Chapter I: Women of the Patriarchal Ages (3)

In Wilkinson's "Egypt," we have some interesting suggestions as to the life and training of the Egyptian priest, which go far to show what manner of education must have been given to Moses. The utmost purity of person was enjoined. Daily and nightly bathing of the whole person, a dress of pure linen, great exactness as to food, with strict dietetic regulations, were also a part of the training. The Egyptians were the fountains of physiological and medical knowledge to the nations of antiquity, and undoubtedly these studies were a part of the "wisdom" of the priests. Moses must also have passed through the lesser and the greater initiation into the mysteries of Egypt; in which were taught the unity of God, the immortality of the soul, and the retributions of a future life. Thus he had an opportunity of comparing that portion of the Divine teaching and traditions which had descended through Egypt, with the pure stream which had flowed down through the patriarchal families.

It thus appears that the Divine Being, in choosing the teacher and lawgiver to form his chosen nation, did not disdain the existing wisdom of the world up to that time. Moses had before him the results of all the world's experience in thought and culture. Egypt was the best there was to know, and he knew Egypt thoroughly. While, however, he often took suggestions from the ritual and philosophy of the Egyptians, the general bent of his institutes in reference to them was jealous and antagonistic.

At the end of such a training and such varied experience,--as priest, as general, as conqueror,--Moses returns to Egypt and meets again his sister, in whose heart the prophetic fire is still burning; and the sight of the oppression and misery of his people leads him to seek to interpose for their deliverance. The first act is the simple, unadvised movement of indignation at injustice; he sees a Hebrew slave writhing under the lash of an Egyptian; he kills the tyrant and delivers the slave. He next tries to rouse a national spirit of union among his people, and separates two who are fighting, with the words, "Ye are brethren, and should not contend." St. Stephen further interprets the heart of Moses at this crisis: "For he supposed that his brethren would have understood how that God by his hand would deliver them: but they understood not. But he that did his neighbor wrong thrust him away, saying, Who made thee a ruler and a judge over us? Wilt thou kill me as thou didst the Egyptian yesterday?" (Acts vii. 25, 27, 28.) According to Josephus, there were at this time envious and jealous plots hatching against Moses in the court of Pharaoh, and his life was threatened.

He fled to the land of Midian, where, with characteristic chivalry, his first act was to interfere for the protection of some women who were prevented by the brutality of the shepherd herdsmen from watering their flocks.

Still we see in him the protector of the weak and defenseless. In this case his interference procures for him the gratitude of the priest of the shepherd tribe, and the exiled Egyptian prince becomes a shepherd in the wilderness of Midian. He marries and settles down, apparently content with the life of a simple herdsman. This seems to have been one of those refluent tides to which natures of great sensibility are liable, after a short experience of the realities of life. At once ardent and tender, Moses had been ready to cast in his fortunes with his oppressed and suffering people; but he found them unwilling to listen to him, and unworthy of freedom. His heart sinks,--the grandeur of courts, military renown, the wisdom of Egypt, are all less in his eyes than even the reproach of a good cause; but he feels himself powerless and alone, rejected by the very people whom he came to serve. Like the Greater Prophet of whom he was the type, "He came unto his own, and his own received him not."

In sinking of heart and despair, the solitude of the wilderness, its loneliness and stern simplicity, are a refuge and rest to him. In the great calm of nature he draws near to Him who is invisible. What is most peculiar in the character of Moses, with all his advantages of beauty, rank, station, education, and military success, is a singular absence of self-esteem and self-reliance. When the God of his fathers appears in flaming fire and commissions him to go and lead forth his oppressed people, Moses shrinks from the position, and prays that it may be given to another. He is not eloquent; he says, he is of stammering speech and a slow tongue, and he prays the Lord to choose another. How often it happens that the work of the world is thus put upon men who shrink from it,--not from indolence, but from an exalted ideality, a high conception of the work to be done! Moses was dumb and stammering with low-minded, vulgar-natured men, as men who live high up in the radiant air of the nobler feelings often are. How bring his great thoughts and purer feelings down to their conceptions? He must have a spokesman, and evidently regards his brother Aaron as better fitted to take the lead than himself.

Aaron seems to be a specimen of that class of men--facile, sympathetic, easily moved, and with a ready gift of words--whom greater natures often admire for a facility and fluency which their very greatness denies to them. And yet it is this Aaron who, when Moses had been more than a month absent on the mount, was carried away by the demand of the people to make them a visible god; and who, if his brother had not cast himself down in agony of intercession, would have been swept away by the Divine anger.

In the great scene of the national deliverance, after the passage of the Red Sea, behold Moses and Miriam once more reunited in a grand act of national triumph! A solemn procession goes forth on the shores of the sea, and Moses leads the psalm of thanksgiving. "And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances. And Miriam answered them, saying, Sing ye to the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea." The solemn union of man and woman in this great public act of worship and thanksgiving, which inaugurated a free nation, is indicative of the equality given to women by the Divine Being in all that pertains to the spiritual and immortal. "On your sons and _your daughters_," says the prophet Joel, "I will pour out of my spirit, and _they_ shall prophesy"; and the same passage is quoted by St. Peter as expressive of the genius of the opening Christian dispensation. Thus we find at the opening of the Mosaic, as well as the Christian dispensation, this announcement of the equality of the sexes in their spiritual nature.

