We shall now close our readings, in the fulfilled prophecies of Scripture, with a rapid survey of those which bear upon the fortunes of the Jews. We have seen something of the testimony which God has borne to His word, to Christ, and to some of the leading doctrines of that faith, which we are told forms the pathway to eternal life. It may be well, then, that we should be reminded that where God sheds light He expects obedience, and that the possession of privileges has its duties and its penalties.
In another respect it may be well that this should form the terminus of our inquiries. We have hitherto been dealing with regions and events far from us, and the force which closer acquaintance and fuller knowledge would have given to conviction has been wanting. But the Jews, scattered everywhere and dwelling in our own midst, bring the claims home to us both of the Old Testament and of the New. The Bible lives in the Jew. His whole history is a testimony to its historic truth: in his present customs, in his very separateness, we see the impress of events, the reality of which many have doubted, and some have denied; and he teaches us that God’s hand rests on the life of today as truly as it rested on the life of the past.
Perhaps the most startling fact in connection with the Jewish race is its attitude towards Christianity. We know that the Gospel was preached to the Jew before it was declared to the Gentile, and that many received the message. The foundations of the new faith were laid among the followers of the old. All the apostles, without a single exception, were Jews. The first preachers of the Gospel, who went everywhere preaching the word, were also of the same race; and multitudes of their countrymen, both at home and abroad, rejoiced in the assurance of forgiveness through the blood of Christ. But, when all this has been admitted, the fact remains that, by nearly the whole race then, and by the entire race ever since, the Messiah has been rejected and scorned. This unanimous and persistent repudiation of the claims of Jesus by His own people is not devoid of difficulty, and the difficulty is increased when we remember that for long ages this nation had been trained to know God’s mind, and had been prepared by prophecy and by the institutions of the law to receive Christ when He came.
If we were asked, then, to explain the rejection of Jesus by His own people, we might not be able to wholly remove the impression that it throws doubt upon the claims of the Gospel. But the prophecies, which the Jews cherish as well as we, turn this, which might have been used as an argument against Christianity, into one of the strongest testimonies to its truth.
THE REJECTION WAS FORETOLD.
We are familiar, for example, with the words of Isaiah. The prophet exclaims, as he looks onward to the Gospel day and searches for the fruits among his people of the labors of those who, with himself, have been proclaiming Jesus: “Who hath believed our report, and to whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed?” (53:1) He breaks out into lamentation over Israel’s rejection of Him of whom he has just predicted that He shall “sprinkle many nations” (52:15), and exclaims: “When we see Him there is no beauty that we should desire Him. He was despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their face He was despised, and we esteemed Him not” (53: 2, 3). The Jews regarded the crucifixion of Jesus as disproving all His claims, and yet, seven centuries before His blood stained the sod of Calvary, it was declared they should so regard it: “Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted” (53:4).
Similar announcements meet us elsewhere That which is yet to be “the headstone of the corner” is “the stone which the builders refused” (Psa. 118:22). Blindness was to fall upon Israel: “Tarry ye and wonder; take your pleasure and be blind: they are drunken, but not with wine; they stagger, but not with strong drink. For the Lord hath poured out upon you the spirit of deep sleep, and hath closed your eyes; the prophets and your heads, the seers hath He covered. And all vision is become to you as the words of a book that is sealed, which men deliver to one that is learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee; and he saith, I cannot, for it is sealed; and the book is delivered to him that is not learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith, I am not learned” (Isa. 29:9-11). Therefore the Redeemer exclaims: “I have labored in vain, I have spent My strength for naught and vanity;” and while He is described as “a light to the Gentiles,” He is in the same breath spoken of as “one whom man despiseth—whom the nation abhorreth” (Isa. 49:4, 6, 7). This is, in fact, one of the great outstanding features in the prophetic portraiture of the Messiah. If, therefore, Israel had accepted, and not rejected, Jesus, that would have been one of the strongest possible arguments against Christianity. It would have proved that He was not the Messiah whose advent had been foretold. On the other hand, in these predictions and their accomplishment we have another seal to the Gospel. The rejection is one more test, placed in our hands by God Himself, whereby we might know whether He whose name should be declared to us was indeed the Saviour of the world; and Israel’s abhorrence of the Nazarene is their unconscious testimony that this indeed is He.
