[pg 294]CHAPTER XXV.REVERSES.Judas met the danger with his accustomed resolution. He waited in the city till he could be certain of the road which the invaders were taking. As soon as he knew that it was from the south that they were approaching, he collected all his available force, having for the purpose to raise the siege of the fortress, and marched forth to meet them.The fortress of Beth-zur, which was intended to be the first line in the defence of the capital, was in danger of falling into the hands of the enemy. Micah had received, early in the year, a commission to revictual it, but had found the task one that was difficult, if not impossible, to execute. There was a positive scarcity of food, and the scarcity was aggravated as usual by the practice of hoarding. It was to little purpose that Micah scoured the country, making requisitions of grain and other supplies. Some few, strong in their faith, gave up what they had, and committed themselves and their children to the[pg 295]Lord, whose law they were seeking to obey. Others met the demand with a flat refusal, and at the same time taunted Micah with the folly of enforcing an impracticable law in times of such difficulty. Many met him with the plea of poverty, and their wasted forms and sunken faces were proof enough that this plea was genuine. The work, therefore, for all the zeal that Micah displayed, went on but very slowly, and, indeed, was not half finished when the advanced guard of the army of Lysias appeared. Beth-zur was immediately invested. The engines, of which Lysias had a large stock, played fiercely upon the walls, and preparations was made for an assault. Micah, on the other hand, saw no hope that he would be able to stand a long siege. The garrison under his command was not large enough adequately to man the walls, while it was too large for the stock of provisions which he had been able to collect.Under these circumstances his resolution was soon taken. Before dawn on the second day of the investment the whole garrison made a desperate sally. Happily they had no non-combatants to care for, and as yet no sick or wounded. Fire was set to the engines. The besiegers, thinking that this was the object of the attack, and that the garrison would make their way back into the fortress, when this had been accomplished, occupied themselves chiefly in putting out the fire. But Micah had no intention of returning. He availed himself of the[pg 296]confusion caused by the burning of the camp, cut his way with desperate resolution through the enemy, and succeeded in reaching the camp of Judas with the larger part of his force. The rest were not able to follow him, but succeeded in regaining the fortress, which they continued to hold against the Greeks.The camp was at Beth-Zachariah, about nine miles south from Jerusalem, and on an elevated position, not less than three thousand feet above the level of the sea, which commanded the whole of the neighbouring country. Behind, to the north, could be seen the towers of Jerusalem, with Bethlehem, the City of David, in the nearer foreground, nestling among its oliveyards and vineyards. To the west lay the plain of Philistia, with the white cliff of Gath clearly visible in the extreme distance; to the east could be seen the purple mountains of Moab. The road from Hebron, by which the Greek army would approach, crept along the eastern side of the mountains. From his elevated position Judas could see the movements of his adversaries while they were still at a considerable distance. Observing that they pitched their camp on the further side of a narrow defile, with the character of which he was intimately acquainted, he conceived the idea of an ambush.He summoned Azariah to his tent and detailed his plan. Azariah also knew the place well, and[pg 297]entered into the scheme with enthusiasm—such enthusiasm, indeed, that Judas felt it necessary to give him a parting caution.“Remember,”he said,“if this scheme fails, that you come back to me immediately. If the ambush should be discovered, retreat at once. There must be no attack. I cannot spare a man. We shall want all that we have, if not more than all, to make head against the thousands of Lysias.”Azariah promised obedience, and lost no time in setting out on his errand. Shortly after sunset he started, having with him a picked force of a thousand men. Before midnight he had reached the place fixed upon by Judas, and there, in a hollow half-way up the side of the hill that formed one side of the pass, he laid his ambush.It was an anxious night for the little band. It was always an accepted maxim in ancient warfare that it was the most steadfast courage that was wanted for the ambush. Men who were brave enough when fighting in the open plain found their courage fail when they had to lie for hours watching for the moment of attack, crouched upon the ground, unable to move and scarcely venturing to talk. Azariah’s men were brave—indeed they had been carefully chosen for this very service—but they were not altogether insensible of the dangers of their position. They knew, too, and even exaggerated the strength of the advancing army. As[pg 298]they talked in whispers during the night, for, as may be imagined, few could sleep, they spoke of the chances of the coming day. The elephants, which had never before been seen on Jewish soil, were mentioned with special awe.“Strange and terrible beasts they are,”said one man to his neighbour;“savage as lions, and many times larger and stronger.”“Is it so?”said the other.“I heard once from an Arab, who had been driver of one of these creatures, that they are marvellously gentle and tame.”“Maybe they are by nature; but their drivers have ways of rousing them to fury before the battle.”“How so?”“They show them the blood of grapes and mulberries, and the creatures rage terribly. ’Tis said that one of them can tread down a whole company of men.”“Well, but ’tis possible, I know, to stand against them. King Antiochus, father to the madman whom the Lord smote for his sins, had an array of them in his army when he fought against the Romans at Magnesia, but they profited him little. So Simeon told me—you know the man, the old Benjamite who took service with the King. The Romans stood firm in their rank, and threw their javelins at the beasts’ trunks, and in the end, so Simeon said, they did more damage to their own people than to the enemy.”[pg 299]“The Lord grant that it be so to-morrow.”The sun had just risen when the approach of the Greek army became visible. And now the vanguard was almost within striking distance of the ambush which, to all appearance, was still undiscovered. Another few steps and they would be immediately below, at a point where they might be assailed with disastrous effect. Behind a little rock which was within a few yards of the pass Azariah knelt, sword in hand, waiting to give the signal to his men. Their fears had mostly vanished in the morning light, and the dreaded elephants did not form part of the advanced guard.But just as Azariah was about to give the signal to charge his quick ear caught the sound of tramping feet, which seemed to come from some place above his own position. The next moment he caught sight, in the slanting rays of the early sun, of the glitter of helmets and shields. A Greek force, fully equal in number to his own, was marching in a direction parallel to the pass but higher up the mountain-side. Lysias had learnt wisdom from experience. He no longer despised his enemy, but credited him with the military skill which, indeed, he had more than once proved himself to possess. He had foreseen the ambush, and had sent a force to guard against the danger. Azariah’s force, though out of sight of the road, could be seen from the higher ground, and the Greeks greeted their appear[pg 300]ance with shouts of laughter. For one moment a wild desire to charge swept through the mind of the Jewish captain. He had hoped to blot out by some brilliant service the remembrance of his former disaster, and now he had failed again. True, it was not by his own fault; yet he had failed, and he would have to go back to Judas empty-handed. A single word would have sent his men in furious onset against the foe. Should he say it? Then there came back to his recollection the gentleness and forbearance of Judas. He could not disobey such a leader a second time. He gave the signal to retreat. His men heard it with disgust; but they knew that he was acting against his own desire as much as against theirs, and they obeyed without a murmur, or, if some of the youngest and fiercest among them complained of the order, it was only under their breath that they spoke.Azariah now made his way to Judas with all the haste that he could use.“I have failed,”he said.“The heathen seemed to know of our design beforehand. There could be no surprise, so I did not attack, but came back to you at once.”“You have done well,”said Judas, who knew what a sacrifice the fiery soldier had made.“A chance victory won by disobeying orders is worse than a defeat.”But Judas, though, as always, he did full justice[pg 301]to his lieutenant, was much depressed by the failure of the attempt, and he looked with a gloomy brow at the approaching host, as it came on in all the pomp and circumstance of war, the sunlight gleaming on the banners, the helmets of brass and gold, and on the long, slanting lines of spear-heads. As it came nearer the regular tread of the columns and the clang of arms, with now and then the shrill voice of a clarion or the deep note of a trumpet heard above the roar, moved even the stoutest warrior to something like fear.Judas followed once more the tactics which he had so often found successful. To stand on the defensive was hopeless; his few thousands would inevitably be trodden down under the feet of this huge multitude. His only hope was in attack. If he could but break the line at a single point his success might be again, as it had been before, the beginning of a panic, and the great host of Lysias might melt away as the host of Apollonius had melted; but the attack must be made while the enemy were yet upon ground where they had not space to make full use of their numbers. He charged with his accustomed fury before the vanguard of the enemy had emerged into the open. For a time it seemed as if his audacity was to be successful. The hostile army reeled under the shock of the patriots’ furious charge. In two or three places it broke. But there was in reserve a second line of[pg 302]veterans, the steadiest and best troops that could be found in the Syrian armies, for Lysias knew by this time that none but the very best could stand against Judas and his Ironsides. And then the numbers were overpowering. Step by step the Jewish column was forced back. They left six hundred of the enemy dead on the field behind them; but the attack had failed.Then, as the Greek army deployed upon the open ground which the retreat of the Jews left open to them, the elephants came upon the scene—the“huge, earth-shaking beasts,”which even the hardiest warrior could hardly see for the first time without some sinking of heart. Each animal was accompanied by picked bodies of horse and foot. Each carried a tower from which skilful marksmen, whose accurate aim was greatly helped by their elevated position, hurled missiles upon the ranks of the foe. The creatures themselves seemed to share in all the fury of the battle. They trumpeted loudly and furiously; at the bidding of the Indian drivers who were perched upon their necks they seized soldiers from among the Jewish ranks with their trunks, whirled them aloft, and then dashed them down, mangled and lifeless corpses, upon the ground.Then was done one of the heroic acts which stand out conspicuously on the pages of history. Eleazar, one of the Maccabee brothers, saw how his country[pg 303]men were being demoralized by the terror of these strange adversaries, and felt that it was a crisis that called for personal devotion. One of the elephants was conspicuous among the rest, not only for its superior size but for the splendour of its equipment. He felt sure that it must be the one that carried the boy-King himself. Immediately his resolve was taken. He made his way, striking furiously right and left, and dealing death with every blow, through the Syrian ranks, crept under the huge beast, and dealt him a mortal wound. Like another Samson, he perished by his own success. The creature fell with a suddenness that gave him no opportunity of escape, and he was crushed to death by its weight.The Death of EleazarThe Death of Eleazar.The hero did not accomplish his object, to rally his countrymen. One might rather say that their panic was heightened by the fall of one of the heroic brothers, a son of the great house to which they owed their liberty. But his deed was not forgotten. The fourth of the Maccabee brothers lived in the history of his people as Eleazar Avaran—Eleazar“the Beast Slayer.”But the battle was lost beyond all hope. The only thing left for Judas was to save as much as he could out of the wreck. He sounded the signal for retreat, drew off his men in good order, and, making his way back as rapidly as possible to Jerusalem, threw himself into the Temple fortress, resolved to stand a siege.[pg 304]CHAPTER XXVI.LIGHT OUT OF DARKNESS.For a time the prospects of the patriots seemed dark indeed. Beth-zur had fallen, and the only hope of the cause was in the Temple fortress. This was fiercely assailed by the garrison of the Greek stronghold of Mount Zion on the one side, and, on the other, by the army which had been victorious at Beth-Zachariah, and which now occupied the Lower City. The Temple fortress was strong; it was fairly well supplied with munitions of war; and the garrison was large—indeed, almost too large for the accommodation of the place. The fatal weakness of the position was the scanty supply of provisions. Only water was abundant, for the unsparing toil of former generations had provided for this want; had it not been for this the resistance of the garrison must very soon have come to an end, for food was scarce—so scarce, indeed, that the strength of the fighting men could hardly be maintained by the in[pg 305]sufficient rations which were doled out to them, while the few non-combatants received barely enough to keep body and soul together.The condition of the Jewish population of the city was not as bad as might have been expected. The cruelties of the days of Apollonius and Philip were not repeated; for Lysias, who, as guardian of the boy-King, was practically supreme, favoured a policy of conciliation, and did his best to repress outrage. Indeed he sanctioned the establishment of what may be called a municipal guard or militia, which, while under obligation to give no assistance to the garrison of the Temple, was permitted to protect the peaceful inhabitants of the city. This guard was under the command of Seraiah.There was much, of course, that it was difficult for those to bear who looked to Judas and his brothers as the hope of Israel. Menelaüs had returned, and with him a whole troop of renegade Jews, whose insolence and impiety sorely tried the patience of the faithful population. And the scarcity of food was only less severe in the city than it was in the fortress.For some time Seraiah’s own household continued to receive mysterious supplies from some unknown source, which made them far more comfortable than their neighbours. Once a week, or even oftener, they would find a bag of corn or flour, a basket of dried grapes or other fruits, a bundle of salt fish, a string[pg 306]of doves or wood-pigeons, put in an outhouse, nor could they guess who their benefactor could be. But when this had gone on for nearly two months, the secret came out. Seraiah, returning from his military duties at an early hour in the morning, and entering by a little postern gate in order to avoid disturbing the household, saw a man drop from the garden wall. He seized him by the arm, and the stranger, turning sharply round, revealed the well-known features of Benjamin.“What do you here?”he asked.“I am come on an errand of my own,”answered the robber.“But in my house?”“Ask no more questions,”said the man;“but take my word—and I would not lie to you for all the kingdom of Antiochus—that I mean no harm to you or yours.”A thought flashed across Seraiah’s mind.“It is you, then, who have been bringing us, week after week, these supplies of food?”Benjamin said nothing.“I adjure you by God that you answer me,”said Seraiah.“Well, if you will know it, it is I who have done it. Why should not God use a man’s hands to feed His servants, as well as a raven’s beak?”“Tell me—how did you come by these things?”“In various ways.”[pg 307]“Lawfully?”“Well, I can hardly say; you and I might not agree about the matter.”“Tell me—did you buy them with your money?”“Nay; that is not my way. I do not buy or sell.”“Then you stole them.”“I told you that we should not agree. But this I know, that they to whom they belonged could do without them better than you and your children.”“Benjamin,”said Seraiah,“you mean well, and I thank you. But after this bring no more of these gifts, for I cannot receive them. I would not have my Judge say to me,‘When thou sawest a thief, thou consentedst unto him.’I had sooner die of hunger—aye, and what is far worse, see my children die—than take that which has not been lawfully acquired.”“As you will have it,”said Benjamin;“if there were more like you, mayhap I should have been a better man. But meanwhile, the world being what it is, you and yours will have a hard time of it;”and he turned to go away.“And the captain,”he went on—“how does he fare? I hear that things are not going well with him. ’Tis a thousand pities, for a braver man never handled sword.”Seraiah told him briefly the story of recent events, and described the present condition of affairs, the other listening with an eager attention, and breaking[pg 308]in now and then with an exclamation of wonder and admiration.“Come, Benjamin,”he said, when he had finished,“why will you not throw in your lot with us? Things look dark just now; but they will brighten. He who has helped us so far will not desert us now.”