Many circumstances make it probable that as Moses and Miriam unitedly led the devotions of the people on this most solemn of national festivals, so they continued to be united in administrative station during that important period when the national code of laws and religious ritual were being crystallized and consolidated. We infer from a passage in the prophet Micah,[3] that it was not in mere brotherly fondness that Moses would have consulted this sister, who had been to him as a mother, but that she was understood to be one of the divinely appointed leaders of the people, and that he was thus justified in leaning upon her for counsel.

[3] Micah, who prophesied in the reign of Hezekiah, represents the
Divine Being as thus addressing his people: "I brought thee up
out of the land of Egypt; I sent before thee _Moses and Aaron and
Miriam_" (Micah vi. 4). This is an indorsement more direct than any
other prophetess ever received.

Moses was distinguished above all men we read of in history by a singular absence of egoism. He was like a mother in the midst of the great people whose sins, infirmities, and sorrows he bore upon his heart with scarcely a consciousness of self. He had no personal interests. He was a man so lowly and gentle of demeanor that all his associates felt free to advise him. Thus his father-in-law, Jethro, visiting him in the wilderness, expresses himself with perfect freedom in regard to the excessive toil he is undergoing in the care of the people, and suggests the appointment of elders who should share the work of management. The eighteenth chapter of Exodus is a beautiful picture of the character and demeanor of Moses towards his father-in-law, and of his meek readiness to take advice. It appears that in all the long, laborious journey through the wilderness, Moses felt the burden and the responsibility altogether more than the honor, and there is a despairing freedom in the complaints he sometimes pours out to his God. Thus in one of the periods of national discontent, when the people were all "weeping and murmuring every man in his tent door," Moses says, "Wherefore hast thou afflicted thy servant? and why have I not found favor in thine eyes, that thou layest the burden of all this people upon me? Have I conceived all this people,--have I begotten them, that thou shouldst say, Carry them in thy bosom as a nursing father beareth the sucking child, unto the land which thou swarest unto their fathers? I am not able to bear all this people alone, because it is too heavy for me. And if thou deal thus with me, kill me, I pray thee, out of hand, if I have found favor in thy sight; and let me not see my wretchedness." The answer to this prayer is the appointment of seventy elders, under the care of God, to be sharers in the responsibilities of Moses. This division of responsibility seems to have relieved Moses, and he had not a thought of divided honor, though it at once occurred to others with regard to him. When the gift of prophecy descended upon some of these seventy elders, it seems to have been imagined by some that this honor would take from the dignity of Moses; and we are told (Num. xi. 28, 29), "Joshua, the son of Nun, the servant of Moses, one of his young men, answered and said, My lord Moses, forbid them. And Moses said unto him, Enviest thou for my sake? Would God that all the Lord's people were prophets!" If now we consider this singular meekness and unselfishness of Moses, we may easily see how it might be a temptation to an ambitious, self-asserting spirit to cross beyond the proper limit of advice and counsel into that of tyrannical dictation.

We have seen, in the few scenes where Miriam has appeared, that she had a peculiar, prompt self-assertion and ready positiveness which made leadership a necessity and a pleasure to her. She was a woman to court rather than shrink from responsibility, and to feel to the full all the personal dignity and glory which her rank and position gave her; and, accordingly, the sacred narrative, which conceals no fault, informs us how gradually these unwatched traits grew up into the very worst form of selfish ambition. After all the trials and sorrows of Moses, all the cabals and murmurings that wearied his soul and made him feel that life was a burden to him, we come at last to the severest trial of his life, when the sister and brother on whom he had leaned joined against him. The whole incident, recorded in Numbers xii., is most painful and most singular. "And Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses on account of an Ethiopian woman whom he had married." This is after the visit of his Midianite father-in-law, Jethro, who brought back to Moses his wife and two sons, from whom he had been long separated. It is supposed by some that this "woman of Cush" is the person referred to. If Moses had to this time been without a wife, he had been entirely devoted to his sister. Now another female influence comes in,--the wife of Moses may have felt disposed to assert her position among the women of Israel, and thus a broil may have arisen. One can easily imagine subjects of contention, and great vivacity of dissent, and the authority of Moses would naturally be referred to as the supreme one.

Miriam and Aaron join together to repudiate that authority, and set themselves up as equals. "And they said, Hath the Lord indeed spoken _only_ by Moses? Hath he not spoken also by _us_? And the Lord heard it. And the Lord spake suddenly to Moses and Aaron and Miriam, Come out ye three unto the tabernacle of the congregation. And they three came out. And the Lord came down in the pillar of cloud, and stood in the door of the tabernacle, and called forth Moses and Aaron and Miriam, and he said: Hear now my words. If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream. My servant Moses is not so, who is faithful in all my house. With him I will speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches, and the similitude of the Lord shall he behold. Wherefore, then, were ye not afraid to speak against my servant Moses? And the anger of the Lord was kindled, and the Lord departed from them, and the cloud departed from the tabernacle; and behold Miriam became leprous, white as snow; and Aaron looked upon Miriam, and behold she was leprous. And Aaron said to Moses, Alas, my lord, lay not this sin upon us, wherein we have done foolishly and wherein we have sinned. Let her not be as one dead, of whom the flesh is half consumed when he cometh out of his mother's womb. And Moses cried unto the Lord, saying, Heal her now, O Lord, I beseech thee." The answer given to Moses draws a strong simile from the customs of those desert tribes where the father holds almost the sacred place of a god in the family. If her own father had expressed towards her the utmost extreme of mingled indignation and loathing at her conduct, would she not be ashamed for a while! And the command is given that she be shut out from the camp for seven days.

