Women in White Raiment,

BY

JOHN LEMLEY,

EDITOR OF

THE ZION’S WATCHMAN,

AND AUTHOR OF

“The Christ Lifted Up,” “Land of Sacred Story,”
“Wonders of Grace,” “Personal
Recollections,” Etc.

“They shall walk with me in white; for they shall be worthy, ... and shall be clothed in white raiment.”—Rev. iii: 4, 5.

THE FIRST EDITION.

Albany, New York,
1899.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1898, by
JOHN LEMLEY,
in the office of the Librarian at Washington.
All Rights Reserved.
CHARLES VAN BENTHUYSEN & SONS,
Printers, Electrotypers and Binders,
ALBANY, N. Y.

CONTENTS.

ILLUSTRATIONS.

INTRODUCTORY.

It has long been in our mind to write this book, in which we seek to set forth the beautiful lives of representative women of the Bible. There has been much written about prophets, kings and priests, about our Lord and His Apostles, about scenes, of different types of character, customs and manners of Oriental life, but so far as we know, nothing has been written about the womanhood of the Bible. We believe a study of these lovely Princesses of God will be both profitable and instructive.

That we may have a suitable background for our pen pictures of these Daughters in Israel, and also, by way of contrast, show what the Bible has done for womanhood, let us briefly take a glance into countries where the Bible has been a sealed book, for the position of women among the Hebrews has always afforded a pleasing contrast with that of their heathen sisters. The position of Jewish women is just what we would expect among a people who were indebted for their laws to the Creator.

It has always been Satan’s shrewdest trick to degrade motherhood, and to cause her to be treated with contempt, knowing that she it is who stands at the fountain head of the race, and her hand always shapes the life and forms the civilization, hence the universal oppression of womanhood in all heathen lands.

The effect of religion (for all nations worship something) upon the people affords overwhelming evidence of its origin. In all heathen lands the people are exceedingly religious. In India alone they worship 360,000,000 gods, but they know nothing about morality. Their religion offers no light in life and no hope in death. The condition of women in India is indescribable. If a man speaks of his wife he never says “wife,” but “family”; and if away, he never speaks of going home, but he is going to his house. There is no home life, as we look upon it, in all that heathen land. Women are considered by the Hindus as a thing that exists solely for their use. She is given away like a lifeless thing to the man who is to be her husband, but who does not consider her his equal. He is commanded by his religion to “enjoy her without attachment,” and never to love her or put his confidence in her. Some women are set apart religiously for the use of the men of all classes and castes. They are consecrated and “married” to the idols in the temples, and are brought up from their girlhood to live as prostitutes. Hindoo sacred law reaches its climax of cruelty and degradation in the rules it lays down for the control of a woman after her husband has died. She may be young and beautiful, she may belong to a wealthy and powerful family; it matters not; custom is as relentless as death in its weight of woe to crush her completely down.

One of the Hindoo sacred books says: “It is unlawful for any man to take a jewelless woman,” whose eyes are like the weeping cavi-flower; being deprived of her beloved husband, she is like a body deprived of the spirit. She may have only been a betrothed infant or a child of a few years. It makes no difference. The Shasters teach that if a widow burns herself alive on the funeral pile of her husband, even though he had killed a Brahmin, that most heinous of deeds, she expiates the crime. For long centuries widows have been a literal burnt offering for the redemption of husbands.

Another law is laid down after the following fashion: “On the death of their attached husbands, women must eat but once a day, must eschew betel and a spread mattress, must sleep on the ground, and continue to practice rigid mortification. Women who have put off glittering jewels of gold must discharge with alacrity the duties of devotion, and neglecting their persons, must feed on herbs and roots, so as barely to sustain life within the body. Let not a widow ever pronounce the name of another man.”

There are, in India, twenty-three millions of widows, of these fourteen thousand are baby widows under four years of age, and sixty thousand girl widows between five and nine years of age. Nearly one-fourth of the whole number of widows are young. Besides, there are many millions of deserted wives, whose condition is as bad, and in some cases worse, than that of the widows. The lives of many millions of these poor women are made so miserable that they prefer death to life, and thousands commit suicide yearly.

And all these helpless women have never heard the message of salvation from God’s Holy Word.

It so happens in these days of missionary work among the heathen that now and then the light of the Gospel finds its way into these benighted hearts. Such was the case of a Brahmin widow, who had lived in the home of her uncle, but, for a fancied offence, was beaten and turned into the street naked. She was a woman of commanding manner and appearance, such as few suffering widows possess. She was tall, elegant of bearing, and attractive. Her story, in short, is this: “I was married when only five years of age. I soon became a widow, and then my father and mother took care of me, though I was kept secure in their home. My father and mother died, and since I was fifteen years of age I have been with their relatives, who let me work in the fields and earn an honorable living. Then my mother’s own brother came along, and persuaded me to come to his house. I hoped for kindness, but I have been their slave from that day.”

When asked whether she had been led astray, she replied, “I might have been, and sat with jewels on my neck and arms, with a frontlet on my brow, and gems would have bedecked my ears had I yielded to the machinations of my uncle and the desires of his friends to betray me into a life of glittering slavery! Because I would not, I am in rags, and now turned homeless into the streets.”

Such is the suffering of women in India. And the saddest of all is, the only heaven they look for after this world, is a place where they can be their husband’s servants. Sad and terrible is their state!

The condition of womanhood in China is but little better. In fact she is unwelcome at her birth. If she is suffered to live, she is subjected to inhuman foot-binding. The feet are supposed to merit the poetical name of “golden lilies.” But how sad it is to discover that such a result is produced by indescribable torture, and that the part of the foot that is not seen is nothing but a mass of distorted or broken bones!

This binding process commences when the girl is about six years old. There is a Chinese proverb that says, “For every pair of bound feet has been shed a kong full of tears.” And yet, the most important part of a Chinese girl’s dress is her tiny shoe of colored silk or satin, most tastefully embroidered, with bright painted heels just peeping beneath the neat pantalets. Missionary ladies tell us how they themselves have seen three strong women holding a little girl by force to compel her to submit to this awful torture. It is not an uncommon thing for a mother to get up in the night and beat a poor child of seven or eight for keeping her awake by her stifled sobs from the terrible pain produced by the bandages. Through the weary summer days, instead of romping and enjoying the fresh air and sports with brothers, the poor little girl will lie, restless with fever, upon her little couch, and when the cold nights of winter come, she is afraid to wrap her limbs in any covering, else they grow warm and the suffering becomes more intense.

At last the much desired smallness is obtained, the feet are deformed for life and she is greatly admired by all her friends. If she is not betrothed until she is ten or more years of age, one of the first questions is, “What is the length of her feet?” Three inches is the correct length of the fashionable shoe, but some are only two.

But this has respect only to those girl-babies who are suffered to live. The horrors of heathenism permits the new-born girl baby to be disposed of. There is outside the city walls of Fuchan, China, a structure of stone without doors, but with two window-like openings. This well-known and frequently visited building is the baby tower—not a day nursery for the care of the infants of the poor, not an orphanage where the little waifs are clothed and fed and educated, but a place where girl-babies can be thrown and left to die. In larger cities, such as Pekin, carts pass through the streets at an early hour of the day and gather up the babies abandoned to the streets by their inhuman parents.

Women in the common walks of life are the slaves of their husbands. The wife rises early in the morning, does the housework for the day, and prepares the morning meal for her husband, who always eats it by himself while she serves. Having finished her own meal, after her husband has eaten his, she cleans up the dishes, and then hastens to the fields to toil all day under a burning sun. The husband, meanwhile, spends the day in sleeping, or gambling, or when opportunity occurs, in thieving or marauding. Sometimes, frequently indeed, the women are carried off by other tribes while out in the fields, and are only released at a price, varying with the excellencies of the woman in question. And yet, if any one were to offer to relieve these women of their work, their offer would be rejected, for this life of toil is what they have been brought up to and trained in, and they know of nothing better. They especially like to be in the fields by themselves, for then they are alone, and are free from the hated presence of man (curiously enough they are said to hate their men), and surely no one would grudge them their liberty.

In dark Africa, where lives one-sixth of the heathen population of the globe, human sacrifice is something awful. And the saddest of all is, the victims are mostly from the ranks of women. Of the languages and dialects, five hundred have never been reduced to writing. What scenes of horrors are locked up in oblivion among these wild tribes of that dark land. Almost daily, the numerous wives of the rulers, as they die, are buried alive in their graves, being compelled to hold the dead bodies of their husbands on their laps, until they themselves are relieved by death. The witch doctors annually slay thousands of innocent women. Among the Masai, a woman has a market value equal to five glass beads, while a cow is worth ten of the same.

Woman’s life in the harem of the Mohammedan is but little better. The code of morals is a very loose one, and the degradation of women beyond our pen to describe. The women of the harems are divided into three classes: The Rhadines, or legitimate wives. The Ikbals, or favorites, out of whose ranks the Rhadines are chosen, and Ghienzdes or “women who are pleasing to the eye of their lord,” and who have the chance to advance to the rank of Ikbals. If the wife of a Turkoman asks his permission to go, and he says, “go,” without adding, “come back,” they are divorced. If he becomes dissatisfied with the most trifling acts of his wife, and tears the veil from her face, that constitutes a divorce. In the streets, if a husband meets one of his numerous wives, he never recognizes her, or ever introduces her to a male friend. A Mohammedan never inquires after the female portion of the household of his friend. The system is full of cruelty and despotism. In Mohammedan countries women suffer from the low opinion held of them by men. The prophet said: “I stood at the gates of hell, and lo! most of its inhabitants were women!” And yet, strange to say, while the religion of Islam denies that woman has a soul, it teaches a sensual paradise.

In fact, in all nations where the Bible is unknown, woman is the slave of man’s lust. She is a drudge or a toy, whose reign is as short-lived as her personal charms. She may not be trusted out of sight of her guardians, though the masculine members of the family are anything but choice in their associations. Indeed, in some countries a woman can not visit even her own mother without being carried in a palanquin or guarded by slaves.

One of the strangest, saddest sights we ever saw was at Mersina, in the Levant. Passing a field one day there were six native women (noble in form and of beautiful olive complexion) hoeing what looked to be cucumbers, while a step or two in their rear stood a negro, a full-blooded Nubian, with a long stick, like an ox-goad, in his hand, evidently their master.

In Ceylon, when it was proposed by a missionary to teach women to read, one native said to another, “What do you think that man is talking about? He wants to teach the women to read! He’ll be wanting to teach the cows next!”

Such is the disrespect in which women are held by heathen people. Five words describe the biography of women in all lands where the Bible is not known: Unwelcomed at birth; untaught in childhood; uncherished in widowhood; unprotected in old age; unlamented when dead.

Such, in brief, is the treatment of womanhood in lands where the Bible is a sealed book, and truly, in comparison with their heathen sisters, women living under the blessed teachings of Christianity are “clothed in white raiment.”

But, perhaps, we ought not to think it so very strange that men who dishonor God, and who want Him blotted out of their thoughts, should abuse God’s best gift to man. This much we know, that God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, “Have dominion over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” When the Pharisees, in their malignity, framed the question, “Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?”—a problem beset with many difficulties, our Lord very promptly asked a counter question, “What did Moses command you?” Instead of entering into their vexed question, He appeals at once to the law and the testimony, and requires them to recite the provision made by Moses for such cases; not as settling the difficulties, but as presenting the true status quaestionis, which was not what the Scribes taught or the Pharisees practiced, but what Moses meant and God permitted. They said, “Moses suffered to write a bill of divorcement, and to put her away.” Quickly Jesus replied, “For the hardness of your heart he wrote you this precept.” The substance of our Saviour’s answer was, Moses gave you no positive command in the case; he would not make a law directly opposite to the law of God; but Moses saw the wantonness and wickedness of your hearts, that you would turn away your wives without any just and warrantable cause; and to restrain your extravagancies of cruelty to your wives, or disorderly turning of them off upon any occasion, he made a law that none should put away his wife but upon a legal cognizance of the cause and giving her a bill of divorce. “From the beginning,” that is, in the very act of creation, God embodied the idea of equality. Capricious divorce is a violation of natural law.

What a beautiful picture Solomon gives us of womanhood. “Her price,” he says, “is far above rubies. The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil. She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life. She seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands.” After the grace of God in the soul, a good wife, one planned on the Divine model, is the Lord’s best gift. To the husband who has such a woman to stand at the head of his home, nothing can measure her value. His heart rests safely in her integrity. He has no need to add to his wealth by spoils, for she will do him good and not evil all the days of his life. She is industrious. She not only works into comfort the wool and flax that are at hand; she seeks to add to her store from the outside world. She does not ask to be kept in idleness. She worketh willingly with her hands. Not content to be a consumer, she becomes a producer. Not satisfied with home production, she brings suitable comforts and luxuries from afar into her home. She is careful in the use of her time. She is not feebly self-indulgent. She riseth while it is yet night to look after her domestic affairs. She is a business woman, knowing the laws that underlie the rise and fall of real estate. She considereth a field, and buyeth it. Then with her hands she planteth a vineyard.

She does not produce inferior goods, neither is she cheated in a bargain. She perceiveth that her merchandise is good. She loves to share her husband’s business burdens, that he may share her society; and they twain are one in service and one in recreation. Like our Lord, she delights not to be ministered unto, but to minister. She is benevolent. Being a recognized producer, she has the luxury of giving of her own means to the poor. She provides well for her household, keeping her dependents in comfort, and even in luxury. As the Revised Version puts it, “She maketh herself carpets of tapestry.” Her own clothing is of the best.

The husband of such a wife has the gentle manners that belong with such a home, and he can but succeed in life. He is known and honored among the best in the land. As her business grows, her products become finer and more expensive; and as she puts them upon the market, her profits increase. This woman is clothed with strength and honor. She has no anxiety about the future. She knows that though her beauty may fade, and her social charms become a thing of the past, her strength and honor will become richer and more glorious as the years go by. “In her tongue is the law of kindness.” She is too busy with her own affairs to look after those of her neighbors. In heathen countries it is a great disgrace for a woman’s voice to be heard in the presence of men. Where women are held back from the real interests that concern them and for which they have so often proved themselves fully qualified, what else could take up their active minds but the pettiness of gossip?

Such are the beautiful tributes paid to women by Solomon, the wisest of men. Nor are the prophets behind in acknowledging the worth and quality of women. Eight hundred years before the Christian era, the prophet Joel wrote, “And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams: and on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.” In the Christian dispensation, the daughters as well as the sons were to be filled with the Spirit of God, and the Spirit would use their lips in the declaration of His truth as certainly as the lips of men, and Paul defined prophecy to be speaking “unto men to edification, and exhortation, and comfort.” It has been one of the devices of the evil one to padlock the lips of that half of the race who are most loyal to God and who have the most helpful knowledge of human nature.

Aside from all these high social and spiritual relations of the Hebrew women, they had a legal status. The rights of the Jewish wife were carefully guarded. Her husband was not allowed to go to war for a year after they were married; and though the eastern institution of polygamy was not utterly prohibited, yet it was so restricted that it must not in any way invade the rights and privileges of the wife. If a husband became jealous of his wife’s fidelity, the legal presumptions were all in her favor. The husband was not allowed to inflict summary punishment; but she was subjected to an ordeal which could by no possibility work injury to her, unless through the guilt of her own conscience or the interposition of divine Providence.