“Sir,”said the man,“I would gladly follow the captain, whether he led me to life or to death. No man could ask a better lot than to be his soldier. But I like not all that are with him. They are over-strict, and make no allowance for such as have not their zeal. Once they beat me; another time they had stoned me to death but that I slipped out of their hands; and both for some miserable trifles which no man of sense would care about. No, sir; Judas I honour and love, but these bigots who give a man no peace I cannot away with. And now the day is beginning to break, and I must go. I am sorry that you will not take my poor gifts.”The next moment he had disappeared.And now came a time of grievous trouble for Ruth and her young charges, for she had naturally taken charge of Azariah’s two daughters. She did not question her husband’s refusal to share any longer the illicit gains of Benjamin, but she could not shut her eyes to the fact that the children were suffering grievously. For herself she could endure, as women can; the girls, too, were old enough to understand[pg 309]the cause of their suffering, though they could not enter into the reasons of what seemed so strange an observance—the Sabbatical year; but little Daniel was too young to know much beyond the fact that he was always terribly hungry, and though he was often brave enough to check his crying when he saw how it distressed his mother, there were times when the pangs of hunger were more than he could bear in silence. Poor Ruth denied herself everything but the few scraps that were absolutely necessary to keep body and soul together, and her physical weakness did not make it easier to keep up her hope and courage. Her hardest task, perhaps, was to hide, as far as it was possible, the true state of things from her husband. His strength must be kept up, for so much depended upon it; but the children, not to speak of herself, had to have their scanty share diminished that it might be so. This, of course, he was not allowed to know, and Ruth was at her wits’ end again and again to keep it from him.Within the Temple fortress, meanwhile, things had become almost desperate. A few shekels’ weight of flour was given out to each man daily, for Judas insisted that all should share alike. That even this scanty allowance might hold out the longer, numbers of the garrison made their escape every night under the cover of darkness that the remainder might prolong their resistance for yet a few days more.[pg 310]Before long came a time when absolutely nothing was left.“Their vessels were without victuals,”and Judas and the few that still remained with him met to hold a final deliberation.“My friends,”said the great captain,“you see the straits into which we are brought. There is no need to tell you of them, or to prove by words what we all know too well in fact. What, then, shall we do? Shall we stay here and perish slowly by hunger, or shall we fall upon our swords, or shall we sally forth from the gates, and, having slain as many of the heathen as we may, so perish ourselves? I had hoped that the Lord would give deliverance to Israel by my hand, and by the hand of my brothers. But if it be not so, His will be done. For He is not shut up to do that which it pleaseth Him by one man or another. He can call whomsoever He will, and give him strength for the work.”He paused for a moment, and Azariah broke in,“It is well said, O captain of the host. The Lord hath helped His people hitherto, and He will help them to the end. Only let us trust in Him, for”—and here, with an impetuous gesture, he struck his foot upon the rock—“they that put their trust in the Lord shall be even as this mountain, which may not be removed, but standeth fast for ever.”Judas was just rising to announce his resolve when the sound of a trumpet was heard at the gate[pg 311]of the fortress. It was a herald bringing a message from the young King.“Have you aught to say to me in private?”asked Judas, when the man was brought in.“Nay,”he answered;“my message is one that all may hear.”He then delivered it, reading the words from a parchment which he carried in his hand, and which bore the sign-manual (an impression of the seal-ring dipped in ink) of Antiochus Eupator, as well as that of Lysias. They ran thus:“Antiochus, surnamed Eupator, King of Syria and Egypt, offers to the people of the Jews peace and friendship. He permits them to worship God after the manners and customs of their fathers, and he hereby revokes all the edicts which the King, his father, having been misinformed by unfaithful advisers, issued against the said nation of the Jews.”Never was there a more surprising, a more unexpected change in the position of affairs. But it might have been foreseen by those who had watched with a full knowledge of the truth, the recent course of events.Despatches had reached Lysias from Antioch which convinced him that he and his young charge had enemies to reckon with who would be far more formidable than Judas and his followers. Philip had returned from Persia with the host of Epiphanes, and had assumed the management of affairs, and[pg 312]Philip was a dangerous rival. Were he to prevail, his own position as the chief adviser of the King would be untenable; and the King himself would very probably be dispossessed by some other claimant to the throne.He laid the case, or at least so much as it was necessary to explain, before the boy-King. The lad, who was indeed intelligent beyond his years, at once acquiesced in the advice, that easy conditions of peace should be offered to the garrison.Then an assembly of the soldiers was summoned. All the officers were invited by name, and, after the usual fashion of such gatherings, as many of the men as could crowd into the chambers were also present. To them Lysias said nothing about the news from Antioch, which it would be better, he thought, to conceal as long as possible; but he dwelt on the useless hardships which they were all enduring.“Famine and the pestilence are upon us,”he said,“and we decay daily. But the place to which we lay siege is strong, and we are no nearer to the taking of it than we were six months since. Now, therefore, let us offer to these men, who are neither robbers nor murderers, peace and liberty, that they may worship God after their own fashion, and live by their own laws. For, of a truth, it is far better, as many of yourselves know, that they should be our friends than our enemies.”[pg 313]An unanimous shout of approval was the answer; and hence the message which came so opportunely to Judas and his followers in the very crisis of their despair.[pg 314]CHAPTER XXVII.A PEACEFUL INTERVAL.It was one of the stipulations of the peace offered by the young Antiochus, and accepted by Judas, that the King should be admitted with due ceremony into the surrendered fortress. It was to be a formal acknowledgment of his authority, but nothing more. No change, it was understood, was to be made; the King and his attendants were not to go beyond the court which it was lawful for the Gentiles to enter.On the morrow, accordingly, the boy-King came with a splendid procession of nobles and officers. In front marched a company of soldiers, picked from the whole army for their beauty of feature and commanding stature, and gorgeous with their gilded arms. Then, in the order of their dignity, came the high officers of state; last, the young monarch himself, the Governor Lysias leading him by the hand.The approach to the Temple was thronged by a crowd of eager spectators, none of whom were more profoundly interested in the sight than the little Daniel, with his cousins, Miriam and Judith. The[pg 315]child’s fancy had been caught by all that he had heard of the young prince. It seemed strange to him, almost beyond belief, that a lad, a little older, it was true, than himself, but younger than Miriam, should have power to do so much harm.“Mother,”he said one day to Ruth,“why does God let him hurt so many people? It is all his doing that the brave soldiers are shut up in the Temple, and that we have so little to eat. Will he not be punished for it some day? I suppose, as he is a king, nobody can punish him except God. But He will, won’t He, mother?”The Boy KingThe Boy King.Then came the unexpected news of the peace; and nothing would satisfy little Daniel but that he must see the boy-King received in the Temple. Eagerly did the child watch him as he walked in his little suit of armour, which the most skilful artizans in Antioch had made so light as not to be too much for his strength, and great was his delight when Eupator, catching a sight of his eager face, kissed his hand to him with a pleasant smile. That smile he never forgot, though it is true that his old anger against the young king returned next day almost as vehemently as ever when he heard that orders had been given that the ramparts of the Temple fortress were to be broken down, and that the Greek soldiers, anxious to depart, had begun the work of destruction the very hour at which the edict had been published.[pg 316]Though this breach of faith was a great blow to the patriots, still they had much to console them. In the first place, to their intense relief, the Greek army marched away, and the Holy City was no more defiled by the presence of the heathen. Then the renegade Menelaüs, whom every faithful Jew hated with a more bitter hatred than he felt for the heathen themselves, went away, but not of his own free choice, with the King. Lysias had an honest man’s dislike for a traitor, and indeed did not scruple to say that this impostor, who was neither good Jew nor real Greek, had done more than any one else to cause the recent troubles.Not less welcome was the end of the Sabbatical year. This of itself would not, of course, have relieved the pressure of scarcity; but there was help from without which before had not been available. Hitherto the Jews had been under a ban; they were enemies of the Syrian King, and none who desired to be his friends would have any dealings with them. Now all was changed. The ban was removed. The people were in favour with Eupator and Lysias. A brisk trade commenced, and supplies of food came in abundance. With good heart and hope the people set themselves to their work. From being a city of mourning Jerusalem became gay and cheerful.The general gladness culminated in the Feast of Tabernacles, always the most joyous of Jewish[pg 317]festivals, and now celebrated with special manifestations of delight. Never had the people felt so keenly the pleasure of seeming at least to return to the simple life of earlier times, the rustic enjoyments of a nation that had not yet learnt to dwell in cities. It was the ordinance that for seven days the Israelite should dwell, not in his house, but in a booth of boughs. For days waggon-loads without number of the boughs of the olive, the palm, the pine, the myrtle, and other trees which had a foliage sufficiently thick for the purpose, were brought into the city. When a house had a roof of a convenient size and situation, the booth was built upon it; in many cases it was set up in the court. Those who had come from elsewhere to share in the festival set up their booths in the court of the Temple, in the street of the Water Gate, and in the street of the Gate of Ephraim. It was a beautiful sight at any time, and now the fresh foliage hid the scars of many a grievous wound that had been inflicted during the years of desolation.Every day, at the time of the morning sacrifice, each Israelite, gaily dressed in holiday attire, made his way to the Temple. Each carried in one hand a bundle of the same branches that were used in the building of the booths, and in the other a fruit of the citron tree. When all the company was assembled, and the parts of the victim had been laid upon the altar, a priest was seen approaching with a[pg 318]golden ewer in his hand. He had filled it at the pool of Siloam, and he brought it into the court of the Temple through the Water Gate. The trumpets sounded as he came in and ascended the slope of the altar. On each side of this were two silver basins; into that on the eastern side he poured the sacred water; while another priest poured wine into that on the western. Then the“Hallel”21was sung; when the singers came to the words,“O give thanks unto the Lord; for He is good, because His mercy endureth for ever,”each Israelite shook his bundle of branches; he did it again when they sang,“Save, Lord, I beseech Thee, O Lord: O Lord, I beseech Thee, send now prosperity;”and a third time at the words,“O give thanks unto the Lord; for He is good: for His mercy endureth for ever.”In the evening there was a grand illumination. Eight lamps, so large and so high that they sent their light over nearly the whole of the city, were set up in the court of the Temple, while many of the people carried flambeaux in their hands. Meanwhile a company of Levites, standing on the steps of the Court of the Women, chanted to the music of cymbal and the harp the fifteen“Songs of Degrees.”22These were the public rejoicings; the private festivities were on the most liberal scale. Never did[pg 319]the maxim that he who fails to contribute according to his means to the general joy is a sinner above other men meet with a more hearty acceptance.Azariah with his daughters and little Daniel were watching the ceremonies of the last and greatest day of the feast from the roof of the Governor’s house, where they were joined by Micah and by Joseph, who, it will be remembered, had shared with him the disastrous command of the city during the absence of Judas in Gilead. Joseph was exultant; Micah’s face was grave and even sad.“Thank the Lord, Azariah,”cried Joseph,“for He has dealt with the traitor after his deservings.”“Whom mean you?”asked Azariah;“for we have had more traitors here than one.”“Whom should I mean but Menelaüs, the false priest who sat in Aaron’s seat?”“And what has befallen him?”“The King has caused him to be put to death. He was in little favour when they took him home, for Lysias said that he had wrought all the mischief that had been done. And when they came to Antioch the matter of Oniah was brought against him, for there were many who loved the old man, and had taken it ill that his death had not been fully avenged. And when the young King heard the story, Menelaüs being present, and having nothing to say against it, he cried,‘I wonder that the King, my father, suffered this murderer to escape, but he shall[pg 320]not go unpunished any more. Take him, and cast him alive into the Tower of Ashes.’So they took him and did as the King had commanded.”“And what is the Tower of Ashes?”asked the little Daniel, who had been listening to this conversation with a sort of terrified interest.Micah answered his question.“At Berea is a tower, the bottom of which is full of ashes, and in the tower is a machine which revolves and plunges the criminal who is bound to it deep into the ashes until he is smothered. But as for this unhappy man, the Lord have mercy upon him!”Joseph turned fiercely upon him.“I marvel,”he said,“that you should pray for this fellow, who was worse than the heathen. He has but had his deservings.”“And where should I be, if I had had mine?”answered Micah.“I walked in the same way with this Menelaüs, and sinned against the Law, even as he sinned, and but that God had mercy upon me, surely I had come to the same end.”“Don’t be sorry, uncle,”said the boy, holding up his little face for a kiss;“I am sure that God has forgiven you, for He knows how bravely you have fought for Him, and how many of the heathen you have killed with your sword.”“May it be so, dear child! But though He has forgiven me, yet I must reap as I have sown.”[pg 321]“And who shall be high priest in this traitor’s place?”asked Joseph, after a pause.“For Oniah, the son of him that was slain at Antioch, is in the land of Egypt, and he takes part with the unfaithful brethren who would build another Temple among the temples of the heathen, leaving the place which the Lord has chosen to set His name there.”“And if the House of Zadok have perished, why should not Judas, son of Mattathias, be high priest?”said Azariah.“He is of a principal house among the sons of Aaron, and the Lord has been with him always.”Joseph had never forgiven Judas for his own disaster. His was one of those mean natures that justify the saying,“The injured may forgive, the injurer never.”The captain had treated him with the same generous kindness which he had showed to Azariah, but this kindness had not been received in the same temper. On the contrary it rankled in his mind, till by a strange, yet not uncommon, perversion of feeling, it had produced a positive sense of injury. He now broke out:“Nay, nay, my friend, you say too much. That he has won victories I deny not; but was the Lord with him when he fled before the face of the heathen at Beth-Zachariah, or when Beth-zur was yielded up to Lysias, or when we had well-nigh perished with famine in the siege, or when the King broke down the ramparts of the Temple? Not so: what[pg 322]ever the people may shout or sing in his praise, he too has known defeat, even as we have.”“This I know,”said Azariah,“that whereas we were trodden underfoot by the heathen till there was no life left in us, now we are risen and stand upright.”“And how long, think you,”returned Joseph,“will it be so with us? Did we drive away the King, or did he not rather depart of his own accord, because of what he and his counsellors had heard of the doings of Philip? And will he not return, and the end be worse than the beginning?”Azariah answered, with some heat,“As for that which may happen hereafter, I say nothing. These things are in the hand of God. But that the young Antiochus departed to his own land was, I doubt not at all, of the Lord’s doing. Why, even this child knows the story of Sennacherib, and the words which Isaiah the prophet spoke to Hezekiah when the King was faint-hearted, and could not see how there should be any deliverance for Israel. Did not the prophet say,‘He shall hear a rumour, and shall return unto his own land?’”Joseph said nothing. With all his meanness and littleness he was a patriot, and really loved his country; and it went against his heart and conscience to prophesy evil against her.Then the little Daniel startled them all by saying, with flashing eyes,“And I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land.”
