Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/423

S E A E L 407 >reign Omri forty years before ; an accurate account of their latious success, obviously written while the impression of it was tlie still fresh, 1 has come down to us in the famous inscription } of King Mesha. Ahaziah, Ahab s immediate successor, was obliged to accept the situation ; after his early death a futile attempt again to subjugate them was made by his brother Joram. Such a campaign was possible to him only in the event of the Syrians keeping quiet, and in point of fact it would appear that they were not in a position to follow up the advantage they had gained at Ramoth ; doubtless they were hampered by the inroads of the Assyrians in 850 and 849. As soon as they got a little respite, however, they lost no time in attacking Joram, driving him into his capital, where they besieged him. Samaria had already been brought to the utmost extremi ties of famine, when suddenly the enemy raised the siege on account of a report of an invasion of their own land by the " Egyptians and Hittites." Possibly we ought to understand by these the Assyrians rather, who in 846 renewed their attacks upon Syria ; to ordinary people in Israel the Assyrians were an unknown quantity, for which it wjuld be natural in popular story to substitute something more familiar. This turn of affairs relieved Joram frotu his straits ; it would even seem that, favoured by a change of dynasty at Damascus, he had succeeded in taking from the Syrians the fortress of- Karnoth in Gilead, which had been the object of Ahab s unsuccessful endeavours, when su Idenly there burst upon the house of Omri the over whelming catastrophe for which the prophets had long been preparing. Phe When the prophets first made their appearance, some time >rophets. before the beginning of the Philistine war, they were a novel phenomenon in Israel; but in the interval they had become so naturalized that they now had a recognized and essential place in connexion with the religion of Jehovah. They had in the process divested themselves of much that h-id originally characterized them, but they still retained their habit of appearing in companies and living together in societies, and also that of wearing a peculiar distinctive dress. These societies- of theirs had no ulterior aims; the rabbinical notion that they were schools and academies in which the study of the Torah and of sacred history was pur.su id imports later ideas into an earlier time. First- rate importance on the whole cannot bo claimed for the Nebiim, but occasionally there arose amongst them a man in whom the spirit which was cultivated within their circles maybe said to have risen to the explosive pitch. Histori cal influence was exercised at no time save by these indi viduals, who rose above their order and even placed them selves in opposition to it, but always at the same time had their base of operations within it. The prototype of this class of exceptional prophets, whom we not unjustly have been accustomed to regard as the true, is Elijah of Thisbe, the contemporary of Ahab. Elijah In compliment to Jezebel his wife, Ahab had set up in and Samaria a temple with richly endowed religious services Ahab. j n h onoul . O f t ue Syrian Baal. In doing so he had no intention of renouncing Jehovah; Jehovah continued to be the national God after whom he named his sons Ahaziah and Jehoratn. The destruction of Jehovah s altars or the persecution of His prophets was not at all proposed, or even the introduction of a foreign cultus elsewhere than in Samaria. Jehovah s sovereignty over Israel being thus only remotely if at all imperilled, the popular faith found nothing specially offensive in a course of action which had been followed a hundred years before by Solomon also. Elijah alone was strenuous in his opposition ; the masses did not understand him, and were far from taking his side. 1 It is obvious that Meslia s narrative is to be taken with 2 Kings i. 1, and not with 2 Kings iii. To him only, but not to the nation, did it seem like a halt ing between two opinions, an irreconcilable inconsistency, that Jehovah should be worshipped as Israel s God and a chapel to Baal should at the same time be erected in Israel. In solitary grandeur did this prophet tower conspicu- Elijah ously over his time ; legend, and not history, could alone ancl tii preserve the memory of his figure. There remains a vague impression that with him the development of Israel s con ception of Jehovah entered upon a new stadium, rather than any data from which it can be ascertained wherein the contrast of the new with the old lay. After Jehovah, acting more immediately within the political sphere, had established the nation and kingdom, he now began in the spiritual sphere to operate against the foreign elements, the infusion of which previously had been permitted to go on almost unchecked. 2 The Ruchabites, who arose at that time, protested in their zeal for Jehovah altogether against all civilization which presupposes agriculture, and in their fundamental principles aimed at a recurrence to the primi tive nomadic life of Israel in the wilderness ; the Nazarites abstained at least from wine, the chief symbol of Dionysiac civilization. In this indeed Elijah was not with them ; had he been so, he would doubtless have been intelligible to the masses. But, comprehending as he did the spirit from which these demonstrations proceeded, lie thought of Jehovah as a great principle which cannot coexist in the same heart with Baal. To him first was it revealed that we have not in the various departments of nature a variety of forces worthy of our worship, but that there exists over all but one Holy One and one Mighty One, who reveals Himself not in nature but in law and righteousness in the world of man. The indignation he displayed against the judicial murder at Jezreel was as genuine and strong as that which he manifested against the worship of Baal in Samaria; the one was as much a crime against Jehovah as the other. Elijah ascended to heaven before he had actually achieved much in the world. The idea which his successors took from him was that it was necessary to make a thorough clearance from Samaria of the Baal worship and of the house of Ahab as well. For this practical end Elisha made use of practical means. When Elijah, after the murder of Naboth, had suddenly appeared before Ahab and threatened him with a violent end, an officer of high command had been present, Jehu ben Nimshi, and he had never forgotten the incident. He now found himself at the head of the troops at Ramoth Gilead after the withdrawal to Jezreel of Joram ben Ahab from the field to be healed of his wound. To Elisha the moment seemed a suitable one for giving to Jehu in Jehovah s name the command now to carry out Elijah s threat against the house of Ahab. Jehu gained Jehu, over the captains of the army, and carried cut so well the task with which the prophet had commissioned him that not a single survivor of Ahab s dynasty or of his court was- left. Pie next extirpated Baal and his worshippers in Samaria. From that date no worship of foreign gods seems ever to have recurred in Israel. Idolatry indeed continued to subsist, but the images, stones, and trees, even the teraphim apparently, belonged to the cultus of Jehovah, or were at least brought into relation with it. . Jehu founded the second and last dynasty of the kingdom of Samaria. His inheritance from the house of Omri included the task of defending himself against the Syrians. The forces at his disposal being insufficient for this, he resorted to the expedient of seeking to urge the Assyrians 2 It is worth noticing how much more frequent from this period onwards proper names compounded with the word Jehovah become. During the period of the judges, and under the kings before Ahab in Israel and Asa in Judah, not a single instance occurs ; thenceforward they become the rule.