Children of the Old Testament Part 5

The tall, gloomy king now sent for David, the hero of the battle of Succoth, and leaning on his spear among his chiefs, Saul told the young shepherd of Bethlehem that he must not return any more to his father's house, for he was to be one of the chief captains of the army. And David was glad, for he loved fighting. When Jonathan, the king's son, saw the young shepherd standing daily among the chiefs in his father's tent, he took a strong liking for him; and as time pa.s.sed his soul was knit with David's, until he loved him as he loved himself. And the king was pleased that his son and David were such good friends.

One day Jonathan took David into his tent, and there the young men promised to be friends all their lives till death should part them.

Now David was very poor compared with the king's son, and had only the rough clothing of a herdsman, thick and strong, but not beautiful; so Jonathan took off his fine cloak, his gay tunic, his rich belt, and even his glittering sword and bow, and put them all upon David, giving them freely to him as a present. Then the king's son brought out other clothes and weapons, and dressed himself once more like a soldier-prince.

And when the young men came out of the tent into the sunshine, both dressed like princes, the people saw that they were as brothers; and the king saw it too, and thought that Jonathan was very foolish. But David was so strong and brave, and such a favourite with the tribesmen, that the king set him over a troop of young men; and whenever Saul went out to fight, David and his band went with him, and this greatly pleased the chiefs and the fighting-men of the army.

King Saul went on fighting with his old enemies the Philistines, who came up at certain seasons of the year to plunder the land, and had to be chased down the long valleys, and back into their walled towns again; but with David's help the king was now able to beat them as he had never done before. And each time they drove the Philistines down, the young men returned leaping, running, dancing, and showing off their skill and strength on the way; and the villagers would often come out to meet them, and rejoice also.

After one of these fights, as the tribesmen came back, with David riding beside the tall, dark king, the young women of the towns came out and danced before them on the road. Beating their tambourines, they shouted wild songs in praise of the fighting-men, singing and answering each other in turn after the manner of the Hebrews. King Saul listened, and his brows grew dark as he heard them praising his brave young captain more than himself.

"Saul hath slain his thousands," sweetly sang one band of maidens.

"And David his tens of thousands," answered another.

These girls little dreamed what harm they were doing with their light-hearted songs. David himself was pleased with the praise of the young women, as we might expect; but as the tall king rode on he grew more angry, saying to himself as he spurred forward his horse, "What more can he have but the kingdom itself?" And he watched David from that day forward, to see whether the young man was aiming at being king.

King Saul's sickness of mind returned from time to time, and day after day David stood before him, playing upon his harp and singing the king's praises; but now Saul would not listen. David's music did not make him well as it had before, but rather worse, for he was full of suspicion of his young chief, and hated the sight of him. But the king's friends thought David's music was the best thing to restore the king to health.

Now the dark-faced king was never without a weapon near his hand; and holding his long spear, he would sit and listen to the young harper, now pleased, now angry, for he sometimes liked David and sometimes hated him. Twice he seized a little spear and flung it at him, crying out that he would pin him to the wall; but his aim was bad. Perhaps he did not mean to harm him; but at all events David avoided the weapon and ran out.

The king in his sickness of mind next became afraid of his young captain. Wishing to have him out of his sight, he set him over a band of a thousand fighting-men, and bade him live with them at a distance.

But the men who were under David liked him more than ever.

King Saul now wished that David was dead, so fiercely did he hate him; but he did not think it wise to kill him himself, so he made a plan to get him killed. He offered him his daughter Merab for a wife, if he would go down the hills and fight the Philistines in their own country; and the crafty king said this, hoping that they would kill him.

Now David had no wish to marry Merab, but he loved fighting, so he went willingly, fought stoutly with the Philistines, and came back alive.

Then Saul broke his promise, and gave Merab to another man, who gave him a rich present, as was the custom when a king's daughter was wedded; and David was not sorry, for Michal, Merab's younger sister, loved the brave young captain, and he loved her in return.

Saul was pleased when he heard of this; for he hoped David would be willing to go into greater danger to win Michal as his wife. And he sent a messenger to tell David that he was well pleased with him, and would like him to marry Michal; and that as he was too poor to give the king a present, he would not ask him for one. But if he would kill one hundred Philistines within a certain time, that would stand for a present.