[pg 294]CHAPTER XXV.REVERSES.Judas met the danger with his accustomed resolution. He waited in the city till he could be certain of the road which the invaders were taking. As soon as he knew that it was from the south that they were approaching, he collected all his available force, having for the purpose to raise the siege of the fortress, and marched forth to meet them.The fortress of Beth-zur, which was intended to be the first line in the defence of the capital, was in danger of falling into the hands of the enemy. Micah had received, early in the year, a commission to revictual it, but had found the task one that was difficult, if not impossible, to execute. There was a positive scarcity of food, and the scarcity was aggravated as usual by the practice of hoarding. It was to little purpose that Micah scoured the country, making requisitions of grain and other supplies. Some few, strong in their faith, gave up what they had, and committed themselves and their children to the[pg 295]Lord, whose law they were seeking to obey. Others met the demand with a flat refusal, and at the same time taunted Micah with the folly of enforcing an impracticable law in times of such difficulty. Many met him with the plea of poverty, and their wasted forms and sunken faces were proof enough that this plea was genuine. The work, therefore, for all the zeal that Micah displayed, went on but very slowly, and, indeed, was not half finished when the advanced guard of the army of Lysias appeared. Beth-zur was immediately invested. The engines, of which Lysias had a large stock, played fiercely upon the walls, and preparations was made for an assault. Micah, on the other hand, saw no hope that he would be able to stand a long siege. The garrison under his command was not large enough adequately to man the walls, while it was too large for the stock of provisions which he had been able to collect.Under these circumstances his resolution was soon taken. Before dawn on the second day of the investment the whole garrison made a desperate sally. Happily they had no non-combatants to care for, and as yet no sick or wounded. Fire was set to the engines. The besiegers, thinking that this was the object of the attack, and that the garrison would make their way back into the fortress, when this had been accomplished, occupied themselves chiefly in putting out the fire. But Micah had no intention of returning. He availed himself of the[pg 296]confusion caused by the burning of the camp, cut his way with desperate resolution through the enemy, and succeeded in reaching the camp of Judas with the larger part of his force. The rest were not able to follow him, but succeeded in regaining the fortress, which they continued to hold against the Greeks.The camp was at Beth-Zachariah, about nine miles south from Jerusalem, and on an elevated position, not less than three thousand feet above the level of the sea, which commanded the whole of the neighbouring country. Behind, to the north, could be seen the towers of Jerusalem, with Bethlehem, the City of David, in the nearer foreground, nestling among its oliveyards and vineyards. To the west lay the plain of Philistia, with the white cliff of Gath clearly visible in the extreme distance; to the east could be seen the purple mountains of Moab. The road from Hebron, by which the Greek army would approach, crept along the eastern side of the mountains. From his elevated position Judas could see the movements of his adversaries while they were still at a considerable distance. Observing that they pitched their camp on the further side of a narrow defile, with the character of which he was intimately acquainted, he conceived the idea of an ambush.He summoned Azariah to his tent and detailed his plan. Azariah also knew the place well, and[pg 297]entered into the scheme with enthusiasm—such enthusiasm, indeed, that Judas felt it necessary to give him a parting caution.“Remember,”he said,“if this scheme fails, that you come back to me immediately. If the ambush should be discovered, retreat at once. There must be no attack. I cannot spare a man. We shall want all that we have, if not more than all, to make head against the thousands of Lysias.”Azariah promised obedience, and lost no time in setting out on his errand. Shortly after sunset he started, having with him a picked force of a thousand men. Before midnight he had reached the place fixed upon by Judas, and there, in a hollow half-way up the side of the hill that formed one side of the pass, he laid his ambush.It was an anxious night for the little band. It was always an accepted maxim in ancient warfare that it was the most steadfast courage that was wanted for the ambush. Men who were brave enough when fighting in the open plain found their courage fail when they had to lie for hours watching for the moment of attack, crouched upon the ground, unable to move and scarcely venturing to talk. Azariah’s men were brave—indeed they had been carefully chosen for this very service—but they were not altogether insensible of the dangers of their position. They knew, too, and even exaggerated the strength of the advancing army. As[pg 298]they talked in whispers during the night, for, as may be imagined, few could sleep, they spoke of the chances of the coming day. The elephants, which had never before been seen on Jewish soil, were mentioned with special awe.“Strange and terrible beasts they are,”said one man to his neighbour;“savage as lions, and many times larger and stronger.”“Is it so?”said the other.“I heard once from an Arab, who had been driver of one of these creatures, that they are marvellously gentle and tame.”“Maybe they are by nature; but their drivers have ways of rousing them to fury before the battle.”“How so?”“They show them the blood of grapes and mulberries, and the creatures rage terribly. ’Tis said that one of them can tread down a whole company of men.”“Well, but ’tis possible, I know, to stand against them. King Antiochus, father to the madman whom the Lord smote for his sins, had an array of them in his army when he fought against the Romans at Magnesia, but they profited him little. So Simeon told me—you know the man, the old Benjamite who took service with the King. The Romans stood firm in their rank, and threw their javelins at the beasts’ trunks, and in the end, so Simeon said, they did more damage to their own people than to the enemy.”[pg 299]“The Lord grant that it be so to-morrow.”The sun had just risen when the approach of the Greek army became visible. And now the vanguard was almost within striking distance of the ambush which, to all appearance, was still undiscovered. Another few steps and they would be immediately below, at a point where they might be assailed with disastrous effect. Behind a little rock which was within a few yards of the pass Azariah knelt, sword in hand, waiting to give the signal to his men. Their fears had mostly vanished in the morning light, and the dreaded elephants did not form part of the advanced guard.But just as Azariah was about to give the signal to charge his quick ear caught the sound of tramping feet, which seemed to come from some place above his own position. The next moment he caught sight, in the slanting rays of the early sun, of the glitter of helmets and shields. A Greek force, fully equal in number to his own, was marching in a direction parallel to the pass but higher up the mountain-side. Lysias had learnt wisdom from experience. He no longer despised his enemy, but credited him with the military skill which, indeed, he had more than once proved himself to possess. He had foreseen the ambush, and had sent a force to guard against the danger. Azariah’s force, though out of sight of the road, could be seen from the higher ground, and the Greeks greeted their appear[pg 300]ance with shouts of laughter. For one moment a wild desire to charge swept through the mind of the Jewish captain. He had hoped to blot out by some brilliant service the remembrance of his former disaster, and now he had failed again. True, it was not by his own fault; yet he had failed, and he would have to go back to Judas empty-handed. A single word would have sent his men in furious onset against the foe. Should he say it? Then there came back to his recollection the gentleness and forbearance of Judas. He could not disobey such a leader a second time. He gave the signal to retreat. His men heard it with disgust; but they knew that he was acting against his own desire as much as against theirs, and they obeyed without a murmur, or, if some of the youngest and fiercest among them complained of the order, it was only under their breath that they spoke.Azariah now made his way to Judas with all the haste that he could use.“I have failed,”he said.“The heathen seemed to know of our design beforehand. There could be no surprise, so I did not attack, but came back to you at once.”“You have done well,”said Judas, who knew what a sacrifice the fiery soldier had made.“A chance victory won by disobeying orders is worse than a defeat.”But Judas, though, as always, he did full justice[pg 301]to his lieutenant, was much depressed by the failure of the attempt, and he looked with a gloomy brow at the approaching host, as it came on in all the pomp and circumstance of war, the sunlight gleaming on the banners, the helmets of brass and gold, and on the long, slanting lines of spear-heads. As it came nearer the regular tread of the columns and the clang of arms, with now and then the shrill voice of a clarion or the deep note of a trumpet heard above the roar, moved even the stoutest warrior to something like fear.Judas followed once more the tactics which he had so often found successful. To stand on the defensive was hopeless; his few thousands would inevitably be trodden down under the feet of this huge multitude. His only hope was in attack. If he could but break the line at a single point his success might be again, as it had been before, the beginning of a panic, and the great host of Lysias might melt away as the host of Apollonius had melted; but the attack must be made while the enemy were yet upon ground where they had not space to make full use of their numbers. He charged with his accustomed fury before the vanguard of the enemy had emerged into the open. For a time it seemed as if his audacity was to be successful. The hostile army reeled under the shock of the patriots’ furious charge. In two or three places it broke. But there was in reserve a second line of[pg 302]veterans, the steadiest and best troops that could be found in the Syrian armies, for Lysias knew by this time that none but the very best could stand against Judas and his Ironsides. And then the numbers were overpowering. Step by step the Jewish column was forced back. They left six hundred of the enemy dead on the field behind them; but the attack had failed.Then, as the Greek army deployed upon the open ground which the retreat of the Jews left open to them, the elephants came upon the scene—the“huge, earth-shaking beasts,”which even the hardiest warrior could hardly see for the first time without some sinking of heart. Each animal was accompanied by picked bodies of horse and foot. Each carried a tower from which skilful marksmen, whose accurate aim was greatly helped by their elevated position, hurled missiles upon the ranks of the foe. The creatures themselves seemed to share in all the fury of the battle. They trumpeted loudly and furiously; at the bidding of the Indian drivers who were perched upon their necks they seized soldiers from among the Jewish ranks with their trunks, whirled them aloft, and then dashed them down, mangled and lifeless corpses, upon the ground.Then was done one of the heroic acts which stand out conspicuously on the pages of history. Eleazar, one of the Maccabee brothers, saw how his country[pg 303]men were being demoralized by the terror of these strange adversaries, and felt that it was a crisis that called for personal devotion. One of the elephants was conspicuous among the rest, not only for its superior size but for the splendour of its equipment. He felt sure that it must be the one that carried the boy-King himself. Immediately his resolve was taken. He made his way, striking furiously right and left, and dealing death with every blow, through the Syrian ranks, crept under the huge beast, and dealt him a mortal wound. Like another Samson, he perished by his own success. The creature fell with a suddenness that gave him no opportunity of escape, and he was crushed to death by its weight.The Death of EleazarThe Death of Eleazar.The hero did not accomplish his object, to rally his countrymen. One might rather say that their panic was heightened by the fall of one of the heroic brothers, a son of the great house to which they owed their liberty. But his deed was not forgotten. The fourth of the Maccabee brothers lived in the history of his people as Eleazar Avaran—Eleazar“the Beast Slayer.”But the battle was lost beyond all hope. The only thing left for Judas was to save as much as he could out of the wreck. He sounded the signal for retreat, drew off his men in good order, and, making his way back as rapidly as possible to Jerusalem, threw himself into the Temple fortress, resolved to stand a siege.[pg 304]CHAPTER XXVI.LIGHT OUT OF DARKNESS.For a time the prospects of the patriots seemed dark indeed. Beth-zur had fallen, and the only hope of the cause was in the Temple fortress. This was fiercely assailed by the garrison of the Greek stronghold of Mount Zion on the one side, and, on the other, by the army which had been victorious at Beth-Zachariah, and which now occupied the Lower City. The Temple fortress was strong; it was fairly well supplied with munitions of war; and the garrison was large—indeed, almost too large for the accommodation of the place. The fatal weakness of the position was the scanty supply of provisions. Only water was abundant, for the unsparing toil of former generations had provided for this want; had it not been for this the resistance of the garrison must very soon have come to an end, for food was scarce—so scarce, indeed, that the strength of the fighting men could hardly be maintained by the in[pg 305]sufficient rations which were doled out to them, while the few non-combatants received barely enough to keep body and soul together.The condition of the Jewish population of the city was not as bad as might have been expected. The cruelties of the days of Apollonius and Philip were not repeated; for Lysias, who, as guardian of the boy-King, was practically supreme, favoured a policy of conciliation, and did his best to repress outrage. Indeed he sanctioned the establishment of what may be called a municipal guard or militia, which, while under obligation to give no assistance to the garrison of the Temple, was permitted to protect the peaceful inhabitants of the city. This guard was under the command of Seraiah.There was much, of course, that it was difficult for those to bear who looked to Judas and his brothers as the hope of Israel. Menelaüs had returned, and with him a whole troop of renegade Jews, whose insolence and impiety sorely tried the patience of the faithful population. And the scarcity of food was only less severe in the city than it was in the fortress.For some time Seraiah’s own household continued to receive mysterious supplies from some unknown source, which made them far more comfortable than their neighbours. Once a week, or even oftener, they would find a bag of corn or flour, a basket of dried grapes or other fruits, a bundle of salt fish, a string[pg 306]of doves or wood-pigeons, put in an outhouse, nor could they guess who their benefactor could be. But when this had gone on for nearly two months, the secret came out. Seraiah, returning from his military duties at an early hour in the morning, and entering by a little postern gate in order to avoid disturbing the household, saw a man drop from the garden wall. He seized him by the arm, and the stranger, turning sharply round, revealed the well-known features of Benjamin.“What do you here?”he asked.“I am come on an errand of my own,”answered the robber.“But in my house?”“Ask no more questions,”said the man;“but take my word—and I would not lie to you for all the kingdom of Antiochus—that I mean no harm to you or yours.”A thought flashed across Seraiah’s mind.“It is you, then, who have been bringing us, week after week, these supplies of food?”Benjamin said nothing.“I adjure you by God that you answer me,”said Seraiah.“Well, if you will know it, it is I who have done it. Why should not God use a man’s hands to feed His servants, as well as a raven’s beak?”“Tell me—how did you come by these things?”“In various ways.”[pg 307]“Lawfully?”“Well, I can hardly say; you and I might not agree about the matter.”“Tell me—did you buy them with your money?”“Nay; that is not my way. I do not buy or sell.”“Then you stole them.”“I told you that we should not agree. But this I know, that they to whom they belonged could do without them better than you and your children.”“Benjamin,”said Seraiah,“you mean well, and I thank you. But after this bring no more of these gifts, for I cannot receive them. I would not have my Judge say to me,‘When thou sawest a thief, thou consentedst unto him.’I had sooner die of hunger—aye, and what is far worse, see my children die—than take that which has not been lawfully acquired.”“As you will have it,”said Benjamin;“if there were more like you, mayhap I should have been a better man. But meanwhile, the world being what it is, you and yours will have a hard time of it;”and he turned to go away.“And the captain,”he went on—“how does he fare? I hear that things are not going well with him. ’Tis a thousand pities, for a braver man never handled sword.”Seraiah told him briefly the story of recent events, and described the present condition of affairs, the other listening with an eager attention, and breaking[pg 308]in now and then with an exclamation of wonder and admiration.“Come, Benjamin,”he said, when he had finished,“why will you not throw in your lot with us? Things look dark just now; but they will brighten. He who has helped us so far will not desert us now.”