Another difficulty in Israel’s rejection of the Messiah is its long continuance. One generation may err, but succeeding generations review the decisions of the past and judge righteous judgment. There was much in the case of the Jews to suggest and to guide such a review. The terrible discipline, through which they have passed, might have humbled and enlightened them. It might have been thought also that it was impossible for them to dwell for 18 centuries in the midst of Christian nations, with the name of Jesus forever in their ears, with the gospels spread before them, and the testimony of their own prophets continually under their eyes, without acknowledging the mistake or rebellion of their fathers. And yet, in spite of all, their rejection of Jesus has been perpetuated, and is as resolute today as it ever has been. This, we repeat, is a farther difficulty, and one which, taken by itself, might form a stumbling-block in the pathway of belief. It might be hard, perhaps impossible, for us to explain how the testimony of those prophecies, which the Jews revere as the Word of God, has failed to convince them that Jesus is the Messiah. But here again the objection is really one of the strongest confirmations. This, too, was predicted.
THE LONG-CONTINUED REJECTION
of Christianity by the Jews is distinctly prophesied in the Old Testament and the New. Isaiah at the outset of his ministry has a vision of the Lord, who has come to His Temple, and whose glory fills it. But, while he is sent to Israel with God’s word, he is told that the vision which he has seen will not be given to them. “And he said, go and tell this people: Hear ye indeed, but understand not, and see ye indeed, but perceive not. Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and turn again and be healed.” The prophet asks how long the doom of blindness is to rest upon Israel, and receives the reply: “Until cities be waste without inhabitant, and houses without man, and the land become utterly waste, and the Lord have removed men far away, and the forsaken places be many in the midst of the land” (Isa. 6:9-12).
It is clear, therefore, that the blindness of the Jews was to be long continued, was to be continued, indeed, during the long ages in which the land of Israel was to be depopulated, so wasted that its very fruitfulness was to pass away. The prediction in the New Testament is still more definite. In the Epistle to the Romans the apostle Paul speaks of his “heart’s desire and supplication to God” that Israel may be saved. But he holds out no hope to his readers of an immediate answer to his prayer. Israel will not return till the time of God’s forbearance with the Gentiles has expired. “For I would not, brethren, have you ignorant of this mystery, lest ye be wise in your own conceits, that a hardening in part hath befallen Israel, UNTIL THE FULLNESS OF THE GENTILES BE COME IN” (Rom. 11:25), that is, till the time come when God shall judge them as He has judged His ancient people. Others understand the words as referring to mercy, not to judgment, and believe that they indicate the ingathering of all the Gentile nations into the kingdom of God. In either case it is clear that the rejection of Jesus by Israel was to continue to the present time and beyond it. This difficulty, therefore, like the other, is another testimony to the truth of God’s word and to the Gospel which He has declared. The Jew confirms 13, his very rejection the claims which he scorns.
This, however, is only the beginning of the story. The sin was to be visited with judgment. Daniel in connection with his prediction regarding the Messiah, which we have already considered, announces the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple: “The people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary” (Dan. 9:26). Zechariah, writing after the return from Babylon, speaks of another terrible calamity for his people. The land is to be spoiled, Israel is to be given over to slaughter, and to be sold into slavery, “For I will no more pity the inhabitants of the land, saith the Lord” (Zech. 11:1-6). Malachi, the last of the prophets, also hints at a rejection of Israel contemporaneous with the calling of the Gentiles. “I have no pleasure in you, saith the Lord of hosts, neither will I accept an offering at your hand. For from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same, My name is great among the Gentiles” (Mal. 1:10, 11).
We shall mainly confine ourselves, however, to the more ancient prophecies in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, to which we have referred in an earlier chapter. There, on the foundation of their institutions as a nation, it was written, not only that God would punish persistent rebellion, but also how He would punish it. The picture of the Divine judgment is full of minute details: it is painted in vivid colors. There may be some doubt, it is true, as to the application of these predictions to the rejection of the Messiah. But this doubt, if it exists, will be dissipated by a moment’s reflection. No other sin that Israel ever committed could equal their rejection of Him, to serve and aid whom in His mission to the nations they existed as a people. For them to reject God’s covenant for themselves, to attempt to bring to naught God’s plan for the world’s redemption, and to fight, as they did for ages, against God’s effort to bring the nations to Himself, was the most daring rebellion in which Israel had ever engaged. If Christianity is of God, and these are God’s words, they must find their full accomplishment in the history of Israel at and since the beginning of the Christian era. If they had not been so fulfilled, there could have been no more certain proof either that the words were not of God, or that Christianity was not from Him, and that in rejecting and attempting to defeat it, the Jews were not rejecting and seeking the overthrow of anything which could be called the counsel of God.
