CHAPTER III.
The "Book of the Law" not in the Ark—Ark Lost for 2,800 Years—Where is it?—"Book of the Law" Found—How Verified—Huldah the Witch—"Book of the Law" again lost—Reproduced by Ezra.
Poor deluded Jehovah! As something of an author myself, I extend him my fraternal sympathy. After all the preternatural fuss he had made about his "Book of the Law," he was completely on the wrong track. He had made some Jew too clever, and that Jew had managed to swindle and over-reach his maker. The ark was opened in the time of Solomon,[1] and, O duped and insulted heaven! the Book of the Law was not in it! If ever the "Book of the Law" had been there, it had been fraudulently abstracted, God knows when, and this in spite of Omniscience knowing what was in the bottom of the ark, and in spite of Omnipotence kow-towing upon the lid of it!
After this appalling discovery the ark was never again heard of. What became of it and the two stones that were in it, God only knows. Peradventure Jehovah, on discovering how he had been swindled, jumped upon the box with his omnipotent feet, and smashed it into matchwood, while the 50,070 men of Beth-shemesh looked down from heaven and up from hell, putting their right hands to their noses, and extending their fingers and crying "Ha! ha!" while murdered Uzzah[2] delivered himself of a ghastly giggle. It is now more than two thousand eight hundred years since the ark was last seen. According to Maccabees, the prophet Jeremiah hid it in a cave on Mount Pisgah, and sealed up the entrance of the said cave. There, of course, it remains till this day, and, most likely, Jehovah is still sitting on the lid, shining away in the dark. "God does nothing," admitted Thomas Carlyle in mournful bitterness. But if Carlyle himself had been placed on the lid of a gilded box between two cherubs or golden hens, and confined to a cave in Mount Pisgah, could he himself have done more than Jehovah has done?
The "Book of the Law" was evidently a merry, happy go lucky volume, that dearly loved a game of hide-and-seek. After all the truly internal fuss which had been made about the "ark"—or, more or more correctly translated, box—of the Lord, which was supposed to contain it, as we have seen, the box was opened in the time of Solomon (and this time it would seem nobody was struck dead for meddling with it), and behold the "Book of the Law" was not there! But it was not all over yet with the marvellous volume, as the sequel will show. For hundred and fifty god-forsaken years the world had to get along as best it could without the works of Moses. Nobody could form any idea as to what god had done with his book. Had he deftly pilfered it out of the ark, and taken it up to heaven with him to read it to Sarah and ask her assistance in revising it for the press? Had he become thoroughly ashamed of it, and made up his mind to withdraw it all together? He had killed tens of thousands with his box and he was yet destined to kill untold millions with his book. No, he had not. He still had faith in the old book, in which he related how he created the heavens and the earth out of a few tons of excellent nothing. He had killed tens of thousands with his box, and he was yet destined to kill untold millions with his book. Three hundred and fifty years after Solomon’s time, when the ark was opened and no "Book of the Law" found therein, "Hilkiah, the high priest, said unto Shaphan, the scribe, I have found the Book of the Law in the house of the Lord."[3] There was life in the old dog yet. And in that life lay hidden the Bolt of Death. Not all the books the world ever saw was so deadly and baneful as that book. Its fearful mission among mankind could not have been prefigured by making leaf of it from the upas tree, and every word of written with the poison of asps. Accursed above all names be the names of Hilkiah and Shaphan. Did the shuddering thunder shake the world, and showers of blood splash down from the darkened heaven as Hilkiah lifted from the shelf in the temple that baleful "Book of the Law"? Every leaf has proved the parent of division, schism, and hate. Every line has been a row of dragons' teeth, from which have sprung a crop of armed men. Every word has been an anvil, upon which have been hammered ten thousand swords. Every letter has evolved the fire, the scaffold, the dungeon, and the rack. All the ink that has been shed in producing its millions of millions of copies is a mere drop in the bucket to the merciless deluge of blood with which it has drenched the fire-blackened plains and ruined cities of the world. And the fetters of iron which it has rivetted upon the limbs of the most valiant of our race are as nothing to the shackles of intellectual bondage which, worn for long ages, have made Humanity an aggregation of credulous parasites, crushed by a superstition under the weight of which all creation groans. In the interests of the Human Race I say, Anathama maranatha be the hand that penned that "Book of the Law," and damned be the light of that day which rose upon Jerusalem when Hilkiah told Shaphan what he had found "in the house of the Lord"!