“Sir,”said the man,“I would gladly follow the captain, whether he led me to life or to death. No man could ask a better lot than to be his soldier. But I like not all that are with him. They are over-strict, and make no allowance for such as have not their zeal. Once they beat me; another time they had stoned me to death but that I slipped out of their hands; and both for some miserable trifles which no man of sense would care about. No, sir; Judas I honour and love, but these bigots who give a man no peace I cannot away with. And now the day is beginning to break, and I must go. I am sorry that you will not take my poor gifts.”The next moment he had disappeared.And now came a time of grievous trouble for Ruth and her young charges, for she had naturally taken charge of Azariah’s two daughters. She did not question her husband’s refusal to share any longer the illicit gains of Benjamin, but she could not shut her eyes to the fact that the children were suffering grievously. For herself she could endure, as women can; the girls, too, were old enough to understand[pg 309]the cause of their suffering, though they could not enter into the reasons of what seemed so strange an observance—the Sabbatical year; but little Daniel was too young to know much beyond the fact that he was always terribly hungry, and though he was often brave enough to check his crying when he saw how it distressed his mother, there were times when the pangs of hunger were more than he could bear in silence. Poor Ruth denied herself everything but the few scraps that were absolutely necessary to keep body and soul together, and her physical weakness did not make it easier to keep up her hope and courage. Her hardest task, perhaps, was to hide, as far as it was possible, the true state of things from her husband. His strength must be kept up, for so much depended upon it; but the children, not to speak of herself, had to have their scanty share diminished that it might be so. This, of course, he was not allowed to know, and Ruth was at her wits’ end again and again to keep it from him.Within the Temple fortress, meanwhile, things had become almost desperate. A few shekels’ weight of flour was given out to each man daily, for Judas insisted that all should share alike. That even this scanty allowance might hold out the longer, numbers of the garrison made their escape every night under the cover of darkness that the remainder might prolong their resistance for yet a few days more.[pg 310]Before long came a time when absolutely nothing was left.“Their vessels were without victuals,”and Judas and the few that still remained with him met to hold a final deliberation.“My friends,”said the great captain,“you see the straits into which we are brought. There is no need to tell you of them, or to prove by words what we all know too well in fact. What, then, shall we do? Shall we stay here and perish slowly by hunger, or shall we fall upon our swords, or shall we sally forth from the gates, and, having slain as many of the heathen as we may, so perish ourselves? I had hoped that the Lord would give deliverance to Israel by my hand, and by the hand of my brothers. But if it be not so, His will be done. For He is not shut up to do that which it pleaseth Him by one man or another. He can call whomsoever He will, and give him strength for the work.”He paused for a moment, and Azariah broke in,“It is well said, O captain of the host. The Lord hath helped His people hitherto, and He will help them to the end. Only let us trust in Him, for”—and here, with an impetuous gesture, he struck his foot upon the rock—“they that put their trust in the Lord shall be even as this mountain, which may not be removed, but standeth fast for ever.”Judas was just rising to announce his resolve when the sound of a trumpet was heard at the gate[pg 311]of the fortress. It was a herald bringing a message from the young King.“Have you aught to say to me in private?”asked Judas, when the man was brought in.“Nay,”he answered;“my message is one that all may hear.”He then delivered it, reading the words from a parchment which he carried in his hand, and which bore the sign-manual (an impression of the seal-ring dipped in ink) of Antiochus Eupator, as well as that of Lysias. They ran thus:“Antiochus, surnamed Eupator, King of Syria and Egypt, offers to the people of the Jews peace and friendship. He permits them to worship God after the manners and customs of their fathers, and he hereby revokes all the edicts which the King, his father, having been misinformed by unfaithful advisers, issued against the said nation of the Jews.”Never was there a more surprising, a more unexpected change in the position of affairs. But it might have been foreseen by those who had watched with a full knowledge of the truth, the recent course of events.Despatches had reached Lysias from Antioch which convinced him that he and his young charge had enemies to reckon with who would be far more formidable than Judas and his followers. Philip had returned from Persia with the host of Epiphanes, and had assumed the management of affairs, and[pg 312]Philip was a dangerous rival. Were he to prevail, his own position as the chief adviser of the King would be untenable; and the King himself would very probably be dispossessed by some other claimant to the throne.He laid the case, or at least so much as it was necessary to explain, before the boy-King. The lad, who was indeed intelligent beyond his years, at once acquiesced in the advice, that easy conditions of peace should be offered to the garrison.Then an assembly of the soldiers was summoned. All the officers were invited by name, and, after the usual fashion of such gatherings, as many of the men as could crowd into the chambers were also present. To them Lysias said nothing about the news from Antioch, which it would be better, he thought, to conceal as long as possible; but he dwelt on the useless hardships which they were all enduring.“Famine and the pestilence are upon us,”he said,“and we decay daily. But the place to which we lay siege is strong, and we are no nearer to the taking of it than we were six months since. Now, therefore, let us offer to these men, who are neither robbers nor murderers, peace and liberty, that they may worship God after their own fashion, and live by their own laws. For, of a truth, it is far better, as many of yourselves know, that they should be our friends than our enemies.”[pg 313]An unanimous shout of approval was the answer; and hence the message which came so opportunely to Judas and his followers in the very crisis of their despair.[pg 314]CHAPTER XXVII.A PEACEFUL INTERVAL.It was one of the stipulations of the peace offered by the young Antiochus, and accepted by Judas, that the King should be admitted with due ceremony into the surrendered fortress. It was to be a formal acknowledgment of his authority, but nothing more. No change, it was understood, was to be made; the King and his attendants were not to go beyond the court which it was lawful for the Gentiles to enter.On the morrow, accordingly, the boy-King came with a splendid procession of nobles and officers. In front marched a company of soldiers, picked from the whole army for their beauty of feature and commanding stature, and gorgeous with their gilded arms. Then, in the order of their dignity, came the high officers of state; last, the young monarch himself, the Governor Lysias leading him by the hand.The approach to the Temple was thronged by a crowd of eager spectators, none of whom were more profoundly interested in the sight than the little Daniel, with his cousins, Miriam and Judith. The[pg 315]child’s fancy had been caught by all that he had heard of the young prince. It seemed strange to him, almost beyond belief, that a lad, a little older, it was true, than himself, but younger than Miriam, should have power to do so much harm.“Mother,”he said one day to Ruth,“why does God let him hurt so many people? It is all his doing that the brave soldiers are shut up in the Temple, and that we have so little to eat. Will he not be punished for it some day? I suppose, as he is a king, nobody can punish him except God. But He will, won’t He, mother?”The Boy KingThe Boy King.Then came the unexpected news of the peace; and nothing would satisfy little Daniel but that he must see the boy-King received in the Temple. Eagerly did the child watch him as he walked in his little suit of armour, which the most skilful artizans in Antioch had made so light as not to be too much for his strength, and great was his delight when Eupator, catching a sight of his eager face, kissed his hand to him with a pleasant smile. That smile he never forgot, though it is true that his old anger against the young king returned next day almost as vehemently as ever when he heard that orders had been given that the ramparts of the Temple fortress were to be broken down, and that the Greek soldiers, anxious to depart, had begun the work of destruction the very hour at which the edict had been published.[pg 316]Though this breach of faith was a great blow to the patriots, still they had much to console them. In the first place, to their intense relief, the Greek army marched away, and the Holy City was no more defiled by the presence of the heathen. Then the renegade Menelaüs, whom every faithful Jew hated with a more bitter hatred than he felt for the heathen themselves, went away, but not of his own free choice, with the King. Lysias had an honest man’s dislike for a traitor, and indeed did not scruple to say that this impostor, who was neither good Jew nor real Greek, had done more than any one else to cause the recent troubles.Not less welcome was the end of the Sabbatical year. This of itself would not, of course, have relieved the pressure of scarcity; but there was help from without which before had not been available. Hitherto the Jews had been under a ban; they were enemies of the Syrian King, and none who desired to be his friends would have any dealings with them. Now all was changed. The ban was removed. The people were in favour with Eupator and Lysias. A brisk trade commenced, and supplies of food came in abundance. With good heart and hope the people set themselves to their work. From being a city of mourning Jerusalem became gay and cheerful.The general gladness culminated in the Feast of Tabernacles, always the most joyous of Jewish[pg 317]festivals, and now celebrated with special manifestations of delight. Never had the people felt so keenly the pleasure of seeming at least to return to the simple life of earlier times, the rustic enjoyments of a nation that had not yet learnt to dwell in cities. It was the ordinance that for seven days the Israelite should dwell, not in his house, but in a booth of boughs. For days waggon-loads without number of the boughs of the olive, the palm, the pine, the myrtle, and other trees which had a foliage sufficiently thick for the purpose, were brought into the city. When a house had a roof of a convenient size and situation, the booth was built upon it; in many cases it was set up in the court. Those who had come from elsewhere to share in the festival set up their booths in the court of the Temple, in the street of the Water Gate, and in the street of the Gate of Ephraim. It was a beautiful sight at any time, and now the fresh foliage hid the scars of many a grievous wound that had been inflicted during the years of desolation.Every day, at the time of the morning sacrifice, each Israelite, gaily dressed in holiday attire, made his way to the Temple. Each carried in one hand a bundle of the same branches that were used in the building of the booths, and in the other a fruit of the citron tree. When all the company was assembled, and the parts of the victim had been laid upon the altar, a priest was seen approaching with a[pg 318]golden ewer in his hand. He had filled it at the pool of Siloam, and he brought it into the court of the Temple through the Water Gate. The trumpets sounded as he came in and ascended the slope of the altar. On each side of this were two silver basins; into that on the eastern side he poured the sacred water; while another priest poured wine into that on the western. Then the“Hallel”21was sung; when the singers came to the words,“O give thanks unto the Lord; for He is good, because His mercy endureth for ever,”each Israelite shook his bundle of branches; he did it again when they sang,“Save, Lord, I beseech Thee, O Lord: O Lord, I beseech Thee, send now prosperity;”and a third time at the words,“O give thanks unto the Lord; for He is good: for His mercy endureth for ever.”In the evening there was a grand illumination. Eight lamps, so large and so high that they sent their light over nearly the whole of the city, were set up in the court of the Temple, while many of the people carried flambeaux in their hands. Meanwhile a company of Levites, standing on the steps of the Court of the Women, chanted to the music of cymbal and the harp the fifteen“Songs of Degrees.”22These were the public rejoicings; the private festivities were on the most liberal scale. Never did[pg 319]the maxim that he who fails to contribute according to his means to the general joy is a sinner above other men meet with a more hearty acceptance.Azariah with his daughters and little Daniel were watching the ceremonies of the last and greatest day of the feast from the roof of the Governor’s house, where they were joined by Micah and by Joseph, who, it will be remembered, had shared with him the disastrous command of the city during the absence of Judas in Gilead. Joseph was exultant; Micah’s face was grave and even sad.“Thank the Lord, Azariah,”cried Joseph,“for He has dealt with the traitor after his deservings.”“Whom mean you?”asked Azariah;“for we have had more traitors here than one.”“Whom should I mean but Menelaüs, the false priest who sat in Aaron’s seat?”“And what has befallen him?”“The King has caused him to be put to death. He was in little favour when they took him home, for Lysias said that he had wrought all the mischief that had been done. And when they came to Antioch the matter of Oniah was brought against him, for there were many who loved the old man, and had taken it ill that his death had not been fully avenged. And when the young King heard the story, Menelaüs being present, and having nothing to say against it, he cried,‘I wonder that the King, my father, suffered this murderer to escape, but he shall[pg 320]not go unpunished any more. Take him, and cast him alive into the Tower of Ashes.’So they took him and did as the King had commanded.”“And what is the Tower of Ashes?”asked the little Daniel, who had been listening to this conversation with a sort of terrified interest.Micah answered his question.“At Berea is a tower, the bottom of which is full of ashes, and in the tower is a machine which revolves and plunges the criminal who is bound to it deep into the ashes until he is smothered. But as for this unhappy man, the Lord have mercy upon him!”Joseph turned fiercely upon him.“I marvel,”he said,“that you should pray for this fellow, who was worse than the heathen. He has but had his deservings.”“And where should I be, if I had had mine?”answered Micah.“I walked in the same way with this Menelaüs, and sinned against the Law, even as he sinned, and but that God had mercy upon me, surely I had come to the same end.”“Don’t be sorry, uncle,”said the boy, holding up his little face for a kiss;“I am sure that God has forgiven you, for He knows how bravely you have fought for Him, and how many of the heathen you have killed with your sword.”“May it be so, dear child! But though He has forgiven me, yet I must reap as I have sown.”[pg 321]“And who shall be high priest in this traitor’s place?”asked Joseph, after a pause.“For Oniah, the son of him that was slain at Antioch, is in the land of Egypt, and he takes part with the unfaithful brethren who would build another Temple among the temples of the heathen, leaving the place which the Lord has chosen to set His name there.”“And if the House of Zadok have perished, why should not Judas, son of Mattathias, be high priest?”said Azariah.“He is of a principal house among the sons of Aaron, and the Lord has been with him always.”Joseph had never forgiven Judas for his own disaster. His was one of those mean natures that justify the saying,“The injured may forgive, the injurer never.”The captain had treated him with the same generous kindness which he had showed to Azariah, but this kindness had not been received in the same temper. On the contrary it rankled in his mind, till by a strange, yet not uncommon, perversion of feeling, it had produced a positive sense of injury. He now broke out:“Nay, nay, my friend, you say too much. That he has won victories I deny not; but was the Lord with him when he fled before the face of the heathen at Beth-Zachariah, or when Beth-zur was yielded up to Lysias, or when we had well-nigh perished with famine in the siege, or when the King broke down the ramparts of the Temple? Not so: what[pg 322]ever the people may shout or sing in his praise, he too has known defeat, even as we have.”“This I know,”said Azariah,“that whereas we were trodden underfoot by the heathen till there was no life left in us, now we are risen and stand upright.”“And how long, think you,”returned Joseph,“will it be so with us? Did we drive away the King, or did he not rather depart of his own accord, because of what he and his counsellors had heard of the doings of Philip? And will he not return, and the end be worse than the beginning?”Azariah answered, with some heat,“As for that which may happen hereafter, I say nothing. These things are in the hand of God. But that the young Antiochus departed to his own land was, I doubt not at all, of the Lord’s doing. Why, even this child knows the story of Sennacherib, and the words which Isaiah the prophet spoke to Hezekiah when the King was faint-hearted, and could not see how there should be any deliverance for Israel. Did not the prophet say,‘He shall hear a rumour, and shall return unto his own land?’”Joseph said nothing. With all his meanness and littleness he was a patriot, and really loved his country; and it went against his heart and conscience to prophesy evil against her.Then the little Daniel startled them all by saying, with flashing eyes,“And I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land.”
