The name Gehazi means “valley of vision,” and is appropriate enough if we think of what Gehazi saw as to the nature of wickedness when the prophet opened his eyes.
Let us note what points there are in this case whichillustrate human life as we now know it. In this way we shall test the moral accuracy of the story—and that is all we are now principally concerned about.
Gehazi was “the servant of Elisha, the man of God.” Surely, then, he would be a good man? Can a good man have a bad servant? Can the man of prayer, whose life is a continual breathing unto God of supreme desires after holiness, have a man in his company, looking on and watching him, and studying his character, who denies his very altar and blasphemes against his God? Is it possible to live in a Christian house and yet not be a Christian? Can we come so near as that, and yet be at an infinite distance from all that is pure and beautiful and true?
If so, then we must look at appearances more carefully than we have been wont to do, for they may have been deceiving us all the time.
Surely, every good man’s children must be good, for they have had great spiritual advantages. They have, indeed, had some hereditary benefits denied to many others. Their house has been a home, their home has been a church, and surely they must show by their whole spirit and tone of life that they are as their father as to all spiritual aspiration and positive excellence.
Is it not so?
If facts contradict that theory, then we must look at the theory again more carefully, or we must examine the facts more closely, because the whole science of Cause and Effect would seem to be upset by such contradictions. There is a metaphysical question here, as well as a question of fact. A good tree must bring forth goodfruit; good men must have good children; good masters must have good servants. Association in life must go for something.
So we would say—emphatically, because we think reasonably.
But facts are against such a fancy.
What is possible in this human life? It is possible that a man may spend his days in building a church, and yet denying God. Does not the very touch of the stones help him to pray? No. He touches them roughly; he lays them mechanically, and he desecrates each of them with an oath.
Is it possible that a man can be a builder of churches and yet be a destroyer of Christian doctrine and teaching generally? Yes.
Let us come closer still, for the question is intensely interesting and may touch many.
It is possible for a man to print the Bible and yet not believe a word of it. On first hearing this shocking statement we revolt from it. We say it is possible for a man to handle type that is meant to represent the greatest revelation ever made to the human mind without feeling that the very handling of the type is itself a kind of religious exercise. Yet men can debauch themselves in the act of printing the Bible; can use profane language while putting the Lord’s Prayer in type; can set up the whole Gospel of John without knowing that they are putting into visible representation the highest metaphysics, the finest spiritual thinking, the most tender religious instruction.
Let us come even closer. A man can preach theGospel and be a servant of the devil. Who, then, can be saved? It is well to ask the question. It is a burning inquiry; it is a spear-like interrogation. We would put it away from us if we dare.
Now, let this stand as our first lesson in the study of this remarkable incident, that Gehazi was the servant of Elisha, the man of God, and was at the same time the servant of the devil. He was receiving wages from both masters. He was a living contradiction; and in being such he was most broadly human. He was not a monster; he was not a natural curiosity; he is not to be accounted for by quietly saying that he was an eccentric person. He represents the human heart, and by so much he brings against ourselves an infinite impeachment.
It is in vain that we shake our skirts as if throwing off this man and all association with him and responsibility for him; this can not be done. He anticipated ourselves; we repeat his wickedness. The iniquity is not in the accident, in the mere circumstances, or in the particular form; the iniquity is in the heart—yea, in the very heart itself. Marvel not that Christ said: “Ye must be born again.”
Gehazi did not understand the spirit of his master. He did not know what his master was doing. How is it that men can be so far separated from one another? How is it that a man can not be understood in his own house, but be thought fanciful, fanatical, eccentric and phenomenally peculiar? How is it that a man may be living among men, and yet not be of them; may be in the world and yet above the world; may be speaking the very language of the time, and yet charging it with themeaning of eternity? See here the differences that still exist, and must ever exist, as between one man and another:
Elisha—living the great spiritual life, the grand prayer-life and faith-life.
Gehazi—grubbing in the Earth and seeking his contentment in the dust.
These contrasts exist through all time, and are full of instruction. Blessed is he who observes the wise man, and copies him; who looks upon the fool, and turns away from him, if not with hatred yet with a desire not to know his spirit.
Gehazi had a method in his reasoning. Said he, in effect:
“To spare a stranger, a man who may never be seen again; to spare a beneficiary, a man who has taken away benefits in the right hand and in the left; to spare a wealthy visitor, a man who could have given much without feeling he had given any thing; to spare a willing giver, a man who actually offered to give something and who was surprised, if not offended, because his gift was declined! There is no reason in my master’s policy.”
It never occurred to Gehazi that a man could have bread to eat that the world knew not of. It never occurs to some men that others can live by faith, and can work miracles of faith by the grace of God.
Are there not minds that never had a noble thought? It is almost impossible to conceive of the existence of such minds, but there they are. They never went beyond their own limited location; they never knew what suffering was on the other side of the wall of their owndwelling place. They were never eyes to the blind, or ears to the deaf, or feet to the lame; they never surprised themselves by some noble thought of generosity. How, then, can they understand the prophets of the times?
Yet how noble a thing it is to have among us men who love the upper life, and who look upon the whole world from the very sanctuary of God, and who say:
“A man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth, but a man’s life consists of his faith, love and charity.”
We can not tell how much the prophets are doing to refine their age, to give a new view to all human duty, to inspire those who otherwise would fail for the lack of courage.
We can not tell where the answers to prayer fall, or how those answers are given, but we feel that there is at work in society a mystic influence, a strange, ghostly, spectral action, which keeps things together, and now and again puts Sabbath day right in the midst of the vulgar time.
There are facts of a high and special kind, as well as what we commonly call facts, which are often but appearances and dramatic illusions. What about the secret ministry, the unnamable spiritual action, the holy, elevating and restraining influence? What is that hand which will write upon palace walls words of judgment and keep the world from plunging into darkness infinite?
Surely, God is in this place, and I knew it not. This—wherever it be, garden or wilderness—is none other than the house of God and the gate of Heaven.
Gehazi prostituted an inventive and energetic mind. He had his plan: “My master hath sent me, saying: ‘Behold, even now there be come to me from Mount Ephraim two young men of the sons of the prophets. Give them, I pray thee, a talent of silver and two changes of garments.”
The case was admirably stated. It was stated, too, with just that urgency which increases the likelihood of that which is declared.
