Notable Women of Olden Time Part 7

The princess of Israel must have been married at an early age, and she was long restrained by the character of Jehoshaphat from the public display of her wishes and inclinations. While he lived, Judah still retained the outward show of reverence for the G.o.d of Israel, and doubtless Athaliah often led her train to the temple of Jehovah; yet the infection of the character and principles of the daughter of Ahab was at work. A poisonous leaven spread through the royal family. The younger princes of Judah were contaminated; and when Jehoshaphat died, this influence of Athaliah was first manifest in the character of Jehoram. It is written of him that "he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel, after the house of Ahab, for the daughter of Ahab was his wife, and he did evil in the sight of the Lord."

He commenced his reign by the murder of his brethren, the sons of his father. Jehoshaphat had provided for all his sons, giving them wealth and appointing them to offices of trust, while he left the kingdom to Jehoram. And without pretext or apology, Jehoram put them all to death; and their families were involved, as we may well believe, in their ruin.

They were probably proclaimed outlaws, and then murdered wherever found, perhaps while dwelling in perfect security and in profound peace; and with them fell many of the other princes of Judah not so nearly connected with the royal family. The very commencement of his reign, the occasion of so much joyful festivity to the court, was thus marked by crimes which brought utter desolation to the families and terror to the hearts of the people of his kingdom; and we may well presume that the woman who afterwards proved herself so reckless and heaven-defying, prompted to this first crime. She who was herself so ready to commit deeds of blood would be quick to instigate others.

The whole reign of Jehoram was impious and disgraceful. He erected altars on all the hills of Judea, to draw his people into the worship of Baal and Ashtaroth; while he compelled the inhabitants of Jerusalem to join in the corrupt festivals and the abominable rites of this Syrian G.o.ddess.

Elijah, the prophet of Israel, was commissioned to reprove Jehoram, and to denounce the impending doom of his house. He was not ordered to present himself at the court of the King of Judah, but to write his message. "There came a writing to Jehoram;" and probably the King of Judah scoffed at the warning, and perhaps referred him to the unexecuted judgments denounced upon the house of Ahab, and to the present prosperity of the family, and the continued stability of the kingdom, as a proof of the fanatical delusion of the pretended prophets of the Lord.

Yet the doom of the guilty Jehoram was accomplished even before the woes denounced upon Jezebel were fulfilled. Tributary kingdoms revolted, and in vain he sought to bring them back to obedience. The Philistines and the Arabians made an incursion into Judah, and carried away all his wealth, while they took his family captive; and Jehoram, smitten by a most loathsome and painful disease, died. He was buried without the usual honours paid to royalty. His memory and his person were alike offensive.

Upon the accession of Ahaziah, the next king, the influence of Athaliah is soon recognised. He was the youngest and the only son not carried into captivity. It is said that "his mother's name was Athaliah, the daughter of Omri. He also walked in the way of the house of Ahab, for his mother was his counsellor to do wickedly,"--as wife and mother, alike unholy. "Wherefore he did evil in the sight of the Lord, like the house of Ahab, for they were his counsellors, after the death of his father, to his destruction."

The second son of Ahab had succeeded to the kingdom of Israel, and Jezebel was surrounded by all the splendours of royalty. Peace and prosperity still attended her family. The death of Naboth and his sons, and the denunciations of the prophet, were probably forgotten, or remembered only to be despised. The royal houses, so closely allied, maintained a familiar intercourse, and the King of Judah was on a visit of sympathy to the King of Israel, who was sick and wounded, when the rebellion of Jehu broke out. It came upon the house of Ahab like a hurricane: in the midst of security and of apparently profound peace, the storm swept over and destroyed them.

While the kings were in the palace of Israel, the rapid approach of a messenger awoke the curiosity rather than the apprehension of the King of Israel. With the rashness of a doomed man, he rushed upon his own destruction. As the messengers, whom he had sent to meet the approaching foes, returned not, the two kings hastened to meet the advancing troop.