As a mother, the Jewish woman must be honored by her children. As a daughter, she had rights and an inheritance. If the wife or daughter uttered rash and foolish vows, the husband or father had a right to disannul them, provided he did it from the day it came to his knowledge. Even the Gentile woman taken captive by a young Israelite warrior must have been surprised to receive treatment so strangely different from that received by captives in her own country, or even among modern nations who profess to be civilized. Her captor could not offer her an insult; she must be taken, not to a prison, but to his home, where she must neither be abused nor outraged, but treated with patient consideration; and she could not be taken, even as a wife, until a full month had elapsed, during which he might secure her affections or reconsider his determination. And if after her marriage she was discontented and made herself disagreeable, she could never again be held as a servant, but must be allowed to go free. Widows, who in heathen lands have been degraded and sometimes murdered or burned, were to be treated with the utmost tenderness. They shared in the tithes, and were admitted to the public festivities. They had a right to glean in the fields and gather up the forgotten sheaves, to gather which the owner was not allowed to go back. Injustice against widows was treated with fearful punishment. “Thou shalt not take the widow’s raiment to pledge” (Deut. xxiv, 17), was a benevolent law which can not be paralleled in any modern code. The command to lend to an Israelite in his poverty was imperative, but no pledge of raiment could be exacted from a widow.

Thus in a variety of ways was the Lord pleased to manifest his kindness and compassion for the fatherless and the widow, and in consequence womanhood was honored and honorable in the Jewish nation, beyond anything known in the heathen world. From the vile and degrading orgies of heathenism the women of Israel were exempt. They feared the Lord, and at his hand received blessings and mercies without number.

Thus it is seen that Hebrew women had rare privileges. They tower like desert palms above the women in pagan lands. In her home she is honored and respected. In India a woman eats her first and last meal with her husband on her wedding day. In the Hebrew home her children are like “olive plants” round her table. In China they may kill their little daughters by the thousands. She has legal rights in her Hebrew home. In all Mohammedan lands a man has the same power over the life of his wife that he has over the life of his horse.

What makes this difference? We answer, It is God’s thought of womanhood, for there was nothing in the Hebrew men to bring about such thoughtful consideration. There were periods in the history of the Hebrew nation when they departed from God, and sank into the vices of the heathens around them. It was during these periods that womanhood was degraded to that of their pagan sisters. There were times when the Hebrews had taken on heathen manners to such an extent as to regard it a disgrace for a rabbi to recognize his wife if he met her on the street. It was commonly said that he was a fool who attempted the religious instruction of a woman, and the words of the law had better be burned than given to a woman.

So it was not Hebrew manhood that saved the daughters of Israel from the suicidal injustice practiced among the heathens, but the sure Word of God. Under its wise provisions and recognized equality they became prophetesses, leaders of armies, and judges. And they taught a pure morality, trained their children according to principles of justice and righteousness, and lived in expectation and hope of the coming of the Messiah in whom all the nations of the earth were to be blessed.

And above all, Christ was the true Friend of womanhood. No teacher in any age of the world or in any land ever taught woman as He did, when He came that glorious morning to Jacob’s well, or in the house of Simon the Pharisee, when the sin-stained woman of the street, who had unobserved entered the banquet hall, and taken up her position at the feet of Jesus, and there poured out the great sorrow of her heart in a paroxysm of humble and grateful love, and bathed His feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hair of her head, anointing them also with ointment, when He personally addressed her and said, “Thy sins are forgiven.” How beautiful is all this, and how grandly these women showed their gratitude and appreciation by following Him and ministering unto “Him of their substance.” They were last at the cross and first at the tomb, and first to publish the Saviour’s resurrection.

From that day to this, women owe their spiritual elevation and their opportunities of usefulness to the recognition Christ gave them in His ministry. In all places untouched by Christian light they are not sure that they have souls. Where the light shines clearly they have equal rights with the men by whose side they are privileged to labor for God’s glory. This being so, how ought they to love God, and in every way possible, spread the light of Christianity through all the earth. We would say to every woman who loves her Lord, the field is wide enough, and opportunities present themselves in every passing hour, therefore, if you have a message which will help and bless some struggling soul heavenward, tell it.

With these brief, introductory words, we come to our subject proper. And should you, dear woman, whom we seek to glorify in the following pages, be blessed and comforted in the unfolding of God’s love towards womanhood, and your own faith take a firmer hold upon the Father’s thought of you, do not, after reading this book, put it away in your book-case, but place it in the hands of some tempted, discouraged, struggling soul, and thereby let others become sharers of the same helpful words, and, possibly, in so doing, you may not only save precious souls, but add many stars to your own crown of life.

As ever, respectfully,
THE AUTHOR.

Albany, N. Y.

WOMEN IN WHITE RAIMENT.

CHAPTER I.
The Paradise Home in Eden.

Man’s First Home a Garden—Eve the Isha—The Scene of the Temptation—Hiding from God—Refusing to Confess, Judgment is Pronounced—The Sad Results of Sin—Eve Believed the Promise.

Perhaps there never lived a woman who has been “talked about” so much as this first woman in White Raiment, for who has not said, If Eve had not been beguiled into a violation of the one commandment by partaking of the fruit of the forbidden tree, we would all be as happy and sinless as was she and her husband before that act of disobedience. But we shall miss the great lesson Eve’s experience intended to convey if we fail to recognize that God put humanity on probation, and the fact of the first temptation is the symbol of every temptation; the fact of the first fall is the symbol of every transgression; the great mistake that lay in the first sin is the symbol of every effect of sin.

After the Lord God had formed man, we read that He “planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there He put the man.” What pen could describe the garden of the Lord’s planting? There were splashing fountains. There were woodbine, and honeysuckles, and morning-glories climbing over the wall, and daisies, and buttercups, and strawberries in the grass. There were paths with mountain mosses, bordered with pearls and diamonds. Here and there cooling streams sparkled in the sunlight or made sweet music as they fell over ledges and rippled away under the overstretching shadows of palm trees or fig orchards, and their threads of silver finally lost amid the fruitage of orange groves. Trees and shrubs of infinite variety added their beauty to the many picturesque scenes everywhere spread out. In the midst of the overhanging foliage were all the bright birds of heaven, and they stirred the air with infinite chirp and carol. Never since have such skies looked down through such leaves into such waters. Never has river wave had such curve and sheen and bank as adorned the Pison, the Havilah, the Gihon and the Hiddekel, even the pebbles being bdellium and onyx stone. What fruits, with no curculio to sting the rind! What flowers, with no slug to gnaw the root! What atmosphere, with no frost to chill and with no heat to consume! Bright colors tangled in the grass. Perfume filled the air. Music thrilled the sky. Great scenes of gladness and love and joy spread out in every direction.

We know not how long, perhaps ever since this man had been created in the “image” of his God, he had wandered through this Eden home, had watched the brilliant pageantry of wings and scales and clouds, and may have noticed that the robins fly the air in twos, and that the fish swim the waters in twos, and that the lions walk the fields in twos, and as he saw the merry, abounding life of his subject creatures, every one perfectly fitted to its environment, and each mated with another of the same instincts and methods of living, he felt the isolation of his own self-involved being, and, possibly, a shadow of loneliness may have crept into his face, and God saw it. And so He said, “It is not good that the man should be alone.” So “He caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam,” as if by allegory to teach all ages that the greatest of earthly blessings is sound sleep.

When he awoke, a most beautiful being, the crowning glory of creation, stood beside him, looking at him with heaven in her eyes, her exquisite form draped with perfect feminine grace and strength. As Adam looked into the face of this immaculate daughter of God, this Woman in White Raiment, he said, “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called Woman” (Hebrew Isha), because God had clothed in separate flesh the gentler and more conscientious part of Adam’s nature, that it might share the work and bliss of Paradise.

How long that first married pair lived in Paradise we are not informed. The story of their disastrous disobedience is given in as few words as possible. Eve may have sauntered out one beautiful morning and as she looked up at the fruit of the various trees of the garden must have recognized “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” and doubtless she had heard Adam say that this was the forbidden tree, and possibly may have cautioned her, “For,” said he, the Lord had said, “in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” As she looked up at the tree and saw the beautiful fruit hanging on the branches, she may have admired its bright, fresh color without any thought of evil in her heart. It is the characteristic of woman to admire the beautiful. Indeed her finer feelings can better appreciate than man, the blendings of color and shadings that combine to give expression to the beautiful.

But it was Satan’s moment. We do not know how long he had been in hiding among the recesses of the garden waiting for just such an opportunity. Quickly he entered a serpent, which, it is declared, “was more subtle than any beast of the field,” and came up to Eve as she admired the tree and its fruit, and in most questioning surprise said, “Yea hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” The query is very cautiously made, expressing great surprise: Yea, truly, can it be possible? The query, with its questioning surprise, had in it now a yes, and now a no, according to the connection. This is the first striking feature in the beginning of the temptation. The temptation of Christ, in the wilderness, was very similar to this. Satan twice challenged our Lord on the point of his divine Sonship: “If thou be the Son of God.” As if he had said, “You claim to be the Son of God, I doubt it, and challenge the claim. If you are, prove it by doing what I suggest.” This was also a blow at the confession of God Himself, “This is My beloved Son.” So here, Satan, in the most cautious manner, would excite doubt in the mind of Eve. Then the expression also aims to awaken mistrust at the goodness and wisdom of God, and so weaken the force of the temptation. As if he had said, “What, not eat of every tree of the garden? I doubt it. Such a prohibition seems unreasonable.”

Here Eve would assure the tempter that she was not mistaken in regard to the prohibition. “We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden. But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.” Notice the Italic words are added by Eve to the command of God concerning the tree. No doubt, as she stood there admiring the tree, the monitor of her heart kept saying, “Don’t touch it, don’t touch it,” and, in her guileless simplicity, she adds the words to the prohibition. And yet by this very addition does her first wavering disguise itself under the form of an overdoing obedience. The first failure is her not observing the point of the temptation, and allowing herself to be drawn into an argument with the tempter; the second, that she makes the prohibition stronger than it really is, and thus lets it appear that to her, too, the prohibition seems too strict; the third that she weakens the prohibition by reducing it to the lesser caution. God had said, “Thou shalt surely die.” She reduces it to “lest ye die,” thus making the motive of obedience to be predominantly the fear of death.

Her tempter, who could quote Scripture to our Lord in his second temptation, after he had failed in the first, was quick to take up the woman’s rendering of the prohibition, and makes answer, “Ye shall not surely die!” What an advance over the first suggestion, “Yea, hath God said.” No doubt he had noted her wavering, and, instead of turning promptly away from the author of her wavering, saw her disposed to inform him of what God had said concerning this “tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” and he promptly steps out from the area of cautious craft into that of a reckless denial of the truth of God’s prohibition, and a malicious suspicion of its object. Eve had not repeated the words of the prohibition, and of the penalty, in its double or intensive form, but Satan repeats it, in blasphemous mockery, as though he had heard it in some other way, and stoutly denies the truth of the threatening, that is, the doubt becomes unbelief.

The way, however, is not prepared for the unbelief without first arousing a feeling of distrust in respect to God’s love, His righteousness, and even His power. So the tempter denies all evil consequences as arising from the forbidden enjoyment, whilst, on the contrary, he promises the best and most glorious results from the same. “Instead of your eyes closing in death,” he said, “they shall be opened.” The tempter would have the woman believe that, in eating of the fruit, she would become wonderfully enlightened, and, at the same time, raised to a divine glory—“shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” And so, in like manner, is every sin a false and senseless belief in the salutary effects of sin.

We tremble for Eve at this point of her interview with her tempter. It is an awful moment, a moment in which her own happiness and that of her husband’s and all the generations of earth are in the balances.

“And when the woman saw.” She was now looking at the tree and its fruit from a far different standpoint from that in the morning. She beheld it now with a look made false by the distorted application of God’s prohibition by her tempter. In fact, she had become enchanted by the distorted construction put upon God’s plain commandment. The satanic promises seemed to have driven the threatening of that prohibition out of her thought. Now she beholds the tree with other eyes. Three times, it is said, how charming the tree appeared to her.

But where has Adam been all this time? Doubtless he was busy with his duties, for God had set him “to dress and to keep” the garden in which he had been placed. He may have seen Eve passing down one of the beautiful paths of the garden in her morning walk, beguiled by the splash of the fountains, the song of the birds, and the beauty of the flowers at her feet. He may have observed her stay longer than usual, and so turned aside from his duties to see what had become of her, and following down the path over which he had last seen her disappear among the trees and shrubbery of the garden, soon came to the place where “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” stood, and then, from the lips of his own pure, sweet wife, learned what had taken place. Possibly she was holding the very fruit of which she had said, “neither shall ye touch it,” in her hands, admiring its beauty and wondering how it tasted. And, while examining the fruit, she told her husband what had passed between her and her tempter, and as she finished her story she said, “I do not think there can be any harm in my just breaking the rind of it, to see how it looks inside.” Prompted by womanly curiosity, she broke open the fruit, and, before she was really conscious, she “did eat!” “Why, how nice!” she exclaimed, at the same time handing the other half to her husband. As a good gardener, he would naturally share the curiosity of his wife to taste this fruit, “and he did eat!”

The next statement we have, “And the eyes of them both were opened.” But how were they opened? Each of them had two good eyes before eating the fruit; in fact, Eve had been admiring the fruit as it hung among the branches of the tree, and as she had turned it over in her hands. Before they tasted they saw with their natural eyes. Now they see with a higher knowledge of sense—there is added a con-sense—a conscience or self-consciousness. In the relation between the antecedent here and what followed there evidently lies a terrible irony. The promise of the tempter becomes half fulfilled, though, indeed, in a sadly different sense from what they had supposed. They had attained, in consequence, to a moral insight. Self-consciousness was awakened with their knowledge of right and wrong, good and evil. It belongs to the very beginning of moral cognition and development.

How strange it all is. Eden full of trees, fruits of every kind, luscious and satisfying, but, excited by false and wicked statements in respect to the prohibition of the fruit of one tree, she straightway desires to taste for herself, and that curiosity blasted her and blasted all nations. And thousands in every generation, inspired by unhealthful inquisitiveness, have tried to look through the keyhole of God’s mysteries—mysteries that were barred and bolted from all human inspection—and they have wrenched their whole moral nature out of joint by trying to pluck fruit from branches beyond their reach.

We may also learn that fruits which are sweet to the taste may afterward produce great agony. Forbidden fruit for Eve was so pleasant she invited her husband also to take of it; but her banishment from paradise and years of sorrow and wretchedness and woe paid for that luxury.

Sometimes people plead for just one indulgence in sin. There can be no harm to go to this or that forbidden place just once. Doubtless that one Edenic transgression did not seem to be much, but it struck a blow which to this day makes the earth stagger. To find out the consequences of that one sin you would have to compel the world to throw open all its prison doors and display the crime, throw open all its hospitals and display the disease, throw open all the insane asylums and show the wretchedness, open all the sepulchres and show the dead, open all the doors of the lost world and show the damned. That one Edenic transgression stretched chords of misery across the heart of the world and struck them with dolorous wailing, and it has seated the plagues upon the air and the shipwrecks upon the tempest, and fastened, like a leech, famine to the heart of the sick and dying nations. Beautiful at the start, horrible at the last. Oh, how many have experienced it! Beware of entertaining temptations to first sins! Turn away and flee for thy life to the sure and only Refuge—Christ Jesus.

In the cool of the day, as the evening hours drew on, Adam and Eve “heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden.” They were used to hearing that voice walking in the garden in the cool of the day. Eden had become a dear spot to the heart of their Father, and doubtless He often came down to converse with them. So now He seeks companionship with the majestic human masterpieces of His creation. And why should he not?

But, passing strange! instead of running to Him out of their Eden home, as doubtless they had been wont to do, “Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.” This act, no doubt, was prompted by self-consciousness and the shame and guilt which it brought. So we clearly see that sin separates from God. They had pronounced judgment upon their transgression by their very conduct. Instead of meeting God as they had been doing, a feeling of distrust and servile fear entered their hearts, and a sense of the loss of their spiritual purity, together with the false notion that they can hide themselves from God. And so it has come to pass that ever since the first transgression men have been hiding from God, running away from his presence.