Elisha spent his time among the sons of the prophets. They all looked to him as a father, as he had once looked to Elijah. He was the young man’s friend—the young minister’s asylum. They all knew the gracious, gentle, Christ-like Elisha—the ante-type of the Messiah; and what was more likely than that two of them, in the course of their journeying, should have called on Elisha unexpectedly?
It was a free and gracious life that the old ministers lived. They seemed to have rights in one another. If any one of them had a loaf, that loaf belonged to the whole fraternity. If one of them, better off than another, had a house or part of a house, any of the sons of the prophets passing by could go and lodge there.
It was a gracious masonry—a true brotherhood.
Gehazi was no model man in a moral sense. His invention was a lie; his cleverness was but an aspect of depravity; his very genius but made him memorable for wickedness.
But Gehazi was successful. He took the two talents of silver in the two bags, with the two changes of garments. He brought them to the tower, and bestowedthem in the house. Then he sat down—a successful man! Now all is well; lust is satisfied, wealth is laid up. Now the fitness of things has been consulted, and harmony has been established between debtor and creditor, and Justice nods because Justice has been appeased.
Were the test to end with the twenty-fourth verse of the fifth chapter of the second Book of Kings, we should describe Gehazi as a man who had set an example to all coming after him who wished to turn life into a success.
Who had been wronged?
Naaman pursues his journey all the more happy for thinking he has done something in return for the great benefit which has been conferred on him. He is certainly more pleased than otherwise. The man of God has at last been turned, he thinks, into directions indicated by common sense.
All this has come about in the way of business; for nothing that is not customary has been done.
Gehazi is satisfied, and Elisha knows nothing about it. The servant should have something, even if the master would take nothing. It is the trick of our own day. The servant is always at the door with his rheumatic hand, ready to take any thing that may be put into it. We leave nothing with the master; it would be an insult to him.
So far the case looks simple, natural and complete; and we have said Elisha knows nothing about it.
Why will men trifle with prophets?
Why will men play with fire?
When will men know that what is done in secret will be published on the house tops?
When will men know that there can be nothing confidential that is wicked?
Observe Gehazi going in to his master as usual, and look at his face; not a sign upon it of any thing having been done that is wrong. Look at his hands—large, white, innocent-looking hands that never doubled their fingers on things that did not belong to them.
Look at Elisha. Fixing his eyes calmly upon Gehazi, he asks:
“Whence comest thou, Gehazi?”
“Thy servant went no whither.”
Gehazi meant it to be understood that he had been on the premises all the time; always within call; the lifting up of a finger would have brought him.
Then came the speech of judgment, delivered in a low tone, but every word was heard—the beginning of the word and the end of the word—and the last word was like a sting of righteousness.
“Went not mine heart with thee?”
Oh, that heart! The good man knows when wickedness has been done. Christ knows when He enters into the congregation whether there is a man in it with a withered hand.
“Went not mine heart with thee?” Was I not present at the interview? Did I not hear every syllable that was said on the one side and on the other? Did I not look at thee when thou didst tell the black, flat and daring lie?
Then came the infliction of the judgment:
“The leprosy, therefore, of Naaman shall cleave unto thee, and unto thy seed for ever.”
Thou, Gehazi, hast touched the silver, not knowing that it was contagious and held the leprosy; thou didst bring in the two changes of garments, not knowing that the germs of the disease were folded up with the cloth. Put on the coat; it will scorch thee.
“He went out from his presence a leper as white as snow.”
A splendid conception is this silent departure. Not a word was said, not a protest uttered. The judgment was felt to be just. “Cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness.” “These shall go away into everlasting punishment.”
Oh, the hush—the solemn silence! The judgment seemed to begin with the sound of trumpets and the rending of things that apparently could not be shaken; at the end there is simply a going away, a silent motion, a conviction that the sentence is right.
See Gehazi as he goes out of Elisha’s presence, and regard him as a specimen of those who, having been judged, on the last day will depart.
Men should consider the price which they really pay for their success.
The grateful Syrian would gladly have pressed upon Elisha gifts of high value, but the holy man resolutely refused to take any thing, lest the glory redounding unto God from this great act should in any degree be obscured. But his servant, Gehazi, was less scrupulous, and hastened with a lie in his mouth to ask, in his master’s name, for a portion of that which Elisha had refused.
The illustrious Syrian no sooner saw the man running after his chariot than he alighted to meet him, and beingglad to relieve himself in some degree under the sense of overwhelming obligation, he sent him back with more than he ventured to ask.
Nothing more is known of Naaman.
We afterward find Gehazi recounting to King Joram the great deeds of Elisha, and in the providence of God it so happened that when he was relating the restoration to life of the Shunnammite’s son, the very woman with her son appeared before the king to claim her house and lands, which had been usurped while she had been absent abroad during the recent famine. Struck by the coincidence, the king immediately granted her application.
As lepers were compelled to live apart outside the towns, and were not allowed to come too near to uninfected persons, some difficulty has arisen with respect to Gehazi’s interview with the king. Several answers occur. The interview may have taken place outside the town, in a garden or garden house, and the king may have kept Gehazi at a distance, with the usual precautions which custom dictated. Some even suppose that the incident is misplaced, and actually occurred before Gehazi was smitten with leprosy. Others hasten to the opposite conclusion, and allege the probability that the leper had then repented of his crime, and had been restored to health by his master.
So far in our Bible studies we have had many weary wanderings among bad men. The fear was that, to someextent, familiarity with them might blunt our own moral sensibility.
Man after man has passed before us out of whose very countenance the image of God had faded. How pleasant it is, and how spiritually exhilarating, to come upon a case in which we read of a different pattern of man! Of Hezekiah it is recorded in the eighteenth chapter of the second Book of Kings:
“And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, according to all that David, his father, did.”
After a long journey underground we seem to have come suddenly upon a sweet garden, and the sight of it is as Heaven. The charm is always in the contrast. If things are not quite so good as we supposed them to be, they are all the better by reason of circumstances through which we have passed, which have made us ill at ease and have impoverished or disheartened us; then very little of the other kind goes a long way.
A man comes up out of the underground railway and says, when he emerges into the light:
“How fresh the air is here! What a healthy locality! How well to live in this neighborhood!”