We are not told what Michal thought of this cruel bargain, for Saul hoped and believed that David would be killed, but David himself was well pleased. He and his young men went down the long valleys to the land of the Philistines, where they went about killing people, until they had slain two hundred; and before the appointed time was up David returned to Saul once more to tell him what he had done.

This was followed by days and nights of rejoicing among the young men of David's camp. The young women decked their hair with flowers, and danced to the sound of the timbrels, as they praised the beauty and goodness of Michal, the king's daughter; and the young men danced and shouted round the camp fires, praising David, the bridegroom, as a mighty man of valour. Saul was unwilling to give up Michal to the young captain; but he now feared him greatly, and could not break his promise. So David got the young princess Michal to be his wife; and after the death of Saul and Jonathan, who were both slain in battle, he became king of the Israelites, as Samuel, the prophet of the Lord, had foretold.

KING DAVID'S LITTLE BOY.

Sunshine fell upon the walls of King David's palace on Mount Zion. The trees in the royal gardens swayed in the breeze, and the doves fluttered up to the windows; but all was hushed and still within.

Black slaves glided to and fro with naked feet, and the women took off their tinkling armlets and talked in whispers; for in a little chamber, with shaded window and curtained door, a dark-eyed mother sat watching her child--the king's child--whose flushed cheeks showed that he was very ill and near to death.

Now when he heard that his boy was so ill, the king, who was now a man of middle age, threw himself upon the floor of his room in the bitterness of his grief and prayed to G.o.d to spare the life of the child.

His friends came and stood round and spoke to him, trying to comfort him; but he would not rise, nor let them raise him up, nor would he take any food. So he pa.s.sed the dark night in praying and in sorrow, while the mother watched the child by the light of a small lamp, and slaves stood outside the chamber door to keep silence.

The morning came, and sunshine fluttered on the trees in the king's gardens and on the hills round the town. Then the king asked for the child, but the answer was that he was no better; and all the people saw that King David's grief was very great, and they wondered. For the monarch had fought in many cruel battles, and beaten his enemies, and caused the death of many men and women, and even children, and he had done many cruel things in his lifetime.

He now had riches and honour and numerous children, and was the great king of Jerusalem, living in a palace, with servants and horses and gardens and fountains, and he had brought the golden ark of G.o.d to be near him in a purple tent on Mount Zion; but he had set his whole heart on this fair-haired child, and the fear that the little one might die took the joy out of everything.

The peac.o.c.ks on the walls and the doves on the roof missed the little child from the garden, where he used to come and feed them. For seven long days and seven longer nights the loving mother watched him as he lay getting slowly worse; and the king's grief was so great that he would not rise from the floor to eat by day or night, and when his slaves spoke to him he paid no heed and would not answer.

He refused to put on the fresh clothing they brought for him, or to wash in the bra.s.s basins of water held out to him, or to eat the food placed on the table at his side; but he lay on the floor of his little room groaning, and praying to G.o.d for the little one.

After a week of suffering the little one pa.s.sed away in the hushed room of the king's palace at Jerusalem, and the weeping mother was led away from the bedside of her dead child. Sorrowing friends went to tell the king in his chamber; but when they came to the door of his room they stopped and whispered, saying,--

"If he would not listen to us while the child yet lived, what will his grief be if we say that the boy is dead?"

The king heard them talking, and looking up, saw from their faces what had happened. Then he asked if the child was dead, and they told him, expecting that he would break out into wild grief; but he did not.

Rising from the floor, where he had lain so long, he asked for water; and his slaves washed him and brought clean, fresh clothing, and combed and oiled his hair.

He spoke to no one, but went out into the sunshine and the wind; and they watched to see what he would do, and where he would go. He did not linger among the shady walks of the king's garden or by the ponds where the red lilies grew and the swans shook out their white plumes in the sun.

His friends followed him as he went slowly out of the palace gardens and away to the great tent of purple and crimson, which he liked to call the House of G.o.d, on Mount Zion; and they stopped outside when he drew the rich curtains apart and went in. There in the darkness he knelt, and with hands upraised bowed his face to the ground before G.o.d as he poured out his soul in prayer.