[pg 294]CHAPTER XXV.REVERSES.Judas met the danger with his accustomed resolution. He waited in the city till he could be certain of the road which the invaders were taking. As soon as he knew that it was from the south that they were approaching, he collected all his available force, having for the purpose to raise the siege of the fortress, and marched forth to meet them.The fortress of Beth-zur, which was intended to be the first line in the defence of the capital, was in danger of falling into the hands of the enemy. Micah had received, early in the year, a commission to revictual it, but had found the task one that was difficult, if not impossible, to execute. There was a positive scarcity of food, and the scarcity was aggravated as usual by the practice of hoarding. It was to little purpose that Micah scoured the country, making requisitions of grain and other supplies. Some few, strong in their faith, gave up what they had, and committed themselves and their children to the[pg 295]Lord, whose law they were seeking to obey. Others met the demand with a flat refusal, and at the same time taunted Micah with the folly of enforcing an impracticable law in times of such difficulty. Many met him with the plea of poverty, and their wasted forms and sunken faces were proof enough that this plea was genuine. The work, therefore, for all the zeal that Micah displayed, went on but very slowly, and, indeed, was not half finished when the advanced guard of the army of Lysias appeared. Beth-zur was immediately invested. The engines, of which Lysias had a large stock, played fiercely upon the walls, and preparations was made for an assault. Micah, on the other hand, saw no hope that he would be able to stand a long siege. The garrison under his command was not large enough adequately to man the walls, while it was too large for the stock of provisions which he had been able to collect.Under these circumstances his resolution was soon taken. Before dawn on the second day of the investment the whole garrison made a desperate sally. Happily they had no non-combatants to care for, and as yet no sick or wounded. Fire was set to the engines. The besiegers, thinking that this was the object of the attack, and that the garrison would make their way back into the fortress, when this had been accomplished, occupied themselves chiefly in putting out the fire. But Micah had no intention of returning. He availed himself of the[pg 296]confusion caused by the burning of the camp, cut his way with desperate resolution through the enemy, and succeeded in reaching the camp of Judas with the larger part of his force. The rest were not able to follow him, but succeeded in regaining the fortress, which they continued to hold against the Greeks.The camp was at Beth-Zachariah, about nine miles south from Jerusalem, and on an elevated position, not less than three thousand feet above the level of the sea, which commanded the whole of the neighbouring country. Behind, to the north, could be seen the towers of Jerusalem, with Bethlehem, the City of David, in the nearer foreground, nestling among its oliveyards and vineyards. To the west lay the plain of Philistia, with the white cliff of Gath clearly visible in the extreme distance; to the east could be seen the purple mountains of Moab. The road from Hebron, by which the Greek army would approach, crept along the eastern side of the mountains. From his elevated position Judas could see the movements of his adversaries while they were still at a considerable distance. Observing that they pitched their camp on the further side of a narrow defile, with the character of which he was intimately acquainted, he conceived the idea of an ambush.He summoned Azariah to his tent and detailed his plan. Azariah also knew the place well, and[pg 297]entered into the scheme with enthusiasm—such enthusiasm, indeed, that Judas felt it necessary to give him a parting caution.“Remember,”he said,“if this scheme fails, that you come back to me immediately. If the ambush should be discovered, retreat at once. There must be no attack. I cannot spare a man. We shall want all that we have, if not more than all, to make head against the thousands of Lysias.”Azariah promised obedience, and lost no time in setting out on his errand. Shortly after sunset he started, having with him a picked force of a thousand men. Before midnight he had reached the place fixed upon by Judas, and there, in a hollow half-way up the side of the hill that formed one side of the pass, he laid his ambush.It was an anxious night for the little band. It was always an accepted maxim in ancient warfare that it was the most steadfast courage that was wanted for the ambush. Men who were brave enough when fighting in the open plain found their courage fail when they had to lie for hours watching for the moment of attack, crouched upon the ground, unable to move and scarcely venturing to talk. Azariah’s men were brave—indeed they had been carefully chosen for this very service—but they were not altogether insensible of the dangers of their position. They knew, too, and even exaggerated the strength of the advancing army. As[pg 298]they talked in whispers during the night, for, as may be imagined, few could sleep, they spoke of the chances of the coming day. The elephants, which had never before been seen on Jewish soil, were mentioned with special awe.“Strange and terrible beasts they are,”said one man to his neighbour;“savage as lions, and many times larger and stronger.”“Is it so?”said the other.“I heard once from an Arab, who had been driver of one of these creatures, that they are marvellously gentle and tame.”“Maybe they are by nature; but their drivers have ways of rousing them to fury before the battle.”“How so?”“They show them the blood of grapes and mulberries, and the creatures rage terribly. ’Tis said that one of them can tread down a whole company of men.”“Well, but ’tis possible, I know, to stand against them. King Antiochus, father to the madman whom the Lord smote for his sins, had an array of them in his army when he fought against the Romans at Magnesia, but they profited him little. So Simeon told me—you know the man, the old Benjamite who took service with the King. The Romans stood firm in their rank, and threw their javelins at the beasts’ trunks, and in the end, so Simeon said, they did more damage to their own people than to the enemy.”[pg 299]“The Lord grant that it be so to-morrow.”The sun had just risen when the approach of the Greek army became visible. And now the vanguard was almost within striking distance of the ambush which, to all appearance, was still undiscovered. Another few steps and they would be immediately below, at a point where they might be assailed with disastrous effect. Behind a little rock which was within a few yards of the pass Azariah knelt, sword in hand, waiting to give the signal to his men. Their fears had mostly vanished in the morning light, and the dreaded elephants did not form part of the advanced guard.But just as Azariah was about to give the signal to charge his quick ear caught the sound of tramping feet, which seemed to come from some place above his own position. The next moment he caught sight, in the slanting rays of the early sun, of the glitter of helmets and shields. A Greek force, fully equal in number to his own, was marching in a direction parallel to the pass but higher up the mountain-side. Lysias had learnt wisdom from experience. He no longer despised his enemy, but credited him with the military skill which, indeed, he had more than once proved himself to possess. He had foreseen the ambush, and had sent a force to guard against the danger. Azariah’s force, though out of sight of the road, could be seen from the higher ground, and the Greeks greeted their appear[pg 300]ance with shouts of laughter. For one moment a wild desire to charge swept through the mind of the Jewish captain. He had hoped to blot out by some brilliant service the remembrance of his former disaster, and now he had failed again. True, it was not by his own fault; yet he had failed, and he would have to go back to Judas empty-handed. A single word would have sent his men in furious onset against the foe. Should he say it? Then there came back to his recollection the gentleness and forbearance of Judas. He could not disobey such a leader a second time. He gave the signal to retreat. His men heard it with disgust; but they knew that he was acting against his own desire as much as against theirs, and they obeyed without a murmur, or, if some of the youngest and fiercest among them complained of the order, it was only under their breath that they spoke.Azariah now made his way to Judas with all the haste that he could use.“I have failed,”he said.“The heathen seemed to know of our design beforehand. There could be no surprise, so I did not attack, but came back to you at once.”“You have done well,”said Judas, who knew what a sacrifice the fiery soldier had made.“A chance victory won by disobeying orders is worse than a defeat.”But Judas, though, as always, he did full justice[pg 301]to his lieutenant, was much depressed by the failure of the attempt, and he looked with a gloomy brow at the approaching host, as it came on in all the pomp and circumstance of war, the sunlight gleaming on the banners, the helmets of brass and gold, and on the long, slanting lines of spear-heads. As it came nearer the regular tread of the columns and the clang of arms, with now and then the shrill voice of a clarion or the deep note of a trumpet heard above the roar, moved even the stoutest warrior to something like fear.Judas followed once more the tactics which he had so often found successful. To stand on the defensive was hopeless; his few thousands would inevitably be trodden down under the feet of this huge multitude. His only hope was in attack. If he could but break the line at a single point his success might be again, as it had been before, the beginning of a panic, and the great host of Lysias might melt away as the host of Apollonius had melted; but the attack must be made while the enemy were yet upon ground where they had not space to make full use of their numbers. He charged with his accustomed fury before the vanguard of the enemy had emerged into the open. For a time it seemed as if his audacity was to be successful. The hostile army reeled under the shock of the patriots’ furious charge. In two or three places it broke. But there was in reserve a second line of[pg 302]veterans, the steadiest and best troops that could be found in the Syrian armies, for Lysias knew by this time that none but the very best could stand against Judas and his Ironsides. And then the numbers were overpowering. Step by step the Jewish column was forced back. They left six hundred of the enemy dead on the field behind them; but the attack had failed.Then, as the Greek army deployed upon the open ground which the retreat of the Jews left open to them, the elephants came upon the scene—the“huge, earth-shaking beasts,”which even the hardiest warrior could hardly see for the first time without some sinking of heart. Each animal was accompanied by picked bodies of horse and foot. Each carried a tower from which skilful marksmen, whose accurate aim was greatly helped by their elevated position, hurled missiles upon the ranks of the foe. The creatures themselves seemed to share in all the fury of the battle. They trumpeted loudly and furiously; at the bidding of the Indian drivers who were perched upon their necks they seized soldiers from among the Jewish ranks with their trunks, whirled them aloft, and then dashed them down, mangled and lifeless corpses, upon the ground.Then was done one of the heroic acts which stand out conspicuously on the pages of history. Eleazar, one of the Maccabee brothers, saw how his country[pg 303]men were being demoralized by the terror of these strange adversaries, and felt that it was a crisis that called for personal devotion. One of the elephants was conspicuous among the rest, not only for its superior size but for the splendour of its equipment. He felt sure that it must be the one that carried the boy-King himself. Immediately his resolve was taken. He made his way, striking furiously right and left, and dealing death with every blow, through the Syrian ranks, crept under the huge beast, and dealt him a mortal wound. Like another Samson, he perished by his own success. The creature fell with a suddenness that gave him no opportunity of escape, and he was crushed to death by its weight.The Death of EleazarThe Death of Eleazar.The hero did not accomplish his object, to rally his countrymen. One might rather say that their panic was heightened by the fall of one of the heroic brothers, a son of the great house to which they owed their liberty. But his deed was not forgotten. The fourth of the Maccabee brothers lived in the history of his people as Eleazar Avaran—Eleazar“the Beast Slayer.”But the battle was lost beyond all hope. The only thing left for Judas was to save as much as he could out of the wreck. He sounded the signal for retreat, drew off his men in good order, and, making his way back as rapidly as possible to Jerusalem, threw himself into the Temple fortress, resolved to stand a siege.
Judas met the danger with his accustomed resolution. He waited in the city till he could be certain of the road which the invaders were taking. As soon as he knew that it was from the south that they were approaching, he collected all his available force, having for the purpose to raise the siege of the fortress, and marched forth to meet them.
The fortress of Beth-zur, which was intended to be the first line in the defence of the capital, was in danger of falling into the hands of the enemy. Micah had received, early in the year, a commission to revictual it, but had found the task one that was difficult, if not impossible, to execute. There was a positive scarcity of food, and the scarcity was aggravated as usual by the practice of hoarding. It was to little purpose that Micah scoured the country, making requisitions of grain and other supplies. Some few, strong in their faith, gave up what they had, and committed themselves and their children to the[pg 295]Lord, whose law they were seeking to obey. Others met the demand with a flat refusal, and at the same time taunted Micah with the folly of enforcing an impracticable law in times of such difficulty. Many met him with the plea of poverty, and their wasted forms and sunken faces were proof enough that this plea was genuine. The work, therefore, for all the zeal that Micah displayed, went on but very slowly, and, indeed, was not half finished when the advanced guard of the army of Lysias appeared. Beth-zur was immediately invested. The engines, of which Lysias had a large stock, played fiercely upon the walls, and preparations was made for an assault. Micah, on the other hand, saw no hope that he would be able to stand a long siege. The garrison under his command was not large enough adequately to man the walls, while it was too large for the stock of provisions which he had been able to collect.
Under these circumstances his resolution was soon taken. Before dawn on the second day of the investment the whole garrison made a desperate sally. Happily they had no non-combatants to care for, and as yet no sick or wounded. Fire was set to the engines. The besiegers, thinking that this was the object of the attack, and that the garrison would make their way back into the fortress, when this had been accomplished, occupied themselves chiefly in putting out the fire. But Micah had no intention of returning. He availed himself of the[pg 296]confusion caused by the burning of the camp, cut his way with desperate resolution through the enemy, and succeeded in reaching the camp of Judas with the larger part of his force. The rest were not able to follow him, but succeeded in regaining the fortress, which they continued to hold against the Greeks.
The camp was at Beth-Zachariah, about nine miles south from Jerusalem, and on an elevated position, not less than three thousand feet above the level of the sea, which commanded the whole of the neighbouring country. Behind, to the north, could be seen the towers of Jerusalem, with Bethlehem, the City of David, in the nearer foreground, nestling among its oliveyards and vineyards. To the west lay the plain of Philistia, with the white cliff of Gath clearly visible in the extreme distance; to the east could be seen the purple mountains of Moab. The road from Hebron, by which the Greek army would approach, crept along the eastern side of the mountains. From his elevated position Judas could see the movements of his adversaries while they were still at a considerable distance. Observing that they pitched their camp on the further side of a narrow defile, with the character of which he was intimately acquainted, he conceived the idea of an ambush.
He summoned Azariah to his tent and detailed his plan. Azariah also knew the place well, and[pg 297]entered into the scheme with enthusiasm—such enthusiasm, indeed, that Judas felt it necessary to give him a parting caution.“Remember,”he said,“if this scheme fails, that you come back to me immediately. If the ambush should be discovered, retreat at once. There must be no attack. I cannot spare a man. We shall want all that we have, if not more than all, to make head against the thousands of Lysias.”
Azariah promised obedience, and lost no time in setting out on his errand. Shortly after sunset he started, having with him a picked force of a thousand men. Before midnight he had reached the place fixed upon by Judas, and there, in a hollow half-way up the side of the hill that formed one side of the pass, he laid his ambush.
It was an anxious night for the little band. It was always an accepted maxim in ancient warfare that it was the most steadfast courage that was wanted for the ambush. Men who were brave enough when fighting in the open plain found their courage fail when they had to lie for hours watching for the moment of attack, crouched upon the ground, unable to move and scarcely venturing to talk. Azariah’s men were brave—indeed they had been carefully chosen for this very service—but they were not altogether insensible of the dangers of their position. They knew, too, and even exaggerated the strength of the advancing army. As[pg 298]they talked in whispers during the night, for, as may be imagined, few could sleep, they spoke of the chances of the coming day. The elephants, which had never before been seen on Jewish soil, were mentioned with special awe.