“And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?” The Lord is the first to break the silence; the first to seek erring humanity. Not for His own sake does God direct this inquiry, for He knew where Adam was, but that Adam might take courage and open his mouth in confession—it was an invitation to tell the whole sad story. But, instead, he multiplies the difficulties by his answer, “I was afraid, because I was naked.” That is to say, Adam, instead of confessing the sin, sought to hide behind its consequences, and his disobedience behind his feeling of shame. His answer to the interrogation is far from the real cause of the change that had come over his conduct, which was sin, and made his consciousness of nakedness to be the reason. To still make Adam see the true reason for his hiding, God farther asked, “Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldst not eat?” Observe this question is so framed as to contain in it the eating and the tree from which he ate, and could have been answered with, “Yes!” How easy God made it for Adam to confess. But, alas! How far from it. He answered, “The woman whom thou gavest unto me, she gave me of the tree and I did eat.” How deep the root of sin had taken hold upon Adam’s heart. What does he say in this answer? Why this, he acknowledged the guilt, but indirectly charges God as the author of the calamity. Eve is referred to as “the woman” who is the author of his sin, and, since she was given to him by the hand of the Lord, therefore it is the Lord’s fault, for if He had not given her to Adam, he would not have partaken of the forbidden tree! How passing strange is all this. And yet that is just what men are doing after six thousand years of experience with sin. Instead of breaking away from it, they say, God put it before them, and they could not resist the temptation to sin. The loss of love that comes out in this interposing of the wife is, moreover, particularly observable in this, that he grudges to call her Eve (Isha—married) or my wife.

Failing to return unto God by way of confession, the Lord next deals with Adam in judgment. “Cursed is the ground for thy sake ... thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee.” The very soil he had been sent to cultivate, and to carry forward in a normal unfolding, to imperishable life and spiritual glory, is now cursed for his sake, and therewith changed to that of hostility to him. Referring to the curse upon mankind, in consequence of the fall, Hugh MacMillan has called attention to the remarkable fact that weeds, the curse of the cultivator, accompany civilization. “There is one peculiarity about weeds which is very remarkable,” says this writer, “namely, that they only appear on ground which either by cultivation or for some other purpose, has been disturbed by man. They are never found truly wild, in woods or hills, or uncultivated wastes far away from human dwellings. They never grow on virgin soil, where human beings have never been. No weeds exist in those parts of the earth that are uninhabited, or where man is only a passing visitant.” And what is true of mother earth is in a sense true of the human heart. The youthful mind no sooner awakes to thought and reason, than it gives evidence of abundance of weeds. In surprise the mother asks where the little one has learned disobedience and questions how so young a mind can assert such strong opposition to wholesome discipline.

And now, lest a worse calamity should fall on Adam and his wife, by stretching forth their hands “and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever,” God “drove out the man” from Eden, and placed “cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.” The act of driving Adam and Eve out of Eden has always been looked upon as a harsh measure. If, however, we stop to reflect what awful consequences would have followed the rash act of eating of the tree of life, we shall see that it was an act of mercy. For, after placing himself under the law of sin, what endless sorrow would have come upon the race, if men could not be removed by death. Think of such human monsters as history has time and again produced. Men and women degraded by thousands of years in sin would indeed be dangerous characters. So God cut off this possibility by guarding the tree of life.

But there came a great change over all life. Beasts that before were harmless and full of play put forth claw and sting and tooth and tusk. Birds whet their beak for prey, clouds troop in the sky, sharp thorns shoot up through the soft grass, blastings are on the leaves. All the chords of that great harmony are snapped. Upon the brightest home this world ever saw our first parents turned their back and led forth on a path of sorrow the broken-hearted myriads of a ruined race.

THE ACCEPTED OFFERING.

When Eve looked into the face of her first-born, she remembered the words of the Lord, in His judgment upon Satan, “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shalt bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his heel,” and, misunderstanding the meaning of the promise, she called him Cain, meaning, “I have gotten a man from the Lord,” mistaking him for the Redeemer. But how bitter must have been her disappointment as she saw the child grow up, saw his characteristics manifest themselves in acts of hatefulness and revenge. However, but little is said of Cain and his younger brother Abel, until they bring their offerings to the Lord. We read that Abel was a “keeper of sheep,” and Cain was a “tiller of the ground.” While it is not stated, we must believe these brothers knew what was, and what was not, an acceptable offering to the Lord, that Cain could easily have exchanged his fruits of the soil for a lamb of Abel’s flock. Evidently Cain was lacking in that fine moral insight which would lead him to have respect as to the nature of the sacrifice necessary to atone for sin. There must be the shed blood of the victim, for, “without shedding of blood,” there is no remission. Either Cain did not regard himself a sinner, or, if he did, he thought one sacrifice as good as another, and so he brings “of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord.” God could not accept this act of disobedience. Because his offering was rejected, and seeing Abel’s offering accepted, Cain rose up and slew his brother. He failed to shed the blood of a lamb for his sin, but was quick to shed the blood of his brother, and thereby add to his sin. But what a crushing blow was this to the hopes of the mother heart who had supposed that her first-born was the promised “seed.” How she must have broken down under her sorrow, as she saw the blood dripping from Cain’s fingers, and that, too, the blood of his own brother. And sadder still as she looked upon the face of death for the first time. However she might have understood the lying words of her tempter, “Ye shall not surely die,” she now sees in the lifeless body of her second child, the awful reality of death. And when the first grave was made, how she must have daily wept over the precious mound, not only over this her first experience in bitter bereavement, but also over the circumstances under which it was brought about, and as she plants the flowers on the tomb, she fancies she hears the blood of the innocent victim continually crying unto heaven to be avenged. Oh, the bitter, bitter fruits of disobedience, who can know to what misery they bring us?

And then also observe Cain’s conduct in this awful crime. God’s arraignment of this fratricide was analogous to that of Adam and Eve. But Cain evades every acknowledgment of it. He not only tells a barefaced falsehood, but in a most impudent manner asks, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” What a fearful advance on the timid explanations of Adam’s transgression as he spoke to the Lord out of his hiding place. How men should tremble at the very thought of sin.

But the sorrowing Eve took heart once more in the birth of Seth, “for,” said she, “God hath appointed another seed instead of Abel.” So hope in the heart, like the perpetual altar fires in the sacrifices of the temple, seemed to sing a sweet song of comfort, and every child born seemed to outweigh the bitter disappointments in the realization of the promised Redeemer.

With this hope in the heart of Eve, and this beautiful language upon her lips, the Scripture account closes. How long she lived after the birth of Seth we are not informed, but of this we are assured, she believed God in His promise of the Messiah. That she misunderstood when that promise was to be realized, is quite evident, but there is every reason to believe she died in the faith of its ultimate realization, for she judged God to be righteous in the promise.

What is the lesson the loss of Paradise has for us? Plainly this: The perverted use of things good in themselves. Eve saw that the tree was pleasant to the eyes. From that day to this there have been women who would throw their health, their home happiness, their chance of training their children for God, their life, their honor, their hope of heaven, into a cauldron out of which might be brought something pleasant to the eyes. Eyes are good, useful and necessary, but we need to make a covenant with them not to see more than is good for our souls.

After she saw, she “desired.” This would seem to imply that the real source of all sin is in the spirit of our own desires. The last of the Ten Commandments strikes down to the very tap-root of all evil, “Thou shalt not covet.” All sin commences with the kindling of desire. The apostle James gives us the pedigree, “Every man is tempted when he is turned away of his own lust and enticed; then, when lust and desire hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin, and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.” The secret of victory, therefore, is not to allow the mind and heart to dwell for a moment upon any forbidden thing. The whole modern life is terribly fitted to stimulate unholy desire. The little child is taught from infancy to covet the vain and glittering attractions of the world—dress, equipage, pleasure, praise, fashion, display and a thousand worldly allurements. The city bill boards are covered with nude harlots. There are no less than 200,000 houses for these social outcasts in our fair land. These open gateways to immorality, where the virtue of the nation is ground out, are not only guarded by police force, but young girls by the 100,000 a year are stolen from country homes by the paid agents, and sold into these open dens of vice and crime, where these poor girls die in a short time, the average length of this life of sin being only five years. And still the people have not a word to say for the suppression of these crime-breeding dens of vice, but legalize and protect them by law to the ruin of our homes. These are the things that are eating out the spiritual life of the nation, and for that reason many do not want to retain the thought of God in their hearts. Hence the responsibilities of life are pressing upon us. As you have seen the child trundling its little hoop by touching it on both sides alternately to keep it from either extreme, so God teaches us both with warning and with promise, as our spiritual condition requires. Sometimes it is warning we need, and He shouts in our ear the solemn admonition, as a mother would cry to her babe in wild alarm if in danger of falling over the precipice. But, again, when we are in danger of being too much depressed, He speaks to us with notes of encouragement and promise, and tells us there is no real danger of our failing utterly, and that He will never suffer us to be tempted above what we are able. And so we hear Him saying on one hand, “Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall;” but immediately after adding on the other side, “God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able, but will, with the temptation, make a way of escape that ye may be able to bear it.”

“Fear not! When temptations try thee

Trust the Saviour’s loving care;

No temptation will come nigh thee

More than thou has strength to bear.

“Fail not! In the hour of testing,

Christ is pledged to bring thee through

In His arms securely resting

There thou shalt thy strength renew.”

We are also impressed with the influence woman has for good or evil. What we need as a nation is consecrated womanhood. When at last we come to calculate the forces that decide the destiny of nations, it will be found that the mightiest and grandest influence came from home, where the wife cheered up despondency and fatigue and sorrow by her own sympathy, and the mother trained her child for heaven, starting the little feet on the path to the celestial city, and the sisters, by their gentleness, refined the manners of the brother, and the daughters were diligent in their kindness to the aged, throwing wreaths of blessing on the road that led father and mother down the steep of years. God bless our homes. And may the home on earth be the vestibule of our home in heaven.

CHAPTER II.
Womanhood in the Patriarchal Age.

Sarah the Beautiful Princess—Her Faith Tested—The Mistake of Her Life—Her Lovely Character—Rebekah—An Oriental Wooing—Eliezer’s Prayer—The Bride’s Answer—Meeting Isaac—A Mother’s Love for Her Son—Jacob’s Flight—Rebekah, the Beautiful Shepherdess—Seven Years’ Service for Her—Laban’s Deception—Leah, the Tender-Eyed—Human Favorites—Divinely Honored—Rachel’s Tomb the First Monument to Human Love.

From the prominence given to Eve in connection with the temptation and the overwhelming disasters which followed the loss of the Eden home in Paradise, we are surprised the Sacred historian passes over a period of about two thousand years without giving us any record of women. The names of good men are mentioned. Enoch walked before God for over three hundred years, and the walk was such a perfect one, and it pleased God so well, that He translated Enoch. Noah also “found grace in the eyes of the Lord,” and he was “a just man and perfect in his generations,” and “walked with God,” doubtless as Enoch had done. No doubt there were others who lived clean, pure lives. Of this number was Lamech, the father of Noah, for he was comforted in the birth of his son, saying, he “shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the Lord hath cursed.” Surely such men must have had good mothers to train them, and good wives for companions. But nothing is said about these women that walked in White Raiment in that dark and sinful age, when “all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth,” until Sarah, the fair wife of Abraham, is reached.

We find this beautiful princess willing to leave her home and her people in the land of Ur of the Chaldees and journey for more than a thousand miles to the land of Canaan. However, this journey was not a continuous one, for a long stop was made at Haran, in Mesopotamia, perhaps half way between Ur and Palestine.

Of her birth and parentage we have no certain account in Scripture. In Gen. xx, 12, Abraham speaks of her as “his sister, the daughter of the same father, but not the daughter of the same mother.” The Hebrew tradition is that Sarai is the same as Iscah, the daughter of Haran. This tradition is not improbable in itself, and certainly supplies the account of the descent of the mother of the chosen race.

The change of her name from Sarai to Sarah was made on the establishment of the covenant of circumcision between Abraham and God, and signifies “princess,” for she was to be the royal ancestress of “all families of the earth.”

The beautiful fidelity of this noble woman is shown in her willingness to accompany her husband in all the wanderings of his life. Her home in Mesopotamia was gladly and willingly exchanged for a tent, and that tent was often taken down and set up during the nomadic life which formed the basis of the patriarchal age. God intended to set forth in Abraham not only the thought that here man has no continuing city, but also the life of faith. And this faith of Abraham is distinguished from the faith of the pious ancestors in this, that he obtained and held the promises of salvation, not only for himself, but for his family; and from the Mosaic system, by the fact that it expressly held the promised blessing in the seed of Abraham, as a blessing for all people. But this faith had not only to be developed, but also tested. It is beautiful to read that Abraham believed God, but his faith when he went down into Egypt was far from that when he went “into the land of Moriah” to offer up Isaac. Nothing is plainer in the Bible than that a man’s faith is not a matter of indifference. He can not be disobedient to God’s calls, and yet go to heaven when he dies. This is not an arbitrary decision. There is and must be an adequate ground for it. The rejection of God’s dealings with us is as clear a proof of moral depravity, as inability to see the light of the sun at noon is a proof of blindness.

Now let us look at a few of these testings or trials of faith that came into the life of this woman in White Raiment, this princess in Israel. She was asked to give up her native land. How dear the fatherland is to the heart, only those who have passed through the experience can realize. This was not all. She was asked to give up her kindred. To move away from all the associations of childhood and youth, requires a brave heart. But she was also asked to give up her home, and what is dearer to a woman’s heart than her home? We have no doubt Sarah’s home by the beautiful streams that flow down from the high table-lands of Armenia into the rich valleys of Mesopotamia, was a lovely one, and to exchange it for tent-life was a brave sacrifice. Her love to God must have been deep and constant.

After a long, weary journey through the desert sands, the land of promise is finally reached, only to find it afflicted with a famine. How often Sarah must have longed for one look out over the fig orchards, the olive yards and waving grain fields ripening in the summer’s sun of her native Mesopotamia, as she looked out over the barren hills, burned-up fields, and dried-up water courses of Palestine. Night after night, Abraham’s tent is pitched, only to be taken down in the morning, in quest of pasturage for their herds and flocks, until the wilderness in the southern extremity of Canaan is reached. How all this must have tested their faith. Had they not mistaken the call of God? Is it possible that this parched land is the land of promise? How disappointments and failures test our faith, and the heart of poor Sarah must have been sorely tried.

But there was yet another test, and a humiliating one at that, and it seems to look as if their united faith was wavering. She was a beautiful woman, and they were now upon the very borders of Egypt, and there was no other alternative but to perish with famine or to go down into the land of the Pharaohs. Both Abraham and Sarah seemed to realize the hazard they were running, for, possibly, the bloom and beauty of Sarah’s face might cost Abraham’s life. So they agreed between them that Sarah should say that she was his sister, lest he should be killed. The declaration was not false. She was his half-sister, but it was not the whole truth, and it would seem, from their present conduct, that their faith, tested by the famine, was now wavering, for, why not appeal their cause to God, instead of taking it into their own hands? The reason for resorting to this deception was, if she was regarded as his wife, an Egyptian could only obtain her, when he had first murdered her husband. But if she was his sister, then there was a hope that she might be won from her brother by loving attentions and costly gifts, or, if her beauty came to the notice of Pharaoh she would be taken to his harem by arbitrary methods. They had not reasoned in vain. The princes of the land saw her, “and commended her before Pharaoh,” and “Sarah was taken into Pharaoh’s house.”

It is hard for us to understand what a trial of her faith this harem life must have been to the pure-minded Sarah. How often her mind must have gone out over the stretches of desert wastes to her own land abounding with streams and fertility. And to be conscious that the charms of her person were the centre of attraction in the court of Egypt.

But all this time God’s eye was a witness to all that was passing. When we get to the end of self, He always comes to our rescue—our extremity is His opportunity. In her resided the religious disposition in the highest measure, and just at a time when the nations appeared about to sink into heathenism, hence her faith must be saved to the race, so “the Lord plagued Pharaoh with great plagues,” that is to say, God administered “blow on blow,” and these were of such a nature as to guard Sarah from injury. At length the ruler of the land, whose heart does not seem to be hardened like the later kings, concludes that his punishment is for the sake of Sarah, and restores her to Abraham.