Why does he speak so kindly of his surroundings? Not because of those surroundings intrinsically, but because of the contrast which they present to the circumstances through which he has just passed.
Hezekiah was no perfect man.
We shall see how noble he was, and how rich in many high qualities, yet how now and again we see the crutch of the cripple under the purple of the king.
It is well for us that he was occasionally and temporarilyweak, or he would have been like a star which we can not touch, and at which we can not light our own torch.
Even Hezekiah was a man like ourselves in many particulars, and therefore what was good and sound in him is all the more attractive and is all the more possible to us.
Who can mistake an honest man?
If all men were upright, where would be the peculiarity of any individual man’s integrity? But, given a corrupt state of society, when the honest man appears we say: “The wind has changed. It blows balmily and healthfully. It comes from a fine origin, and brings with it many a blessing.”
Who can mistake the atmosphere of the sea? How it blows away all the city dullness! How it quickens the blood! How it throws off increasing years, and makes the voyager feel almost young again!
It is so with honesty, nobleness, charity and goodness of character when the surrounding air is charged with some kind of poison or pestilence.
So it is that we come upon Hezekiah.
Perhaps it is well for him that we approach his case after such an experience. He thus gets advantages that otherwise might not have been accorded to him. He looks the higher for the dwarfs that are round about him, the whiter because of the black population amid which he stands—at once a contrast and a rebuke.
But from Hezekiah’s point of view the case was different. Behind him were traditions of the most corrupt sort. He was as a speckled bird in the line of his ownfamily. It is hard to be good amid so much that is really bad. All attempts at goodness are accounted examples of affectation, conceit, vanity and pharisaism; and under such circumstances sometimes a man’s foes may be the people of his own household. They wish he was more pliable, less sabbatarian, less devoted to his Bible, less constant in his attendance at church. He might go once a day, and give himself one end of the rope not tethered to the altar; but he will not.
Has that man an easy time of it?
No hard word may be spoken to him—certainly no bitter word—and yet all the while he may be made to feel that perhaps, after all, he may be affecting somewhat of piety and purity, and that those who are looking on may be better critics of him than he is of himself.
At all events, there come to him periods of trial, and sometimes he says within himself:
“Shall I today be as constant as I have been, or may I not break away now? Have I not built up a character, and may I not retire upon my moral competence, and live henceforth the life of a latitudinarian? After a long spell of many years, surely I might intermit just a little.”
Who shall say that the temptation is not subtle and strong? Some men have to force their way to church through innumerable and unnamable difficulties. This ought to be reckoned. Some credit must be due to men who are thus constant to their sense of public duty and religious obligation. Men are not always at church with the entire consent of those who are round about them.
What, then, must be done?
One of two things. Either yield to the temptation or resist it. You can not trifle with it. You can not compromise, and then recur to firmness, and again connive, and again balance, consider and hesitate. Virtue is not an intermittent grace. We must stand, or we must fall.
Hezekiah had a wicked father. How will that wickedness come out in the son? Not, perhaps, as wickedness, but as infirmity, weakness, and want of constancy in some directions, though there may be no want of firmness in others.
Can a man wholly escape the bad blood inherited of his father?
We must not forget that Hezekiah’s mother’s name was Abi, the daughter of Zachariah. How she came to marry a wicked husband must remain a mystery. But the mother will come up in the son.
She was the daughter of Zachariah, and Zachariah was a prophet, or seer—a man with double sight—one of those strange men who can see beyond the merely visible and palpable, and can read things that lie behind.
Zachariah came up again in his daughter, and the mother came up again in the son, and so there was a mysterious play of inheritance, transfer, transition, reappearance, somewhat of resurrection—a great tragic mystery of transformation and representation.
We speak about a man as if he were self-contained—just standing upon so much ground, without relation behind or before, on the right hand or on the left. But no man is thus insularly placed; no man is an absolute solitary.
Every man has in him the blood of the past and the life of the future.
Can a son of a good mother be altogether bad? Most surely not. You must have mistaken the case if you thought so. Your very thinking so may constitute an element of hopefulness in your case. Take comfort from that suggestion.
So long as you can think of yourself seriously and of the past and of your advantages, and can compare what you are with what you might have been, there is hope of you.
But can there be in all history such an irony as this, that a man should have had a praying mother and himself be a prayerless man?
No! It can not be. Somewhere—at some time and in some way—the better nature will assert itself, and out of a good seed surely there will come a good harvest.
But the lesson does not lie upon one side only. Here is encouragement to the praying fathers and to praying mothers.
Zachariah, read on; read between the lines of things; interpret events symbolically; read the apocalyptic sense of what is happening—and out of all this mental elevation and spiritual conduct there will come results in your daughter or your son.
Abi, pray on. Be just to your father’s memory, and say: “He was a holy man. I must prove it by being a holy woman. He can not live upon a written character; he must live in my life. I will prove that such a child must have had a good father.”
So the vital lessons fall—on the right hand, on theleft, and around about us. Shame be to us if, amid this shower of monition and encouragement and stimulus, we be deaf and dumb and blind, unfeeling, unresponsive.
Hezekiah will now go to work and prove himself to be an energetic reformer.
“He removed the high places, and brake the images, and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made; for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it; and he called it Nehustan.”
He must have been a strong man. He had no colleague, no ally; no one to say to him: “Be brave, be true.” He went straight against the hardest wall that ever was built by the stubbornness and perversity of man.
It is not easy to begin life by a destructive process of reformation. Who would not rather plant a tree than throw down a wall? Who would not rather plant flowers and enjoy their beauty and fragrance than give himself the severe toil and the incessant trouble of destroying corrupt and evil institutions?
Whoever attempts this kind of destructive work, or even a constructive work which involves preliminary destructiveness, will have a hard time of it. Criticism will be very sharp, and selfishness will be developed in an extraordinary degree.
If a man be more than politician—if he be a real born statesman, looking at whole empires at once and not at mere parishes, and if in his thought and purpose he should base his whole policy upon fundamental right—he will not have an easy life of it, even in a Christiancountry. In proportion as he bases his whole policy on righteousness, temperance and judgment to come, he will be pelted with hard names and struck at with unfriendly hands.
This holds good in all departments of life, in all great reformations, in all assaults made upon ignorance, selfishness, tyranny and wrong of every name.