“Strange and terrible beasts they are,”said one man to his neighbour;“savage as lions, and many times larger and stronger.”
“Is it so?”said the other.“I heard once from an Arab, who had been driver of one of these creatures, that they are marvellously gentle and tame.”
“Maybe they are by nature; but their drivers have ways of rousing them to fury before the battle.”
“How so?”
“They show them the blood of grapes and mulberries, and the creatures rage terribly. ’Tis said that one of them can tread down a whole company of men.”
“Well, but ’tis possible, I know, to stand against them. King Antiochus, father to the madman whom the Lord smote for his sins, had an array of them in his army when he fought against the Romans at Magnesia, but they profited him little. So Simeon told me—you know the man, the old Benjamite who took service with the King. The Romans stood firm in their rank, and threw their javelins at the beasts’ trunks, and in the end, so Simeon said, they did more damage to their own people than to the enemy.”
“The Lord grant that it be so to-morrow.”
The sun had just risen when the approach of the Greek army became visible. And now the vanguard was almost within striking distance of the ambush which, to all appearance, was still undiscovered. Another few steps and they would be immediately below, at a point where they might be assailed with disastrous effect. Behind a little rock which was within a few yards of the pass Azariah knelt, sword in hand, waiting to give the signal to his men. Their fears had mostly vanished in the morning light, and the dreaded elephants did not form part of the advanced guard.
But just as Azariah was about to give the signal to charge his quick ear caught the sound of tramping feet, which seemed to come from some place above his own position. The next moment he caught sight, in the slanting rays of the early sun, of the glitter of helmets and shields. A Greek force, fully equal in number to his own, was marching in a direction parallel to the pass but higher up the mountain-side. Lysias had learnt wisdom from experience. He no longer despised his enemy, but credited him with the military skill which, indeed, he had more than once proved himself to possess. He had foreseen the ambush, and had sent a force to guard against the danger. Azariah’s force, though out of sight of the road, could be seen from the higher ground, and the Greeks greeted their appear[pg 300]ance with shouts of laughter. For one moment a wild desire to charge swept through the mind of the Jewish captain. He had hoped to blot out by some brilliant service the remembrance of his former disaster, and now he had failed again. True, it was not by his own fault; yet he had failed, and he would have to go back to Judas empty-handed. A single word would have sent his men in furious onset against the foe. Should he say it? Then there came back to his recollection the gentleness and forbearance of Judas. He could not disobey such a leader a second time. He gave the signal to retreat. His men heard it with disgust; but they knew that he was acting against his own desire as much as against theirs, and they obeyed without a murmur, or, if some of the youngest and fiercest among them complained of the order, it was only under their breath that they spoke.
Azariah now made his way to Judas with all the haste that he could use.
“I have failed,”he said.“The heathen seemed to know of our design beforehand. There could be no surprise, so I did not attack, but came back to you at once.”
“You have done well,”said Judas, who knew what a sacrifice the fiery soldier had made.“A chance victory won by disobeying orders is worse than a defeat.”
But Judas, though, as always, he did full justice[pg 301]to his lieutenant, was much depressed by the failure of the attempt, and he looked with a gloomy brow at the approaching host, as it came on in all the pomp and circumstance of war, the sunlight gleaming on the banners, the helmets of brass and gold, and on the long, slanting lines of spear-heads. As it came nearer the regular tread of the columns and the clang of arms, with now and then the shrill voice of a clarion or the deep note of a trumpet heard above the roar, moved even the stoutest warrior to something like fear.
Judas followed once more the tactics which he had so often found successful. To stand on the defensive was hopeless; his few thousands would inevitably be trodden down under the feet of this huge multitude. His only hope was in attack. If he could but break the line at a single point his success might be again, as it had been before, the beginning of a panic, and the great host of Lysias might melt away as the host of Apollonius had melted; but the attack must be made while the enemy were yet upon ground where they had not space to make full use of their numbers. He charged with his accustomed fury before the vanguard of the enemy had emerged into the open. For a time it seemed as if his audacity was to be successful. The hostile army reeled under the shock of the patriots’ furious charge. In two or three places it broke. But there was in reserve a second line of[pg 302]veterans, the steadiest and best troops that could be found in the Syrian armies, for Lysias knew by this time that none but the very best could stand against Judas and his Ironsides. And then the numbers were overpowering. Step by step the Jewish column was forced back. They left six hundred of the enemy dead on the field behind them; but the attack had failed.
Then, as the Greek army deployed upon the open ground which the retreat of the Jews left open to them, the elephants came upon the scene—the“huge, earth-shaking beasts,”which even the hardiest warrior could hardly see for the first time without some sinking of heart. Each animal was accompanied by picked bodies of horse and foot. Each carried a tower from which skilful marksmen, whose accurate aim was greatly helped by their elevated position, hurled missiles upon the ranks of the foe. The creatures themselves seemed to share in all the fury of the battle. They trumpeted loudly and furiously; at the bidding of the Indian drivers who were perched upon their necks they seized soldiers from among the Jewish ranks with their trunks, whirled them aloft, and then dashed them down, mangled and lifeless corpses, upon the ground.
Then was done one of the heroic acts which stand out conspicuously on the pages of history. Eleazar, one of the Maccabee brothers, saw how his country[pg 303]men were being demoralized by the terror of these strange adversaries, and felt that it was a crisis that called for personal devotion. One of the elephants was conspicuous among the rest, not only for its superior size but for the splendour of its equipment. He felt sure that it must be the one that carried the boy-King himself. Immediately his resolve was taken. He made his way, striking furiously right and left, and dealing death with every blow, through the Syrian ranks, crept under the huge beast, and dealt him a mortal wound. Like another Samson, he perished by his own success. The creature fell with a suddenness that gave him no opportunity of escape, and he was crushed to death by its weight.
The Death of EleazarThe Death of Eleazar.
The Death of Eleazar.
The hero did not accomplish his object, to rally his countrymen. One might rather say that their panic was heightened by the fall of one of the heroic brothers, a son of the great house to which they owed their liberty. But his deed was not forgotten. The fourth of the Maccabee brothers lived in the history of his people as Eleazar Avaran—Eleazar“the Beast Slayer.”
But the battle was lost beyond all hope. The only thing left for Judas was to save as much as he could out of the wreck. He sounded the signal for retreat, drew off his men in good order, and, making his way back as rapidly as possible to Jerusalem, threw himself into the Temple fortress, resolved to stand a siege.
[pg 304]CHAPTER XXVI.LIGHT OUT OF DARKNESS.For a time the prospects of the patriots seemed dark indeed. Beth-zur had fallen, and the only hope of the cause was in the Temple fortress. This was fiercely assailed by the garrison of the Greek stronghold of Mount Zion on the one side, and, on the other, by the army which had been victorious at Beth-Zachariah, and which now occupied the Lower City. The Temple fortress was strong; it was fairly well supplied with munitions of war; and the garrison was large—indeed, almost too large for the accommodation of the place. The fatal weakness of the position was the scanty supply of provisions. Only water was abundant, for the unsparing toil of former generations had provided for this want; had it not been for this the resistance of the garrison must very soon have come to an end, for food was scarce—so scarce, indeed, that the strength of the fighting men could hardly be maintained by the in[pg 305]sufficient rations which were doled out to them, while the few non-combatants received barely enough to keep body and soul together.The condition of the Jewish population of the city was not as bad as might have been expected. The cruelties of the days of Apollonius and Philip were not repeated; for Lysias, who, as guardian of the boy-King, was practically supreme, favoured a policy of conciliation, and did his best to repress outrage. Indeed he sanctioned the establishment of what may be called a municipal guard or militia, which, while under obligation to give no assistance to the garrison of the Temple, was permitted to protect the peaceful inhabitants of the city. This guard was under the command of Seraiah.There was much, of course, that it was difficult for those to bear who looked to Judas and his brothers as the hope of Israel. Menelaüs had returned, and with him a whole troop of renegade Jews, whose insolence and impiety sorely tried the patience of the faithful population. And the scarcity of food was only less severe in the city than it was in the fortress.For some time Seraiah’s own household continued to receive mysterious supplies from some unknown source, which made them far more comfortable than their neighbours. Once a week, or even oftener, they would find a bag of corn or flour, a basket of dried grapes or other fruits, a bundle of salt fish, a string[pg 306]of doves or wood-pigeons, put in an outhouse, nor could they guess who their benefactor could be. But when this had gone on for nearly two months, the secret came out. Seraiah, returning from his military duties at an early hour in the morning, and entering by a little postern gate in order to avoid disturbing the household, saw a man drop from the garden wall. He seized him by the arm, and the stranger, turning sharply round, revealed the well-known features of Benjamin.“What do you here?”he asked.“I am come on an errand of my own,”answered the robber.“But in my house?”“Ask no more questions,”said the man;“but take my word—and I would not lie to you for all the kingdom of Antiochus—that I mean no harm to you or yours.”A thought flashed across Seraiah’s mind.“It is you, then, who have been bringing us, week after week, these supplies of food?”Benjamin said nothing.“I adjure you by God that you answer me,”said Seraiah.“Well, if you will know it, it is I who have done it. Why should not God use a man’s hands to feed His servants, as well as a raven’s beak?”“Tell me—how did you come by these things?”“In various ways.”[pg 307]“Lawfully?”“Well, I can hardly say; you and I might not agree about the matter.”“Tell me—did you buy them with your money?”“Nay; that is not my way. I do not buy or sell.”“Then you stole them.”“I told you that we should not agree. But this I know, that they to whom they belonged could do without them better than you and your children.”“Benjamin,”said Seraiah,“you mean well, and I thank you. But after this bring no more of these gifts, for I cannot receive them. I would not have my Judge say to me,‘When thou sawest a thief, thou consentedst unto him.’I had sooner die of hunger—aye, and what is far worse, see my children die—than take that which has not been lawfully acquired.”“As you will have it,”said Benjamin;“if there were more like you, mayhap I should have been a better man. But meanwhile, the world being what it is, you and yours will have a hard time of it;”and he turned to go away.“And the captain,”he went on—“how does he fare? I hear that things are not going well with him. ’Tis a thousand pities, for a braver man never handled sword.”Seraiah told him briefly the story of recent events, and described the present condition of affairs, the other listening with an eager attention, and breaking[pg 308]in now and then with an exclamation of wonder and admiration.“Come, Benjamin,”he said, when he had finished,“why will you not throw in your lot with us? Things look dark just now; but they will brighten. He who has helped us so far will not desert us now.”“Sir,”said the man,“I would gladly follow the captain, whether he led me to life or to death. No man could ask a better lot than to be his soldier. But I like not all that are with him. They are over-strict, and make no allowance for such as have not their zeal. Once they beat me; another time they had stoned me to death but that I slipped out of their hands; and both for some miserable trifles which no man of sense would care about. No, sir; Judas I honour and love, but these bigots who give a man no peace I cannot away with. And now the day is beginning to break, and I must go. I am sorry that you will not take my poor gifts.”The next moment he had disappeared.And now came a time of grievous trouble for Ruth and her young charges, for she had naturally taken charge of Azariah’s two daughters. She did not question her husband’s refusal to share any longer the illicit gains of Benjamin, but she could not shut her eyes to the fact that the children were suffering grievously. For herself she could endure, as women can; the girls, too, were old enough to understand[pg 309]the cause of their suffering, though they could not enter into the reasons of what seemed so strange an observance—the Sabbatical year; but little Daniel was too young to know much beyond the fact that he was always terribly hungry, and though he was often brave enough to check his crying when he saw how it distressed his mother, there were times when the pangs of hunger were more than he could bear in silence. Poor Ruth denied herself everything but the few scraps that were absolutely necessary to keep body and soul together, and her physical weakness did not make it easier to keep up her hope and courage. Her hardest task, perhaps, was to hide, as far as it was possible, the true state of things from her husband. His strength must be kept up, for so much depended upon it; but the children, not to speak of herself, had to have their scanty share diminished that it might be so. This, of course, he was not allowed to know, and Ruth was at her wits’ end again and again to keep it from him.Within the Temple fortress, meanwhile, things had become almost desperate. A few shekels’ weight of flour was given out to each man daily, for Judas insisted that all should share alike. That even this scanty allowance might hold out the longer, numbers of the garrison made their escape every night under the cover of darkness that the remainder might prolong their resistance for yet a few days more.[pg 310]Before long came a time when absolutely nothing was left.“Their vessels were without victuals,”and Judas and the few that still remained with him met to hold a final deliberation.“My friends,”said the great captain,“you see the straits into which we are brought. There is no need to tell you of them, or to prove by words what we all know too well in fact. What, then, shall we do? Shall we stay here and perish slowly by hunger, or shall we fall upon our swords, or shall we sally forth from the gates, and, having slain as many of the heathen as we may, so perish ourselves? I had hoped that the Lord would give deliverance to Israel by my hand, and by the hand of my brothers. But if it be not so, His will be done. For He is not shut up to do that which it pleaseth Him by one man or another. He can call whomsoever He will, and give him strength for the work.”He paused for a moment, and Azariah broke in,“It is well said, O captain of the host. The Lord hath helped His people hitherto, and He will help them to the end. Only let us trust in Him, for”—and here, with an impetuous gesture, he struck his foot upon the rock—“they that put their trust in the Lord shall be even as this mountain, which may not be removed, but standeth fast for ever.”Judas was just rising to announce his resolve when the sound of a trumpet was heard at the gate[pg 311]of the fortress. It was a herald bringing a message from the young King.“Have you aught to say to me in private?”asked Judas, when the man was brought in.“Nay,”he answered;“my message is one that all may hear.”He then delivered it, reading the words from a parchment which he carried in his hand, and which bore the sign-manual (an impression of the seal-ring dipped in ink) of Antiochus Eupator, as well as that of Lysias. They ran thus:“Antiochus, surnamed Eupator, King of Syria and Egypt, offers to the people of the Jews peace and friendship. He permits them to worship God after the manners and customs of their fathers, and he hereby revokes all the edicts which the King, his father, having been misinformed by unfaithful advisers, issued against the said nation of the Jews.”Never was there a more surprising, a more unexpected change in the position of affairs. But it might have been foreseen by those who had watched with a full knowledge of the truth, the recent course of events.Despatches had reached Lysias from Antioch which convinced him that he and his young charge had enemies to reckon with who would be far more formidable than Judas and his followers. Philip had returned from Persia with the host of Epiphanes, and had assumed the management of affairs, and[pg 312]Philip was a dangerous rival. Were he to prevail, his own position as the chief adviser of the King would be untenable; and the King himself would very probably be dispossessed by some other claimant to the throne.He laid the case, or at least so much as it was necessary to explain, before the boy-King. The lad, who was indeed intelligent beyond his years, at once acquiesced in the advice, that easy conditions of peace should be offered to the garrison.Then an assembly of the soldiers was summoned. All the officers were invited by name, and, after the usual fashion of such gatherings, as many of the men as could crowd into the chambers were also present. To them Lysias said nothing about the news from Antioch, which it would be better, he thought, to conceal as long as possible; but he dwelt on the useless hardships which they were all enduring.“Famine and the pestilence are upon us,”he said,“and we decay daily. But the place to which we lay siege is strong, and we are no nearer to the taking of it than we were six months since. Now, therefore, let us offer to these men, who are neither robbers nor murderers, peace and liberty, that they may worship God after their own fashion, and live by their own laws. For, of a truth, it is far better, as many of yourselves know, that they should be our friends than our enemies.”[pg 313]An unanimous shout of approval was the answer; and hence the message which came so opportunely to Judas and his followers in the very crisis of their despair.