It is evidence of the high position held by this woman, that the whole camp of Israel waited during those seven days, while she was suffering under this terrible rebuke. The severity of the rebuke and punishment which fell upon Miriam seems at first sight excessive. But we shall notice, in the whole line of the traditions with respect to the prophetic office, the most complete unselfishness is absolutely required. To use the prophetic gift in any manner for personal ambition or aggrandizement, was sacrilege. The prophet must be totally, absolutely without self. His divine gifts must never be used for any personal and individual purpose, even for the relief of utmost want. Thus the great prophets, Elijah and Elisha, gifted with miraculous power, wandered hungry in the desert, and waited to be fed by God. Thus Jesus, the Head of all the Prophets, when after wandering forty days he was an hungered, refused the suggestion to feed himself by his own miraculous power, and also the suggestion to glorify himself by a public display of that power.

Miriam, as we have seen, had naturally a great many of those personal traits which easily degenerate into selfish ambition. She was self-confident, energetic, and self-asserting by nature, and she had been associating with a brother whose peculiar unselfishness and disposition to prefer others in honor before himself had given full scope to her love of dictation. Undoubtedly, in most things her influence and her advice had been good, and there had been, in her leadership among the women of Israel, much that was valuable and admirable. But one of the most fearful possibilities in our human experience is the silent manner in which the divine essence exhales from our virtues and they become first faults and afterward sins. Sacred enthusiasms, solemn and awful trusts for noble purposes, may, before we know it, degenerate into mere sordid implements of personal ambition. In the solemn drama that has been represented in Scripture, the punishment that falls on the prophetess symbolizes this corruption. God departs from the selfish and self-seeking soul, and, with God, all spiritual life. The living, life-giving, inspired prophetess becomes a corrupt and corrupting leper. Such was the awful lesson spoken in this symbol of leprosy; and, while the gifted leader of Israel waited without the camp, the nation pondered it in silence.

One cannot but wonder at the apparent disproportion of the punishment upon Aaron. Yet, by careful observation, we shall find it to be a general fact in the Divine dealings, that the sins of weakness are less severely visited than the sins of strength. Aaron's was evidently one of those weak and yielding natures that are taken possession of by stronger ones, as absolutely as a child is by a grown man. His was one of those sympathetic organizations which cannot resist the force of stronger wills. All his sins are the sins of this kind of temperament. To suffer bitterly, and to repent deeply, is also essential to this nature; and in the punishment which fell on the sister who had tempted him, Aaron was more punished than in anything that could have befallen himself. There is utter anguish and misery in the cry which he utters when he sees his sister thus stricken.

There seems to have been a deep purpose in thus appointing to the priestly office a man peculiarly liable to the sins and errors of an excess of sympathy. The apostle says, that the proper idea of a priest was one "who could have compassion on the ignorant, and on them that are out of the way, for that he also is compassed with infirmity." Among men such humility is only acquired by bitter failures. At the same time a nature so soft and yielding could not be smitten like a stronger one without being utterly destroyed. Aaron appears to have been so really crushed and humbled by the blow which struck his sister that he suffered all of which he was capable. The whole office of the priest was one of confession and humiliation. In every symbol and every ceremony he expressed a sense of utmost unworthiness and need of a great expiation. It seems, therefore, in sympathy with the great and merciful design of such an office, that for its first incumbent should be chosen a man representing the infirmity rather than the strength of humanity. Our own experience in human nature is, that those who err from too sympathetic an organization, and a weak facility in receiving impressions from others, may yet have great hold on the affections of men, and be the most merciful counsellors of the sinful and tempted.

The great Leader of Israel, who proclaimed his name through Moses as forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, evidently fully forgave and restored both Miriam and Aaron, since he remained in the priestly office, and she is subsequently mentioned in Holy Writ as an ordained prophetess.

After this scene in the desert we lose sight of Miriam entirely, and are only reminded of her in one significant passage, where it is said to Israel, "Remember what the Lord thy God did to Miriam by the way, after ye were come forth from Egypt" (Deut. xxiv. 9). Her death is recorded, Numbers xx. 1. Josephus gives an account of her funeral obsequies, which were celebrated in the most solemn manner for thirty days; the same honor was shown to a woman endowed with the prophetic commission that was given to her brothers; and not only so, but, as late as the time of St. Jerome, the tomb of Miriam was shown as an object of veneration.