The children of Israel always seemed to live a foolish life. They were the veriest children—so, at least, we would say but for fear of branding sweet children with an evil stigma.
They were infantile, weak, treacherous to themselves, uncertain at every point—and so, having kept the brazen serpent, they burned incense to it. They liked a visible God. When the calf appealed to their religious feelings they danced around it as if at last they had found a deity.
But who can worship a spirit—invisible, impalpable, far away, near at hand, without a name, without a shape which we can verify and say: “It comes to thus much, and this is the weight and this is the value of it?”
It requires a mind of some mental strength to stand up, take hold of the brazen serpent and call it “Nehushtan”—a contemptuous term, meaning a piece of brass; dead brass, useless and worthless brass, a relic but not a God.
Let us give credit to the men who have been bold—religiously intrepid—in the midst of circumstances of a most discouraging and overbearing kind. They are the men to whom we owe our present privileges. We have the Bible in our mother tongue because they were valiant. Not a church would have been built today in whichmen could assemble with a sense of freedom—sweet, joyous liberty—but for the Hezekiahs and others who went forth and, at great cost and great peril, destroyed things evil and black, by the power of God’s almightiness—overthrew them, and set up a better kingdom.
What was the root of Hezekiah’s character? At present we have seen phenomena of a gracious kind; we like what we have seen of this man.
“He trusted in the Lord God of Israel; so that after him was none like him among all the kings of Judah nor any that were before him. For he clave to the Lord, and departed not from following Him, but kept His commandments, which the Lord commanded Moses.”
At length a man arose who said: “I will do God’s will, God helping me. I will not only read the commandments, but I will incarnate them. I will not only speak religious words, but live a religious life.”
Tender and yet emphatic are the words: “He trusted,” “he clave,” “he kept.”
He “trusted”—that is to say, he had no other trust. His religion was not a convenience, one thing among many things, an occasional exercise in piety; but it was a perpetual confidence, the one trust, the all-centralizing and all-ruling fact.
Then he “clave”—he kept close to. He would not allow any thing to come between his hand and the God he seized. The hand could do nothing except cleave to God and what was possible through that cleaving; and much is possible of a helpful and beneficent kind.
He “kept the commandments”—counted them one by one; examined himself in them; took himself dailyto task about the whole ten. We live an off-hand life.
Religion is now as easy as a wave of the hand, a salutation across a thoroughfare; it is something that can be taken up, laid down, forgotten and resumed.
What wonder if the Rab-shakehs of the age come and taunt us, mock our piety and blow back our prayers before they get to the skies?
We want more trust, more cleaving piety, more keeping of the commandments, living in them and having no other life that is not consonant with them.
Now came, as we have often seen, the inevitable temptation. We pass instantly to the visit of Rab-shakeh. This Rab-shakeh was an eloquent man. He had the gift of mockery; he could gibe well. He was not without a certain logical qualification.
He made a long and offensive speech to the people under Hezekiah’s rule, and he thought he had them at both ends of the argument.
Having mocked their piety, laughed it down, challenged it, spat upon it, he said:
“Perhaps you will say: ‘We trust in the Lord, our God,’ but you forget that this very man, Hezekiah, has thrown down His altars, has taken away His groves, has rooted up the house of your God by the foundations.”
Rab-shakeh did not understand the destructive reformation wrought out by Hezekiah. He heard of the groves being cut down and the holy places being removed, and he said:
“This is so much to our advantage. The king of Assyria shall hear of this, and we shall make good commerce of it.”
Rab-shakeh did not distinguish between idolatry and piety—between a reform essential to health and a mere accident in history. That which was good in Hezekiah seemed to be wickedness to Rab-shakeh.
Rab-shakeh assaulted the people, trampled on them, leaped over their bodies, mocked their refuges and their trust, and thrust his fist into the face of Egypt and said:
“Come away from Hezekiah. Trust him not; he is blind; he is incapable. Leave him, and I will tell you what the king of Assyria will do for you.”
And he held this out to them:
“I will come and take you away to a land like your own land—a land of corn and wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of olive oil and of honey—that ye may live, and not die; and hearken not unto Hezekiah, when he persuadeth you, saying: ‘The Lord will deliver us.’”
It is but an empty saying: “Come, and I will give you a great Canaan!”
Sometimes it does seem as if the enemy had the best of it. Every thing lies so handily to him. He says:
“I will get you through this difficulty. I know a lie that would deceive a king. I can instruct you in a policy that would blind a judge. I could get the money for you; you need have no difficulty about that. Why, I say, in confidence, I can let you have it now!”
What can the preacher do in the presence of such a Rab-shakeh?
Or, he may not offer temptation in that direction, but in another. He may say:
“All these arguments I could answer, if I cared to do so. Who wrote the Bible? Who has seen the originalmanuscripts? Who has ever seen God? It is utterly impossible to know the infinite. Come, and I will make you rich at once in real, solid, practical things. I can give you work instantly, and wages immediately the work is begun. I can give you something in advance. Leave the preacher, the altar, the Bible and the church. Come and work in the open streets, and be doing something that you can handle and about which there is no manner of doubt.”
People begin then to wonder.
They should adopt the policy which was imposed on the children of Hezekiah:
“But the people held their peace, and answered him not a word, for the king’s commandment was: ‘Answer him not.’”
Nothing is to be got out of wordy controversy. Live the Christian life; grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. While the controversialist is contemning you, taunting you and smiting you, show to him that you are growing broader, more massive in character, more tender in disposition, more benevolent in every aspiration and desire and purpose, and thus by well-doing “Put to silence the ignorance of foolish men.”
Defend your Christianity by the eloquence of your life.
The servants of Hezekiah said to him: “What Rab-shakeh has said may come to pass. Let us go to Isaiah and tell him all.”
Hezekiah himself thought that perhaps there might be something in it, after all. There he and his servants fell into a state of incertitude.
“So the servants of King Hezekiah came to Isaiah.” They came to the right man. Standing up like a king, he said:
“Thus shall ye say to your master: Thus saith the Lord: ‘Be not afraid of the words which thou hast heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed Me. Behold, I will send a blast upon him, and he shall hear a rumor, and shall return to his own land; and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land.’”