Turning now to the prediction in Deuteronomy, we note that those who were to be
THE INSTRUMENTS IN PUNISHING ISRAEL
are described. If the words had been meant merely as a threat, and not as an unveiling of the future, the materials for impressive writing lay at hand What could have impressed Israel more than to hold over them the menace of a return to the fiery furnace of Egyptian bondage? Or some of the neighboring and dreaded nations of the time might have been named as their conquerors and oppressors. But to none of these did the warning point. The chastisement was not to be the consequence of ordinary aggression. It was to bear upon it from first to last the stamp of Divine judgment. “The Lord shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the earth, as the eagle flieth; a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand: a nation of fierce countenance” (Deut. 28:49, 50). It is hardly necessary to remind the reader how wonderfully these words were fulfilled in the case of the Romans. They came from far, from the ends of the earth. Theirs was a speech the Jews did not understand. They were men of fierce aspect. Let me, however, again remind him that this prediction could scarcely have resulted from a calculation of probabilities. We may be occasionally disturbed by a dread of national chastisement, but, if we were to don the prophet’s mantle and speak of coming invasion, should we not inevitably think of nations known to us as the probable instruments of vengeance? If the writer of Deuteronomy had been moved by the thoughts of his own heart, this course would have been as natural to him as it is to us. But he turned away from every people then known to Israel, and said “Your punishment will come from none of these. A people from far, from the ends of the earth, a people whose speech you will not understand—they will be the sword in the hand of God.” What shall we say of it? If the words are not God’s, then their presence on the page of Scripture must be due to one of the most wonderful freaks of chance of which we have any record.
Whether they are due to chance or not, will be made abundantly clear ere we have finished. The words proceed to speak of
THE MERCILESSNESS OF THESE MINISTERS OF VENGEANCE.
They were to be “a nation of fierce countenance, which shall not regard the person of the old, nor show favor to the young” (Deut. 28:50). We have often heard of the stern necessities of war, but these necessities were never more ruthlessly enforced than by the Romans. In their stern discipline there was no room for pity. There was no soft spot in that iron heart, to which either age or infancy could make its appeal. Those who could be sold as slaves, who could fight in the cruel sports of their amphitheaters, or adorn the triumph of their general, might be spared, but they never troubled themselves with useless incumbrances. Josephus tells how at Tiberias, even where the people had been promised their lives, the old men and those who “were useless” were put to the sword. The same course was followed at Jerusalem and elsewhere. They regarded not the person of the old, nor did they show favor to the young.
Another feature in the punishment of Israel was, that, though Egypt was not to be the means of their overthrow, it was nevertheless to be concerned in their degradation. They were to be
TAKEN BACK TO EGYPT IN SHIPS.
“And the Lord shall bring thee into Egypt again with ships” (ver. 68). Of those saved at Jerusalem, all who were over 17 years of age were sent to labor in the Egyptian mines, where the prisoners were kept at work day and night without intermission, or the slightest interval of sleep, till they fell down and died. “The vast numbers,” says Diodorus, “employed in these mines are bound in fetters and compelled to work day and night without intermission and without the least hope of escape. No attention is paid to their persons; they have not even a piece of rag to cover themselves; and so wretched is their condition that every one who witnesses it deplores the excessive misery they endure. No rest, no intermission from toil, are given either to the sick or maimed; neither the weakness of age nor woman’s infirmities are regarded; all are driven to their work with the lash, till, at last, overcome with the intolerable weight of their afflictions, they die in the midst of their toil.” It was a more terrible bondage than that from which God had freed their fathers. Besides these, vast multitudes were sold into slavery. The markets were glutted, and the words were accomplished: “No man shall buy you” (ver. 68). 97,000, according to Josephus, were carried away captive from Jerusalem alone. This number was increased by a large part of the population of Judea and Galilee. Wherever resistance had been offered to the Roman arms, captivity was the mildest fate granted to the vanquished. On the suppression of the rising under Barcochebas in the next century all the horrors of the previous war were repeated. “They were reduced to slavery,” says Milman, “by thousands. There was a great fair held under a celebrated Terebinth, which tradition had consecrated as the very tree under which Abraham had pitched his tent. Thither his miserable children were brought in droves, and sold as cheap as horses. Others were carried away and sold at Gaza; others were transported to Egypt.”
This forms only a small part, however, of the prophetic description of those sufferings and calamities, which were to make that terrible time to be forever remembered as a time of judgment. One characteristic of the war was to be ITS SIEGES.
