IITHE GRAVE BY THE ROADSIDE
Thehistory of Bethlehem is the romance of Bethlehem; a story of love and daring, of brave men and beautiful women. We do not know that story in great detail; but here and there across the centuries, the light breaks on the little Judean town and we catch a fleeting glimpse of some scene of tender affection or chivalrous adventure. And it is striking to notice how many of these incidents involve womanly devotion and self-sacrifice, both before and after the Most Blessed of Women suffered and rejoiced in Bethlehem.
Long, long centuries before that first Christmas was dreamed of, the story of Bethlehem begins. And lo, the earliest episode has to do with a birth day.
In the yellow evening light a little band of nomadic shepherds is straggling along the dusty road past the high, gray walls of the outer fortifications of Jerusalem—not Jerusalem the Holy City, but Jerusalem the Jebusite stronghold, which is to remain heathen and hateful for a thousand years until, in that far-distant future, the arrogant fortress shall fall before the onslaughts of the mighty men of David.
At the head of the long line of herds and pack-animals and armed retainers walks the chief, Jacob ben-Isaac. A generation before, he had passed along this same ancient caravan route going northward; but no onewould recognize that frightened, homesick fugitive in the grave, self-confident leader who travels southward to-day. For now he is Sheikh Jacob, full of years and riches and wisdom; Jacob the strong man, the successful man and, in his own rude way, the good man.
An hour’s journey beyond Jerusalem there appear shining on a hilltop to the left the white stone houses of Bethlehem, at the sight of which the tired herdsmen grow more cheerful and the slow-moving caravan quickens somewhat its pace; for close under those protecting walls the tribe of B’nai Jacob will shelter its flocks for the night, safe alike from wolves and from marauding Arab bands.
But just as they reach the spot where the road to Bethlehem branches off to the leftfrom the main caravan route, there is a sudden change of plan. The hope of camping at the town is abandoned, and one of the low, black, goat-hair tents is hastily set up right by the roadside. Then there is an excited bustling among the household servants, and a time of anxious waiting for Sheikh Jacob, until Bilhah, the handmaid, puts into the old man’s arms his son Benjamin, his youngest boy, who is long to be the comfort of the father’s declining years.
THE TOMB OF RACHELIn the background the town of Beit Jala
THE TOMB OF RACHELIn the background the town of Beit Jala
THE TOMB OF RACHELIn the background the town of Beit Jala
Soon, however, the cries of rejoicing are hushed. From the women’s quarters comes a loud, shrill wail of grief. And before the B’nai Jacob break camp again the leader raises a heap of stones over the grave of Rachel—his Rachel—a gray-haired woman now and bent with toil, but still to him the beautiful girl whom he loved and for whomhe labored and sinned those twice seven long years in the strength of his young manhood.
Many years afterward, when Benjamin was a grown man and Jacob lay dying in the distant land of Egypt, the thoughts of the homesick old sheikh dwelt on the lonely grave by the roadside.
“I buried her there on the way to Bethlehem,” he said.
Her tombstone remains “unto this day,” the Hebrew narrator adds. Indeed, even to our own day, a spot by the Bethlehem road, about a mile from the town, is pointed out as the burial place of Rachel. Probably no site in Palestine is attested by the witness of so continuous a line of historians and travelers. For many centuries the grave was marked by a pyramid of stones. The presentstructure, with its white dome, is only about four hundred years old. But there it stands “unto this day,” revered by Christians, Jews and Moslems, and the wandering Arabs bring their dead to be buried in its holy shadow.
Such is the first Biblical reference to Bethlehem. A son was born there! More significant still, there was a vicarious sacrifice—a laying down of one life for another.