One thing in respect to the sacred and prophetic women of the Jewish race is peculiar. They were uniformly, so far as appears, married women and mothers of families, and not like the vestal virgins of antiquity, set apart from the usual family duties of women. Josephus mentions familiarly the husband of Miriam as being Hur, the well-known companion and assistant of Moses on a certain public occasion. He also refers to Bezaleel, one of the architects who assisted in the erection of the tabernacle, as her grandson. We shall find, by subsequent examination of the lives of prophetic women who were called to be leaders in Israel, that they came from the bosom of the family, and were literally, as well as metaphorically, mothers in Israel. In the same year that Miriam died, Aaron, her brother, was also laid to rest, and, of the three, Moses remained alone.

It is remarkable that while Jewish tradition regarded Miriam with such veneration, while we see her spoken of in Holy Writ as a divinely appointed leader, yet there are none of her writings transmitted to us, as in the case of other and less revered prophetesses. The record of her fault and its punishment is given with the frankness with which the Bible narrates the failings of the very best; and, after that, nothing further is said. But it is evident that that one fault neither shook her brother's love nor the regard of the nation for her. Josephus expressly mentions that the solemn funeral honors which were shown her, and which held the nation as mourners for thirty days, were ordered and conducted by Moses, who thus expressed his love and veneration for the sister who watched his infancy and shared his labors. The national reverence for Miriam is shown in the Rabbinic tradition, that, on account of her courage and devotion in saving her brother's life at the Nile, a spring of living water, of which the people drank, always followed her footsteps through her wanderings in the wilderness. On her death the spring became dry. No more touching proof of a nation's affectionate memory can be given than a legend like this. Is it not in a measure true of every noble, motherly woman?

Yet, like many of her sex who have watched the cradle of great men, and been their guardians in infancy and their confidential counsellors in maturity, Miriam is known by _Moses_ more than by herself.

As sunshine reappears in the forms of the plants and flowers it has stimulated into existence, so much of the power of noble women appears, not in themselves, but in the men who are gradually molded and modified by them. It was a worthy mission of a prophetess to form a lawgiver. We cannot but feel that from the motherly heart of this sister, associated with him in the prophetic office, Moses must have gained much of that peculiar knowledge of the needs and wants and feelings of women which in so many instances shaped his administration.

The law which protected the children of an unbeloved wife from a husband's partiality, the law which secured so much delicacy and consideration to a captive woman, the law which secured the marriage-rights of the purchased slave and forbade making merchandise of her, the law which gave to the newly married wife the whole of the first year of her husband's time and attention, are specimens of what we mean when we say that the influence of a noble-hearted woman passed into the laws of Moses. No man could be more chivalric or more ready to protect, but it required a woman's heart to show where protection was most needed, and we see in all these minute guardings of family life why the Divine Being speaks of a woman as being divinely associated with the great lawgiver: "I sent before you Moses and Aaron and Miriam."

Thus a noble womanly influence passed through Moses into permanent institutions. The nation identified her with the MAN who was their glory, and Miriam became immortal in Moses.

DEBORAH THE PROPHETESS.

The Book of Judges is the record of a period which may be called the Dark Ages of the Jewish Church, even as the mediæval days were called the Dark Ages of Christianity. In both cases, a new system of purity and righteousness, wholly in advance of anything the world had ever before known, had been inaugurated by the visible power of God,--the system of Moses, and the system of Christ. But these pure systems seem, in each case, to have been allowed to struggle their own way through the mass of human ignorance and sin. The ideal policy of Moses was that of an ultra-democratic community, so arranged that perforce there must be liberty, fraternity, and equality. There was no chance for overgrown riches or abject poverty. Landed property was equally divided in the outset, and a homestead allowed to each family. Real estate could not be alienated from a family for more than a generation; after that period, it returned again to its original possessor. The supreme law of the land was love. Love, first, to the God and Father, the invisible head of all; and secondly, towards the neighbor, whether a Jewish brother or a foreigner and stranger. The poor, the weak, the enslaved, the old, the deaf, the blind, were protected by solemn and specific enactments. The person of woman was hedged about by restraints and ordinances which raised her above the degradation of sensuality to the honored position of wife and mother. Motherhood was exalted into special honor, and named as equal with fatherhood in the eye of God. "Ye shall fear every man _his mother_ and his father, and keep my Sabbaths: I am the Lord." (Lev. xix. 3.)

Refinement of feeling, personal cleanliness, self-restraint, order, and purity were taught by a system of ordinances and observances, which were intertwined through all the affairs of life, so that the Jew who lived up to his law must of necessity rise to a noble manhood. But this system, so ideally perfect, encountered an age of darkness. Like all beautiful ideals, the theocratic republic of Moses suffered under the handling of coarse human fingers. Without printed books or printing, or any of the thousand modern means of perpetuating ideas, the Jews were constantly tempted to lapse into the customs of the heathen tribes around. The question whether Jehovah or Baal were God was kept open for discussion, and sometimes, for long periods, idolatry prevailed. Then came the subjugation and the miseries of a foreign yoke, and the words of Moses were fulfilled: "Because thou servedst not the Lord thy God, with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things, therefore shalt thou serve the enemy whom the Lord shall send against thee, in hunger and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things; and he shall put a yoke of iron on thy neck, till he have destroyed thee."