“He shall besiege thee in all thy gates, until thy high and fenced walls come down, wherein thou trustedst, throughout all thy land: and he shall besiege thee in all thy grates, throughout all thy land, which the Lord thy God giveth thee.” This was by no means an ordinary incident in Jewish warfare. The wars conducted by the Maccabees were wars of battles. They met their enemies in the field. The Jews pursued Cestius when he retreated from Jerusalem, and they made a disastrous attack on Ascalon, but with these exceptions the war was, as here described, a war of sieges. In previous struggles there had been battles, the names of which awoke memories of joy or sorrow in the breasts of the children of Israel, but now their story is the story of towns besieged and stormed. The names Jotapata, Japha, Tarichea, Gamala, Itabyrium, Gischala, Jerusalem, Herodion, Machaerus, Massada, which appear in the history of the campaigns, are the names, not of stricken fields, but of captured cities and fortresses. I repeat that this was not a necessary feature of the war. The armies of Israel might have been defeated on their plains or on their mountains, and the cities might, as a consequence of the defeat, have surrendered. But the contest is pictured as one of infatuation or despair. It is war to the death. The battle raged wherever there was a chance of resistance, and the Romans had to fight their way through the land step by step, reducing one stronghold after another. Even after Jerusalem had fallen, as fierce a stand was made at Machaerus and Massada. “He shall besiege thee in all thy gates throughout all thy land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.”
We may notice also what is said of
THE METHOD OF ATTACK.
“He shall besiege thee in all thy gates, until thy high and fenced walls come down, wherein thou trustedst.” Josephus describes the terrors of the Roman battering-ram. When it is “pulled backward,” he says, “by a great number of men with united forces, and then thrust forward by the same men with a mighty noise, it batters the walls with that iron part which is prominent: nor is there any tower so strong, nor walls so broad, that can resist any more than its first batteries, but all are forced to yield to it at last.” He describes its effects at Jotapata, where he commanded: “Now at the very first stroke of this engine the wall was shaken, and a terrible clamor was raised by the people within the city, as if they were already taken.” The result here, as everywhere besides, was that not only was a breach made and the city taken, but, in accordance with the orders of Vespasian, the city was “entirely demolished and all the fortifications burned down.” Their high and fenced walls came down wherein they trusted.
Then the prophecy presents a vivid picture of the sufferings of the people. They were to endure
THE EXTREMITIES OF FAMINE.
It was to be no ordinary tale of want and suffering, but one such that the ears of everyone that heard it should tingle. “Thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and thy daughters, which the Lord thy God hath given thee, in the siege and in the straitness wherewith thine enemies shall straiten thee. The man that is tender among you and very delicate, his eye shall be evil toward his brother, and toward the wife of his bosom, and toward the remnant of his children which he hath remaining: so that he will not give to any of them the flesh of his children whom he shall eat... The tender and delicate woman among you which would not adventure to set the sole of her foot upon the ground for delicateness and tenderness... she shall eat them (her children) for want of all things secretly” (Deut. 28:53-57). So closely was this terrible prediction fulfilled that history in this case seems but the echo of prophecy. “The famine was too hard,” says Josephus, “for all other passions,... insomuch that children pulled the very morsels that their fathers were eating out of their very mouths, and, what was still more to be pitied, so did the mothers do to their infants; and, when those that were most dear were perishing under their hands, they were not ashamed to take from them the very last drops that might preserve their lives.” And he tells, with evident reluctance (for he was still a Jew, and knew he was exposing the shame of his country to the eyes of Gentile readers), of a certain woman named Mary, “eminent for her family and her wealth” who by reason of the want of all things “in the siege and in the straitness,” “slew her son; and they roasted him, and ate the one half of him, and kept the other half by her concealed.”
They were also to be
“LEFT FEW IN NUMBER”
(Deut. 28:62). Summing up the numbers given by Josephus, it appears that 1,356,460 were slain and 101,700 carried away captive. But he only gives the number of prisoners in Jerusalem and two other places, and there were many losses which he omits, “besides the immense waste of life from massacre, famine, and disease, inseparable from such a war in almost every district.” This terrible total was swelled through insurrection and massacre in other parts of the Roman Empire, and was further increased by the atrocities perpetrated by the Romans in suppressing the outbreak under Barochebas. Of that “massacre the Rabbins tell frightful stories, but their horror is mitigated by their extravagance. More are said to have fallen at Bither than escaped with Moses from Egypt. The horses waded up to their bits in carnage. Blood flowed so copiously, that the stream carried stones weighing four pounds into the sea, according to their account, forty miles distant. The dead covered eighteen square miles, and the inhabitants of the adjacent regions had no need to manure their ground for seven years. Amore trustworthy authority, Dion Cassius, states that during the whole war the enormous number of 580,000 fell by the sword, not including those who perished by famine, disease, and fire. The whole of Judea was a desert; wolves and hyenas went howling along the streets of the desolate cities.”
But the predictions are not bounded by the judgments which marked the end of the Jewish nation in Palestine. They have also told their after story. We noticed in a former chapter the prophecy, that they should be swept from off the land which God had given them: “Ye shall be plucked from off the land whither thou goest in to possess it” (Deut. 28:63). It may be enough to remark now that, from the time of the Emperor Hadrian to the present, they have never been permitted to call that land their own. Men of every nationality and faith have been more at home in the ancient land of Israel than the despised and downtrodden Jew.