And they met Jehu by the vineyard of Naboth, and there the King of Israel was slain, while the King of Judah fled, mortally wounded, to Megiddo, where he died. All that belonged to the house of Ahab in Israel perished in this hour of vengeance and righteous retribution. Jehu murdered those of the descendants of Jehoram who fell in his way; and Athaliah hastened to complete the fulfilment of the prophetic doom of her house by herself instigating the murder of all who remained of the royal family of Judah, although they were her own descendants! In her ruthless ambition she destroyed her grandchildren, that she might herself ascend the throne of Judah. She seems to have exulted in the blood and carnage which opened her way to royal power. Unmoved by the fate of her mother, with her sons and her brothers scarce cold in their untimely graves, by her cruel treachery she consummated the destruction of her family; and, stained with blood and polluted by crimes, she seated herself upon the throne of David, and usurped the inheritance of her children!

For eight years Athaliah held this usurped position. No compunctious visitings of conscience seem to have haunted her. She felt neither pity nor remorse. She may have well sustained her ill-gotten power while she resided amidst the pomp and pageantry of royalty. Her resolute despotism seems to have held her subjects in awe, and to have quelled them all into subjection. She had herself wrought the fulfilment of the doom of her race. As the last of Ahab's children, the sword of divine vengeance was suspended over her head, and in the time appointed it fell. She was to die the death of her house--a death of blood.

When the kings of Judah apostatized, while the individuals were punished, the race was spared. G.o.d still remembered his covenant with David; and, amid all the sin and desolation of Judah, the line of hereditary descent was unbroken. The root remained, and some scion worthy of the stock sprang from it.

When Athaliah was ingrafted on the stock of royal Judah, she so debased it, that it seemed needful to purify it by cutting off all the branches to the very root. Yet one was saved. And, as if to display his own power and grace, G.o.d is at times pleased to select from the families the most apostate and unholy, the instrument of his work and the trophy of his grace. So he made the daughter of Athaliah the nurse and the instructress of him who was to reform the kingdom of Judah.

Jehoshabeath, wife of the high-priest of the Lord, seems to have escaped the character and the doom of her family. Her's was a task most difficult. She was called to oppose the depravity of her mother and to thwart her b.l.o.o.d.y policy, and yet not to appear as her accuser and as hastening the execution of the Divine vengeance. Hard is it to the virtuous child to reprobate the character and course of the unholy parent, and yet preserve the reverence due to the relation. Jehoshabeath appears before us in a light which leaves a most favourable impression.

The saviour of the infant heir of Judah, the son of her brother, she cherished, instructed and guarded him. At the proper time the high-priest communicated the secret of the existence of the child to the princes of the land, and the son of Ahaziah was proclaimed king. No a.s.sault was made upon Athaliah. She rushed, like others of her family, upon her doom, as if she were infatuated. The tumult of the people, the triumphant strains of sacred and martial music, the clashing of the shields of the soldiers as they bore their king aloft, brought the first tidings of the existence of the last of her race to Athaliah.

The daughter of Jezebel was not easily daunted. Her courage rose in the hour of danger. She had purchased the throne at a price too great readily to relinquish the possession of it. She forced her way through the crowds who surrounded the Temple, and through the bands of soldiers who guarded the young king, until she confronted the child whose brow already bore the crown of Judah--a heavy weight for the infant king. In vain she rent her royal robes, and in vain she cried, "Treason!

Treason!" None adhered to her--none followed her--none perished with her. She died by the sword,

"And left a name to other times Link'd with no virtue, but a thousand crimes."

The history of modern nations is not without examples of similar evils entailed upon those who, professing themselves the heads of a purified church and a reformed faith, choose (from motives of pride or policy) to seek an alliance with the adherents of a dark, cruel, and persecuting superst.i.tion. Such a marriage precipitated the Stuarts from the throne of England, cost one king his life, and the family a kingdom; and the marriages of policy among princes, contravening the rules of G.o.d's word, are often followed by most disastrous results, and hasten the evils they are contracted to prevent.

In private life, also, the marriage of those who have renounced this world for a higher portion, with the worldly and the unG.o.dly, is generally a source of sin or of sorrow. There can be little congenial feeling between the spiritual and the earthly; and the servant of G.o.d who chooses a wife from the daughters of sin and the devotees of pleasure, places himself in a position of peculiar trial.

The spirit of the wife pervades the household. The husband may rule, but the wife influences. His voice is obeyed, but the wishes of the wife are consulted. Her friends are the welcome guests. His a.s.sociates gather around his board and claim his leisure hour, but her voice whispers to him in his retirement. She comes between G.o.d and his soul. The strongest of men was shorn of his might by the companion of his bosom; the wisest was led into foolishness and idolatry by the influence of a corrupt woman.