The history of the Jewish nation, in the Book of Judges, presents a succession of these periods of oppression, and of deliverance by a series of divinely inspired leaders, sent in answer to repentant prayers. It is entirely in keeping with the whole character of the Mosaic institutions, and the customs of the Jewish people, that one of these inspired deliverers should be a woman. We are not surprised at the familiar manner in which it is announced, as a thing quite in the natural order, that the chief magistrate of the Jewish nation, for the time being, was a woman divinely ordained and gifted. Thus the story is introduced:--

"And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord when Ehud was dead, and the Lord sold them into the hands of Jabin, King of Canaan, that reigned in Hasor, the captain of whose host was Sisera, which dwelt in Harosheth of the Gentiles. And the children of Israel cried unto the Lord; for he had nine hundred chariots of iron, and twenty years he mightily oppressed the children of Israel. And Deborah, the prophetess, the wife of Lapidoth, she judged Israel at that time. And she dwelt under the palm-tree of Deborah, between Ramah and Bethel, in Mount Ephraim, and the children of Israel came up to her for judgment. And she sent and called Barak, the son of Abinoam, and said unto him: Hath not the Lord God of Israel said, Go draw towards Mount Tabor, and take with thee ten thousand men of the children of Zebulun and the children of Naphtali? And I will draw unto thee, at the river Kishon, Sisera, the captain of Jabin's army, with his chariots and his multitude, and I will deliver him into thy hands. And Barak said: If _thou_ wilt go with me, I will go; but if thou wilt not go with me, I will not go. And she said: I will surely go with thee; notwithstanding, the journey that thou takest shall not be for thine honor, for the Lord shall sell Sisera into the hand of a woman."

In all this we have a picture of the reverence and confidence with which, in those days, the inspired woman was regarded. The palm-tree which shaded her house becomes a historical monument, and is spoken of as a well-known object. The warlike leader of the nation comes to her submissively, listens to her message as to a divine oracle, and obeys. He dares not go up to battle without her, but if she will go he will follow her. The prophetess is a wife, but her husband is known to posterity only through her. Deborah was the wife of Lapidoth, and therefore Lapidoth is had in remembrance even down to our nineteenth century.

This class of prophetic and inspired women appear to have been the poets of their time. They were, doubtless, possessed of that fine ethereal organization, fit to rise into the higher regions of ecstasy, wherein the most exalted impressions and enthusiasms spring, as birds under tropic sunshine. The Jewish woman was intensely patriotic. She was a living, breathing impersonation of the spirit of her nation; and the hymn of victory chanted by Deborah, after the issue of the conflict, is one of the most spirited specimens of antique poetry. In order to sympathize with it fully, we must think of the condition of woman in those days, when under the heel of the oppressor. The barriers and protections which the laws of Moses threw around the Jewish women inspired in them a sense of self-respect and personal dignity which rendered the brutal outrages inflicted upon captives yet more intolerable. The law of Moses commanded the Jewish warrior who took a captive woman to respect her person and her womanhood. If he desired her, it must be as a lawful wife; and even as a husband he must not force himself at once upon her. He must bring her to his house, and allow her a month to reconcile herself to her captivity, before he took her to himself. But among the nations around, woman was the prey of whoever could seize and appropriate her.

The killing of Sisera by Jael has been exclaimed over by modern sentimentalists as something very shocking. But let us remember how the civilized world felt when, not long since, the Austrian tyrant Heynau outraged noble Hungarian and Italian women, subjecting them to brutal stripes and indignities. When the civilized world heard that he had been lynched by the brewers of London,--cuffed, and pommeled, and rolled in the dust--shouts of universal applause went up, and the verdict of society was, "Served him right." Deborah saw, in the tyrant thus overthrown, the ravisher and brutal tyrant of helpless women, and she extolled the spirit by which Jael had entrapped the ferocious beast, whom her woman's weakness could not otherwise have subdued.

There is a beautiful commentary on the song of Deborah in Herder's "Spirit of Hebrew Poetry." He gives a charming translation, to which we refer any one who wishes to study the oldest poem by a female author on record. The verse ascribed to Miriam seems to have been only the chorus of the song of Moses, and, for aught that appears, may have been composed by him; but this song of Deborah is of herself alone. It is one of the noblest expressions of devout patriotism in literature.

We subjoin a version of this poem, in which we have modified, in accordance with Herder, some passages of our ordinary translation.

"Praise ye Jehovah for the avenging of Israel,
When the people willingly offered themselves.
Hear, O ye kings; give ear, O ye princes.
I will sing praise to Jehovah;
I will praise Jehovah, God of Israel.
Jehovah, when thou wentest out from Seir,
When thou marchedst from Edom,
The earth trembled and the heavens dropped,
The clouds also poured down water."

The song now changes, to picture the miseries of an enslaved people, who were deprived of arms and weapons, and exposed at any hour and moment to the incursions of robbers and murderers:--

"In the days of Shamgar, the son of Anath,
In the days of Jael,
The highways were unoccupied,
And travelers walked through by-ways.
The inhabitants ceased from the villages,
Till I, Deborah, arose.
I arose a mother in Israel.
They went after strange gods;
Then came the war to their gates.
Was there then a shield or a spear
Among forty thousand in Israel?"