He would make no violent attack on the men. He would summon no legion of angels to overwhelm this great Oriental potentate. He would simply “send a blast.” He would change the wind; he would scatter something upon it and bid it blow across the brain of the king of Assyria, and the king would not know his right hand from his left, nor the morning from the night; he would be calling everybody by the wrong name, and be asking for things that he did not wish to possess, and be, generally, thrown into a state of unbalanced and wandering mind.
“I will send a whisperer to him. He shall simply go to the ear of the king of Assyria and say something, and the king will take fright and fly away in a panic. O Hezekiah, continue thy prayer, repeat thy morning sacrifice and thine evening oblation; and, as for the king of Assyria, I will send a blast and a rumor. I will answer Rab-shakeh.”
Let the contempt of the enemy be answered by the contempt of Heaven.
Rab-shakeh, having found that the king of Assyriawas warring against Libnah, returned; and when he heard that Tirhakah, king of Ethiopia, was come up to war, he once more addressed Hezekiah in terms of exultation and contempt.
Rab-shakeh was pretendedly anxious that Hezekiah should not be deceived by the Lord, his God, and then he taunts him with many a history in which Assyria had been conqueror over opposing nations. He completes his taunt by asking:
“Where is the king of Hamath, and the king of Arpad, and the king of the city of Sepharvaim, of Hena, and Ivah?”
This message came to Hezekiah in the form of a letter, or letters, and he instantly “went up into the house of the Lord, and spread it before the Lord.”
There is no need to regard this as in any sense involving a heathenish custom. The meaning simply is that Hezekiah consulted the Lord on the whole matter, and declined to take any thing into his own counsel or power. He acknowledges the dignity of God by the expression: “O Lord God of Israel, which dwellest between the cherubims.”
Then he pointed to the letter which more immediately concerned himself, thus showing his consciousness that the majesty of the Lord did not separate Him from taking an interest in earthly things. We are not to stop at the point of majesty, but are to reason that, because God is so majestic and august, He will pay attention to the prayers and desires of the beings whom He has created in His own image and likeness. The divine majesty is not a rebuke to human approach, but is an encouragementto human prayer. When Hezekiah says “Thou art the God,” the emphasis is to be laid on the pronoun. Thou art the true God, and Thou alone. When he desires God to bow down His ear, and hear, the reference is not so much to listen to Hezekiah’s prayer as to the words of Sennacherib.
The meaning of the whole petition may be:
“Interpose immediately and energetically between me and mine enemy. Let Thine ears hear, let Thine eyes see, and let Thine arm be extended.”
Hezekiah acknowledges that the kings of Assyria had destroyed the nations and their lands, and had cast the gods of the nations into the fire. By so much he gives the Assyrians credit for having spoken the truth, and for having thus founded their project against Israel upon the success which they had already attained.
Hezekiah acknowledges, indeed, that the gods of the nations were no gods. At the same time he feels that to the minds of the Assyrians they may have been as real deities, and their overthrow may have encouraged the Assyrians to believe that Jehovah was like unto them.
Thus the prayer of Hezekiah was argued and ordered in logical and historical form, and was intended to excite, as it were, the very jealousy of the Lord God of Israel.
We now turn to the reply which was made to Hezekiah through the lips of Isaiah, the son of Amos. The reply was manifestly given in a contemptuous tone:
“The virgin the daughter of Zion hath despised thee, and laughed thee to scorn; the daughter of Jerusalem hath shaken her head at thee.”
This is a poetic personification of place, Zion being regarded as mother of the people dwelling there. While the term “virgin” may denote the inviolable security of the citadel of Jehovah, it may also intimate that a woman—even a solitary woman—was enough, when under the inspiration and protection of God, to repel the assault of the most boastful and audacious king.
The expression, “hath shaken her head at thee,” has been literally rendered: “Hath nodded behind thee.” It signifies an act of security—as, for example, in the Twenty-second Psalm: “All they that see me laugh me to scorn; they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying: ‘He trusted on the Lord that He would deliver him. Let Him deliver him, seeing He delighted him.’”
The people of Jerusalem are represented by this expression as nodding their heads in contempt at the retiring envoys of Sennacherib.
The answer of Isaiah to Hezekiah was a religious revelation to the king of Assyria.
The twenty-second verse puts into interrogative form a reproach against the ignorance of the king:
“Whom hast thou reproached and blasphemed? And against whom hast thou exalted thy voice and lifted up thine eyes on high?”
The meaning evidently is that the king did not know the real nature of the God of Israel and Judah, and that he was making an infinite mistake in confounding that nature with what he had already seen of the idols of the nations.
Humiliation is promised to the king of Assyria. A hook is to be thrust into his nose, a bridle is to be put onhis lips, and he is to be turned back by the way which he came.
While the king of Assyria is humiliated, the remnant that escaped of the house of Judah is promised again to take root downward and bear fruit upward—literally, shall add root to root, shall take firmer root than ever, as a tree often does after a storm; the ravaged land was to be newly stocked by the remnant that was to be saved out of Jerusalem.
All these statements are supported by the declaration: “The zeal of the Lord of Hosts shall do this.”
Thus the promise is not made in any human name or guaranteed by the conquests of human history. It is immediately connected with the very purpose and power of the Most High. Nor is this the only instance in which divine strength is promised on behalf of Judah and of Israel. We read: “For I will defend this city, to save it, for mine own sake, and for my servant David’s sake.”
We must always be careful to notice that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, and that no occasion is ever given for man to glory in man, but that everywhere from the beginning of religious history, as given in the Bible, it is God who is King, Ruler and Protector, and to Him all the glory of deliverance and conquest undividedly belongs.
And that night “the angel of the Lord went out and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five thousand; and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses.”
Again and again we say: “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”
Let Rab-shakeh talk—let him deliver his burning messages—and when he has ceased his mockery it is not necessary for us to answer. God will defend His own cause.
Here we stand. We think all history is on the Christian side. But let us not forget that the finest argument in favor of Christianity is a Christian life.
The ninth verse of the fourth chapter of the first Book of Chronicles contains a reference to Jabez. The whole history is brief:
“And Jabez was more honorable than his brethren; and his mother called his name Jabez, saying: ‘Because I bear him with sorrow.’ And Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying: ‘Oh, that Thou wouldst bless me indeed, and enlarge my coast, and that Thine hand might be with me, and that Thou wouldst keep me from evil, that it may not grieve me!’ And God granted him that which he requested.”
