The Story of the Chosen People (Yesterday's Classics) (11 page)

Gideon, the fifth judge of Israel, ruled forty years, and during all that time the Midianites did not dare renew their oppression. But when he died, at a good old age, the people again went back to the worship of Baal, and entirely forgot the Lord who had delivered them so many times from the hands of their enemies.

A
LTHOUGH
Gideon had refused the royal power, it was claimed after his death by Abimelech, one of his sons. This young man secured the help of the Shechemites, and, to prevent any one from disputing his claim to the throne, he killed seventy of his relatives.

A prophet was sent to reprove the Shechemites for helping Abimelech, and he did so by telling them a parable, or lesson taught by a story, which is probably the oldest in the world.

He told them that the trees once decided to elect a king, and chose the olive; but the olive tree refused to leave its fatness, to serve other trees. The fig tree, which was next chosen, refused to give up its sweetness, and the vine, its power to cheer; and all the trees and shrubs found some good excuse to decline the honor of being king.

At last the charge was accepted by the worthless bramble, which said: "If in truth ye anoint me king over you, then come and put your trust in my shadow, and if not, let fire come out of the bramble and devour the cedars of Lebanon."

You see, all the other trees were good for something, and had something to live for and to do; but the worthless bramble, which could produce nothing and was only fit for the fire, was ready enough to accept the crown, although it could not even furnish shadow enough to protect any one, and knew that the other trees would suffer if they came near it, and would perish in the fire to which it was condemned.

The prophecy contained in this parable was fulfilled three years later; for Abimelech,—the worthless bramble,—having grown angry with his former friends the Shechemites, came against them with an army, defeated them, and set fire to one of their principal towers, where many people had taken refuge.

He next passed on to Thebez, where he again tried to set fire to the walls with his own hand. But while he was thus occupied, a woman threw a fragment of a millstone down upon his head, and broke his skull. Abimelech did not die right away, but had just time to call his armor-bearer, and bid the man kill him, so that it might never be said that a woman had slain him.

This Abimelech is reckoned as the sixth judge of Israel, although he never did any good to the people, and thereby differed greatly from the judges who came before and after him.

We are told that the civil wars ended with the death of Abimelech, and that the two succeeding judges ruled peacefully over the Israelites. But, as usual, the people soon took advantage of this prosperity to relapse into idolatry, and, as usual, they suffered for this sin by falling into the hands of their enemies.

This time they were conquered by the Philistines and the Ammonites, who tormented them for eighteen years. But when the Israelites had suffered enough, and were thoroughly humbled, God took compassion upon them, and sent Jephthah, the ninth judge, to lead their armies against the foe.

Anxious to obtain a glorious victory, Jephthah made a rash vow, promising to offer up in sacrifice "whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon."

Thanks to the help of God, who delivered the enemies into his hands, Jephthah won a grand victory, secured twenty towns, and so terrified the Ammonites that they did not dare rise up again until long after, in the days of Saul.

Jephthah now returned to his house, but all his joy was turned to sorrow when he saw his daughter come forth to welcome him. Then only did he remember his rash vow, and realize that he would be obliged to give up his beloved child.

When the girl heard of her father's vow, she made no resistance, and only asked that she might have two months' grace. At the end of two months, she came down from the mountains of Gilead, where she had mourned with her companions. Whether her father really made a human sacrifice, which was not unheard of at that day, or whether he merely shut the maiden up in a sort of a convent, where she would spend all her time in prayer, remains a mystery to this day; for we are only told that he "did with her according to his vow which he had vowed."

W
HEN
Jephthah went forth to fight the Ammonites, he did not ask any help from the Ephraimites. They resented this oversight bitterly, and behaved so insolently that the followers of Jephthah made war against them, and defeated them in a pitched battle.

When the fight was won, Jephthah was afraid that some of the Ephraimites might cross the Jordan, and, returning home, give a wrong impression of the quarrel and stir up their whole tribe to war; so he and his followers decided not to let a man of the conquered army escape.

To make sure of this, they placed a guard at all the fords of the Jordan, with orders to make every man who wished to cross pronounce the word "shibboleth;" for the Ephraimites could not pronounce this word.

After judging Israel six years, Jephthah died in Gilead, where he was buried. He was succeeded by three judges in turn, after whose rule the disobedient Israelites fell into the hands of the Philistines. This time their bondage lasted forty years, and Samson, who lived during the first half of this period, has been called the thirteenth judge of Israel.

Born in the days when Eli was high priest, Samson was the son of a Danite. Before his birth, an angel had appeared to his mother, telling her that she would have a son, who was to be dedicated to God by a special vow, and hence called a Nazarite.

The woman was so amazed at this prophecy that she called her husband, and the angel repeated it to him before vanishing. The child Samson was born as the angel had foretold, and his mother duly dedicated him to the service of the Lord, and never cut off his long hair, which was the outward sign of a Nazarite.