We are p.r.o.ne to think of the period to which we have been referring as one of barbarism, and of the nations of Israel and Judah as ignorant and uncivilized. Does it not seem as if the very heavens must have been shrouded and the course of nature changed during the perpetration of such b.l.o.o.d.y crimes? Does it not seem as if a natural darkness must have overspread the land? And yet it was not so. The sun shone in his brightness, the skies were as serene, the rain and the dew descended, the vine and the olive ripened, and the flowers shed forth their sweetness, and all the bustle and show of life went on, as at other times. The people were oppressed, but the courts of Israel and Judah were splendid and luxurious; and they doubtless boasted of their advancing refinement, even when they were sinking into corruption and depravity. It has ever been the policy of the monarchs who are guilty of the most atrocious crimes, who shrink from no acts of cruelty, to promote that despotism which may banish the remembrance of their enormities, and to dazzle and blind the eyes of their people by the glare and splendour which surrounds their court. And thus these guilty monarchs, by the patronage of the licentious festivals of heathen worship and the alluring rites of a corrupt religion, compelled their people to sin. They drowned the voice of conscience and prevented all reflection.

All history has shown us that, as nations have been verging to their ruin, they have yielded themselves to criminal excess and sensual indulgence; and the boasted periods of splendour and high refinement have been but the preludes to long seasons of national calamity or entire overthrow. Thus we may suppose it to have been with the ancient descendants of Israel. The courts were splendid and all the arts were patronized, while the thin veil of refinement was thrown over deeply corrupt manners. The people, departing from a holy faith, were sinking into a sullen debas.e.m.e.nt, or giving themselves to sensual indulgence and brutal ferocity.

Modern nations have followed in the footsteps of the ancient world. The same idols are still worshipped under other names--the same pa.s.sions rule the unholy heart.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

ESTHER.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

When Isaiah wrote, Babylon sat a queen among the nations, in the pride of pomp and power, in the full security of strength; yet he graphically depicted her desolation and foretold her present state, while he p.r.o.nounced her doom--a perpetual desolation. She shall never be rebuilt!

Her towers are fallen and her site marked by ruins.

The decline of Babylon had begun. It was certain, although slow. Years were to pa.s.s before the sentence should be fully executed. At the period, when the transactions recorded in the book of Esther took place, Shushan was the royal city of Persia. We are told that in this--the City of Lilies--the king Ahasuerus held a great feast, probably in celebration of some recent success, or in commemoration of some great national event. He a.s.sembled all the princes and n.o.bles of his vast empire, extending from Egypt to India, and gave a feast or succession of festivities, which continued for more than the third of a year.

All that oriental splendour and magnificence could contribute, all the expedients that eastern luxury could desire, to multiply the resources and to heighten the enjoyment of pleasure, were brought to aid the designs of the monarch and to add to the festivities of his court.

Yet motives of policy may have combined with the designs of pleasure. In all ages the despot has sought to blind and dazzle the people by a display of power and magnificence; and the princes and n.o.bles around, from distant provinces, have swelled the retinue of their attendants.

The amus.e.m.e.nts of monarchs and of courts have, through all varieties of manners and degrees of refinement, been much the same. The ancient Syrian or Persian, like the modern British or French monarch, had his royal parks and forests for hunting.

All nations have patronized the various trials of skill and strength, and the mimic fight has ever been an amus.e.m.e.nt where war was the great business of life. And the royal pageantry was doubtless intermingled with the religious ceremonies which allowed a license to criminal indulgence and at the same time offered a supposed expiation for crime.

While these employed the day, the games of chance, the wine, the music, the movements of the degraded dancing-girl, and the tricks of the buffoon and the jester, amused the late hours and varied the festive scenes of the night.

The feast was drawing to a close, and, at the termination of this long season of hilarity, Ahasuerus extended the pleasures of the occasion to all cla.s.ses of his subjects at Shushan.