Nothing more is known of this Jabez or of his brethren. “The Speaker’s Commentary” regards the fact as remarkable that Jabez should be introduced without description or patronymic, as if a well-known personage, and supposes that he was known to those for whom the Book of Chronicles was written, either by tradition or by writings which have perished.
The word Jabez signifies sorrowful.
Jabez was distinguished in some way above his brethren. By this distinction we are not to infer the exercise of an undue partiality in the spirit of his parents. Account for it as we may, some men appear to be born with what may be called a larger religiousness of nature than other men. It is easy for them to pray; it is a delight to them to peruse all sacred writings; it is a positive pain to them to be deprived of religious privileges.
We must leave this mystery as insoluble. It is a very pleasant mystery to those who are gifted with religious intuition; but, on the other hand, it is a most appalling mystery to those who seem to be what we can not better describe than by calling them natural Atheists.
The name which Jabez bore was a memorial of his mother’s sorrow—not a prophecy of his own. Yet Jabez was animated by that inexplicable superstition which discovers in names and circumstances omens and predictions which the imagination can never treat with disregard.
Jabez might intellectually know that his name did but represent what his mother had endured, yet a subtle feeling took possession of him, as if he himself would in some way be involved in the same sorrow. Nor was this an irrational conclusion.
As a matter of fact, some men are born to more sorrow than others—as certainly as by constitution some men are more religious than others.
Here, again, is a dark and painful mystery. We see the operation of this mystery even in the same family, where one of the children may be full of sunlight, hope and music, and another may be doomed to walk in darknessthroughout a lifetime—unable to discern between Summer and Winter, loaded with trouble and oppressed with undefinable apprehensions.
Jabez is known to history as pre-eminently a man of prayer. Although it has been considered that the prayer of Jabez was uttered in view of some imminent battle or other dreaded experience, yet by common consent Jabez has been regarded by Christian students as a typical man of prayer.
Judging the case within the narrow limits of the history given in verses nine and ten, it would seem as if Jabez started life in an act of prayer. The image is at once graphic and beautiful. Think of a young man standing at the door of his house, looking abroad at the unknown and unmeasured world, listening to the conflicting voices which troubled his native air, and then turning his eyes to Heaven and asking divine direction before he would take a single step from the threshold of his home.
Nothing of the nature of mere romance attaches itself to this picture.
This, indeed, is what every young man ought to do before going out to battle or labor. It would appear, from instances which have come under our view, that God condescends to receive from men promises of religious life on certain providential conditions. We can not understand this now, but it is perfectly clear, from such instances as Jacob and Jabez, that God was willing to respond to propositions of obedience founded upon the realization of specified blessings.
The prayer of Jabez must be judged to be good, forthe sufficient reason that it was answered—“and God granted him that which he requested.”
Is the conduct of life, then, open to regulation upon such high and sacred lines? May a young man come before the Almighty, speak out all his heart and receive promises of continual guidance and defense from the Living One?
If we could realize the certainty of this holy commerce as between Earth and Heaven, our whole life would be lifted to a noble level, our spirit would be released from the dominion of fear, and instead of laboring in toilsome prayer, we should be filled with the spirit of triumphant thankfulness and praise.
What privileges are open to the young! It lies within their power to give a whole life-time to God. Those who have advanced considerably in life can now but give a fraction of their days, but the young soul can give God the brightness of the morning, the glory of noonday and the tranquility of evening.
Let the young think of this, and give themselves diligently to the study of such instances as that of Jabez, knowing that if they remember their Creator in the days of their youth increasing age will mean increasing joy.
Jehoram undertakes an expedition against King Mesha, but in doing so he pays a tribute to the power of the king of Moab by allying with himself Jehoshaphat,king of Judah, and also the king of Edom. A remarkable character is given of Jehoram. He was not an imitator of the evil of his father as to its precise form, but he had his own method of serving the devil.
We should have thought that Ahab and Jezebel had exhausted all the arts of wickedness, but it turns out that Jehoram had found a way of his own of living an evil life.
Warned by the untimely fate of his brother, which had fallen upon him expressly on account of his Baal worship, Jehoram began his reign by an ostentatious abolition of the Phenician state religion, which his father had introduced.
Jehoram went back to the olden times, and re-established the worship of the calf, after the pattern which Jeroboam, its founder, had patronized. His doing so, however, he found to be quite compatible with a secret allowance that the people should practice their own form of worship.
There is room in wickedness for the exercise of genius of a certain limited kind. The limitation is imposed by wickedness itself—for, after all, wickedness is made up of but few elements.
Many persons suppose that if they do not sin according to the prevailing fashion they are not sinning at all. They imagine that by varying the form of the evil they have mitigated the evil itself.
A good deal of virtue is supposed to consist in reprobating certain forms of vice. A man may be no drunkard, according to the usual acceptation of the term, and yet he may be in a continual state of intoxication. Itis possible to shudder at what is usually known as persecution, and yet all the while to be beheading enemies and burning martyrs.
Jehoram made a kind of trick of wickedness. He knew how to give a twist to old forms, or a turn to old ways, so as to escape part of their vulgarity and yet to retain all their iniquity.
A most alarming thought it is to the really spiritual mind that men may become adepts in wickedness—experts in evil doing—and may be able so to manage their corrupt designs as to deceive many observers by a mere change of surface or appearance.
We do not amend the idolatry by altering the shape of the altar. We do not destroy the mischievous power of unbelief by throwing our skepticism into metaphysical phrases, and thus making verbal mysteries where we might have spiritual illumination. We are deceived by things simply because we ourselves live a superficial life and read only the history of appearances.
What is the cure for all this manipulation of evil, this changing of complexion and of form, and this consequent imagining that the age is improving because certain phenomena which used to be so patent are no longer discernible on the face of things?
We come back to the sublime doctrine of regeneration, as the answer to the great inquiry: “What is the cure for this heart disease?”
“Marvel not that I said unto thee: ‘Ye must be born again.’”
We may change either the language or the manners of wickedness, or the times and seasons for doing wickedthings, and we may decorate our wickedness with many beautiful colors, but so long as the heart itself is unchanged decoration is useless—yea, worse than useless; for it is a vain attempt to make that look true which is false—an endeavor even to deceive Omniscience itself.