The theme then changes, to celebrate those whose patriotic bravery had redeemed their country:--

"My heart throbs to the governors of Israel
That offered themselves willingly among the people.
Bless ye Jehovah!
Speak, ye that ride on white asses,
Ye that sit in judgment, and ye that walk by the way,
They that are delivered from the noise of archers
In the place of drawing water,
There shall they rehearse the righteous acts of Jehovah,
His righteous acts towards the inhabitants of the villages.
Then shall the people go down to the gates.
Awake! awake! Deborah,
Awake! awake! utter a song!
Arise, Barak, and lead captivity captive,
Thou son of Abinoam!"

After this, another change: she reviews, with all a woman's fiery eloquence, the course which the tribes have taken in the contest, giving praise to the few courageous, self-sacrificing patriots, and casting arrows of satire and scorn on the cowardly and selfish. For then, as in our modern times, there were all sorts of men. There were those of the brave, imprudent, generous, "do-or-die" stamp, and there were the selfish conservatives, who only waited and talked. So she says:--

"It was but a small remnant that went forth against the mighty.
The people of Jehovah went with me against the mighty.
The march began with Ephraim,
The root of the army was from him;
With him didst thou come, Benjamin!
Out of Machir came down the leaders;
Out of Zebulun the marshals of forces;
And the princes of Issachar were with Deborah.
Issachar, the life-guard of Barak,
Sprang like a hind into the battle-field!"

It appears that the tribe of Reuben had only been roused so far as to _talk_ about the matter. They had been brought up to the point of an animated discussion whether they should help or not. The poetess thus jeers at them:--

"By the brooks of Reuben there were great talkings and inquiries.
Why abodest thou in thy sheepfolds, Reuben?
Was it to hear the bleating of the flocks?
By the brooks of Reuben were great talks [but nothing more].
Gilead, too, abode beyond Jordan;
And why did Dan remain in his ships?
Asher stayed on the sea-shore and remained in his harbor.
Zebulun and Naphtali risked their lives unto the death
In the high places of the field of battle."

Now comes the description of the battle. It appears that a sudden and violent rain-storm and an inundation helped to rout the enemy and gain the victory; and the poetess breaks forth:--

"The kings came and fought;
The kings of Canaan in Taanach, by the waters of Megiddo;
They brought away no treasure.
They fought; from heaven the stars in their courses
They fought against Sisera.
The river Kishon swept them down,
That ancient river, Kishon.
O my soul! walk forth with strength!
Then was the rattling of hoofs of horses!
They rushed back,--the horses of the mighty."

And now the solemn sound of a prophetic curse:--

"Curse ye Meroz, saith the angel of Jehovah,
Curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof,
Because they came not to the help of Jehovah,
To the help of Jehovah against the mighty!"

Then follows a burst of blessing on the woman who had slain the oppressor; in which we must remember, it is a woman driven to the last extreme of indignation at outrages practiced on her sex that thus rejoices. When the tiger who has slain helpless women and children is tracked to his lair, snared, and caught, a shout of exultation goes up; and there are men so cruel and brutal that even humanity rejoices in their destruction. There is something repulsive in the thought of the artifice and treachery that beguiled and betrayed the brigand chief. But woman cannot meet her destroyer in open, hand-to-hand conflict. She is thrown perforce on the weapons of physical weakness; and Deborah exults in the success of the artifice with all the warmth of her indignant soul.

"Blessed above women be Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite!
Blessed shall she be above women in the tent!
He asked water and she gave him milk;
She brought forth butter in a lordly dish.
She put her hand to the nail,
Her right hand to the workman's hammer.
With the hammer she smote Sisera,
She smote off his head.
When she had stricken through his temple,
At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay prostrate.
At her feet he bowed, he fell.
Where he bowed, there he fell down dead!"

The outrages on wives, mothers, and little children, during twenty years of oppression, gives energy to this blessing on the woman who dared to deliver.

By an exquisite touch of the poetess, we are reminded what must have been the fate of all Judæan women except for this nail of Jael.

"The mother of Sisera looked out at a window.
She cried through the lattice,
Why delay the wheels of his chariot?
Why tarries the rattle of his horse-hoofs?
Her wise ladies answered: yea, she spake herself.
Have they not won? Have they not divided the prey?
To every man a virgin or two;
To Sisera a prey of divers colors, of divers colors and gold
embroidery,
Meet for the necks of them that take the spoil."

In the reckoning of this haughty princess, a noble Judæan lady, with her gold embroideries and raiment of needle-work, is only an ornament meet for the neck of the conqueror,--a toy, to be paraded in triumph. The song now rises with one grand, solemn swell, like the roll of waves on the sea-shore:--

"So let all thine enemies perish, O Jehovah!
But let them that love thee shine forth as the sun in his strength."