After Abraham had separated from Lot, the Lord again appeared unto him, at which time Abraham complained for the want of an heir. So the Lord leads Abraham out of his tent, under the heavens as seen by night, and in that land of blue skies, the night heavens are beautiful indeed. God had promised at first one natural heir, but now the countless stars which he sees, should both represent the innumerable seed which should spring from this one heir, and at the same time be a warrant for his faith.

At this point the human element again seeks to aid in bringing about the realization of the divine promise. The childless state of Abraham’s house was its great sorrow, and the more so, since it was in perpetual opposition to the calling, destination, and faith of Abraham, and was a constant trial of his faith. Sarah herself, doubtless, came gradually more and more, on account of her barrenness, to appear as a hindrance to the fulfillment of the divine promise, and as Abraham had already fixed his eye upon his head servant, Eliezer of Damascus, so now Sarah fixes her eye upon her head maid, Hagar the Egyptian. It must be this maid not only had mental gifts which qualified her for the prominent place she occupied in the household, but also inward participation in the faith of her mistress. So Hagar is substituted, for, in the substitution, Sarah hopes to carry forward the divine purpose of the family. In this she certainly practiced an act of heroic self-denial, but still, in her womanly excitement, anticipated her destiny as Eve had done, and carried even Abraham away with her alluring hope. Though she greatly erred in this effort to assist God in bringing in the realization of the promise, and thereby revealed a lack of faith in the divine appointments, yet we have here a beautiful exhibition of her heroic self-denial even in her error. Perhaps, viewed from the human standpoint, we should here bring into our narrative also, the fact, that they had been already ten years in Canaan, and Sarah was now seventy-five years of age, waiting in vain for the heir, through whom the great blessing was to come to all the families of the earth.

However, in all this, Sarah, the noble generous hearted, had not counted upon the conduct Hagar would assume in her new relation. As an Egyptian, Hagar seemed to have regarded herself as second wife, instead of recognizing her subordination to her mistress. This subordination seems to have been assumed by Abraham, and hence the apparent indifference probably was the source of Sarah’s sense of injury, when she exclaimed, “My wrong be upon thee.” She felt that Abraham ought to have redressed her wrong—ought to have seen and rebuked the insolence of the maid. Beyond a doubt, looking at the pride and insolence of Hagar, from Sarah’s standpoint, it was very trying. The Hebrews regarded barrenness as a great evil and a divine punishment, while fruitfulness was held as a great good and a divine blessing. The unfruitful Hannah received the like treatment with Sarah, from the second wife of Elkanah. It is still thus, to-day, in eastern lands. With almost the tenderness of Elkanah to the sorrowing Hannah, Abraham says, “Behold the maid is in thy hand.” He regards Hagar still as the servant, and the one who fulfills the part of Sarah. But now the overbent bow flies back with violence. This is the back stroke of her own eager, overstrained course. Sarah now turns and deals harshly with Hagar. How precisely, we are not told. Doubtless, through the harsh thrusting her back into the mere position and service of a slave. But Hagar, it appears, would not submit to such treatment. She, perhaps, believed that she had grown above such a position, and fled from the presence of Sarah.

What need was there for Sarah to learn the lesson of the patience of faith. God had promised her great honors and blessings. There was in her nature much that needed toning up by the grace of patience, and God would take his own best time in developing her life. Her haste to anticipate the blessing promised, not only delayed its realization, but brought sorrow to her own heart, and untold trouble to her posterity, for Ishmael’s hand has been “against every man, and every man’s hand against him.” The Ishmaelites, it is said, “dwelt from Havilah unto Shur,” and it is certain that they stretched in very early times across the desert to the Persian Gulf, peopled the north and west of the Arabian peninsula, and eventually formed the chief element of the Arab nation, which has proved to be a living fountain of humanity whose streams for thousands of years have poured themselves far and wide. Its tribes are found in all the borders of Asia, in the East Indies, in all Northern Africa, along the whole Indian Ocean down to Molucca, they are spread along the coast to Mozambique, and their caravans cross India to China. These wandering hordes of the desert have always and still lead a robber life. They justify themselves in it, upon the ground of the hard treatment of Ishmael, their father, who, driven out of his paternal inheritance, received the desert for his possession, with the permission to take whatever he could find. Mohammed is in the line of Ishmael, and the followers of Islam, in their pride and delusion, claim that the rights of primogeniture belong to Ishmael instead of Isaac, and assert their right to lands and goods, so far as it pleases them. Vengeance for blood rules in them, and the innocent have often fallen victims to their horrible massacres. So that the disaster which overtook the race in this premature anticipation of divine Providence is second only to the disaster that overtook Eve in the temptation and the loss of Paradise. Could Sarah have foreseen all the sad consequences of her unseemly haste to pluck the unripened promise God meant to give her, she certainly would have cultivated the patience of faith.

But the years passed on—fifteen of them nearly—since the child Ishmael had been in the home of the patriarch, and the visit of the angels under the Oaks in the plain of Mamre. During this time God had once more renewed his promise to Abraham, and also the rite of circumcision had been established, and, doubtless, the symbolical purification of Abraham and his house, opened the way for the friendly appearance of Jehovah in the persons of the angels, or men, as the patriarch at first thought them to be, as he looked up, while seated in his tent door through the heat of the noontide hours.

When he saw the angels, “he ran to meet them,” and, it seems, instantly recognized among the three the one whom he addressed as the Lord, and who afterwards was clearly distinguished from the two accompanying angels. “If now,” Abraham asks, “I have found favor in Thy sight, pass not away.” This cordial invitation, while it has in it the marked hospitality of Orientals, to the inner consciousness of Abraham it had a deeper meaning, the covenant relation between himself and Jehovah, that is, he hopes this relation is still continued. His humble and pressing invitation, his zealous preparations, his modest description of the meal, his standing by to serve those who were eating, are picturesque traits of the life of faith as it here reveals itself, in an exemplary hospitality. This is the custom still in Eastern lands, and is referred to by our Lord in that passage where He speaks of His second coming, and shall find His people watching, for He will “make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them” (Luke xii, 37), and seems to be one of the countless instances where, in the web of the Holy Scriptures, the golden threads of the Old Testament are interwoven with those of the New, and form, as it were, one whole. And the fact that this beautiful custom of hospitality is still observed among the Bedouins, as we can speak from personal knowledge, is remarkable, and impresses us with the thought that the covenant blessings, like some sweet, heavenly fruitage, refuses to be lost out of the lives of that ancient people.

The meal having been served in this beautiful Oriental manner, the Lord asks, “Where is Sarah?” Abraham made answer, “Behold, in the tent.” Then the Angel of the Lord, not only renews the promise, but that it should be fully realized in the birth of Isaac within a year. Sarah, behind the tent door, hears this unqualified assurance, but, viewing it from nature’s standpoint, rendered doubly improbable from her life-long barrenness, “laughed within herself.” We can not regard this as a laugh of unbelief, or the scoff of doubt, as some do, but as a laugh falling short in her conception of God. The thing which was impossible according to the established laws of nature, her faith had not yet grasped as being possible with God. But the Lord, nevertheless, observed Sarah’s laugh, and this divine hearing on the part of the Angel of the Lord, startled her, and had its part in the strengthening of her faith. It prepared the way for the question, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” To her own mind one thing, namely, that she should be a mother at ninety years of age, seemed too hard. And so the question had to do with this very thought, and must be settled on the side of her faith. And she grandly and heroically asserted her belief that nothing, not even the seeming insurmountable obstacle which nature interposed, was too great for God to overcome, and her faith was strengthened, for we read, “through faith Sarah received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she judged Him faithful who had promised” (Heb. xi, 11). The trial of her patience of faith was a long struggle. It took twenty-five years to bring her up to the point where her faith could grasp the truth that nothing was too hard for the Lord to perform. But this blessed woman at length stood in right relation to God, for, without faith, be it observed, it is impossible to please God, or to receive anything at His hands.

In due time Isaac was born. It was the great event in Sarah’s life. As the mother looked down into the face of the son of her bosom she breaks forth in an exultant song of thankfulness, not unlike that of Mary, the blessed virgin. The little song of Sarah, it has beautifully been said, is the first cradle hymn. Our Lord reveals the profoundest source of this joy, when, in addressing the Pharisees, who held Abraham to be their father, said, “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day.” Sarah, in the birth of Isaac, is the ancestress of Christ. Spiritually viewed, the birthday of Isaac becomes the door or entrance of the day of Christ, and the day of Christ the background of the birthday of Isaac.

Another beautiful incident in connection with the childhood of Isaac is, that Sarah, his mother, even at her advanced age and exalted station in life, did not deem it a burden to nurse him. Calvin has well said, “Whom God counts worthy of the honor of being a mother He at the same time makes a nurse; and those who feel themselves burdened through the nursing of their children, rend, as far as in them lies, the sacred bond of nature, unless weakness, or some infirmities, form their excuse.”

But along with the growing child is the mocking Ishmael. He was fourteen years of age at the birth of Isaac, and therefore in the first years of Isaac, appears as a playful lad, and true to his nature, doubtless developed a characteristic trait of jealousy which would not escape the ever watchful eye of Sarah, as she observed his dancing and leaping, and now and then making hateful faces at the mother’s darling, mocking his childish fears and appeals to the mother for protection. This seems to have been endured by Sarah until the great feast day, held to celebrate the weaning of Isaac. Seeing special attention paid to Isaac by all the invited guests, his jealousy suddenly developed into envy, and this, in turn, found expression in mockery. Sarah could endure these mockings no longer, for to her sensitive nature, Ishmael’s mocking the child of promise was but the outward expression of his unbelief in the faith of his parents, and therefore the word and purpose of God. His conduct revealed his unbelief, and hence was unworthy and incapable of sharing in the blessing, which then, as now, was secured only by faith, and which had already cost her so much. Hence she said to Abraham, “Cast out this bondwoman and her son.” The treatment may seem harsh, but there could be no peace or happiness in that household until the mocking Ishmael was out of it. This mother, whose spiritual faith had been quickened in a marvelous manner, was clear-sighted enough to see that the purposes of God in reference to Isaac could only become actual through this separation. The fact that the prompt, sharp determination that “the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir” with Isaac, “was very grievous in Abraham’s sight,” shows that his prejudice in favor of the rights of the natural first-born needed correction. And God confirmed the judgment of Sarah. For the exclusion of Ishmael was requisite not only to the prosperity of Isaac and the line of the promise, but to the welfare of Ishmael himself. And the man of faith, who should later offer up Isaac, must now be able to offer up Ishmael also.

After the sending away of Hagar and her son Ishmael, there is but one incident recorded in the life of Abraham, namely the treaty or covenant of peace with Abimelech, King of Gerar, though probably several years passed away between the departure of Hagar and the last great test or trial of Abraham in the offering up of Isaac on Mt. Moriah.

The son of promise had grown to be a lad of sixteen or seventeen years of age, when the voice of the Lord called unto Abraham, saying, “Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.” It would seem that this message came to Abraham while asleep—in a dream as we would say—and therefore all the more trying as such a revelation, under such circumstances might well be questioned. Upon waking out of his sleep he might reasonably question the import of such a dream, especially since Isaac was his only child, and the son of promise. But it appears that Abraham did not stop to explain away this command, and we must believe that he did not even inform Sarah of this heart-crushing revelation, for neither she nor Isaac knew at the time the special object of the journey. Promptly Abraham made the necessary preparations, and set out on the three days’ journey. His obedience is absolute. There is not even a question raised as to his correctly understanding the duty required of him. To suppose that Abraham did not have the bleeding heart of a father in this great trial, would be to destroy the force of this testing of his faith. And the fact that he had three days’ time in which he could change his purpose, made the conflict within him all the harder.

The lad and the mother could easily see from the wood, and the fire, and the knife, that he went not merely to worship, but to sacrifice. The testing was still more heart-breaking when, at the end of the journey, at the foot of Moriah, while Abraham is in the act of laying the wood upon the obedient Isaac, the heir of promise said, “My father, behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” How the bleeding heart of the father must have been touched afresh as he looked upon Isaac as “the lamb,” yet, as if the hour for the fuller revelation had not yet come, made answer, “My son, God will provide Himself a lamb.”

And so the two, the father and the son, slowly climb the rugged sides of Moriah to its very summit, and Abraham built an altar, as he so often had done before, for, wherever Abraham had a tent, God had an altar, and in the building of this altar we may well believe the loving, obedient Isaac assisted. Then the wood was laid upon it. All was ready for “the lamb!” But God had not yet provided the victim.

What passed between father and son the Sacred record has not revealed. However, we must believe it was the Gethsemane struggle with Isaac, and that in the end he said to Abraham, as Christ, under similar circumstances, said to His heavenly Father, “Thy will be done.” And, perhaps, this loving self-surrender of Isaac made it all the harder for the father’s heart. But, somehow, we can not understand it, only in the light of complete self-surrender to the will of God, he “bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood,” and, nerving himself for the last great act, he “stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.”

But God, during this scene on Mount Moriah, was an interested spectator. He saw that the obedience of faith—the complete self-surrender of Abraham’s will—was perfect. “And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven, and said, ‘Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything unto him, for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from me.’”

It is worthy of observation that, while the command to offer up Isaac came in a dream, and therefore open to misgiving, the command to stay his hand is spoken by the angel of Jehovah out of heaven. Abraham was perfect in his faith, and how far it reached into the great love for God and self-surrender to His will, we shall never know. Paul, speaking of this wonderful victory over self, said that Abraham accounted that God was able to raise up Isaac, “even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure.” Though all his hope, humanly speaking, perished out of his heart when he took up the sacrificial knife on Moriah, yet his faith overleaped human limitations into the infinite ability of God to raise up Isaac out of the ashes upon his altar.

Such faith was possible for Abraham, for God asks no impossibilities at the hands of men, and what was possible for this man of faith is possible for any of us, if we are willing to pay the price. Let no one think, however, that such fruits of righteousness drop into the lap of the faithless.

But through this severe testing, Sarah nowhere appears on the scene. It may be, infinite love would spare the mother’s heart. It may be, also, the last great trial of her faith took place in the tent, stretched under the oaks, in the plain of Mamre. There is a Jewish tradition that when Sarah fully learned the nature of the journey to Moriah, and the scene which there took place, the shock of it killed her, and Abraham found her dead on his return home. This may do as a tradition, but not as the finale of God’s dealing with His people. The potter, as he fashions the vessel upon the wheel, does not seek to break it. So God does not test us beyond our capacity to endure. Then, also, if Isaac was born when Sarah was ninety years of age, and she died at the age of one hundred and twenty-seven, and the scene on Moriah took place when Isaac was a lad of sixteen or seventeen, she lived for twenty years after that event, to be a comfort and a blessing in her home.

At length this princess in Israel, tested and tried, and found true, died at Hebron at the good age of one hundred and twenty-seven years, and Abraham wept over her, and well he might, for she had shared his trials and was a good and faithful wife, and she was a mother, even more than a wife.

Abraham purchased the cave of Machpelah of Ephron, the Hittite, and tenderly laid the remains of this lovely woman to rest in one of the chambers of the cave. It is the first burial mentioned in the Sacred records. And the tomb remains unto this day, hallowed in the eyes of Jews, Christians and Mohammedans alike, and was visited by the writer.

The lesson which God would teach us in the life of this woman in White Raiment is that testings are necessary to the development of faith, and that these testings come to us in the most ordinary events of our daily lives. All Christians surely know by experience that events which seemed all darkness at first have ultimately brought them nearer to the light. The much-dreaded cloud has proved to be only a veil under which God hides His mighty power. His gracious query, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” has comforted us, and has turned what we thought to be a curse into a blessing. O, can we not trust Him in the darkness as well as in the light, knowing that He can bring calm out of storm, and that he often chooses the darkness and the cloud as a special medium by which to reveal himself? Could we climb to heaven by some other way, and escape the shadows and the storms of life, how much should we miss of the blessed manifestations of God’s revelations of His power.

