea; these rulers would have been

called kings in the old time, and the second sheykh bears the same

relation to the first that the Cæsar did to the Augustus in the Roman

Empire.

 

Our train is assembled in the little market-place opposite the hotel,

or rather it is assembling, for horses and donkeys are slow to arrive,

saddles are wanting, the bridles are broken, and the unpunctuality and

shiftlessness of the East manifest themselves. Abd-el-Atti is in fierce

altercation with a Koorland nobleman about a horse, which you would not

say would be likely to be a bone of contention with anybody. They are

both endeavoring to mount at once. Friends are backing each combatant,

and the air is thick with curses in guttural German and maledictions in

shrill Arabic. Unfortunately I am appealed to.

 

"What for this Dutchman, he take my horse?"

 

"Perhaps he hired it first?"

 

"P'aps not. I make bargain for him with the owner day before yesterday."

 

"I have become dis _pferd_ for four days," cries the Baron.

 

There seems to be no reason to doubt the Baron's word; he has ridden the

horse to Bethlehem, and become accustomed to his jolts, and no doubt has

the prior lien on the animal. The owner has let him to both parties, a

thing that often happens when the second comer offers a piastre more.

Another horse is sent for, and we mount and begin to disentangle

ourselves from the crowd. It is no easy matter, especially for the

ladies. Our own baggage-mules head in every direction. Donkeys laden

with mountains of brushwood push through the throng, scraping right and

left; camels shamble against us, their contemptuous noses in the air,

stretching their long necks over our heads; market-women from Bethlehem

scream at us; and greasy pilgrims block our way and curse our horses'

hoofs.

 

One by one we emerge and get into a straggling line, and begin to

comprehend the size of our expedition. Our dragoman has made as

extensive preparations as if we were to be the first to occupy Gilgal

and Jericho, and that portion of the Promised Land. We are equipped

equally well for fighting and for famine. A party of Syrians, who desire

to make the pilgrimage to the Jordan, have asked permission to join

us, in order to share the protection of our sheykh, and they add both

picturesqueness and strength to the grand cavalcade which clatters out

of Jaffa Gate and sweeps round the city wall. Heaven keep us from undue

pride in our noble appearance!

 

Perhaps our train would impress a spectator as somewhat mixed, and he

would be unable to determine the order of its march. It is true that the

horses and the donkeys and the mules all have different rates of speed,

and that the Syrian horse has only two gaits,--a run and a slow walk.

As soon as we gain the freedom of the open country, these differences

develop. The ambitious dragomen and the warlike sheykh put their horses

into a run and scour over the hills, and then come charging back upon

us, like Don Quixote upon the flock of sheep. The Syrians imitate this

madness. The other horses begin to agitate their stiff legs; the donkeys

stand still and protest by braying; the pack-mules get temporarily

crazy, charge into us with the protruding luggage, and suddenly wheel

into the ditch and stop. This playfulness is repeated in various ways,

and adds to the excitement without improving the dignity of our march.

 

We are of many nationalities. There are four Americans, two of them

ladies. The Doctor, who is accustomed to ride the mustangs of New Mexico

and the wild horses of the Western deserts, endeavors to excite a spirit

of emulation in his stiff-kneed animal, but with little success. Our

dragoman is Egyptian, a decidedly heavy weight, and sits his steed like

a pyramid.

 

The sheykh is a young man, with the treacherous eye of an eagle; a