After a time the king came out of the great tent again, and his friends and servants followed him as he returned to his palace. He had not yet spoken, and they could not understand why he did not weep and mourn for the child. He asked for food, and they wondered yet more as he ate from the dishes which the slaves brought him.

"What is this that thou doest?" asked one of his friends. "While the child lived thou didst weep for him, and wouldst take no food; and now that he is dead thou dost rise and eat."

They thought he had been only mourning as he lay for days on the floor; but he had been praying, and now he answered them,--

"While he was yet alive I fasted and wept; for I thought, 'Who knoweth whether G.o.d may not be merciful to me, and the child may live?' But now he is dead, and why should I fast? I cannot bring him back to life again. Some day I shall die and go to him, but he will not return to me."

Whether such thoughts as these comforted the mother's heart, we are not told; but the king himself tried to comfort her. After a time she had another little boy, and she called him Solomon, "the peaceful one," for mothers chose the names in those days. And as his nurse carried him about the garden, clad in a little blue robe with white ta.s.sels, the people said that he too was a beautiful child; and he grew up to be good and wise and handsome, and loved his mother dearly. And years afterwards this child became the great King Solomon, whom all men thought so wise.

ELIJAH AND THE WIDOW'S SON.

Ahab, the wicked King of Israel, was sitting in his house at Samaria, when suddenly there appeared before him a wild-looking man, with long hair and a cape of woolly sheepskin on his shoulders, his rough tunic girdled with a broad belt of leather, and thick sandals on his feet.

Elijah, the Prophet of G.o.d, was his name. Born and bred in the wild desert country, he now dwelt amid the hills and valleys of Gilead, across the river Jordan, and he had come to warn the king that trouble was in store for his kingdom.

"As G.o.d lives, before whom I stand," he said, with upraised hand, "there shall not be dew or rain for years, but according to my word."

And he said more, for this king was married to Jezebel, a wicked princess of another nation, who had got her husband to set up images and altars to Baal, a wooden idol, although he knew it was wrong.

Also, to please his wife, Ahab had killed the priests of G.o.d, and set up priests of Baal in their stead; and so when King Ahab heard the words of the wild prophet he was both angry and afraid.

Elijah did not wait for an answer, but fled out of the king's house and out of the city; for he knew that when King Ahab told his terrible wife of what he had said, she would send out men to capture him, dead or alive. She had tried to kill every prophet of G.o.d in the land, and thought indeed that she had done so; but Obadiah, the king's officer, had hidden one hundred in caves by the riverside, and kept them alive with bread and water.

So the wild prophet Elijah, with his sheepskin cape or mantle on his shoulders, fled away to the lonely country of rocks and bushes, wild beasts and robbers. But he had no fear, for he had no riches to lose, and he always carried a stout staff in his hand; and no one ever refused him shelter, for he was known everywhere as "the Man of G.o.d."

He fled eastwards, having received a message from G.o.d to go and hide in the deep valley of the Cherith, a small stream running between high banks down to the river Jordan--a place of caves where many ravens had their nests; and he had been told also that the black ravens would feed him there with the food they brought. There he hid himself from King Ahab's men, who were searching the country for him; and the ravens brought him food morning and evening, and he drank of the water of the brook until it dried up, for there was no rain.

When he could no longer live there he had another message from G.o.d, bidding him leave his hiding-place. Climbing the wooded hills of Galilee, he started to go down the other side to the town of Zarephath, by the seash.o.r.e, where he would be out of King Ahab's country. With his thick staff in his hand and his woolly mantle on his shoulders, his head shaded by a shawl hanging down each side of his face, he crossed the plains, and going up a cleft in the hills, pa.s.sed between them towards the coast--a journey of about seventy miles, that would take him at least four days, for he would have to keep out of sight of the king's men.

Sleeping now in a cave, now in a friendly tent, avoiding villages and bands of men, the wild prophet came to the fields outside Zarephath and waited; for the place was a walled town with a low stone archway, and gatekeepers to question all who came in.

Now as he loitered among the trees a poor woman came out to gather broken branches to kindle her fire, and the prophet called to her,--