God speaks to listening ears and waiting hearts as truly to-day as He did before the tent door under the oaks in the plain of Mamre. He may speak to us through his providence, through the voice of a friend, through a book or a sermon; but perhaps He does so most frequently in the little details of everyday life, in which we can not fail to see His dealings with us if our hearts are turned expectantly toward him. Only let us be admonished by Sarah’s sad mistake. That she made it, proves that she was human. But let us be afraid of sin. The door once open, none of us can tell into what endless labyrinths of sorrow it will lead us. God wants a tried people, not only for their own sake but that they may be a blessing to others.

And now we come to a most beautiful scene in Sacred History. While, as a whole, the Bible gives the drama of human sin and divine redemption, yet it pauses in its wonderful revelations to let us look into the homes of the people who lived ages ago. It somehow touches human life on all its sides. Other books which are held sacred by eastern nations, give woman only contemptuous mention. This one recognizes the dignity and beauty of her life and work. It tells in seven verses the story of Enoch, who walked with God three hundred and sixty-five years and who was holy enough to escape death, while it gives sixty-six verses to the wooing and wedding of Rebekah and Isaac. In the pictures which the Sacred Record opens to us of the domestic life of the patriarchal age, perhaps this is the most perfectly characteristic and beautiful idyl of a marriage, and how it was brought about. In its sweetness and sacred simplicity, it is a marvelous contrast to the wedding of our modern fashionable life. And surely, since God’s Book gives so much time and space to the domestic life of women, the daughters of modern Christianity ought to regard themselves and their affairs of the utmost importance. For the sake of Him who gave them such prominence and recognition, they ought to love Him.

Abraham, the friend of God, understood fully that it would never do to have the heir of promise fall into the hands of a heathen wife. He could not bear the thought of taking one of the corrupt Canaanites into his family, with the chance of her leading Isaac into the abominable worship of her gods.

Parents often frustrate the grace of God and mar His plans irreparably by being careless of the worldly associations and affinities of their children.

Sarah, the beautiful and beloved, had been tenderly laid away in the cave of Machpelah, and Isaac is now forty years of age. Forty years, however, in those good old times, is yet young, when the thread of mortal life ran out to a hundred and seventy-five or eighty years. As Abraham has nearly reached that far period, his sun of life is dipping downwards toward the evening horizon. He has but one care remaining—to settle his son Isaac in life before he is gathered to his fathers.

The scene where Abraham discusses the subject with his head servant sheds a peculiar light on the domestic and family relations of those days.

Calling Eliezer, his most trusty servant, he discloses to him his purpose, and makes him take an oath that he will faithfully carry out his wishes. But Abraham’s steward saw the difficulties of such a proxy wooing, and expressed a fear that the young woman would object to so hazardous a journey to share the home of a man whom she had never seen and of whom she had possibly never before heard. So, to make matters sure, he asks if it would not be better to take Isaac with him? To this request the patriarch replied, “Beware thou that thou bring not my son thither again.” Abraham saw that there was too much risk in allowing Isaac to go back to the old home. He might have to be scourged out of it as was Jacob, the next in the line, a few years later. He must do right and trust God. So he told his steward, “The Lord, before whom I walk, will send his angel before thee and prosper thy way, and thou shalt take a wife for my son of my kindred and of my father’s house.” Then, as he saw the ever-present contingency with which human free agency may frustrate even Divine Providence, he added, “And if the woman will not be willing to follow thee, then thou shalt be clear from this thine oath; only bring not my son thither again.”

The picture of the preparations made for this embassy denotes a princely station and great wealth. “And the servant took ten camels of the camels of his master, and departed; for all the goods of his master were in his hand; and he arose and went to Mesopotamia, unto the city of Nahor.”

Now comes a quaint and beautiful picture of the manners of those pastoral days. He made his camels to kneel down without the city by a well of water, at the time of the evening when the women go out to draw water. With the kneeling camels around the well, the aged Eliezer uncovers his head in the evening twilight, and with closed eyes and face raised towards heaven, he talks to God in this simple and yet eloquent way, “O, Lord God of my master Abraham, I pray thee, send me good speed this day, and show kindness unto my master Abraham. Behold! I stand here by the well of water; and the daughters of the men of the city come out to draw water: And let it come to pass that the damsel to whom I shall say, Let down thy pitcher, I pray thee, that I may drink; and she shall say, Drink and I will give thy camels drink also: let that same be she that Thou hast appointed for Thy servant Isaac; and thereby shall I know that Thou hast shewed kindness unto my master.” It is to be observed that this aged servant talked to God with all the simplicity and directness of a child with its mother. He told the Lord where he stood, and it was in the most likely place about an Oriental city at evening time, for all the damsels come out to the well at that hour of the day to draw water. He did not doubt that there was a bride for Isaac in the town; and he wanted to find the right one immediately. The care of Abraham’s affairs pressed him, and he wanted to get through the matter with as little waste of time and sentiment as possible. That he might not make any mistake in his delicate mission, he tells the Lord of a little test he thought of using. He needed a sign from God to select the bride from among the women who should come to the well. He used his own judgment as far as it went; but it stopped short of a decision. He specified that the chosen one should be industrious, hospitable, deft, courteous. She should be qualified to stand at the head of a princely establishment.

His prayer was speedily granted, for thus the story goes on, “And it came to pass, before he had done speaking, that, behold Rebekah came out, who was born to Bethuel, son of Milcah, the wife of Nahor, Abraham’s brother.”

It is noticeable, how strong is the sensibility to womanly beauty in this narrative. This young Rebekah is thus announced: “And the damsel was very fair to look upon, and a virgin, and she went down to the well, and filled her pitcher, and came up.” Drawn by the bright eyes, and fair face, the old servant hastens to apply the test, doubtless hoping that this lovely creature is the appointed one for his young master.

“And the servant ran to meet her, and said, Let me, I pray thee, drink a little water of thy pitcher. And she said, Drink, my Lord; and she hastened, and let down her pitcher upon her hand, and gave him drink.”

She gave with a will, with a grace and readiness that outflowed the request, and then it is added: “And when she had done giving him drink, she said, I will draw water for thy camels also, until they have done drinking. And she hastened and emptied her pitcher into the trough, and ran again unto the well to draw water, and drew for all his camels.” Let us fancy ten camels, all on their knees, in a row, at the trough, with their long necks, and patient, care-worn faces, while the pretty young damsel, with cheerful alacrity, is dashing down the water from her pitcher, filling and emptying in quick succession, apparently making nothing of the toil; the gray-haired old servant, looking on in devout recognition of the answer to his prayer, for the story says: “And the man, wondering at her, held his peace, to wit (know) whether the Lord had made his journey prosperous or not.”

There was wise penetration into life and the essentials of wedded happiness in this prayer of the old servant. What he asked for his young master was not beauty, or talent, but a ready and unfailing outflow of sympathy and kindness. He asked not merely for a gentle nature, a kind heart, but he asked for a heart so rich in kindness that it should run even beyond what was asked, and be ready to anticipate the request with new devices of helpfulness; the lively, lighthearted kindness that could not be content with waiting on the thirsty old man, but with cheerful alacrity took upon herself the care of all the ten camels. This was a gift beyond that of beauty, yet when it came in the person of a maiden exceedingly fair to look upon, no marvel that the old man wondered joyously at his success.

Instantly, as the camels had done drinking, he produced from his treasury golden earrings and bracelets with which he adorned the maiden. We can easily imagine the maidenly delight with which she ran to exhibit the gifts of jewelry that thus unexpectedly descended upon her.

Nor does Eliezer fail to offer up a prayer of thanksgiving for divine guidance. In this he set a worthy example to all who seek direction from God. He said, “I, being in the way, the Lord led me.” A free translation would be, “I used my own judgment as far as it would go, which was a long distance from a safe conclusion, and the Lord led me the rest of the way.”

Bethuel, when he saw the gifts and heard the words of Rebekah, hastened to the well and said to Eliezer, “Come in, thou blessed of the Lord; wherefore standest thou without? for I have prepared the house, and room for the camels. And the man came into the house: and he ungirded the camels, and gave straw and provender for the camels, and water to wash his feet, and the men’s feet that were with him. And there was set meat before him to eat: but he said, I will not eat, till I have told my errand. And he said, Speak on.”

He then related the purport of his journey, of the prayer that he had uttered at the well, and of its fulfillment in a generous-minded and beautiful young maiden, and thus he ends his story: “And now, if ye will deal kindly and truly with my master, tell me: and if not, tell me; that I may turn to the right hand or to the left.”

Bethuel answered, “Behold, Rebekah is before thee; take her, and go, and let her be thy master’s son’s wife, as the Lord hath spoken.”

“And it came to pass, that when Abraham’s servant heard their words, he worshipped the Lord, bowing himself to the earth.”

And now comes a scene most captivating to female curiosity. “The servant brought forth jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment, and gave them to Rebekah; he gave also to her brother and to her mother precious things.” The scene of examining jewelry and garments and rich stuffs in the family party would have made no mean subject for a painter. No wonder such a suitor sending such gifts found welcome entertainment. So the story goes on: “And they did eat and drink, he and the men that were with him, and tarried all night; and they rose up in the morning and he said, Send me away unto my master. And her brother and her mother said, Let the damsel abide with us a few days, at the least ten, and after that she shall go.”

“And he said unto them, Hinder me not, seeing the Lord hath prospered my way; send me away, that I may go to my master. And they said, We will call the damsel and inquire at her mouth. And they called Rebekah, and said unto her, Wilt thou go with this man? And she said, I will go.” Her prompt reply to this important question was an index to her character. The Divine approval of her ready obedience gave her a grand prophetic Messianic promise that thousands of millions should be gathered into His Kingdom from the conquest “of those which hate them.” This extra Hebrew prophecy was a flash of God’s light on the fact that our Lord should be the Saviour, not only of the Jews, but of the entire world.

Thus far this wooing seems to have been conceived and conducted in that simple religious spirit recognized in the words of the old prayer, “Grant that all our work may be begun, continued and ended in thee.” The Father of nations has been a never-failing presence in every turn.

“And Rebekah arose, and her damsels, and they rode upon the camels, and followed the man; and the servant took Rebekah, and went his way.”

It was a long way from the city of Nahor, in Mesopotamia to Hebron in the southern borders of Palestine, and between the Euphrates and the land of promise stretched leagues of hot desert sands, through which the camels slowly and patiently toiled day after day with their precious burden. But at length Damascus with its refreshing streams, and Mt. Hermon with its dome lifted among the clouds, were passed, and, towards evening of the last day, just as they reached the head of the valley of Eschol, from the summit of which opens a magnificent view through the whole length of the valley, “Rebekah lifted up her eyes, and when she saw Isaac she lighted off the camel. For she had said unto the servant, What man is this that walketh in the field to meet us? And the servant had said, It is my master; therefore she took a veil and covered herself.”

Doubtless for days Isaac had walked the mile and a half from his mother’s tent to where the valley of Eschol forms a junction with the plain of Mamre, from whence he could look up the narrow valley and view the approaching caravan at a considerable distance. The expectant bridegroom, brought up with the strictest notions of filial submission, waits to receive his wife dutifully from his father’s hand, and yet, we fancy, day after day he goes out to meet her, and now the long-expected caravan, with Eliezer, his father’s most trusted servant, at its head, is approaching at eventide, and he quickens his step to meet his bride.

From what we have already seen of Rebekah, she is lively, lighthearted, kind, possessed of an alert readiness, prompt to see and do what is to be done at the moment. No dreamer is she, but a wideawake young woman who knows her own mind exactly, and has the fit word and fit action ready for each short turn in life. She was quick, cheerful and energetic in hospitality. She was prompt and unhesitating in her resolve; and yet, at the moment of meeting, she knew the value and propriety of the veil. She covered herself that she might not unsought be won.

“And Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah’s tent.” Tent life in the days of Abraham, in our estimation, must have been not only desirable, but grand and glorious. Living, as they did, so closely in contact with nature, as God made it, fresh, pure air, babbling brooks, rippling streams, and blue skies, theirs was a happy life. They were not confined in crowded cities, surrounded by dismal walls, but on the hillsides, the open valleys and the unbounded plains. Their tent was pitched in a clump of oaks, near a living stream, and overlooked the plain of Mamre—a beautiful picture of freedom, ease and comfort. To such a place he took Rebekah, and she became his wife; and he loved her; and Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death. So ends this most charming story of domestic life in the patriarchal age. For beauty, simplicity and directness it has no equal. We also see, in the closing words, one of those delicate and tender natures that find repose first in the love of a mother, and when that stay is withdrawn, lean upon a beloved wife.

So ideally pure, and sweet, and tenderly religious has been the whole inception and carrying on and termination of this wedding, that Isaac and Rebekah have been remembered in the wedding ritual of Christian churches as models of a holy marriage according to the divine will.

Though for nineteen years Rebekah was childless, yet retained she her husband’s love. This may have been a trial to Isaac, since the line of the blessing was to pass through him. That he thought much about it is evident, for, at length, he “entreated the Lord for his wife,” and his intercession was based upon a divine foundation in Jehovah’s promise. And, possibly, even Isaac had to be educated up to this point, namely, that the seed of promise must be sought from God, so that it should be regarded, not as the fruit of nature, but as the gift of divine grace.

In due time Esau and Jacob were born, and they were twins, but with natures and characteristics marked more for their contrasts than similarity. Beyond the bare statement, “And the boys grew,” nothing is said of their childhood and youth—the formative periods of their lives.

When they had grown to manhood’s estate, we are informed that “Esau was a cunning hunter, a man of the field; and Jacob was a plain man, dwelling in tents.” The free and easy life in the chase developed in Esau a robust appearance, and for that reason, and also “because he did eat of his venison,” Isaac loved Esau. Jacob is represented to us as of a more delicate make-up and naturally appealed more to the mother heart. “Rebekah loved Jacob.” From merely a parental standpoint, both were wrong. Even though the characteristics of these boys were wide apart, the parents should have been united in their love, and impartially discharged their duties, and let God, in his own good time, make His selection. But here, as in the lives of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah delayed the blessing God designed they should have, and brought sorrow into their own lives. It is evident that the ardent Rebekah, by her animated, energetic declarations, formed a very significant complement to Isaac, confiding more in the divine declarations as to her boys than Isaac did, and therefore better able to appreciate the deeper nature of Jacob. But when Isaac shows his preference for Esau to be the heir, the courageous woman forgets her vocation, and with artifice counsels Jacob to steal the blessing from Isaac—a transgression for which she had to atone in not seeing her favorite son after she sent him away, out of reach of his brother’s anger. She had only Esau left, and he must have made her feel that it was her partiality that had robbed him of what he prized most highly. His heathen wives had been a “grief of mind” to her. She said, in her diplomatic effort to get Jacob off to a place of safety, “I am weary of my life because of the daughters of Heth. If Jacob take a wife from the daughters of Heth, such as these which are the daughters of the land, what good shall my life do me?” Probably Esau did not mend matters by adding to his family the Ishmaeltish woman.

Rebekah’s habit of managing affairs may be more common than we think. It is the fault of energetic souls. She loved Jacob with the passionate, tropical strength of her fervid heart. She would not trust God to give him what she believed he ought to receive. It is very hard for such as she to wait patiently for the Lord when His delays are developing faith.

However, viewed from a human standpoint, her faith in the divine purposes was much more clear-sighted than that of Isaac. Consenting to be laid on the altar as a sacrifice to God, Isaac had the stamp of submission early and deeply impressed on his soul. Hence, in the spiritual aspect of his character, he was the man of patience, of acquiescence, of susceptibility, of obedience. Rebekah, on the other hand, was energetic, intensely active, self-confident, a most excellent manager, even tricky, but nevertheless capable and efficient. She had the faults which usually go with such traits of character. Taking things into her own hands, she even meddled with Providence.