We proceed to follow their after history as it is depicted in prophecy, and we mark first of all
THEIR UNIVERSAL DISPERSION.
“And the Lord shall scatter thee among all peoples from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth” (Deut. 28:64); “And you will I scatter among the nations” (Lev. 26:33). These words have been so fully accomplished that the dispersion of the Jews has long been one of the commonplaces of history. The Jew is found in every land, from north to south, from east to west. Even today, accustomed as we are to the commingling of nationalities, the dispersion of Israel strikes us with astonishment. To no other nation would these words have applied. Can we explain how they have been so abundantly fulfilled in the fate of the one people of whom they were spoken? The fulfillments of other predictions have been far removed from the scope of our observation, and have not summoned us, so to speak, as God’s witnesses. But this touches us. It is a fulfillment in our own day, and in our own land. It is one which we have no need to search out and make ourselves acquainted with. It has been laid fully before us; it is among the thing we have long known. And now what is the testimony we have to offer? Is it not that the book which declared this from of old bears upon it here the Divine seal?
This, however, is only part of the picture. It was foretold that, though dispersed,
THEY SHOULD BE PRESERVED.
That a nation, deprived of its fatherland, wandering over all the earth without any home or rallying-place, deprived, too, as we shall immediately see, of the chief ceremonies and institutions of the religion which had been the main instrument in binding them together as a people—that a nation so placed should not be absorbed by the peoples among whom they sojourned, and should not disappear as a distinct and separate race, is contrary to reason and experience. In every other instance the uprooting of a people from their own land and the scattering of them among surrounding nations, have been followed by their extinction as a race. But the words which pronounced the judgment upon the Jew, said also, “And yet, for all that, when they be in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them, neither will I abhor them, to destroy them utterly, and to break My covenant with them; for I am the Lord their God” (Lev. 26:44). And here again the improbable, and therefore the utterly unforeseen, has happened. The Jews plucked up out of their own land, and scattered over the whole earth, have nevertheless been preserved. “Massacred by thousands, yet springing up again from their undying stock, the Jews appear at all times and in all regions. Their perpetuity, their national immortality, is at once the most curious problem to the political inquirer; to the religious man a subject of profound and awful admiration.”
The
SEPARATENESS,
which is such a marked characteristic of the Jewish people, was also clearly predicted. It has not always been the desire of Jews that it should continue. There were many in the time of Ezekiel, as well as afterward in the days of the Maccabees, who considered its perpetuation to be a mistake. God’s answer to the imagination of their hearts was this: “That which cometh into your mind shall not be at all; in that ye say, we will be as the nations, as the families of the countries, to serve wood and stone” (Ezek. 20:32). Another prediction, to which we shall again refer, represents Israel after the dispersion as a woman who had been an adulteress, but whom the prophet purchases and weds on the condition that she will no more transgress, but abide for him many days (Hos. 3:1-3). Neither their own proclivities to idolatry, nor the terrible constraint which was to be put upon them, would avail to blot out the distinctions which separated them from the nations among whom they sojourned. These predictions have been answered by what is one of the mightiest marvels of history. Rivers sometimes enter the sea in such volume and force that they cleave pathways for miles through the ocean bed. But this force is soon spent, and their waters, like those of meaner streams, have at last to commingle with the ocean. We can understand how the Jews might retain their national, or what in their case was the same, their religious, characteristics for a time. Customs, institutions, and beliefs, which had been established for ages, could not be forgotten in a day. But scattered, dispirited, in many cases enslaved, surrounded by strong temptations, and goaded by bitter and unrelenting persecution to cast away the faith of their fathers, they have overcome every opposing influence and disappointed every expectation. It is difficult to explain this result, and it was impossible to foresee it. What then of the words which proclaimed it from of old, which said that Israel should thus remain many days, and that, in spite of attempts even from within to heathenize the nation, it should not be “as the nations, as the families of the countries?”
And the story is told yet more fully. The word, which spoke God’s judgment upon their sin, foretold THEIR TREATMENT IN THE LANDS OF THEIR LONG SOJOURN. They were, for example, to be
COMPELLED TO POLLUTE THEMSELVES WITH IDOLATRY.