And as this song dies away, so passes all mention of Deborah. No other fragment of poetry or song from her has come down from her age to us. This one song, like a rare fragment of some deep-sea flower, broken off by a storm of waters, has floated up to tell of her. We shall see, as we follow down the line of history, that women of this lofty poetic inspiration were the natural product of the Jewish laws and institutions. They grew out of them, as certain flowers grow out of certain soils. To this class belonged Hannah, the mother of Samuel, and Huldah, the prophetess, and, in the fullness of time, Mary, the mother of Jesus, whose _Magnificat_ was the earliest flower of the Christian era. Mary was prophetess and poet, the last and greatest of a long and noble line of women, in whom the finer feminine nature had been kindled into a divine medium of inspiration, and burst forth in poetry and song as in a natural language.

DELILAH THE DESTROYER.

The pictures of womanhood in the Bible are not confined to subjects of the better class.

There is always a shadow to light; and shadows are deep, intense, in proportion as light is vivid. There is in bad women a terrible energy of evil which lies over against the angelic and prophetic power given to them, as Hell against Heaven.

In the long struggles of the Divine Lawgiver with the idolatrous tendencies of man, the evil as well as the good influence of woman is recognized. There are a few representations of loathsome vice and impurity left in the sacred records, to show how utterly and hopelessly corrupt the nations had become whom the Jews were commanded to exterminate. Incurable licentiousness and unnatural vice had destroyed the family state, transformed religious services into orgies of lust, and made woman a corrupter, instead of a saviour. The idolatrous temples and groves and high places against which the prophets continually thunder were scenes of abominable vice and demoralization.

No danger of the Jewish race is more insisted on in sacred history and literature than the bad power of bad women, and the weakness of men in their hands. Whenever idolatry is introduced among them it is always largely owing to the arts and devices of heathen women.

The story of Samson seems to have been specially arranged as a warning in this regard. It is a picture drawn in such exaggerated colors and proportions that it might strike the lowest mind and be understood by the dullest. As we have spoken of the period of the Judges as corresponding to the Dark Ages of Christianity, so the story of Samson corresponds in some points with the mediæval history of St. Christopher. In both is presented the idea of a rugged animal nature, the impersonation of physical strength, without much moral element, but seized on and used by a divine impulse for a beneficent purpose. Samson had strength, and he used it to keep alive this sacerdotal nation, this race from whom were to spring the future apostles and prophets and teachers of our Christianity.

Like some unknown plant of rare flower and fruit, cast out to struggle in ungenial soil, nipped, stunted, browsed down by cattle, trodden down by wild beasts, the Jewish race, in the times of the Book of Judges showed no capability of producing such men as Isaiah and Paul and John, much less Jesus. Yet, humanly speaking, in this stock, now struggling for bare national existence, and constantly in danger of being trampled out, was contained the capacity of unfolding, through Divine culture, such heavenly blossoms as Jesus and his apostles.

In fact, then, the Christian religion, with all its possibilities of hope and happiness for the human race, lay at this period germinant, in seed form, in a crushed and struggling race. Hence the history of Samson; hence the reason why he who possessed scarcely a moral element of character is spoken of as under the guidance of the Spirit of the Lord. A blind impulse inspired him to fight for the protection of his nation against the barbarous tribes that threatened their destruction, and with this impulse came rushing floods of preternatural strength. With the history of this inspired giant is entwined that of a woman whose name has come to stand as a generic term for a class,--Delilah! It is astonishing with what wonderful dramatic vigor a few verses create before us this woman so vividly and so perfectly that she has been recognized from age to age.

Delilah! not the frail sinner falling through too much love; not the weak, downtrodden woman, the prey of man's superior force; but the terrible creature, artful and powerful, who triumphs over man, and uses man's passions for her own ends, without an answering throb of passion. As the strength of Samson lies in his hair, so the strength of Delilah lies in her hardness of heart. If she could love, her power would depart from her. Love brings weakness and tears that make the hand tremble and the eye dim. But she who cannot love is guarded at all points; _her_ hand never trembles, and no soft, fond weakness dims her eye so that she cannot see the exact spot where to strike. Delilah has her wants,--she wants money, she wants power,--and men are her instruments; she will make them her slaves to do her pleasure.

Samson, like the great class of men in whom physical strength predominates, appears to have been constitutionally good-natured and persuadable, with a heart particularly soft towards woman. He first falls in love with a Philistine woman whom he sees, surrendering almost without parley. His love is animal passion, with good-natured softness of temper; it is inconsiderate, insisting on immediate gratification. Though a Nazarite, vowed to the service of the Lord, yet happening to see this woman, he says forthwith: "I have seen a woman in Timnath, of the daughters of the Philistines; therefore get her for me for a wife. Then said his father and his mother, Is there never a woman of the daughters of thy people, that thou goest to take a Philistine woman to wife? But he said, Get her for me; for she pleaseth me well."

She is got; and then we find the strong man, through his passion for her, becoming the victim of the Philistines. He puts out a riddle for them to guess. "And they said to Samson's wife, Entice thy husband that he may declare unto us the riddle. And Samson's wife wept before him, and said, Thou dost but hate me, and lovest me not: thou hast put forth a riddle unto the children of my people and hast not told me. And she wept before him seven days, and on the seventh day he told her." A picture this of what has been done in kings' palaces and poor men's hovels ever since,--man's strength was overcome and made the tool of woman's weakness.