But was she not provoked to this act by Isaac himself? Isaac’s willful act does not consist alone in his arbitrary determination to present Esau with the blessing of the theocratic birthright, although Rebekah received that divine sentence respecting her children before their birth, and which, no doubt, she had mentioned to him, but the manner in which he intends to bless Esau. He arranges to bless him in unbecoming secrecy, without the knowledge of Rebekah and Jacob. The preparation of the venison, in its main point of view, is an excuse to gain time and place for the secret act. In this point of view, the act of Rebekah appears in a different light. His well-calculated prudence was skillfully caught in the net of Rebekah’s shrewdness.

A want of divine confidence may be recognized through all his actions. Rebekah, however, has so far the advantage of him that she in her deception has the divine assurance that Jacob was the heir, while Isaac has only his human reason without any inward spiritual certainty. Rebekah’s error consists in thinking that she must direct divine Providence by means of human deception. The divine promise would have been fulfilled without her assistance. Of course, when compared with Isaac’s fatal error, she was right. Though she deceived him greatly, misled her favorite son, and alienated Esau from her, there was yet something saving in her action according to her intentions. For to Esau the most comprehensive blessing might have become only a curse. He was not fitted for it.

Viewed from Rebekah’s point of view, the lesson for us is, we are not to do evil, that good may come. The sinful element in her act was the wrong application of her assurance of faith, for which she suffered, perhaps, many long years of melancholy solitude.

Had this noble woman in White Raiment not erred she would not have been human. As a whole, she has a beautiful character—beautiful in its generous helpfulness, in its prudence, in its magnanimity, and in her theocratic zeal of faith.

Here Rebekah obviously disappears from the stage of life. It has been conjectured that she died during Jacob’s sojourn in Padan-aram, whither she had sent him to escape the tragic consequences of her hasty conduct, for she is not mentioned when Jacob returned to his father, nor do we hear of her burial till it is incidentally mentioned by Jacob on his deathbed. She was buried in the cave of Machpelah, by the side of Sarah.

After Jacob had obtained the theocratic birthright he fled from his father’s home in Beer-sheba to Padan-aram, or the city of Haran, in Mesopotamia. Haran was situated about four hundred and fifty miles north-east from Beer-sheba. If the young man walked thirty miles a day, for he performed this long journey over the mountains and through the desert on foot, it took him fifteen days. No doubt, as he drew near the well, before the city, he was footsore, dust-covered, homesick, and greatly depressed in mind, for the occasion of his sudden departure and the anger of his brother Esau were still fresh in memory.

But what a quaint, picturesque scene of Oriental life is presented to our view. It is yet early evening. The shepherds, with their flocks, are moving from various points over the plain to one common centre. Three of the shepherds had already arrived, and Jacob salutes them, and asks, “My brethren, whence be ye?” And they answered, “Of Haran.” Then he inquired, “Know ye Laban?” They made reply, “We know him,” then, pointing to a shepherdess slowly leading her flock over the plain towards the well, said, “Behold Rachel, his daughter, cometh with the sheep.” While he was yet talking with the shepherds, Rachel drew near “with her father’s sheep.” Jacob saw his opportunity, for the great stone over the mouth of the well had not been removed, and, though it was the work of three men to remove the stone, he hastens to perform this task for the beautiful shepherdess alone, and does for her what his mother had done for Eliezer’s camels, watered her flock. Clearly, it was love at first sight. Rachel must have deeply impressed him. And what could have been her thoughts as she stood by her flock and saw this youth pour bucketfull after bucketfull into the stone troughs for her sheep? It was certainly an impressive introduction.

The sheep watered, and before he made himself known, he stepped up to the bewitching shepherdess, and kissed her. This story of Rachel, the pretty shepherdess of the plains of Mesopotamia, who took with a glance the heart of the loving, homesick Jacob, and held it to the end of her days, has always had a peculiar interest, for there is that in it which appeals to some of the deepest feelings of the human heart. The beauty of Rachel, the deep love with which she was loved by Jacob from their first meeting by the well of Haran, when he showed to her the simple courtesies of the desert life, and kissed her and told her he was Rebekah’s son; the long servitude with which he patiently served for her, in which the seven years “seemed to him but a few days, for the love he had to her;” their marriage at last, after the cruel disappointment through the fraud which substituted the elder sister in the place of the younger; and the death of Rachel “in the way to Ephrath, which is Bethlehem,” when she had given birth to Benjamin, and had become still more endeared to her husband; his deep grief and ever-living regrets for her loss—these things make up a touching tale of personal and domestic history which has kept alive the memory of Rachel through all the long centuries down to the present time. Her untimely death has been likened to a “bunch of violets pulled up by the roots, with the soil clinging to them—their exquisite perfume reminding one of the leafy nook in which they grew.”

What a mystery is love! We can not define it. It can only be unlocked by the key of experience. Love is not a product of the reason. It is the free play of the spiritual sensibilities in the possession of its object. And if human love is inexplicable, divine love is an ocean too deep for the plummet of man, and by far too broad to be bounded by the thought of the loftiest intelligence in the universe.

Chaste human love is a beautiful thing, by which conjugal love is afterwards more and more strengthened and confirmed. And, in this scene at the well, we have emphasized the fact that virtuous maidens do not need to attend large, exciting assemblies or popular resorts, to get husbands. If they are true to themselves, they can safely trust God, who is able to give them pious, honorable and upright husbands.

As soon as Rachel learned that Jacob was her father’s nephew, and that he was Rebekah’s son, “she ran and told her father.” When Laban heard Rachel’s story, he hastened to meet Jacob, and brought him to his house.

After a short stay as the guest of the family, it seemed best to Laban that wages should be given to Jacob for his services, but instead of wages he desires Rachel, and, instead of service for an indefinite time, he promises a service of seven years. Jacob’s service, it is thought by some writers, represents the price which was usually paid for the wife. Doubtless, Rachel was worth to Jacob the years of service he paid, but doubtless then, as now, prices varied according to age and beauty, and in some Eastern countries the prices are higher than in others. The custom still exists. A man without means serves from three to seven years for his bride. To Jacob, these years of service seemed but a few days. His love for Rachel made his long service a delight to him. He was cheerful and joyful in hope.

At the end of the years of service Laban made a great nuptial feast. These Oriental weddings last seven days. Doubtless Laban arranged this feast, the better to facilitate Jacob’s deception by the coming and going of guests, and the general bustle and noise characteristic of such occasions. The deception was also possible through the custom, namely, the bride was led veiled to the bridegroom and the bridal chamber. Laban probably believed, as to the base deception, that he would be excused, because he had already in view the concession of the second daughter, so Leah, the elder daughter, was substituted. The motive for this is not stated. Perhaps Laban recognized a skillful and useful shepherd in Jacob. He may also have acted from regard to his own interest, especially since he knew that Jacob possessed a great inheritance at home.

The substitution of Leah for Rachel is the first retribution Jacob experienced for the deceitful practices of his former days. He had, through fraud and cunning, secured the place and blessing of Esau—he, the younger, in place of the elder. Now, by the same deceit, the elder is put upon him in the place of the younger. God has somehow so arranged the affairs of men, that what a man sows, that shall he also reap. Sin is often punished with sin.

When Laban was asked for an explanation of his conduct, he replied that it was not the custom in his country to give the younger into marriage before the first-born, a bit of information he should have given Jacob when he first made suit for Rachel. His excuse does not justify in the least his deception, but there was, however, a sting for Jacob in his reply, namely, in the emphasis of the right of the first-born.

There was, therefore, nothing left for Jacob but to give another seven years’ service for Rachel. So, at the end of the marriage week or feast of Leah, the second wedding followed, and the years of service were rendered afterwards. We do not know why Rachel was affectionately loved, while Leah held but an indifferent place in Jacob’s heart. But then there is no accounting for, or explaining, love. Leah, it is said, was “tender-eyed,” that is to say, weak-eyed. This, however, does not necessarily mean she was sore-eyed or blear-eyed, but simply they were not full, clear, and sparkling, not in keeping with the Oriental idea of beauty, though otherwise she might have been comely. But to an Oriental, black eyes, clear, lustrous, full of life and fire, especially, when in addition to all these, the eye is expressive, are considered the principal part of female beauty. Rachel was the fortunate possessor of all these charming qualities of Eastern beauty, and so must have charmed, captivated, and held Jacob in spite of all other obstacles.

That Leah tried to win his affections is evident from what she says in connection with the birth of Reuben, her first born. “Now therefore,” she says, “my husband will love me.” No doubt, during the seven years that Jacob was in the home of Laban, her love for him became deep and strong, which had, no doubt, induced her to consent to Laban’s deception. So, after the birth of the first son, she hoped to win, through her child, Jacob’s love in the strictest sense. After the birth of the second, she hoped to be put on a footing of equality with Rachel, and to be delivered from her disregard. After the third one, she hoped at least for a constant affection. At the birth of the fourth, she looked entirely away from her surroundings to Jehovah by calling him Judah—praised be Jehovah.

If Rachel obtained Jacob’s affections because of her beauty and loveliness, and he refused to bestow upon Leah that affectionate consideration for which she was grieving her life away, it may be a comfort to those who suffer as Leah did, to know that God does not look for beauty from man’s standpoint, and that the sweet graces of mind and heart go farther than personal charms, for He certainly conferred more honor upon her than He did upon Rachel. He gave her more children than to Rachel. She was also, through her posterity, the mother of Moses, David, John the Baptist, and the greatest honor of all, was the mother of our precious Lord Jesus Christ. Leah was not an idolator, so far as we know, while the beautiful Rachel was tainted with this abomination, and it seems to have clung to her posterity, for it was the tribe of Ephraim that led Israel in the sin of idol worship. So that while Leah may not have been as beautiful as her fair sister, she was more loyal to God, and doubtless was, on that account, so greatly honored of Him.

But the fair, clear-eyed, beautiful Rachel, like the lovely Sarah and sprightly Rebekah, was barren and childless, and because of this became very much dejected, and exclaimed, “Give me children or else I die!” From this expression we are to understand, she would die from dejection. Doubtless this dejection led to the substitution of her maid Bilhah. Her jealous love for Jacob is overbalanced by her envy of her sister. The favored Rachel desired children as her own, at any cost, lest she should stand beside her sister childless. The ambition to be among the progenitors of the Messiah made Hebrew women eager to have children. Rachel was not willing to leave the founding of the people of God to her sister only, but wished also to become an ancestress, as well as Leah, but in very deed, not until Joseph’s birth, her very own, could she say, “Now God has taken away my reproach.”

At length, after a service of twenty years or more, God called Jacob to return to his own people. Laban had been a hard master, not only to Jacob, but to his own daughters. “Are we not counted of him strangers?” said they in their conference with Jacob concerning the return. He had sold them as strangers, more as slaves, for the service of their husband. Hence they had nothing more to hope for from him, for this very price, that is, the blessing resulting from Jacob’s service, he had entirely consumed. The daughters had received no share of it. Hence it is evident that they speak with an inward alienation from their father, and are quite willing to go with Jacob to the land of promise.

The time set for the departure was the feast of sheep-shearing. Either Laban had not invited Jacob to this feast, or Jacob took the opportunity of leaving, in order to visit his own flocks. As the sheep-shearing lasted several days, the opportunity was very favorable for his flight.

“But Rachel had stolen the images,” the Penates or household gods, which were honored as guardians, and as oracles. From this incident we may infer that she was not altogether free from the superstitions and idolatry which prevailed in the land whence Abraham had been called, and which still, to some degree, infected even those families among whom the true God was known. It is thought she was actuated to steal them with the superstitious idea that her father, being prevented from consulting them as oracles, would not be able to pursue Jacob. This act, however, as also the well-planned and ready dexterity and presence of mind with which she concealed her theft, and prompt denial to her father, reveals a cunning which is far more befitting the daughter of Laban than the wife of the prudent patriarch.

Jacob continued his journey without interruption until the fords of the Jabbok were reached. While at Mahanaim he sent messengers to Esau, with a view of bringing about a reconciliation with his grieved brother. When he reached the Jabbok the messengers returned and brought the alarming intelligence that Esau was coming to meet him, and four hundred men were with him. This greatly distressed Jacob, and led him to divide his family and his flocks, and to send them in bands before him. Once more, in a critical time, when he expected an attack from Esau, his discriminate regard for Rachel is again shown by placing Leah and her children in the place of danger, in advance of Rachel and her child.

JACOB’S STRUGGLE AT THE JABBOK.

Having thus disposed of his family and his flocks, Jacob remains behind to pray. It was the great struggle of his life. And the burden of that midnight cry was, “Deliver me, I pray Thee, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau; for I fear him, lest he will come and smite me, and the mother with the children.” At length the angel of the Lord said, “Let me go, for the day breaketh!” But Jacob, as if his life hung on the issue, which it doubtless did, replied, “I will not let Thee go, except Thou bless me!”

God heard his prayer and delivered him out of the hands of his brother, Esau.

As Jacob passed over the Jabbok “the sun rose upon him,” and he set forward on his journey a changed man.

In due time Jacob reached the Jordan at Succoth, thence to Shechem, and then to Bethel. At each of these places he halted.

It seems that for a considerable time after the return to Palestine, the images, or household Penates, which Rachel had stolen from her father, remained in the family, perhaps connived at by Jacob, till, on being reminded by the Lord of the vow which he had made at Bethel when he fled from the face of Esau, and being bidden of Him to erect an altar to the God who appeared to him there, Jacob felt the glaring impiety of thus solemnly appearing before God with the taint of idolatry cleaving to his beloved Rachel, said, “Put away the strange gods from among you.” After thus casting out the polluting things from his house, Jacob, at Bethel, amidst its sacred associations, received from God an emphatic promise and blessing.

After his spirit had been purified and strengthened by communion with God, by the assurance of the divine love and favor, by the consciousness of evil put away and duties performed, it was, as he journeyed away from Bethel, that the chastening blow fell and Rachel died. Doubtless the blessings that came as a result of the cleansing and purging from idolatry at Bethel had their effect in bringing Rachel to a higher sense of her relation to that Jehovah in whom her husband, with all his faults of character, so firmly believed.

Five miles south of Jerusalem, and a mile and a half from Bethlehem, in the way to Hebron, is a beautiful chapel, sacred to the memory of Rachel. This is the place where beautiful Rachel surrendered her own life for the life of her second son, whom she named Ben-oni (son of my pain). The wish she had uttered at Joseph’s birth, that God would give her another son, now, after a long period, perhaps sixteen or seventeen years, is at last realized.

Rachel held Jacob’s love to the last, and even down to his old age he mourned her loss. The stone pillar which he set up at her grave is the first recorded instance of the setting up of a sepulchral monument; caves having been up to this time spoken of as the usual places of burial. The tomb of Rachel is one of the shrines which Mohammedans, Jews and Christians unite in honoring, and concerning which their traditions are identical. At the time of our visit, it happened to be the time of new moon, when the chapel was open and all lighted up with olive oil lamps, and the chapel and crypt filled with weeping women. The lamentations were real and sincere, and, had we remained very long, we should have wept out of very sympathy for the grief-stricken mourners of this princess of Israel. The thought that here this lovely woman in White Raiment sacrificed her own life for another was in itself depressing. This first mortuary monument, sacred to the memory of a great love and a great sorrow, has come down to us through more than three thousand years. One may see it “but a little to come to Ephrath.”

“Tell me, ye winged winds,

That round my pathway roar,

Do ye not know some spot

Where mortals weep no more?

Some lone and pleasant dell,

Some valley in the west,

Where, free from toil and pain,

The weary soul may rest?

The loud wind dwindled to a whisper low,

And sighed for pity as it answered, ‘No!’”