All the tribes of Israel were now under Philistine oppression, and when Samson became a man, the spirit of God began to move him, and revealed itself principally in the matchless strength and courage with which he was endowed.

As this strength all depended on the keeping of his vow to be a Nazarite, the Bible tells us that Samson's strength was in his hair. The young man, conscious of his unusual power, was very brave indeed, and tried hard to provoke a quarrel with the oppressors.

With this purpose in view, he once asked for the hand of a certain Philistine woman. On his way to visit her, a lion rushed out upon him from a neighboring thicket, and would have eaten him up, had not the spirit of God come upon him at the moment of greatest need, and enabled him, although unarmed, to seize and tear the lion to pieces.

SAMSON AND THE LION

Some time after, when passing along the same road, Samson saw a swarm of bees building their honeycombs in the lion's sun-dried carcass; and he ate some of the honey. As it was customary to ask riddles at marriage festivals, he gave the following to the Philistines when his own wedding took place:

"Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness."

The Philistines made vain efforts to find the answer of this riddle, and thus secure the prize of garments which Samson had promised them. At last, however, they coaxed the young man's bride to reveal the answer, and, going to him, triumphantly cried:

"What is sweeter than honey, and what is stronger than a lion?"

Samson, of course, was surprised to hear that they had solved his riddle; but when he found out that they had done so only by fraud, he was very indignant, and resolved to take his revenge. To pay the promised reward, therefore, he slew thirty Philistines, and gave their spoil to the wedding guests.

A few months later, when Samson would fain have claimed his wife, and taken her home, he was told that she had been given in marriage to another. To avenge this insult he tied firebrands to the tails of three hundred captive foxes, and then let the animals loose in the ripe grain fields. The grain soon caught fire, and all the Philistine harvest was destroyed.

In anger, the Philistines now burned Samson's wife and her father, and thereby so enraged the young man that he fell upon them, and "smote them hip and thigh with a great slaughter." Then he went and took refuge on the top of the rock of Etam in the territory of Judah.

W
E
left Samson on top of a steep rock, where he had taken refuge after killing many Philistines to avenge his wife's death. Here he staid until he was captured by an army three thousand strong.

To prevent the escape of this prisoner, the men bound him securely with new ropes; but Samson broke them almost without effort. Then, seizing the jawbone of an ass lying near at hand, he wielded it so vigorously, and to such good purpose, that he soon stretched one thousand Philistines dead at his feet, and put to flight the remainder.

These superhuman efforts left Samson very weary, and he was so thirsty that he longed for a drink. To satisfy this want, a spring of fresh water suddenly and miraculously sprang out of the jawbone, and the thirsty hero was able to refresh himself.

This massacre of the Philistines was a cause of great rejoicing among the Israelites, who raised Samson to the rank of judge. In spite of this dignity, however, Samson continued to live as before, and he once ventured into Gaza, one of the enemy's strongholds, to pay a visit there.

The Philistines, hearing that their foe was within their walls, closed the city gates, intending to find and kill Samson in the morning. But the hero, starting on his homeward journey at midnight, and finding the gates closed, lifted them off their hinges, and bore them off to the top of a neighboring mountain, whence the people of Gaza had much trouble in bringing them down once more.

Shortly after this adventure, Samson married another Philistine woman named Delilah. She had been secretly bribed by his enemies to discover the source of his great strength, and to deliver him into their hands securely fastened with bonds which even he could not break.

DELILAH

When first asked by his bride what bonds would hold him, Samson told her that he could not break green withes. So she once bound him thus, while he was asleep, and then awakened him by crying that the Philistines were coming; but he snapped his bonds as if they had been threads.

Delilah now made two other efforts to bind him,—once with new ropes, and once with seven strands of his own hair,—but these also failed to hold him. Then she pouted and coaxed until the giant told her that the real secret of his strength lay entirely in the keeping of his vow, and hence in his unshorn locks.

Delilah therefore cut off Samson's abundant hair while he was sound asleep, bound him, and delivered him bodily into the hands of the cruel Philistines. They put out his eyes, and made him grind wheat in their prison.

Samson suffered untold agonies while thus in the enemy's power. But God had not entirely forsaken him; for, as his hair grew long again, he gradually felt his wonted strength come back.

His enemies, wishing to taunt him, once had him brought into the temple of their god Dagon. The heavy roof of this building was supported by large stone pillars. As it was a great festival, several thousand Philistines were assembled there on that occasion, and about three thousand were on the flat roof.

After breathing a short, silent prayer for divine help, Samson threw his powerful arms around two of the columns, gave them a mighty wrench, and thus tore them down. As they fell, the heavy roof which they supported came crashing down upon the heads of the luckless Philistines, whose taunts were still ringing in their victim's ears.

All the people assembled there perished, and Samson's body, taken from the ruins, was buried with his family in their ancestral burying ground.