How did Shaphan and his friends know that he had found the "Book of the Law"? Aye, there's the rub. Did they submit the book to the scrutiny of all the scholars and experts of the then civilised world, in order that they might have their verdict as to whether the work was from the stylus of Jehovah or from the pen of some Chatterton of a Jew? No such thing. God and his people do not like learning, and they never did. The wise and prudent, the learned and thoughtful, are not in their line; but the babe and suckling are, and the imbecile and the blockhead. They took the book to no seat of learning; they showed it to no scholar and philologist; but they went off with it under their arm, and showed it to Huldah the witch![4] "Hilkiah the priest, and Ahikam, and Achbor, and Shaphan, and Asahiah, went unto Huldah the prophetess, the wife of Shallum the son of Tikvah, the son of Harhas, keeper of the wardrobe (now she dwelt in Jerusalem in the college); and they communed with her."[5]
The witch Huldah cursed like a trooper. Our army swore terribly in Flanders, but nothing like Huldah when the deputation waited upon her with the "Holy Bible, book divine." She cursed the place and she cursed the inhabitants, even with "all the curses that are written in the book." Quoth she, the wrath of the Lord is "kindled against this place, and shall not be quenched."[6] And all this fearful and unquenchable rage of Jehovah was to fall upon the generation alive when his book was found, not upon the generation who allowed the book to be lost. But we must constantly keep in mind that the Lord's ways are not as our ways, and that the Lord's justice is justice upside down.
One person, however, was to be exempt from the terrible curse; and this person was King Josiah. He had flattered the witch by sending the deputation re the Book to wait upon her. In the name of the Lord she prophesied of him: "Behold, therefore, I will gather thee unto thy fathers, and thou shalt be gathered into thy grave in peace."[7] Now, in the very next chapter, the witch's prediction is falsified. Far from being gathered to his "grave in peace," Josiah was slain in battle at Megiddo, from which stricken field his servants brought his bloody remains and laid them in a sepulchre in Jerusalem.[8] So much for Huldah's skill as a prophetess; but, next to babes and sucklings, the Lord seems to have a weakness for impostors. And one impostor more or less with a finger in the pie of the finding of "the Book of the Law" was neither here nor there.
But the "Book of the Law" had not even yet done with its game of hide-and-seek. Its appearance in the temple was mysterious enough. If it had been there only for a short time, how did it come there and whence did it come? If it had been there for a long time, how did it remain that long time and not be discovered? The discovery was certainly mysterious, and, in recognition thereof, the king "rent his clothes," which would give a slight impetus to trade in the tailoring line, and the people took to eating roast lamb, without green peas and mint sauce, and called the orgie the "Passover." But, mysterious though the appearance of the book was, its disappearance appears to have been more mysterious still. God does not seem to have written his law upon sheep-skin, but to have inscribed it upon the back of a veritable will-o'-the-wisp.
One hundred and fifty years after Hilkiah's time Ezra managed to put salt on the tail of the Lord's will-o'-the-wisp"—the "Book of the Law" was again discovered! The discovery this time was of an exceedingly peculiar nature. Hilkiah discovered the book in the temple; but Ezra seems to have discovered it inside his own head! After the return from the seventy years' exile by the waters of Babel, Esdras (Ezra) saw necessary to draw the attention of the Lord to the fact that the "Book of the Law" had been destroyed by fire, and thereby the Holy Ghost's name as an author blotted from the records of literature. "Thy law is burnt: therefore no man knoweth the things that are done of Thee." Then, after assuring God that his book had been burnt, Ezra obligingly offers to write him another in its place—to "write all that hath been done in the world since the beginning, which were written in thy law that men may find thy path."
- ↑ [Erratum: 2 Kings xxiii.]