We have now a record of the way this wife was taken from him, and of the war he declared against the Philistines, and of exploits which caused him to be regarded as the champion of his nation by the Hebrews, and as a terror by his enemies. He holds them in check, and defends his people, through a course of years; and could he have ruled his own passions, he might have died victorious. The charms of a Philistine woman were stronger over the strong man than all the spears or swords of his enemies.

The rest of the story reads like an allegory, so exactly does it describe that unworthy subservience of man to his own passions, wherein bad women in all ages have fastened poisonous roots of power. The man is deceived and betrayed, with his eyes open, by a woman whom he does not respect, and who he can see is betraying him. The story is for all time. The temptress says: "How canst thou say, I love thee, when thy heart is not with me? Thou hast mocked me these three times, and hast not told me wherein thy great strength lieth. And it came to pass when she pressed him daily with her words, and urged him so that his soul was vexed to death, that he told her all his heart." Then Delilah runs at once to her employers. "She sent and called the lords of the Philistines, saying, Come up this once, he hath told me all his heart. And she made him sleep upon her knees; and called for a man, and bade him shave off the seven locks, and his strength went from him. And she said, The Philistines be upon thee, Samson, and he awoke and said, I will go out and shake myself, as at other times, and he wist not that the Lord was departed from him. But the Philistines took him, and put on him fetters of brass, and he did grind in their prison house."

Thus ignobly ends the career of a deliverer whose birth was promised to his parents by an angel, who was vowed to God, and had the gift of strength to redeem a nation. Under the wiles of an evil woman he lost all, and sunk lower than any slave into irredeemable servitude.

The legends of ancient history have their parallels. Hercules, the deliverer, made the scoff and slave of Omphale, and Antony, become the tool and scorn of Cleopatra, are but repetitions of the same story. Samson victorious, all-powerful, carrying the gates of Gaza on his back, the hope of his countrymen and the terror of his enemies; and Samson shorn, degraded, bound, eyeless, grinding in the prison-house of those he might have subdued,--such was the lesson given to the Jews of the power of the evil woman. And the story which has repeated itself from age to age, is repeating itself to-day. There are women on whose knees men sleep, to awaken shorn of manliness, to be seized, bound, blinded, and made to grind in unmanly servitude forever.

"She hath cast down many wounded,
Yea, many strong men hath she slain;
Her house is the way to Hell,
Going down to the chambers of Death."

JEPHTHA'S DAUGHTER.

This story, which has furnished so many themes for the poet and artist, belongs, like that of Samson, to the stormy and unsettled period of Jewish history which is covered by the Book of Judges.

Jephtha, an illegitimate son, is cast out by his brethren, goes off into a kind of border-land, and becomes, in that turbulent period, a leader of a somewhat powerful tribe.

These times of the Judges remind us forcibly, in some respects, of the chivalric ages. There was the same opportunity for an individual to rise to power by personal valor, and become an organizer and leader in society. A brave man was a nucleus around whom gathered others less brave, seeking protection, and the individual in time became a chieftain. The bravery of Jephtha was so great, and his power and consideration became such, that when his native land was invaded by the Ammonites, he was sent for by a solemn assembly of his people, and appointed their chief. Jephtha appears, from the story, to have been a straightforward, brave, generous, God-fearing man.

The story of his vow is briefly told. "And Jephtha vowed a vow unto the Lord and said, If thou wilt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into my hands, then it shall be that whatsoever cometh first out of my door to meet me, when I return, shall be the Lord's, and I will offer it as a whole offering unto the Lord." The vow was recorded, a great victory was given, and the record says, "And Jephtha came to Mizpah, unto his house, and behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels. She was his only child, and beside her he had neither son nor daughter. And it came to pass, when he saw her, that he rent his clothes, and said, Alas! my daughter, thou hast brought me very low; for I have opened my mouth to the Lord, and cannot go back. And she said, My father, if thou hast opened thy mouth to the Lord, do to me according to that which hath proceeded out of thy mouth; forasmuch as the Lord hath taken vengeance for thee of thine enemies, even the children of Ammon. And she said unto her father, Let this thing be done for me: Let me alone two months, that I may go up and down upon the mountains to bewail my virginity, I and my fellows. And he said, Go. And he sent her away for two months, and she went with her companions and bewailed her virginity upon the mountains. And it came to pass at the end of two months, that she returned to her father, who did with her according to his vow."

And what was that? The popular version generally has been that Jephtha killed his daughter, and offered her a burnt sacrifice. Josephus puts this interpretation upon it, saying that "he offered such an oblation as was neither conformable to the law nor acceptable to God; not weighing with himself what opinion the hearers would have of such a practice." A large and very learned and respectable body of commentators among the Jews, both ancient and modern, deny this interpretation, and, as appears to us, for the best of reasons.

Jephtha was a Jew, and human sacrifice was above all things abhorrent to the Jewish law and to the whole national feeling. There is full evidence, in other pictures of life and manners given in the Book of Judges, that in spite of the turbulence of the times, there were in the country many noble, God-fearing men and women who intelligently understood and practiced the wise and merciful system of Moses.