He threw open his palaces and pleasure-grounds, his parks and gardens--always of vast extent around eastern palaces--and admitted all the citizens to a feast prepared for them. Tents had been erected within the precincts of the palace for the tables--and these tents were furnished with all the luxurious appendages of the east--with white and green and blue hangings, fastened with cords of fine linen and purple to silver rings and marble pillars; while the beds--the couches around the tables, against which the ancients reclined--were of gold and silver, upon a pavement of red and blue, and black and white marble; while they gave them to drink in vessels of gold. Until these last days the princes and n.o.bles alone had partic.i.p.ated in the festive scenes; but now, as we have said, all ranks were allowed to share, and the citizens of Shushan, subjects of Ahasuerus, thronged the palace and trod the royal gardens, and, entering the tents, enjoyed all that royalty could offer in ancient Persia--far surpa.s.sing in costly splendour and elegance the entertainments of modern courts. And surely the monarch must have had strong confidence in the security of his government and the loyalty of his people, as he thus from day to day, for successive days, flung open to them the recesses of his palace.

While the king thus feasted the men in the gardens and parks of the palace, Vashti, the queen, held a festival for the women within the secluded apartments appropriated to the female part of the royal household. She made them a feast within the house of Ahasuerus; and this queenly entertainment was conducted with all that regard for retirement and decorum which accords with Eastern manners. But whatever the amus.e.m.e.nts of the queen and her train of attendants, no rumours pa.s.sed the carefully guarded bounds of the women's apartments. At length the long season of pleasure came to a harmonious close. No outbreak of the people of Shushan, no rising of distant provinces, no plotting of high-born traitors had marred the festal pomp. Yet the season of pleasure is always a period of trial, and the seeds of remorse and repentance are almost invariably sown in the hours of gayety. Amid all this brightness, a dark cloud hung over Ahasuerus. On the seventh and last day, when the heart of the king was merry--when he had forgotten royalty dignity and personal decorum, by sitting too long at the festive board--excited by pride and vanity, and stimulated by wine, he resolved to dazzle the eyes of the people by presenting to their admiration a gem, brighter and more lovely than any which sparkled in the royal crown. To verify his loud boasts of her matchless charms, he sent his chamberlain to bid the queen array herself in that royal attire which befitted her state while it displayed her beauty and proclaimed her rank, and thus present herself, that the a.s.sembled mult.i.tudes might admire her loveliness and confess his happiness.

In Western lands, and in modern days, this command would convey no idea of shame or impropriety. The royal consort and her train of fair attendants have often graced the presence and shared the honours of the monarch and his court, and added refinement to luxury. But no offer could be more opposed to all ideas of Eastern delicacy and propriety--more degrading to the woman, or more offensive to the queen.

By thus unveiling herself before the crowd, she would sink herself to the level of the most unworthy of her s.e.x--while the violation of an established usage, in the time of such excitement and excess, might lead to the wildest disorder, and the queen might be exposed to every insult from crowds maddened by wine and ripe for disorder; while the monarch himself might not be able to protect her in a position so strange and unfitting.

The modesty of the woman and the dignity of the queen alike forbade compliance with the strange order--and Vashti might well presume that, in the hour of reflection, when his senses had returned, the monarch would thank her for a prudence which probably alone preserved her dignity and his honour.

But the pa.s.sions of the king were inflamed. His reason was blinded, and artful courtiers, from motives of intrigue or pique, stimulated his anger. There are ever those who stand ready to administer to unholy pa.s.sions, and who are watching for the fall of such as are high in place or favour. And still under the influence of wine, the rash monarch, by his own act, placed an inseparable barrier between himself and her whose charms had so lately been his proudest boast, and whose conduct had proved that she well deserved all honour and all affection. Vashti was separated from the king's favour; and flattering sycophants extolled the act of folly, as a measure which gave peace and security to every household in the realm. "All the wives shall give to their husbands honour, both to great and small." And thus the day closed by an edict that brought sorrow to many hearts, and desolation even to the gates of the palace.

The excitement was past. The hour of reflection arrived, and "the king remembered Vashti." His resentment was appeased. "He remembered what she had done, and what was decreed against her." That which had been magnified into a crime and had given such deep offence, was now seen to be an act of wisdom and prudence--the result of true modesty, and that deep affection which sought alone the love of her husband, which shrank from the admiration of the crowd, and which ventured to disobey rather than forfeit self-respect and womanly pride--preferring to lose his love rather than expose his honour. An immutable decree--his own--separated him from one lately so beloved, and so truly worthy of high honour.