For a time the prospects of the patriots seemed dark indeed. Beth-zur had fallen, and the only hope of the cause was in the Temple fortress. This was fiercely assailed by the garrison of the Greek stronghold of Mount Zion on the one side, and, on the other, by the army which had been victorious at Beth-Zachariah, and which now occupied the Lower City. The Temple fortress was strong; it was fairly well supplied with munitions of war; and the garrison was large—indeed, almost too large for the accommodation of the place. The fatal weakness of the position was the scanty supply of provisions. Only water was abundant, for the unsparing toil of former generations had provided for this want; had it not been for this the resistance of the garrison must very soon have come to an end, for food was scarce—so scarce, indeed, that the strength of the fighting men could hardly be maintained by the in[pg 305]sufficient rations which were doled out to them, while the few non-combatants received barely enough to keep body and soul together.
The condition of the Jewish population of the city was not as bad as might have been expected. The cruelties of the days of Apollonius and Philip were not repeated; for Lysias, who, as guardian of the boy-King, was practically supreme, favoured a policy of conciliation, and did his best to repress outrage. Indeed he sanctioned the establishment of what may be called a municipal guard or militia, which, while under obligation to give no assistance to the garrison of the Temple, was permitted to protect the peaceful inhabitants of the city. This guard was under the command of Seraiah.
There was much, of course, that it was difficult for those to bear who looked to Judas and his brothers as the hope of Israel. Menelaüs had returned, and with him a whole troop of renegade Jews, whose insolence and impiety sorely tried the patience of the faithful population. And the scarcity of food was only less severe in the city than it was in the fortress.
For some time Seraiah’s own household continued to receive mysterious supplies from some unknown source, which made them far more comfortable than their neighbours. Once a week, or even oftener, they would find a bag of corn or flour, a basket of dried grapes or other fruits, a bundle of salt fish, a string[pg 306]of doves or wood-pigeons, put in an outhouse, nor could they guess who their benefactor could be. But when this had gone on for nearly two months, the secret came out. Seraiah, returning from his military duties at an early hour in the morning, and entering by a little postern gate in order to avoid disturbing the household, saw a man drop from the garden wall. He seized him by the arm, and the stranger, turning sharply round, revealed the well-known features of Benjamin.
“What do you here?”he asked.
“I am come on an errand of my own,”answered the robber.
“But in my house?”
“Ask no more questions,”said the man;“but take my word—and I would not lie to you for all the kingdom of Antiochus—that I mean no harm to you or yours.”
A thought flashed across Seraiah’s mind.
“It is you, then, who have been bringing us, week after week, these supplies of food?”
Benjamin said nothing.
“I adjure you by God that you answer me,”said Seraiah.
“Well, if you will know it, it is I who have done it. Why should not God use a man’s hands to feed His servants, as well as a raven’s beak?”
“Tell me—how did you come by these things?”
“In various ways.”
“Lawfully?”
“Well, I can hardly say; you and I might not agree about the matter.”
“Tell me—did you buy them with your money?”
“Nay; that is not my way. I do not buy or sell.”
“Then you stole them.”
“I told you that we should not agree. But this I know, that they to whom they belonged could do without them better than you and your children.”
“Benjamin,”said Seraiah,“you mean well, and I thank you. But after this bring no more of these gifts, for I cannot receive them. I would not have my Judge say to me,‘When thou sawest a thief, thou consentedst unto him.’I had sooner die of hunger—aye, and what is far worse, see my children die—than take that which has not been lawfully acquired.”
“As you will have it,”said Benjamin;“if there were more like you, mayhap I should have been a better man. But meanwhile, the world being what it is, you and yours will have a hard time of it;”and he turned to go away.“And the captain,”he went on—“how does he fare? I hear that things are not going well with him. ’Tis a thousand pities, for a braver man never handled sword.”
Seraiah told him briefly the story of recent events, and described the present condition of affairs, the other listening with an eager attention, and breaking[pg 308]in now and then with an exclamation of wonder and admiration.
“Come, Benjamin,”he said, when he had finished,“why will you not throw in your lot with us? Things look dark just now; but they will brighten. He who has helped us so far will not desert us now.”
“Sir,”said the man,“I would gladly follow the captain, whether he led me to life or to death. No man could ask a better lot than to be his soldier. But I like not all that are with him. They are over-strict, and make no allowance for such as have not their zeal. Once they beat me; another time they had stoned me to death but that I slipped out of their hands; and both for some miserable trifles which no man of sense would care about. No, sir; Judas I honour and love, but these bigots who give a man no peace I cannot away with. And now the day is beginning to break, and I must go. I am sorry that you will not take my poor gifts.”
The next moment he had disappeared.
And now came a time of grievous trouble for Ruth and her young charges, for she had naturally taken charge of Azariah’s two daughters. She did not question her husband’s refusal to share any longer the illicit gains of Benjamin, but she could not shut her eyes to the fact that the children were suffering grievously. For herself she could endure, as women can; the girls, too, were old enough to understand[pg 309]the cause of their suffering, though they could not enter into the reasons of what seemed so strange an observance—the Sabbatical year; but little Daniel was too young to know much beyond the fact that he was always terribly hungry, and though he was often brave enough to check his crying when he saw how it distressed his mother, there were times when the pangs of hunger were more than he could bear in silence. Poor Ruth denied herself everything but the few scraps that were absolutely necessary to keep body and soul together, and her physical weakness did not make it easier to keep up her hope and courage. Her hardest task, perhaps, was to hide, as far as it was possible, the true state of things from her husband. His strength must be kept up, for so much depended upon it; but the children, not to speak of herself, had to have their scanty share diminished that it might be so. This, of course, he was not allowed to know, and Ruth was at her wits’ end again and again to keep it from him.
Within the Temple fortress, meanwhile, things had become almost desperate. A few shekels’ weight of flour was given out to each man daily, for Judas insisted that all should share alike. That even this scanty allowance might hold out the longer, numbers of the garrison made their escape every night under the cover of darkness that the remainder might prolong their resistance for yet a few days more.
Before long came a time when absolutely nothing was left.“Their vessels were without victuals,”and Judas and the few that still remained with him met to hold a final deliberation.
“My friends,”said the great captain,“you see the straits into which we are brought. There is no need to tell you of them, or to prove by words what we all know too well in fact. What, then, shall we do? Shall we stay here and perish slowly by hunger, or shall we fall upon our swords, or shall we sally forth from the gates, and, having slain as many of the heathen as we may, so perish ourselves? I had hoped that the Lord would give deliverance to Israel by my hand, and by the hand of my brothers. But if it be not so, His will be done. For He is not shut up to do that which it pleaseth Him by one man or another. He can call whomsoever He will, and give him strength for the work.”
He paused for a moment, and Azariah broke in,“It is well said, O captain of the host. The Lord hath helped His people hitherto, and He will help them to the end. Only let us trust in Him, for”—and here, with an impetuous gesture, he struck his foot upon the rock—“they that put their trust in the Lord shall be even as this mountain, which may not be removed, but standeth fast for ever.”
Judas was just rising to announce his resolve when the sound of a trumpet was heard at the gate[pg 311]of the fortress. It was a herald bringing a message from the young King.
“Have you aught to say to me in private?”asked Judas, when the man was brought in.
“Nay,”he answered;“my message is one that all may hear.”
He then delivered it, reading the words from a parchment which he carried in his hand, and which bore the sign-manual (an impression of the seal-ring dipped in ink) of Antiochus Eupator, as well as that of Lysias. They ran thus:
“Antiochus, surnamed Eupator, King of Syria and Egypt, offers to the people of the Jews peace and friendship. He permits them to worship God after the manners and customs of their fathers, and he hereby revokes all the edicts which the King, his father, having been misinformed by unfaithful advisers, issued against the said nation of the Jews.”
Never was there a more surprising, a more unexpected change in the position of affairs. But it might have been foreseen by those who had watched with a full knowledge of the truth, the recent course of events.
Despatches had reached Lysias from Antioch which convinced him that he and his young charge had enemies to reckon with who would be far more formidable than Judas and his followers. Philip had returned from Persia with the host of Epiphanes, and had assumed the management of affairs, and[pg 312]Philip was a dangerous rival. Were he to prevail, his own position as the chief adviser of the King would be untenable; and the King himself would very probably be dispossessed by some other claimant to the throne.
He laid the case, or at least so much as it was necessary to explain, before the boy-King. The lad, who was indeed intelligent beyond his years, at once acquiesced in the advice, that easy conditions of peace should be offered to the garrison.
Then an assembly of the soldiers was summoned. All the officers were invited by name, and, after the usual fashion of such gatherings, as many of the men as could crowd into the chambers were also present. To them Lysias said nothing about the news from Antioch, which it would be better, he thought, to conceal as long as possible; but he dwelt on the useless hardships which they were all enduring.
“Famine and the pestilence are upon us,”he said,“and we decay daily. But the place to which we lay siege is strong, and we are no nearer to the taking of it than we were six months since. Now, therefore, let us offer to these men, who are neither robbers nor murderers, peace and liberty, that they may worship God after their own fashion, and live by their own laws. For, of a truth, it is far better, as many of yourselves know, that they should be our friends than our enemies.”
An unanimous shout of approval was the answer; and hence the message which came so opportunely to Judas and his followers in the very crisis of their despair.
[pg 314]CHAPTER XXVII.A PEACEFUL INTERVAL.It was one of the stipulations of the peace offered by the young Antiochus, and accepted by Judas, that the King should be admitted with due ceremony into the surrendered fortress. It was to be a formal acknowledgment of his authority, but nothing more. No change, it was understood, was to be made; the King and his attendants were not to go beyond the court which it was lawful for the Gentiles to enter.On the morrow, accordingly, the boy-King came with a splendid procession of nobles and officers. In front marched a company of soldiers, picked from the whole army for their beauty of feature and commanding stature, and gorgeous with their gilded arms. Then, in the order of their dignity, came the high officers of state; last, the young monarch himself, the Governor Lysias leading him by the hand.The approach to the Temple was thronged by a crowd of eager spectators, none of whom were more profoundly interested in the sight than the little Daniel, with his cousins, Miriam and Judith. The[pg 315]child’s fancy had been caught by all that he had heard of the young prince. It seemed strange to him, almost beyond belief, that a lad, a little older, it was true, than himself, but younger than Miriam, should have power to do so much harm.“Mother,”he said one day to Ruth,“why does God let him hurt so many people? It is all his doing that the brave soldiers are shut up in the Temple, and that we have so little to eat. Will he not be punished for it some day? I suppose, as he is a king, nobody can punish him except God. But He will, won’t He, mother?”The Boy KingThe Boy King.Then came the unexpected news of the peace; and nothing would satisfy little Daniel but that he must see the boy-King received in the Temple. Eagerly did the child watch him as he walked in his little suit of armour, which the most skilful artizans in Antioch had made so light as not to be too much for his strength, and great was his delight when Eupator, catching a sight of his eager face, kissed his hand to him with a pleasant smile. That smile he never forgot, though it is true that his old anger against the young king returned next day almost as vehemently as ever when he heard that orders had been given that the ramparts of the Temple fortress were to be broken down, and that the Greek soldiers, anxious to depart, had begun the work of destruction the very hour at which the edict had been published.[pg 316]Though this breach of faith was a great blow to the patriots, still they had much to console them. In the first place, to their intense relief, the Greek army marched away, and the Holy City was no more defiled by the presence of the heathen. Then the renegade Menelaüs, whom every faithful Jew hated with a more bitter hatred than he felt for the heathen themselves, went away, but not of his own free choice, with the King. Lysias had an honest man’s dislike for a traitor, and indeed did not scruple to say that this impostor, who was neither good Jew nor real Greek, had done more than any one else to cause the recent troubles.Not less welcome was the end of the Sabbatical year. This of itself would not, of course, have relieved the pressure of scarcity; but there was help from without which before had not been available. Hitherto the Jews had been under a ban; they were enemies of the Syrian King, and none who desired to be his friends would have any dealings with them. Now all was changed. The ban was removed. The people were in favour with Eupator and Lysias. A brisk trade commenced, and supplies of food came in abundance. With good heart and hope the people set themselves to their work. From being a city of mourning Jerusalem became gay and cheerful.The general gladness culminated in the Feast of Tabernacles, always the most joyous of Jewish[pg 317]festivals, and now celebrated with special manifestations of delight. Never had the people felt so keenly the pleasure of seeming at least to return to the simple life of earlier times, the rustic enjoyments of a nation that had not yet learnt to dwell in cities. It was the ordinance that for seven days the Israelite should dwell, not in his house, but in a booth of boughs. For days waggon-loads without number of the boughs of the olive, the palm, the pine, the myrtle, and other trees which had a foliage sufficiently thick for the purpose, were brought into the city. When a house had a roof of a convenient size and situation, the booth was built upon it; in many cases it was set up in the court. Those who had come from elsewhere to share in the festival set up their booths in the court of the Temple, in the street of the Water Gate, and in the street of the Gate of Ephraim. It was a beautiful sight at any time, and now the fresh foliage hid the scars of many a grievous wound that had been inflicted during the years of desolation.Every day, at the time of the morning sacrifice, each Israelite, gaily dressed in holiday attire, made his way to the Temple. Each carried in one hand a bundle of the same branches that were used in the building of the booths, and in the other a fruit of the citron tree. When all the company was assembled, and the parts of the victim had been laid upon the altar, a priest was seen approaching with a[pg 318]golden ewer in his hand. He had filled it at the pool of Siloam, and he brought it into the court of the Temple through the Water Gate. The trumpets sounded as he came in and ascended the slope of the altar. On each side of this were two silver basins; into that on the eastern side he poured the sacred water; while another priest poured wine into that on the western. Then the“Hallel”21was sung; when the singers came to the words,“O give thanks unto the Lord; for He is good, because His mercy endureth for ever,”each Israelite shook his bundle of branches; he did it again when they sang,“Save, Lord, I beseech Thee, O Lord: O Lord, I beseech Thee, send now prosperity;”and a third time at the words,“O give thanks unto the Lord; for He is good: for His mercy endureth for ever.”In the evening there was a grand illumination. Eight lamps, so large and so high that they sent their light over nearly the whole of the city, were set up in the court of the Temple, while many of the people carried flambeaux in their hands. Meanwhile a company of Levites, standing on the steps of the Court of the Women, chanted to the music of cymbal and the harp the fifteen“Songs of Degrees.”22These were the public rejoicings; the private festivities were on the most liberal scale. Never did[pg 319]the maxim that he who fails to contribute according to his means to the general joy is a sinner above other men meet with a more hearty acceptance.Azariah with his daughters and little Daniel were watching the ceremonies of the last and greatest day of the feast from the roof of the Governor’s house, where they were joined by Micah and by Joseph, who, it will be remembered, had shared with him the disastrous command of the city during the absence of Judas in Gilead. Joseph was exultant; Micah’s face was grave and even sad.