“The Lord shall scatter thee among all peoples, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth; and there thou shalt serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou nor thy fathers, even wood and stone” (Deut. 28:64). This doom had been laid upon them in the prediction which spoke of the earlier captivity: “The Lord shall bring thee and thy king which thou shalt set over thee unto a nation which thou hast not known, thou nor thy fathers; and there shalt thou serve other gods, wood and stone” (ver. 36). That prophecy was literally fulfilled when both king and people were removed to Babylon. But it will be noticed that while there is no mention of their king in the subsequent prediction, the one “nation” to which the Lord should bring them is exchanged for “all peoples from the one end of the earth unto the other end of the earth.” It is clear then that the second prophecy contemplates a different set of circumstances, when Israel would be without a king and the people should be scattered broadcast over the earth. Though the circumstances were to be changed, however, this doom was to be repeated. They were again to serve other gods. The prophecy was first fulfilled in the forfeiture of the Temple tax for the purposes of Roman idolatry. The Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus was destroyed by fire on the same day which witnessed the conflagration of the Temple of Jerusalem, and the half-shekel paid by every Jew, no matter where he resided, to support the Temple-service was allotted by the Roman Emperors to the rebuilding and adornment of the shrine of the Roman God. It was in vain the Jews refused to pay. Their resistance was severely punished, and they were compelled to take the money sacred to Jehovah and lay it, so to speak, upon the altar of Jove. The tax was long continued. But this was only an earnest of what lay before them. Neither the heathenism of the Roman Empire, nor that of the so-called Christianity whose priests succeeded to the lordship of the Roman conscience, knew anything of toleration; and we know that even till times comparatively recent, the persecution of this people has been continued. They have been compelled to worship the idols of Roman Catholic Christendom, gods of wood and stone which neither they nor their fathers had known.
It was also predicted that
THEY SHOULD HAVE NO REST.
“And among those nations shalt thou find no ease, and there shall be no rest for the sole of thy foot; but the Lord shall give thee there a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and pining of soul: and thy life shall hang in doubt before thee; and thou shalt fear night and day, and shalt have none assurance of thy life: in the morning thou shalt say, Would God it were even! and at even thou shalt say, Would God it were morning for the fear of thine heart which thou shalt fear, and for the sight of thine eyes which thou shalt see” (vv. 65-67). “And you will I scatter among the nations, and I will draw out a sword after you” (Lev. 26:33).
The tale which these words recall is, without exception, the most terrible and pathetic in human history. In the beginning of the second century they broke out into insurrection in Babylonia, Egypt, Cyrene, and Cyprus. The rebellion was suppressed with immense bloodshed. They were expelled from Cyprus, and were never after permitted to put a foot upon the island. If a Jew chanced to be wrecked upon its shores he was immediately put to death. It was said that in Egypt as many fell as originally escaped under Moses, namely, 600,000 men. To tell the story of their after persecutions we should have to write their history. They have had periods of rest, but these were only lulls in the storm. The hatred in which they were held was augmented, too, by their own madness. They assisted the Persians, for example, to capture Jerusalem in the beginning of the seventh century, and, after they had butchered their own Christian prisoners, they purchased those of the Persians that they might still further glut their revenge. All this recoiled upon themselves. We know how they suffered during the Crusades. Peter the Hermit was leading his hosts through Germany when the cry ran from lip to lip, “why march against the enemies of Christ when worse enemies are being left behind us!” Their fury was accordingly let loose against the Jews, who were everywhere along the route attacked, plundered, and massacred. Fifty years afterward a second storm broke upon the Jews of Germany, and fanatical mobs swept the cities of the Rhine, and renewed the former horrors. In the same country they suffered in every popular rising “No fanatic monk,” says Milman, “set the populace in commotion, no public calamity took place, no atrocious or extravagant report was propagated, but it fell upon the heads of this unhappy caste. In Germany the black plague raged in all its fury, and wild superstition charged the Jews, as elsewhere, with causing and aggravating the misery, and themselves enjoying a guilty comparative security amid the universal desolation. Fatal tumults were caused by the march of the Flagellants, a host of mad enthusiasts, who passed through the cities of Germany, preceded by a crucifix, and scourging their naked and bleeding backs as they went as a punishment for their own offenses and those of the Christian world. These fanatics atoned for, as they supposed, rather than aggravated, their sins against the God of Mercy, by plundering and murdering the Jews in Frankfort and other places. The same dark stories were industriously propagated, readily believed, and ferociously avenged, of fountains poisoned, children crucified, the Host stolen and outraged. The power of their liege lord and Emperor, recognized by the law of the Empire, even when exerted for their protection, was but slightly respected and feebly enforced, especially where every province and almost every city had or claimed an independent jurisdiction. Still, persecuted in one city they fled to another, and thus spread over the whole of Germany, Brunswick, Austria, Franconia, the Rhine Provinces, Silesia, Brandenburg, Bohemia, Lithuania, and Poland. Oppressed by the nobles, anathematized by the clergy, hated as rivals in trade by the burghers in commercial cities, despised and abhorred by the populace, their existence is known by the chronicle, rarely of protective edicts, more often of their massacres.” The light which afterward dawned on Christendom, brought, no doubt, alleviation for the lot of the Jew in Germany, as elsewhere, but the regulations of Frederick the Great, show of what cruel arbitrariness a philosophic statesman could be guilty even in the eighteenth century when the fate of the Jew was in question; and we still hear of the Juden-hetze—Jew-baiting—in that land of philosophy and freedom.