Leah probably lived for some years after Jacob reached Hebron. Whether she ever found grace in his sight is not stated. However, in Jacob’s differences with Laban both Leah and Rachel appeared to be attached to him with equal fidelity, while later, in the critical moment, when he expected an attack from Esau, his discriminate regard for the several members of his family was again shown by his placing Rachel and her child hindermost, in the least exposed situation, Leah and her children next, and the two hand-maids, with their children, in front. Of her death nothing is said. From the expression, “There I buried Leah,” (Gen. xlix, 31), we are led to believe that she died at Hebron before Jacob went down into Egypt. She was buried in the family sepulchre, “in the field of Machpelah, which is before Mamre.” Since Hebron is only twenty-five miles from Rachel’s tomb, near Bethlehem, it is quite strange that Jacob did not bury his beloved Rachel in the family sepulchre, along with Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, and Leah, and where he was himself finally buried.

CHAPTER III.
Womanhood During the Egyptian Bondage and in the Desert of Sinai.

Jochebed—Her Remarkable Courage—Thonoris—Her Compassion—Heroic Labors Seemingly Unrewarded—Zipporah, the Midianite Shepherdess—Glorifying Daily Labor—At a Wayside Inn—Miriam—Her Song of Triumph at the Red Sea—Her Affliction at Hazeroth—An Eventful Life.

The history of the human race runs on from the tomb of Rachel for over four hundred years without bringing to our notice any woman in White Raiment until Jochebed, the mother of Moses, is reached. In the meantime, the dreams of Joseph are told, his wandering in the fields of Shechem, and the finding of his brethren in Dothan, the heartless transaction with the Midianites, who, in turn, sold Joseph into Egypt, his prison life followed by his elevation next to the throne and a seven years’ famine, when Jacob and his sons, as Abraham had done before them, went down into Egypt, the years of favor in the house of Pharaoh, and the bondage, bitter and hard, all are told. But, in spite of all, the suffering Israelites, because blessed of God, prospered and “increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceedingly mighty; and the land was filled with them.”

The reigning Pharaoh became alarmed at this state of affairs, and, to repress the Israelites, “made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field.” But, as a stream in a spring freshet bursts through every obstruction, so the Israelites overleaped every barrier thrown in their way by the Egyptian taskmasters. At length a decree was issued that every son born to the Israelites should be cast into the Nile.

But there was at least one woman in the house of bondage who feared the Lord more than she feared Pharaoh. Her name was Jochebed, which means, whose glory is Jehovah. If ever a name had attached with it the characteristic of the person bearing it, it was Jochebed, the wife of Amram, and daughter of Levi. That the glory of this woman in White Raiment was Jehovah, is evident from the fact the hard circumstances in which she was placed by the command of Pharaoh could not make her lose faith in God. Others might obey the unwarranted and heartless, as well as wicked decree, she would not, for she believed it was better to obey God rather than man, and to this belief her faith was anchored, and held steady amid the awful wail of bereaved motherhood as it ascended into the ear of God from the fields of Goshen.

Jochebed was already the mother of Miriam and Aaron, and, since Aaron was three years older than Moses, the decree that all Hebrew male children should be cast into the Nile could not have been in force at Aaron’s birth, or at least had not reached its dangerous climax. As a member of the house of Levi, Jochebed shows the daring and energetic boldness for which her tribe had become distinguished, and indicated the qualities needful for the future priesthood. That the child was so fair, she recognized in it as a good omen. Josephus traces this intuition of faith, which harmonized with the maternal feeling of complacency and desire to preserve his life, to a special revelation. The means of preservation chosen by Jochebed is especially attributed to her genius and courage. It was all the more daring, since in the use of it she seemed to have, from the outset, the daughter of Pharaoh in mind.

Prompted by an heroic faith, this poor Hebrew slave woman, in the house of a cruel and heartless bondage, dared to disobey the royal decree, trusting in God to carry her through the perilous enterprise of saving the life of her well-favored child. The chrism of hot tears which fell on the babe’s forehead, set him apart to the tremendous task of leading up to nationhood a race of degraded slaves whose hands were horny with unpaid toil, whose faces had grown scowling and knotted under the overseer’s lash.

THE ISRAELITES IN BONDAGE.

Jochebed held the boy hard against her heart when she found she could no longer hide him, and said, more to herself and God than to any human helper, “My baby shall not die.” The resolution once formed in the mother’s heart, the next task was to carry it into effect. Then came the gathering of the papyrus leaves, the getting of the bitumen, the building of the little ark, and the finding of the best place for it among the flags of the Nile.

At length the little craft, with many a scalding tear mingled with the bitumen, was found waterworthy. Then, with many a prayer and heartache, and no small faith in the righteousness of her act, the dear child of promise, with many a passionate kiss, such as mothers only can give, was laid asleep in as soft a nest as the loving hands of mother could devise. Then the little craft, baby and all, was carried to the great river of Egypt, “and she laid it in the flags by the river’s brink.” Quickly the mother walked away, though her heart was crushed and bleeding, for how could she look upon her child if any disaster should overtake his small boat on the bosom of the mighty Nile? But her faith in God was sure. Her good sense had done its best. Her courage made her equal to facing the anger of the king; and she would leave the care of her little darling to the God of her fathers.

But the mother-love could not wholly abandon the little craft to its fate, without at least knowing how it fared with the child. So, back a little from the river, where the tall flags formed a gracious shade over the little brother, and her body concealed in the rank grass, the large, bright eyes of Miriam were fixed on the babe’s hiding-place, and the swift feet of the sister were ready to run to tell the mother whatever might happen.

Pretty soon the watchful eyes of Miriam saw a royal retinue issue from the palace gate, and as it drew near the river’s brink she discerned that it was Thonoris, the daughter of Pharaoh, and her maidens, come down to the Nile to bathe in the open stream, as was the custom of ancient Egyptians. As the princess and her maidens walked along the river’s side, she saw the little ark among the flags, and sent one of the maids to fetch it. And when she saw the child she had compassion on it, and said, “This is one of the Hebrew’s children.” But the eyes of Miriam, the faithful sister, closely watched the scene, and when the little ark was safely drawn to shore by the maids of Thonoris, she ran up to the Egyptian princess and said, “Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for thee? And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, Go. And the maid went and called the child’s mother.”

MOSES RESCUED FROM THE NILE.

The compassion of the princess towards the beautiful child led her to adopt him; and when she did so, making him, therefore, prospectively an Egyptian, she did not need, we may well believe, to educate him secretly. The taking of the child into the royal household, doubtless rendered the cruel edict less severe, if not wholly inoperative.

All this reads like a fairy tale, but there is no end of the wonders wrought by our God on behalf of those who trust His love and power.

“And the child grew.” Of course it would under the watchful care of such a nurse. One can easily see how during those years in which Jochebed was nursing her boy as the adopted son of the Egyptian princess, she made the most of her opportunity. In a tongue not understood in the palace she taught the child of Him who should redeem the race. She held him loyal to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Her instruction had been careful, thorough, and direct from her father, Levi, the son of Jacob; and she was true to her faith from her very heart’s core. So that, with the very life of his mother, the growing boy had drank in the Hebrew spirit.

At first it must have been a surprise to the young heir to the Egyptian throne when his Hebrew nurse unfolded to him the secret of his descent. That while legally and formally he was the son of the Princess Thonoris, inwardly he was the son of another mother, and belonged to another race, not of the dominant, but of the servile, race; not a worldly, but a spiritual prince. Probably he had the usual struggle with self. It was no easy matter to lay aside the flattering prospect of one day sitting on the throne of Egypt, to forever renounce the glory and glitter of an earthly court, and to identify himself with the slave people whose lives were made bitter in all manner of service. Surely, Jochebed must not only have been a loving mother, but a wise spiritual teacher to thus gain the surrender of all that was dear to her child of the earthly life, that he might gain the heavenly. He must have been completely regenerated when he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, but chose to suffer affliction with the people of God. Only a personal knowledge of the Redeemer could have brought him to esteem the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt.

No better compliment could have been paid Jochebed than the fact that in that corrupt, magnificent, heathen court she was able to do her work so well. Her son’s flawless choice of the Divine will made him the greatest man, the Son of God excepted, ever veiled in human flesh. That was the best possible sign and seal of her capability and faithfulness.

When her child had passed beyond the years of childhood, and, as a nurse, could no longer retain him, “she brought him unto Pharaoh’s daughter,” and Thonoris, with almost infinite care, completed the boy’s education by instructing him in all the wisdom of Egypt; hence Moses was prepared both negatively and positively for his life work. Positively by his great-hearted mother, Jochebed; negatively by the Egyptian princess Thonoris, thereby, by her own hand, brought up the deliverer and avenger of the oppressed Israelites.

At this point Jochebed is lost to view. She drops out of history, and nothing more is known of her. Hers emphatically was a work of faith, for in all probability she died while Moses was under discipline in the land of Midian. Her people, for whom she had wrought so heroically, were still serving “with rigor” in building for Pharaoh the “treasure cities Pithom and Raamses.” The son from whom she had hoped so much as the crown prince of the land was in exile in the back side of the desert; yet her faith held steady as she said with her parting breath, “God will deliver His people. He saved Moses from the wrath of Pharaoh and from the reptiles of the Nile; He will yet bring him back to lead Israel out of this cruel bondage.”

How many a mother has gone down to her grave in sorrow without realizing the fruit of her toil, perhaps broken-hearted, as Jochebed may have done, when she saw her son hastening into the desert to escape the vengeance which would surely have overtaken him for smiting the Egyptian. Doubtless she never again saw his face, and may have wondered to what purpose was all her labor. It is difficult to conceive of a grander purpose in motherhood than that of sending out into the world young men spiritually, morally and physically healthy, with correct principles and holy purposes; and it is one of the saddest spectacles in life when these preparations are cast aside by ungrateful or wayward acts. All human help is vain, her sorrow and her anguish are too deep to be reached by sympathy. God alone is her refuge. She is often at the throne of grace with strong cries and tears, and with a faith that will not shrink. Doubtless such were the last days of the brave, the courageous, the heroic Jochebed, as she saw the form of her beloved Moses disappear in the desert of Midian. But God honored her faith as no woman’s faith had ever been honored in the life and works of Moses, the great law-giver, and leader of Israel’s hosts out of the land of bondage.

“Faithful, O Lord, Thy mercies are,

A rock that can not move:

A thousand promises declare

Thy constancy of love.”

But though Moses had fled from the face of Pharaoh because, in his effort to defend a Hebrew who was being smitten by an Egyptian, slew the oppressor, he had not gone into the land of Midian so far but His eye followed the young refugee.

Away in the south-eastern part of Arabia, toward the close of what we may well believe to have been a long day’s travel through the burning sand of that arid country, the young refugee sat down under the grateful shade of a cluster of palm trees that flourished by the side of a well. As he sat there resting, possibly quite homesick, the daughters of Jethro, a Midianite sheik and priest, came with their father’s flock to the well to water them. The fact that it took seven of these daughters to lead the flock to the well, shows that the Midianite was wealthy. These maidens lowered their buckets into the well and then drew them up brimming full of water, and poured it out into the stone troughs. They did this again and again, while Moses was a silent observer. It does not appear that he in any way interrupted the work.

But scarcely had the panting nostrils of the flocks begun to cool a little in the brimming troughs than some rough Bedouin shepherds came with their flocks and drove the maidens and their flock from the well. This was too much for Moses. His face began to color up, and his eyes flash with indignation, and all the gallantry of his nature was aroused. He naturally had a quick temper, as he demonstrated in the case of the Egyptian oppressing an Israelite, and as he showed afterward when he broke all the Ten Commandments at once by shattering the two granite slabs on which the law was written. Hence the harsh treatment of the girls sets him on fire. The injustice of these Bedouin shepherds was more than he could bear, and he came to the rescue of the maidens of the Midianite sheik. Driving the shepherds away, he told the daughters of Jethro to gather their flock once more and bring them again to the watering troughs. Here the beautiful character of Moses comes out, and shows that the careful training of his faithful mother had not been in vain. Though brought up as a prince in the court of Egypt, he takes hold of the water buckets and draws water from the well, and waters the immense flock which had taken seven maidens to drive to the well! What a sight it must have been to these daughters of the priest of Midian as they stood by and saw this brave, unselfish act. What wonder that Zipporah fell in love with such a young man?

Hard as the task must have been, it was quickly finished and the flock early sheltered in the fold. So much so that Jethro asked of his daughters, “How is it that ye are come so soon to-day?” They answered, “An Egyptian delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds, and also drew water enough for us, and watered the flock.” Jethro further inquired, “Where is he? Why is it that ye have left the man?”

We confess it was a somewhat ungrateful act on the part of these girls not to invite the young man to their father’s home, but it only shows that they were so modest as to be too bashful to make such an advance.

So Moses was invited to the home of the Midianite sheik, and in due time Zipporah was given to him in marriage, and she became the mother of his two sons, Gershom and Eliezer.

The Bible does not record much of Zipporah’s life, but, evidently from the fact that she was a shepherdess, she was industrious, notwithstanding the great wealth and influence of her father. What was the use of Zipporah’s bemeaning herself with work when she might have reclined on the hillside near her father’s tent, and plucked buttercups, and dreamed out romances, and sighed idly to the winds, and wept over imaginary songs to the brooks. But no. She knew that work was honorable, and that every girl ought to have something to do, and so she led her father’s flock to the fields, to the watering troughs, and to the safe shelter of the fold. In how many households are there young women without practical and useful employments? Many of them are waiting for fortunate and prosperous matrimonial alliance, but some lounger like themselves will come along, and after counting the large number of father Jethro’s sheep and camels will make proposal that will be accepted; and neither of them having done anything more practical than to chew chocolate caramels, the two nothings will start on the road of life together, every step more and more a failure. Not so with the daughter of the Midianite sheik. Moses found her at the well drawing water. And Zipporah soon learned that Moses could also draw water. Ye daughters of idleness, imitate Zipporah. Do something helpful. The reason that so many men now condemn themselves to unaffianced and solitary life is because they can not support the modern young woman—a thousand of them not worth one Zipporah. There needs to be a radical revolution among most of the prosperous homes of America, by which the elegant do-nothings may be transformed into practical do-somethings. Let useless women go to work and gather the flocks. The stranger at the well may prove to be as good a man as was Moses to Zipporah.

Still further, watch this spectacle of genuine courage. No wonder when Moses scattered the rude shepherds he won Zipporah’s heart. Sense of justice fired his courage; and the world wants more of the spirit that will dare almost anything to see others righted. There are many wells where outrages are practiced, the wrong herd getting the first water. Those who have the previous right come in last, if they come it at all. Thank God we have here and there a strong man to set things right!

This child of the desert, full of industry and energy, very naturally had a quick temper, and, for once at least, it came out in her life. Moses was on his way to Egypt, as the deliverer of Israel. Zipporah and sons set off to accompany him, and went part of the way. While stopping for the night at a wayside inn the Lord suddenly withstood Moses. It appears, for some reason, possibly because Zipporah opposed it, their sons, Gershom and Eliezer, had not been circumcised. And, since the neglect of this rite would cut them off from God’s covenanted people, the Lord suddenly afflicted Moses so that his life must have been despaired of by the wife and mother. In her distress, to save the life of her husband, she herself performs this rite. The expression, “took a sharp stone,” means a sharp stone-knife (more sacred than a metallic knife, on account of the tradition). Under the trying ordeal, and notwithstanding the life of her husband was still in the balance between life and death, she was unable to conceal her ill-humor, and charged him with being “a bloody husband.” Which may mean that the rite of his people was distasteful to her, and doubly so since she had to perform it with her own hand to save the life of Moses.

It appears, probably on account of the performance of this rite upon their two sons, she had to return to her father’s house, as the children would not be in a condition to continue the journey into Egypt, and Moses had to perform the remainder of the way alone.

The only other incident recorded in Zipporah’s life is the bringing of herself and her two sons to Moses by her father, when the host of Israel had reached the Peninsula of Sinai, after they had departed out of the land of Egypt.

It has been suggested that Zipporah was the Cushite (A. V. Ethiopian) wife who furnished Miriam and Aaron with the pretext for their attack on Moses. (Num. xii, 1). The death of Zipporah is not mentioned, but undoubtedly it occurred before Moses took the Cushite to be his wife.