“Thank the Lord, Azariah,”cried Joseph,“for He has dealt with the traitor after his deservings.”“Whom mean you?”asked Azariah;“for we have had more traitors here than one.”“Whom should I mean but Menelaüs, the false priest who sat in Aaron’s seat?”“And what has befallen him?”“The King has caused him to be put to death. He was in little favour when they took him home, for Lysias said that he had wrought all the mischief that had been done. And when they came to Antioch the matter of Oniah was brought against him, for there were many who loved the old man, and had taken it ill that his death had not been fully avenged. And when the young King heard the story, Menelaüs being present, and having nothing to say against it, he cried,‘I wonder that the King, my father, suffered this murderer to escape, but he shall[pg 320]not go unpunished any more. Take him, and cast him alive into the Tower of Ashes.’So they took him and did as the King had commanded.”“And what is the Tower of Ashes?”asked the little Daniel, who had been listening to this conversation with a sort of terrified interest.Micah answered his question.“At Berea is a tower, the bottom of which is full of ashes, and in the tower is a machine which revolves and plunges the criminal who is bound to it deep into the ashes until he is smothered. But as for this unhappy man, the Lord have mercy upon him!”Joseph turned fiercely upon him.“I marvel,”he said,“that you should pray for this fellow, who was worse than the heathen. He has but had his deservings.”“And where should I be, if I had had mine?”answered Micah.“I walked in the same way with this Menelaüs, and sinned against the Law, even as he sinned, and but that God had mercy upon me, surely I had come to the same end.”“Don’t be sorry, uncle,”said the boy, holding up his little face for a kiss;“I am sure that God has forgiven you, for He knows how bravely you have fought for Him, and how many of the heathen you have killed with your sword.”“May it be so, dear child! But though He has forgiven me, yet I must reap as I have sown.”[pg 321]“And who shall be high priest in this traitor’s place?”asked Joseph, after a pause.“For Oniah, the son of him that was slain at Antioch, is in the land of Egypt, and he takes part with the unfaithful brethren who would build another Temple among the temples of the heathen, leaving the place which the Lord has chosen to set His name there.”“And if the House of Zadok have perished, why should not Judas, son of Mattathias, be high priest?”said Azariah.“He is of a principal house among the sons of Aaron, and the Lord has been with him always.”Joseph had never forgiven Judas for his own disaster. His was one of those mean natures that justify the saying,“The injured may forgive, the injurer never.”The captain had treated him with the same generous kindness which he had showed to Azariah, but this kindness had not been received in the same temper. On the contrary it rankled in his mind, till by a strange, yet not uncommon, perversion of feeling, it had produced a positive sense of injury. He now broke out:“Nay, nay, my friend, you say too much. That he has won victories I deny not; but was the Lord with him when he fled before the face of the heathen at Beth-Zachariah, or when Beth-zur was yielded up to Lysias, or when we had well-nigh perished with famine in the siege, or when the King broke down the ramparts of the Temple? Not so: what[pg 322]ever the people may shout or sing in his praise, he too has known defeat, even as we have.”“This I know,”said Azariah,“that whereas we were trodden underfoot by the heathen till there was no life left in us, now we are risen and stand upright.”“And how long, think you,”returned Joseph,“will it be so with us? Did we drive away the King, or did he not rather depart of his own accord, because of what he and his counsellors had heard of the doings of Philip? And will he not return, and the end be worse than the beginning?”Azariah answered, with some heat,“As for that which may happen hereafter, I say nothing. These things are in the hand of God. But that the young Antiochus departed to his own land was, I doubt not at all, of the Lord’s doing. Why, even this child knows the story of Sennacherib, and the words which Isaiah the prophet spoke to Hezekiah when the King was faint-hearted, and could not see how there should be any deliverance for Israel. Did not the prophet say,‘He shall hear a rumour, and shall return unto his own land?’”Joseph said nothing. With all his meanness and littleness he was a patriot, and really loved his country; and it went against his heart and conscience to prophesy evil against her.Then the little Daniel startled them all by saying, with flashing eyes,“And I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land.”
It was one of the stipulations of the peace offered by the young Antiochus, and accepted by Judas, that the King should be admitted with due ceremony into the surrendered fortress. It was to be a formal acknowledgment of his authority, but nothing more. No change, it was understood, was to be made; the King and his attendants were not to go beyond the court which it was lawful for the Gentiles to enter.
On the morrow, accordingly, the boy-King came with a splendid procession of nobles and officers. In front marched a company of soldiers, picked from the whole army for their beauty of feature and commanding stature, and gorgeous with their gilded arms. Then, in the order of their dignity, came the high officers of state; last, the young monarch himself, the Governor Lysias leading him by the hand.
The approach to the Temple was thronged by a crowd of eager spectators, none of whom were more profoundly interested in the sight than the little Daniel, with his cousins, Miriam and Judith. The[pg 315]child’s fancy had been caught by all that he had heard of the young prince. It seemed strange to him, almost beyond belief, that a lad, a little older, it was true, than himself, but younger than Miriam, should have power to do so much harm.“Mother,”he said one day to Ruth,“why does God let him hurt so many people? It is all his doing that the brave soldiers are shut up in the Temple, and that we have so little to eat. Will he not be punished for it some day? I suppose, as he is a king, nobody can punish him except God. But He will, won’t He, mother?”
The Boy KingThe Boy King.
The Boy King.
Then came the unexpected news of the peace; and nothing would satisfy little Daniel but that he must see the boy-King received in the Temple. Eagerly did the child watch him as he walked in his little suit of armour, which the most skilful artizans in Antioch had made so light as not to be too much for his strength, and great was his delight when Eupator, catching a sight of his eager face, kissed his hand to him with a pleasant smile. That smile he never forgot, though it is true that his old anger against the young king returned next day almost as vehemently as ever when he heard that orders had been given that the ramparts of the Temple fortress were to be broken down, and that the Greek soldiers, anxious to depart, had begun the work of destruction the very hour at which the edict had been published.
Though this breach of faith was a great blow to the patriots, still they had much to console them. In the first place, to their intense relief, the Greek army marched away, and the Holy City was no more defiled by the presence of the heathen. Then the renegade Menelaüs, whom every faithful Jew hated with a more bitter hatred than he felt for the heathen themselves, went away, but not of his own free choice, with the King. Lysias had an honest man’s dislike for a traitor, and indeed did not scruple to say that this impostor, who was neither good Jew nor real Greek, had done more than any one else to cause the recent troubles.
Not less welcome was the end of the Sabbatical year. This of itself would not, of course, have relieved the pressure of scarcity; but there was help from without which before had not been available. Hitherto the Jews had been under a ban; they were enemies of the Syrian King, and none who desired to be his friends would have any dealings with them. Now all was changed. The ban was removed. The people were in favour with Eupator and Lysias. A brisk trade commenced, and supplies of food came in abundance. With good heart and hope the people set themselves to their work. From being a city of mourning Jerusalem became gay and cheerful.
The general gladness culminated in the Feast of Tabernacles, always the most joyous of Jewish[pg 317]festivals, and now celebrated with special manifestations of delight. Never had the people felt so keenly the pleasure of seeming at least to return to the simple life of earlier times, the rustic enjoyments of a nation that had not yet learnt to dwell in cities. It was the ordinance that for seven days the Israelite should dwell, not in his house, but in a booth of boughs. For days waggon-loads without number of the boughs of the olive, the palm, the pine, the myrtle, and other trees which had a foliage sufficiently thick for the purpose, were brought into the city. When a house had a roof of a convenient size and situation, the booth was built upon it; in many cases it was set up in the court. Those who had come from elsewhere to share in the festival set up their booths in the court of the Temple, in the street of the Water Gate, and in the street of the Gate of Ephraim. It was a beautiful sight at any time, and now the fresh foliage hid the scars of many a grievous wound that had been inflicted during the years of desolation.
Every day, at the time of the morning sacrifice, each Israelite, gaily dressed in holiday attire, made his way to the Temple. Each carried in one hand a bundle of the same branches that were used in the building of the booths, and in the other a fruit of the citron tree. When all the company was assembled, and the parts of the victim had been laid upon the altar, a priest was seen approaching with a[pg 318]golden ewer in his hand. He had filled it at the pool of Siloam, and he brought it into the court of the Temple through the Water Gate. The trumpets sounded as he came in and ascended the slope of the altar. On each side of this were two silver basins; into that on the eastern side he poured the sacred water; while another priest poured wine into that on the western. Then the“Hallel”21was sung; when the singers came to the words,“O give thanks unto the Lord; for He is good, because His mercy endureth for ever,”each Israelite shook his bundle of branches; he did it again when they sang,“Save, Lord, I beseech Thee, O Lord: O Lord, I beseech Thee, send now prosperity;”and a third time at the words,“O give thanks unto the Lord; for He is good: for His mercy endureth for ever.”In the evening there was a grand illumination. Eight lamps, so large and so high that they sent their light over nearly the whole of the city, were set up in the court of the Temple, while many of the people carried flambeaux in their hands. Meanwhile a company of Levites, standing on the steps of the Court of the Women, chanted to the music of cymbal and the harp the fifteen“Songs of Degrees.”22
These were the public rejoicings; the private festivities were on the most liberal scale. Never did[pg 319]the maxim that he who fails to contribute according to his means to the general joy is a sinner above other men meet with a more hearty acceptance.
Azariah with his daughters and little Daniel were watching the ceremonies of the last and greatest day of the feast from the roof of the Governor’s house, where they were joined by Micah and by Joseph, who, it will be remembered, had shared with him the disastrous command of the city during the absence of Judas in Gilead. Joseph was exultant; Micah’s face was grave and even sad.
“Thank the Lord, Azariah,”cried Joseph,“for He has dealt with the traitor after his deservings.”
“Whom mean you?”asked Azariah;“for we have had more traitors here than one.”
“Whom should I mean but Menelaüs, the false priest who sat in Aaron’s seat?”
“And what has befallen him?”
“The King has caused him to be put to death. He was in little favour when they took him home, for Lysias said that he had wrought all the mischief that had been done. And when they came to Antioch the matter of Oniah was brought against him, for there were many who loved the old man, and had taken it ill that his death had not been fully avenged. And when the young King heard the story, Menelaüs being present, and having nothing to say against it, he cried,‘I wonder that the King, my father, suffered this murderer to escape, but he shall[pg 320]not go unpunished any more. Take him, and cast him alive into the Tower of Ashes.’So they took him and did as the King had commanded.”
“And what is the Tower of Ashes?”asked the little Daniel, who had been listening to this conversation with a sort of terrified interest.
Micah answered his question.“At Berea is a tower, the bottom of which is full of ashes, and in the tower is a machine which revolves and plunges the criminal who is bound to it deep into the ashes until he is smothered. But as for this unhappy man, the Lord have mercy upon him!”
Joseph turned fiercely upon him.“I marvel,”he said,“that you should pray for this fellow, who was worse than the heathen. He has but had his deservings.”
“And where should I be, if I had had mine?”answered Micah.“I walked in the same way with this Menelaüs, and sinned against the Law, even as he sinned, and but that God had mercy upon me, surely I had come to the same end.”
“Don’t be sorry, uncle,”said the boy, holding up his little face for a kiss;“I am sure that God has forgiven you, for He knows how bravely you have fought for Him, and how many of the heathen you have killed with your sword.”
“May it be so, dear child! But though He has forgiven me, yet I must reap as I have sown.”
“And who shall be high priest in this traitor’s place?”asked Joseph, after a pause.“For Oniah, the son of him that was slain at Antioch, is in the land of Egypt, and he takes part with the unfaithful brethren who would build another Temple among the temples of the heathen, leaving the place which the Lord has chosen to set His name there.”
“And if the House of Zadok have perished, why should not Judas, son of Mattathias, be high priest?”said Azariah.“He is of a principal house among the sons of Aaron, and the Lord has been with him always.”
Joseph had never forgiven Judas for his own disaster. His was one of those mean natures that justify the saying,“The injured may forgive, the injurer never.”The captain had treated him with the same generous kindness which he had showed to Azariah, but this kindness had not been received in the same temper. On the contrary it rankled in his mind, till by a strange, yet not uncommon, perversion of feeling, it had produced a positive sense of injury. He now broke out:
“Nay, nay, my friend, you say too much. That he has won victories I deny not; but was the Lord with him when he fled before the face of the heathen at Beth-Zachariah, or when Beth-zur was yielded up to Lysias, or when we had well-nigh perished with famine in the siege, or when the King broke down the ramparts of the Temple? Not so: what[pg 322]ever the people may shout or sing in his praise, he too has known defeat, even as we have.”
“This I know,”said Azariah,“that whereas we were trodden underfoot by the heathen till there was no life left in us, now we are risen and stand upright.”
“And how long, think you,”returned Joseph,“will it be so with us? Did we drive away the King, or did he not rather depart of his own accord, because of what he and his counsellors had heard of the doings of Philip? And will he not return, and the end be worse than the beginning?”
Azariah answered, with some heat,“As for that which may happen hereafter, I say nothing. These things are in the hand of God. But that the young Antiochus departed to his own land was, I doubt not at all, of the Lord’s doing. Why, even this child knows the story of Sennacherib, and the words which Isaiah the prophet spoke to Hezekiah when the King was faint-hearted, and could not see how there should be any deliverance for Israel. Did not the prophet say,‘He shall hear a rumour, and shall return unto his own land?’”
Joseph said nothing. With all his meanness and littleness he was a patriot, and really loved his country; and it went against his heart and conscience to prophesy evil against her.
Then the little Daniel startled them all by saying, with flashing eyes,“And I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land.”