The darkened and saddened aspect of the monarch declared his late repentance; and those who had precipitated the fall of the queen, to screen themselves, were prompt to devise methods of banishing the remembrance of the divorced Vashti. They would replace her by a new favourite. Yet, so surpa.s.sing was her loveliness, and so rare her beauty, that the courtiers could with difficulty find one whose charms might banish from memory the repudiated consort, until they sought through all the provinces of that vast empire for the fairest of the daughters of men.

Hada.s.sah, a daughter of Israel, a descendant of Benjamin, of the house of Kish, the family of Saul, first king of Israel, won the monarch's favour, and was promoted to the place of the disobedient but high-minded Vashti. Esther was an orphan, but she had been carefully guarded and instructed by her kinsman Mordecai; and while we are told that the maiden was exceeding fair, we may believe that her beauty was of a high order, stamped too by intellect and feeling, and that the soul which often sustained and impelled her in her trying exigencies, breathed through her features and animated her form. Yet Ahasuerus merely bowed to the fair shrine. He sought not to awaken the response of the soul that dwelt within.

When the daughter of Israel was placed upon the throne of Persia, and another royal feast proclaimed the triumph of Esther and the happiness of Ahasuerus, the king displayed his royal magnificence by the bestowal of gifts upon his favourites; and the name of Esther was blended with other and higher a.s.sociations, as, upon her elevation, the taxes of the burdened provinces were remitted and pardons granted to the condemned.

Mordecai, the relative who had supplied the place of parents to Esther, was, as we have said, of the house of Kish. Mordecai was the Jew rather than the Benjamite. His heart was devoted to his country. When the child of his adoption was taken to the palace, Mordecai displayed his wise forethought in cautioning her against making her parentage and kindred known. He had been as a father to her, and a deep interest in the orphan of his care led him, day by day, to watch the gate of the palace--to mingle with the attendants, that he might catch a view of her train or gather tidings of her welfare. And thus, unknown as the relative of the fair queen, or as especially interested in the king, Mordecai was enabled to detect and reveal a plot for the a.s.sa.s.sination of Ahasuerus.

Esther being informed of the plot, disclosed it to the king--the criminals were defeated and punished--but no reward was conferred upon Mordecai.

The pa.s.sion of Ahasuerus for his fair bride seems to have soon declined.

The fickle voluptuary sought new pleasures, and the bride so lately exalted to a throne was no longer an object of envy. Many bitter tears have been shed by the victims of family pride or state policy, when thus allied to greatness and splendour. The sacred rite has often been prost.i.tuted to purposes of ambition and selfishness, and has thus become a source of guilt and misery. Esther, in her elevation, may have shed as bitter tears as fell from Vashti in her banishment and disgrace.

Thus each state has its own trials and its own griefs--and it has its peculiar alleviations too. Perhaps the progress of the narrative will show us the source of that influence which seems early to have estranged Ahasuerus from his bride.

Among the courtiers of the king there was the descendant of a race long at variance with the Jews. The Amalekites had been the enemies of the Israelites from the infancy of the nation. When the tribes came up from Egypt, faint and weary in the desert, the Amalekites had fallen upon them and attempted to destroy them; and during a series of ages there had been a war of extermination between the races. Nor had Amalek been subjected until Saul was raised to the throne and Israel had become a kingdom.

When Israel and Judah had been destroyed or carried captive by the hosts of the a.s.syrians, the remaining Amalekites seem likewise to have been carried into the east, either as prisoners or allies. And now, from among all his courtiers, Ahasuerus had chosen, as his chief favourite and counsellor, Haman, the son of Hammedatha, a descendant of Agag--that king of Amalek who, as the prisoner of Saul, was condemned to death by Samuel, the judge of Israel. The descendant of a royal line and of an ancient race, Haman was as crafty as he was unprincipled and malignant, and his evil influence seems to have first drawn the king's favour from Esther. He did not know her lineage, but by plunging the king in every excess, by keeping all safe counsellors at a distance, he intended to increase his own influence and perpetuate his own power, while he was acc.u.mulating great wealth from the prodigality of his master and from the presents offered as bribes to obtain his favour.