“And Mesha, king of Moab, was a sheepmaster, and rendered unto the king of Israel an hundred thousand lambs and an hundred thousand rams, with the wool. But it came to pass, when Ahab was dead, that the king of Moab rebelled against the king of Israel.”
Enduring masteries are not of a physical kind. Ahab held Mesha simply by a strong arm, and the consequence was that, as soon as Ahab was dead, Mesha refused to render the tribute.
This historical circumstance, limited so far as the mere letter is concerned, is full of significance to the Christian Church and to all Christian countries.
Let us not call ourselves masters of positions or of men, simply because we happen to have the stronger arm. The dominion which is acquired by mere strength and held by superior force is an illusion wherever it is found.
The men whom we may so hold may be hypocrites enough to assume an acquiescent attitude, or even to display a complacent demeanor; they may even go so far as to appear to be grateful for the rule which they can not set aside. But all such appearances are of necessity without reason, and therefore without continuance. They are always to be suspected.
This would be so in the case of the Christian faith, had we the power of imposing even its nominal beliefupon any nation. Suppose we say that any man not professing the Christian faith shall certainly be fined, imprisoned or otherwise punished. It is easy to see that such a threat might in many instances bring about an appearance of acquiescence. But it must be, by the very necessity of the case, appearance only.
Faith is a question of the individual judgment and of the individual heart, and can not be controlled in any degree by external authority.
Suppose we create a law making it penal to open places of business on the Sabbath day. Looking upon all commercial houses whose business was suspended for a particular time, we might say: “See how unanimously and happily the Sabbath day is observed in this country!”
But such would be an altogether superficial and mistaken judgment. The Sabbath day can not be kept by law. If the Sabbath is not kept by the reason, and is not hailed with thankful delight by the very heart, it can never be kept at all.
All shops may be closed, all places of amusement may suspend their entertainments, all toys may be put away from the nursery, all out-door enjoyments and avocations may be withdrawn for the time, but the people who have retired in apparent acceptance of these conditions, but not in heartfelt acquiescence with them, are breaking the Sabbath every moment they breathe.
Here is a great law for the house, the church and the nation. The head of the family who rules by mere dread or tyranny is not training an obedient household, but he is preparing an outburst of sedition, which sooneror later must transpire, and when it occurs his ruin is certain.
The same law applies in the matter of capital and labor. The man who only works that he may receive his wages never truly serves or makes his labor into a delight. The man who can threaten the laborer by withdrawment of pecuniary recognition never elicits from that laborer a response to duty, though he may insist on a formal compliance with law.
What a blessed mastery is that of Jesus Christ in this respect.
For Christ reasons with men, and addresses the very highest form and quality of mind; He sets before men the alternative courses of life, and beseeches them to accept the straight and narrow way leading to repentance. Certainly he threatens, He denounces, He declares an awful issue for the wicked man, but it is not mere threatening or mere denunciation; it is the solemn disclosure of a sequence which even Almighty God could not suspend and yet retain the integrity of His throne and the security of the universe. We must never accuse Jesus Christ of what is termed “threatening.” His denunciations are revelations, and not the expressions of merely angry feelings.
The way of the approach having been settled, the kings proceeded to fetch a compass of seven days’ journey around by the south end of the Dead Sea. They little knew the difficulty that would arise in their way. We do not read that they made any religious inquiry at the outset of their journey, and therefore no responsibility could be charged upon God for the misadventurewhich occurred. The three kings seem to have consulted only with themselves, and to have resolved in their own counsel and strength upon their expedition against Mesha.
What was the misadventure which occurred? It is related: “And there was no water for the host and for the cattle that followed them.”
Even kings are dependent upon nature. Think of three kings, who supposed themselves at least to be very mighty, and all their people, stopped in their career simply for want of water!
A very pitiable and yet very instructive picture is this of three kings and their armies standing still merely for want of water. The so-called little things of life are often turned into not only things that are great, but into things that are vital.
Blessed indeed would be the man who sees even in natural arrangements and daily providences a call to him to lift up his head toward the heavens and ask great questions about being and duty and destiny.
So we have the usual religious appeal: “Is there not here a prophet of the Lord, that we may inquire of the Lord by him?”
Elisha now assumes a new attitude, and one certainly not destitute of spiritual grandeur. Turning to the king of Israel, he said:
“‘What have I to do with thee? Get thee to the prophets of thy father, and to the prophets of thy mother.’ And the king of Israel said unto him: ‘Nay; for the Lord hath called these three kings together, to deliver them into the hand of Moab.’”
Observe that this address was made to the very king of Israel. It simply means that the God of Israel had nothing to do with the king of Israel, and yet Israel was understood to be a theocracy. The form was theocratic, but not the power.
Think of a man bearing the name of God, and yet being godless! A temple deserted of its deity is surely a melancholy sight, but what shall be said of the man from whose heart the Spirit of the living God has utterly departed?
Elisha seems to have inherited the taunting spirit of his great predecessor: “Get thee to the prophets of thy father, and to the prophets of thy mother.”
Who can say with how bitter a taunt the word “mother” was pronounced in this connection?
The evil that men do goes on for many a day—not only to the end of their life-time, but it lives after them.
This is a taunt that is founded on reason. If men have been serving a god for seven years past, surely it can not be unreasonable to refer them to that god in the time of their extremity. What is faith if it can not be tested? What is the value of an altar if you can not go to it and find lying upon it direct answers to your prayer?
Is there any thing meaner in all the history of cowardice than that a man should ignore the living God all his life, and then whiningly repent upon his death-bed? Why does he not go to the trusts to which he has committed himself, and say he will die in them as he has lived in them? Surely, the cowardice of men should teach those who observe it something regarding the nature and uses of religious faith.
The appeal of Elisha was perfectly fair.
If the gods of Jehoram were worth any thing, they could find water for him in the time of his necessity. Let them do it. If they will do it, then they will establish their claim to be regarded with reverence, and indeed be honored and worshiped.
We must insist upon making the same appeal in our own day. Men must be made to feel their irreligion.
Jehoram did feel his in this instance, for he protested against the decision of Elisha. Throughout the course of Scripture men are referred to their gods, and are made to test the value of their religion.