It has also been thought that Jethro and his house, before his acquaintance with Moses, was not a worshipper of the true God. Traces of this appear in the delay which Moses had suffered to take place in respect to the circumcision of his sons. But the fact that Zipporah started from her home in Midian to accompany her husband upon his mission in Egypt, and of her joining him when he had reached the wilderness, upon his return, shows that she was in sympathy with his work, and, doubtless, if up to the time the Lord suddenly withstood Moses at the wayside inn, she was not fully in accord with him in her faith, that this incident fully established her in the true faith. There is a legend which, if not true, is characteristic of the priest of Midian. This Midrash tale relates that Jethro was a counselor of Pharaoh, who tried to dissuade him from slaughtering the Israelitish children, and consequently, on account of his clemency, was forced to flee into Midian, but was rewarded by becoming the father-in-law of Moses.

The wife of so excellent and remarkable a man as Moses, and one who possessed so many womanly qualities as did this shepherdess whom Moses found by the well in Arabia, in the faithful discharge of her duties, deserves a place in the galaxy of Women in White Raiment.

The hospitality, freehearted and unsought which Jethro at once extended to the unknown, homeless wanderer, on the relation of his daughters that he had watered their flock, is a picture of Eastern manners no less true than lovely, and gives us a fine view of the quaint habits and honest simplicity of the Oriental people.

We now pass to the daughter of Jochebed, namely, Miriam. She first came to our notice when the little ark of Moses was placed among the flags of the Nile. Her mother set her to watch the little craft as it floated on the bosom of the great river. When the princess Thonoris, Pharaoh’s daughter, discovered the child and sent her maid to rescue him from his perilous surroundings, Miriam, then probably a young girl, appeared before the Egyptian princess, and asked if she should call a nurse for the child. In reply to this question, Thonoris said to her she might find for her a nurse. And Miriam hastened to the home of her parents, “and called the child’s mother.”

This act shows that Miriam was not only quick-witted, but had the courage to carry her convictions into effect. Though very human, as fully demonstrated in after years, she was faithful to her mother when she watched the boat woven of river plants and made water-tight with asphaltum, carrying its one passenger. And was she not very courageous and did she not put all the ages of time and of a coming eternity under obligation when she defended her helpless brother from the perils of the Nile? She it was that brought that wonderful babe and its mother together, so that he was reared to be the deliverer of his nation. What a garland for faithful sisterhood!

What part Miriam took in the care of her illustrious brother while in the arms of his mother-nurse, we are not told, but we may well believe her sisterly love was strong and unwavering during the years while the precious charge was in the care of the mother.

But there was a long period of eighty years between the infancy of Moses and his return from the desert of Midian, so that the clear-eyed and sprightly girl had grown away from the buoyancy of youth during the years of his exile, and must have been nearly, if not quite, a hundred years old, when God’s chosen people were led out of the iron furnace of bondage, a fact we must not lose sight of in the brief narrative of this noble woman in White Raiment. Her age may, in part at least, account for the high position given her. “The sister of Aaron,” is her biblical distinction which she never lost. In Numbers xii, 1, she is placed before Aaron, and in Micah vi, 4, reckoned as one of the three deliverers of God’s chosen people, “I sent before thee Moses and Aaron and Miriam.” Hence it is quite evident that she had no small part in the redemption of the house of Israel from the land of oppression. Whether or not the prejudices of that day gave her full honor, the Lord admitted her to the triumvirate of deliverance, the three children of the brave, faithful Jochebed.

She was also the first person in her father’s house, and the first woman in the history of God’s people to whom the prophetic gifts are directly ascribed. “Miriam the prophetess,” is her acknowledged title in Exodus xv, 20. She stood, as the leader of Hebrew women, appropriately by the side of the future conductor of the religious service.

MIRIAM’S SONG OF TRIUMPH.

In the song of triumph which the children of Israel sang after their passage of the Red Sea, Miriam, with cymbal in hand, led the women in their part of the glad song of deliverance. It does not appear how far the Hebrew women joined in the song, that is, the part led by Moses, but in the antiphony, Miriam repeats the opening words, in the form of a command to the women, saying, “Sing ye to Jehovah, for he hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea.”

“Sound the loud timbrel o’er Egypt’s dark sea!

Jehovah has triumphed, His people are free!

Sing, for the pride of the tyrant is broken;

His chariots, his horsemen, all splendid and brave;

How vain was their boasting! the Lord hath but spoken,

And chariots and horsemen are sunk in the wave.

“Sound the loud timbrel o’er Egypt’s dark sea!

Jehovah has triumphed, His people are free!

Praise to the Conqueror, praise to the Lord!

His word was our arrow, His breath was our sword.

Who shall return to tell Egypt the story

Of those she sent forth in the hour of her pride?

For the Lord hath looked out from His pillar of glory,

And all her brave thousands are dashed in the tide.

Sound the loud timbrel o’er Egypt’s dark sea!

Jehovah has triumphed, His people are free!”

Miriam must have been exempt from the infirmities of age to a remarkable degree, to be able at her advanced years to lead the host of Hebrew women and maidens in the music and songs of triumph and general rejoicings over the mighty deliverance out of the hand of Pharaoh on the farther shores of the Red Sea. The victory, however, was such a marked one, and the deliverance so great as to cause old age, for the time being, to be swallowed up in the youth of praise and thanksgiving.

Taking up their line of march from the shores of the Red Sea, we do not learn anything farther concerning Miriam until Hazeroth is reached. Here she seems to have been the instigator of an insurrection against Moses. In some respects it must have been grievous to him, all the more so, from the fact that Aaron had also suffered himself to be carried away by his sister’s fanaticism. By virtue of their office as prophet and prophetess, in the minds of the people, they held almost equal rank with Moses.

The occasion of this insurrection was a marriage which Miriam regarded as objectionable, though, notwithstanding, she had the example of Joseph, who married an Egyptian woman, before her, and which marriage did not prove to be antitheocratic. Moses had married a Cushite. It is true the prohibition to marry with the daughters of other than their own people had special reasons of religious self-preservation, and for that reason the High Priest was allowed to marry only a Hebrew virgin, but that was a limitation belonging to his symbolic position. The prophetic class, on the other hand, had the task of illustrating the greatest possible letting down of legal restraint. The union of Moses with this Cushite may have symbolized the future calling of the Gentile nations, a sort of first fruit, as Rahab and Ruth later on proved to be, and it offers a remarkable parallel that the next greatest man of the law, Elijah, lived for a considerable time as the table companion of a heathen widow of Zarephath.

It is manifest that Moses endured in silence the domestic obliquity which his sister drew down upon him, patiently committing his justification to God, until her would-be pious zeal assumed a more alarming aspect. Since Aaron had made common cause with Miriam, Aaron, who wore the breast-plate, Urim and Thummim, and Miriam, who, as a prophetess, had already led the chorus of the women of Israel, must have held high places in the minds of the people; hence, when they raised the question, “Hath the Lord indeed spoken only by Moses? hath he not spoken also by us?” there is no telling where this sedition of Miriam and Aaron might have ended, had not the Lord Himself taken it promptly in hand.

But the Lord heard that complaint, which implied that the prophetic gift was exercised by them also, that they were prophets, vested with authority, and if they even suffered Moses, since his objectionable marriage, to remain in the prophetic college, they could at least outvote him. So Moses, Aaron and Miriam were suddenly cited to the tabernacle of the congregation. When the three presented themselves at the place appointed, the Lord came down in a cloud at the door of the tabernacle, and “called Aaron and Miriam” apart from Moses, and there, at the door of the tabernacle, administered a stern rebuke to both of them. They had lived with Moses so long, and yet knew so little of his exalted position. As a brother he stood too near to them, and they themselves, with their self-consciousness, stood too much in their own light.

“And the cloud departed from off the tabernacle.” As Aaron saw the cloud lifting up and moving off, he must have been inwardly crushed at this punishment. The fires on his altar went out, the pillar of smoke no longer mounted up as a token of grace, the divine presence was withdrawn, and it was as if an interdict of Jehovah lay on the services of the Sanctuary. But this was not all. “Miriam became leprous, white as snow.” There seems to be a singular connection between the punishment of Aaron as the representative of the Church, and Miriam, who had thought herself and Aaron above Moses, snow-white in righteousness, while she looked down on him as unclean. She would dominate the Church, for she dominated Aaron, and now, as a leper, she must be excluded from the Church.

When Aaron looked upon his afflicted sister, though High Priest, the Lord having withdrawn the symbol of his favor from the altar of sacrifice, was as helpless as Miriam, and he now implores Moses, as his superior, to intercede. Here only the spiritual high priesthood of a divine compassion can deliver the helpless High Priest himself and his unfortunate associate in the prophetic office. In his appeal, Aaron almost speaks as if Moses could heal the leprosy. Moses, however, understood it as an indirect request to intercede for Miriam.

“And Moses cried unto the Lord, saying: Heal her now, O God, I beseech thee.” The Lord granted the request, accompanied with a sharp reproof, “If her father had but spit in her face, should she not be unclean seven days?” The figurative expression compares her, who desired to be the prophetic regent of the nation, to a dependent maiden in whose face her father had spit on account of unseemly behavior. Such a one must conceal herself seven days on account of her shame. The same treatment was dictated for Miriam, and she was “shut out from the camp seven days.” The silent grief of the nation must have been profound, for the people remained encamped at Hazeroth during the seclusion of Miriam, and not until she was pronounced clean, and the prescribed sacrifices required on her reception back again, were made, did the Lord’s host depart from their encampment. All these are proofs of the high place she held in the affections of the people.

This sad stroke, and its most gracious removal, is the last public event of Miriam’s life. She died toward the close of the wilderness wanderings at Kadesh, and was buried there. According to Jewish tradition, the burial took place with great pomp on a mountain in the edge of the wilderness of Zin, and the mourning of the whole camp of Israel lasted for thirty days, Jerome tells us that her tomb was shown near Petra.

According to Josephus she was the wife of Hur and the grandmother of Bezaleel, the inspired artisan of the Tabernacle. According to the Targum, the miraculous supply of water at Rephidim was given in her honor. It failed when she died at Kadesh, and was restored only at the second stroke of Moses’ rod, and later, by the digging of the princes with their staves of office, while the people sang a hymn of praise and faith.

These traditions are of but little value except to show in what high esteem she was held.

A long, beautiful, eventful, inspired life—one of patient waiting, intense activity, deep enthusiasm and triumphant faith—transformed the brave little slave girl into the mighty princess and leader of the Lord’s hosts. But for the one assumption of unwarranted authority at Hazeroth, her record would have come down to us untarnished.

CHAPTER IV.
Womanhood During the Conquest and the Theocracy, or Rule of the Judges.

Rahab—Great Grace for Great Sinners—The Fall of Jericho—The Covenant Remembered—Deborah—Her Remarkable Courage—Sisera’s Iron Chariots Broken—The Daughter of Jephthah—Her Loving Devotion and Sacrifice—The Story of Naomi—Orpah’s Kiss—The Loving Ruth—Gleaning Among the Reapers—Her Rich Reward—Hannah—Her Consecration—Yearly Visits to Shiloh—Stitching Beautiful Thoughts into Samuel’s Coat—Her Beautiful Life.

After the death of Miriam at Kadesh, on the borders of Zin, and the death of Aaron on Mount Hor, and of Moses on lofty Pisgah, Joshua “sent out of Shittem two men to spy secretly, saying, Go, view the land, even Jericho. And they went, and came into an harlot’s house, named Rahab, and lodged there.”

The occupation of this woman has called out much comment, and many attempts have been made to clear her character of the stains of vice by affirming that she was only an inn-keeper, and not a harlot. No doubt there is much truth in this statement, for we can not entertain the thought that two pure-minded young men sent out by a leader like Joshua would pass by an inn and purposely seek an house of ill repute. It is also possible that to a woman of the age in which she lived, such a calling may have implied a far less deviation from the standard of morality than it does with us, with nearly two thousand years of Christian teaching. We must not forget that Rahab was a heathen; and the heathen knew very little of the simplest principles of truth and purity. In the first chapter of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans he gives a life picture of pagan morals. Even among the polished Greeks, loyalty to their religion made personal purity impossible. The Canaanites were so vile that, in the emphatic language of Scripture, the land vomited them out. The glimpse we catch of Lot’s neighbors may show in what a cesspool of vice Rahab was brought up. But even if we judge this woman by our modern standards, and admit that she was all that is implied in the opprobrious term, the fact that she is listed among God’s elect women shows the wondrous power of divine grace. God can save a great sinner just as easy as a small one. Notwithstanding she carried the double disability, that of being a heathen and a great sinner, her story is told in full. She has honorable mention by the Apostle James as an illustration of the works that show strong faith; and by the spirit of inspiration in the Epistle to the Hebrews, giving her a place among the mighty heroes and heroines who wrought marvels through confidence in God.

At the time when the Israelites were encamped in Shittem, ready to cross the Jordan and enter the land of promise, Jericho was the strongest fortified city in Canaan, and, as the key to Western Palestine, commanded the two mountain passes which led into the land that was to be possessed. It was to be taken; but how? Joshua sent two of his most trusted men to spy out the land, remembering, no doubt with much trepidation, the failure of forty years before, which made them go back and die in the desert.

The life of the spies, the success of the enterprise, and the courage their report would give the Israelites, all turned on the faith and skill of Rahab. She saved to God’s people the battle they had lost forty years before. No wonder that Hebrew writers have thrown the glamor of romance over her story.

Her house was situated on the wall, probably near the city gate, so as to be convenient for persons coming in and going out of Jericho. She seems not only to have kept an inn for wayfaring men, but also to have been engaged in the manufacture of linen and the art of dyeing, for which the Phœnicians were early famous, since we find the flat roof of her house covered with stalks of flax, put there to dry, and a stock of scarlet or crimson line in her house, a circumstance which, coupled with the mention of Babylonish garments as among the spoils of Jericho, indicates the existence of a trade in such articles between Phœnicia and Mesopotamia. It also appears she had a father and mother, brothers and sisters, who, if they were not living in the same house with her, were dwelling in Jericho.

Traders coming from Mesopotamia, or Egypt to Phœnicia, would frequently pass through Jericho, situated as it was near the fords of the Jordan, and, according to the customs of the times, these travelers would seek a public inn.

These men, coming and going, would naturally enough carry the news of current events with them. Rahab therefore had opportunity to be well informed with regard to the events of the Exodus. As we learn from her own story, she had heard of the passage through the Red Sea, of the utter destruction of Sihon and Og, and of the irresistible progress of the Israelitish host. The effect upon her mind had been what one would not have expected in a person of her way of life. It led her to a firm faith in Jehovah as the true God, and to the conviction that He purposed to give Canaan to the Israelites. She may have thought long and deeply on these strange events, and, possibly, her better nature may have loathed the vices of her people, in which she herself had become involved, and longed for the pure worship of the wonder-working God of whom she had heard.

When, therefore, the two spies sent out by Joshua, who must have been men of moral character and worthy of so important a commission, came to Jericho, no doubt they were divinely directed to her house, who alone, of the whole population, was friendly to their cause. Her heart, at all events, was prepared to receive the message with which they intrusted her, and she gave them the information they sought. And such faith had she in the purposes of God to give the land to the hosts of Joshua that she made a covenant with these representatives of his army, to save her and her family when the city fell into their hands.

The coming of these spies, it seems, was quickly known, and the king of Jericho, having received information of it while at supper, according to Josephus, sent that very evening to require her to deliver them up. It is very likely that, her house being a public one, some one who resorted there may have seen and recognized the spies, and at once reported the matter to the authorities. But not without awakening Rahab’s suspicions, and she was courageous enough to hide them under the flax on the roof, and throw the officers off their suspicion, while she let the Hebrews down over the wall and hurried them away to the mountains, to stay till the hunt was given up and the guards had come back from the fords of the Jordan, thus allowing them to escape across the river to their camp.