The story of the Jew in England is quite as terrible. They were tortured and robbed by king and nobles, and massacred by the populace. From 500 to 1,500 men with their wives and children perished in a rising in York in the twelfth century. At the end of the thirteenth century their whole property was confiscated, and they were expelled from the kingdom with circumstances of great barbarity. They were not re-admitted till the reign of Charles the Second. We have to repeat the same tale when we turn to France. For a brief period that country was a Paradise to the Jews. One of the two Mayors of Narbonne was always a Jew, and the Jewish quarter in Lyons was the principal part of the city. One of them was sent on an embassy by Charlemagne. They were physicians and ministers to nobles and princes, and the confidential advisers of Louis the Debonnaire. But their eminence and wealth only marked them out the more for after robbery and oppression. They were plundered and enslaved by the children of the nobles whom they had served. Philip Augustus robbed them of their effects and banished them from the kingdom. For a price they were allowed to return. They came back only to be entrapped. Louis VIII. annulled all interest on debts due to them, declared them to be attached to the soil, and assigned them as property to its lords.
In 1239 the mobs of Paris rose against them and committed frightful atrocities, which were imitated in other parts of the kingdom. They were finally banished from France at the end of the 14th century, a decree of exclusion which remained in force till 1794.
The story of their sufferings in Spain is more harrowing still; but we forbear. There has been again a lull, broken in recent years by the persecutions in Russia. The contempt and hatred with which the Jews are still regarded there and elsewhere on the continent are well known, and the trembling of heart of which the prophet spoke has not ceased even now.
Let me call attention in closing to another part of their story as told in prophecy. In the book of Hosea, to which we have already referred, we find these remarkable words: “The children of Israel shall abide many days without king, and without prince, and without sacrifice, and without pillar, and without ephod or teraphim” (3:4). We have here a prophetic description of some of THE SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS PECULIARITIES of the scattered Israelites. We have seen that the Jews were to continue, and that they were to be separate. That they were to be still further separated from the peoples among whom they were to sojourn is evident from this prediction in Hosea. Tempted sorely to turn aside to idolatry, and terribly persecuted because of their refusal, they were nevertheless to preserve their ancient faith: “Thou shalt abide for me many days; thou shalt not play the harlot” (Hos. 3:3). And now we are told that this separateness would be maintained by a community
DEPRIVED OF ANY CENTRAL GOVERNMENT
which might shield and guide them as a people: “The children of Israel shall abide many days without king and without prince,” The words have been fulfilled in spite of the strenuous efforts of the Jews to maintain among themselves some central authority. Within 60 years after the revolt under Barcochebas the Jews in the Roman Empire ranged themselves under the patriarch of Tiberias, while the Jews in the Persian dominions gave their allegiance to another of their number who bore the title, the Prince of the Captivity. Both sovereignties flourished for a time. The Patriarch was permitted to appoint ministers, to exercise religious authority, and to receive an annual contribution from the Jews scattered throughout the Empire. “Even now,” says Origen, “when the Jews are under the dominion of Rome, and pay the didrachma, how great, by the permission of Caesar, is the power of their Ethnarch! I myself, have been a witness that it is little less than that of a king. For they secretly pass judgments according to their law, and some are capitally condemned, not with open and acknowledged authority, but with the connivance of the Emperor.” The Prince of the Captivity assumed a still greater state. His installation was marked by great ceremony. The magnates of the people assembled in a magnificent chamber adorned with rich curtains, and the Prince was seated on a lofty throne He resided in a stately palace, and when he went to pay a visit to the sovereign a royal carriage was placed at his service. But the Patriarchate withered away and was brought to a close about 429. And the last Prince of the Captivity perished on the scaffold in the beginning of the eleventh century. An independent kingdom of the Jews, which had been established in Arabia Felix more than a century before the Christian Era, was overthrown by the Mohammedans in the seventh century With these perished every attempt to maintain sovereign authority among the Jews; and they have now been “many days without king and without prince.”
They were also to be
“WITHOUT SACRIFICE AND WITHOUT PILLAR.”