Possibly many a Jehoram may be acting under influences which he himself can not explain—so much that he becomes a puzzle to his own mind, wondering how it is that he takes one road when he has decided upon another, and that he mistakes substances for shadows and shadows for substances, so that his whole life is turned into a mocking bewilderment.
The answer is given in Scripture: “I also will choose their delusions, and will bring their fears upon them; because when I called, none did answer; when I spake, they did not hear; but they did evil before Mine eyes, and chose that in which I delighted not.”
Now we come to a better phase of this history—namely, to the saving element—which appears and reappears in the course of our changeful life.
Elisha was not to be placated by the king of Israel. In his eyes a vile person was contemned. The king of Israel was but a poor, frail thing in the presence of a man who lived with God and was commissioned to denouncethe judgments of Heaven against evil. But the world is not made up of Jehorams. Blessed be God, there are men of another type, whose very presence saves society from judicial ruin.
“And Elisha said: ‘As the Lord of Hosts liveth, before whom I stand, surely, were it not that I regard the presence of Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, I would not look toward thee, nor see thee.’”
Now we know that the spirit of Elijah rested upon Elisha. We seem to hear the very tones of the old master in the new disciple. Is it not always so in life—that it is one man who saves many; that the ten righteous men save the city, and that Paul saves all those who sail with him in the midst of the tempestuous sea?
Your house is saved because of your little child. Your whole estate is protected from ruin because your wife is a praying woman. Your life would be cut off tomorrow in shame and disgrace were it not that you have entered upon an inheritance of prayers laid up for you by those who went before.
Life thus becomes very sacred and very tender, and we know not to whom we are under the deepest obligations. Enough to know that, somewhere, there is a presence that saves us, there is an influence that guards our life, and that we owe absolutely nothing in the way of security or honor to bad kings or bad men of any name.
The remainder of the chapter is occupied with a prophecy of Elisha and by a statement of the overthrow of the king of Moab.
Nothing now could save Mesha. A strong delusionwas sent upon him to believe a lie. When water came down by way of Edom, and the whole country was filled with it, the Moabites rose up early in the morning, and as the Sun shone on the water the Moabites saw the water on the other side as red as blood.
It looked so like blood that they declared it to be blood; and, believing that the kings were slain who had come up against them, the Moabites advanced to the spoil. Alas, they advanced to their ruin.
The king of Moab saw that the battle was too sore for him. In his despair he took with him seven hundred men that drew swords, to break through even unto the king of Edom, but through the iron wall he could not force his way. In his madness he took his eldest son, who should have reigned in his stead, and flung him for a burnt offering upon the wall.
But the Lord will not be pleased with thousands of rams or with ten thousand rivers of oil, nor will He accept the first-born for a man’s transgression or the fruit of his body for the sin of his soul.
Verses sixteen to twenty-nine, inclusive, of the eighth chapter of the second Book of Kings should be compared with the twenty-first chapter of the second Book of Chronicles. The name Joram is an obvious contraction of Jehoram. Joram and Jehoram were practically interchangeable terms. The king of Israel iscalled Joram, and the king of Judah Jehoram. In another place Joram is the name of the king of Judah. In two other places both kings are called Jehoram.
Jehoram “walked in the way of the kings of Israel, as did the house of Ahab”—in other words, as the house of Ahab acted. Jehoram, as son-in-law of Ahab and Jezebel, gave his patronage to the worship of the Tyrian Baal.
Jehoram had examples enough before him of the fate which had befallen idolatrous worship, and yet, turning his eye backward upon all the ruins which had been created by divine anger, he pursued his evil way as if the Lord had approved the house of Ahab and its idolatry rather than manifested His judgments upon them.
Rational men may well ask themselves how it is that history is lost on some minds. They look backward and see that from the beginning sin has always been followed by punishment, and punishment has in many cases been carried as far as death itself. Yet in view of all the suffering, and in full sight of the innumerable graves dug by the hand of justice, they continue the same policy without one particle of alteration.
One would have supposed that, looking at the history of the kings of Israel, Jehoram would have said:
“I see now exactly what to avoid; and to see what to avoid is to begin to see what to cultivate and establish. It is perfectly evident that the worship of Baal is doomed, or that wherever it is set up divine anger instantly and severely attests the displeasure of God. It must be my care, therefore, to destroy every trace of idolatry, and build up faith in the true God.”
This would have been called reflective and philosophical on the part of the king, and indeed any thing that stood opposed to this course of reasoning would seem to be marked by incredible fatuity.
The contrary, however, is the exact fact. With all the evidences of divine displeasure around him Jehoram continued in the worship of Baal, or in some other form of idolatry which might appeal to the popular imagination or gratify the desires of his own corrupt fancy.
It is easy for moralists to condemn this neglect of history, and to point out to those who, having neglected it, come into suffering and loss, that they ought to have been wise before the event; but the very same thing is done even by the moralists who criticize the course of Jehoram and his predecessors.
This is the sin of every age, and it should be looked at clearly and acknowledged frankly, because until we do bring ourselves into vital relation to it our reasoning will be founded on false bases and will hasten itself to false conclusions.
All history is teaching us that the wages of sin is death; that the way of transgressors is hard; that, though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not go unpunished; that the face of the Lord is as a flint against evil doers. Yet, with this plainest of all lessons written on the very face of history, men are doing today as their predecessors did centuries ago, and will probably continue to repeat the folly and the wickedness until the end of time.
Surely, this is as curious a puzzle as any that occurs in all the annals of human history. It would seem, indeed,to be more than a puzzle; to be, in fact, indicative of a suicidal disposition on the part of the actor. It would not be tolerated in any other department of life.
If a man had known that a hundred of his ancestors were killed by drinking a certain liquid, and he thus knowingly put that liquid to his lips, the iniquity of his suicide would be aggravated by the knowledge of what had occurred in the records of his family.
How many murders, then, may he be said to accomplish who murders himself as to his moral nature and spiritual cultivation? He does not do it in ignorance. All history is surrounding him with its evidence, and is doing its utmost to secure his attention, and he himself is not unwilling to acknowledge that the testimony of history is uniform and absolute. Yet some immeasurable force within him drives him with infinite fury to the repetition of every sin and the defiance of every judgment.