The patriarchs set up “pillars” here and there during their wanderings, and the expression “without pillar” no doubt signifies that Israel should be deprived even of the simplest and rudest holy place. How strange the words must have seemed to Israel, and how completely they have been fulfilled, I need not say. Since the destruction of the temple they have neither had sacrifice nor holy place, and for eighteen centuries their religion has continued, though deprived of all that seemed to give it expression and to ensure its permanency. They were also to remain
WITHOUT EPHOD OR TERAPHIM.
The ephod was used in the priestly ministrations, and specially in seeking to learn the mind of God. The teraphim appear to have been also used for the purpose of obtaining oracular responses. This part of the description, therefore, implied that the priestly office would cease in Israel, and that all attempts to obtain the direction of what we may call the living voice of God would be given over. In the destruction of Jerusalem and the subsequent troubles which fell upon Judea, the entire priesthood perished, and since that time there has been neither ephod nor teraphim in Israel. The Rabbi has taken the place of the priest, and the unpretentious and far-off worship of the synagogue has succeeded to the solemn service and the near access of the Temple. But behind all the wrath there is mercy. Judgment paves the way for blessing Hosea continues: “Afterward shall the children of Israel return, and seek the Lord their God, and David their King; and shall come with fear unto the Lord and to His goodness in the latter days” (Hos. 3:5). The fulfillment of the previous words tells that these last are also remembered, and that God’s arm, “though strong to smite, is also strong to save.”
CONCLUSION.
We began with the question, “What are we to believer—has it been answered? Let me remind the reader of two things. On one of them we are all agreed. No one can lift the vail which hides the future, and become the historian of the days that are yet to be. Not even the most experienced or the most
gifted can tell what will be the political position of any one of the leading countries of Europe at the end of the next Soo years or of the next century, nor paint the condition which its meanest hamlet will present when fifty years have passed away. Great as are the powers of the human intellect, they are limited on the side of the future by sharply defined and utterly impassable boundaries. No man can prophesy. That is one thing which we all admit to be beyond the possibility of question. The second point is that for the readers of these pages it is equally undeniable that Scripture not only contains, but abounds with, genuine prophecies. As our inquiry has proceeded what, in no offensive sense, we may call skeptical explanations have broken down. The predictions were not written after the events, for our case is founded only upon prophecies which have been fulfilled at, or since, the beginning of the Christian era. Then their accomplishment cannot be explained by chance. The predictions are not fortunate guesses, arrows shot at a venture which have happened to hit. The fulfillments are too many, the prophetic descriptions too clear and too full, many of the details too striking and too minute, to admit of their being explained by any such theory. It is plainly impossible to account in that way for the prophetic pictures of Egypt, of Judea and the Jews, of the world’s history, of Christ and His work. But, if these predictions are not due to after-knowledge or to chance, there is only one explanation left. They are the result of foreknowledge. They tell of thought which holds all generations, past and future, in its grasp, and of purpose, which, perhaps, like the mightier harvests of earth, advances slowly to its fulfillment, but which is nevertheless, surely and fully accomplished. In a word, they reveal God. They prove His existence: they manifest Himself; and one cry of the human heart finds its answer there. The existence of God is not a dream. This life of ours is compassed about with a larger and grander. There is One for us to adore, to love, to lean upon.
Then as we read these predictions another form is revealed. It is a striking fact that the ages have not been suffered to forget the name of Jesus. Neither persecution, nor superstition, nor perversions of the truth, have been able to make the world forget the gospel story, or to silence those who have proclaimed the Redeemer’s name. We still look back to Bethlehem, to Nazareth, to Galilee, to Calvary, to Olivet. And just as we look back today, so patriarchs and prophets looked forward. We look back through the light of history: they looked forward through a light which anticipated that of history-the light of prophecy. We have seen how the Old Testament from first to last glows with this anticipation, and we have compared forecast with fulfillment. The very fact that it was the unceasing testimony of Scripture that a Son of Abraham, a Jew, should become a light to the Gentiles, and that this Light did rise and is shedding its beams upon us now, is enough to overwhelm doubt; and the picture of His character, of His sufferings, of the nature of His work for us, forms a foundation for our trust, which, till these things be explained away, nothing can shake. And here another cry of the heart is answered. There is a Mediator between God and man: One who is ours, and His: One who is for Him, and who is also for ourselves.
But when these points are settled, they reveal one need more. We desire nearness to our Father and our Redeemer: we thirst for likeness to them. In other words, we cry for light which will reveal them, and make plain our pathway. And need we search further for the answer? Is it not in that book, which is without a peer, and which is stamped as Divine by the impress of knowledge such as man has never boasted? He who has cared for every other want, and who has made need but a pathway into His fulness, has cared for this, the deepest and most clamant want of all. Let us not spurn the gift. Let us not neglect it. It is heaven’s light “whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day-star arise in your hearts.”