Fanaticism
:
Hebrew Heroes
We will now glance at the encampment of the Hebrew warriors, upon a
wild expanse of undulating ground, in view of the towers of Bethsura, a
strong fortress rebuilt by the Edomite settlers on the site of that
raised in former times by Rehoboam. Bethsura is now garrisoned by the
Syrians, and its environs occupied by the countless tents of their
mighty host.
On a small rising ground near the centre of the H
brew camp stands, as
on a rostrum, an old Jew clad in a camel-hair garment, with long gray
unkempt hair hanging over his shoulders. His manner is excited, his
gestures vehement, and the shrill accents of his voice are so raised as
to be heard to a considerable distance. A gradually increasing circle
of listeners gathers around him--stern, weather-beaten men, who have
toiled and suffered much for their faith. What marvel if with some of
these warriors religion have darkened into fanaticism, courage
degenerated into savage fierceness? It is the tendency of war,
especially if it be of a guerrilla character, to inflame the passions
and harden the heart. Only terrible necessity can justify the
unnatural strife which arms man against his brother man. Even the most
noble struggle in which patriot can engage in defence of his country's
freedom, draws along with it terrible evils, of which a vast amount of
human suffering is not perhaps the greatest.
"Yea, I do charge you, Joab, I do charge you, O son of Ahijah, with
having brought a spy, a traitor, into our camp!" almost shrieked the
wild orator Jasher, as he pointed with his shrivelled finger at the
sturdy muleteer, who stood in the innermost rank of the circle. "Was
not this Greek, by your own showing, present at the martyrdom of the
blessed saint Solomona?--was he not tried for his life at her grave,
where he was discovered coiling like a serpent in the darkness?--is he
not one of a race of idolaters, worshippers of images made by man's
hand?"
"All that I can say," replied Joab, doggedly, "is, that whatever
Lycidas may have been, he is not an idolater now."
"Who are you that you should judge, you Nabal, you son of folly?"
exclaimed the excited orator. "Mark you, men of Judah, mark you the
blindness that falls on some men--ay, even on a reputed saint like the
Lady Hadassah! Joab has learned from her handmaiden the astounding
fact that for months this Lycidas, this viper, was nurtured and tended
in her home, as if he had been a son of Abraham! Doubtless it was this
act of worse than folly on the part of Hadassah that drew down a
judgment on her and her house. Mark what followed. The warmed viper
escapes from her dwelling, and the next day--ay, the very next
day--Syrian dogs beset the house of Salathiel as he celebrates the holy
Feast! Who guided them thither?" The question was asked with
passionate energy, and the feelings of the speaker were evidently
beginning to communicate themselves to the audience. "Who then lay a
bleeding corpse on the threshold, slain by the murderous Syrians?"
continued Jasher, with yet fiercer action; "who but Abishai, the brave,
the faithful, he who had denounced the viper, and had sought, but in
vain, to crush it--it was he who fell at last a victim to its
treacherous sting!" Jasher ended his peroration with a hissing sound
from between his clinched teeth, and the caldron of human feelings
around him began, as it were, to seethe and boil. Fanaticism stops not
to weigh evidence, or to listen to reason. Joab could hardly make his
voice heard amidst the roar of angry voices that was rising around him.
"Lycidas was present and helped at the burial of the Lady Hadassah; he
has risked his life to protect her daughter," cried the honest defender
of the Greek.
"Ha! ha! how much he risked we know not, but we can well guess what he
would win!" exclaimed Jasher, with a look of withering scorn. "He has
crept into the favour of a foolish girl, who forgets the traditions of
her people, who cares not for the afflictions of Jacob, who prefers a
goodly person"--the old man's features writhed with the fierceness of
his satire--"to all that a child of Abraham should regard with
reverence and honour! But what can we expect from the daughter of a
perjured traitor, an apostate? Had she not Abner for a father, and can
we expect otherwise than that she should disgrace her family, her
tribe, her nation, by wedding an accursed Gentile, a detestable Greek?"
"Never! never!" yelled out a hundred fierce voices. And one of the
crowd shouted aloud, "I would rather slay her with my own hand, were
she my own daughter!"
"I cannot believe Lycidas false!" cried out Joab, at the risk of
drawing the tempest of rage upon himself.
"You cannot believe him false, you son of the nether millstone!"
screamed out the furious Jasher, stamping with passion; "as if you were
a match for a wily Greek, born in that idolatrous, base, ungrateful
Athens, that banished her only good citizen, and poisoned her only wise
one!" The fierce prejudices of race were only too easily aroused in
that assembly of Hebrew warriors, and if Jasher were blamed by some of
his auditors, it was for allowing that any Athenian could be either
wise or good.
"Yet hear me for a moment--I must be heard," cried Joab, straining his
voice to its loudest pitch, yet scarcely able to make his words
audible; "Lycidas has been admitted into the Covenant by our priests;
he can give proofs--"
"Who talks of proofs?" exclaimed Jasher, stamping again on the earth.
"Did you never hear of the proofs given by Zopyrus? Know you not how
Babylon, the golden city, fell under the sword of Darius? Zopyrus,
minion of that king, fled to the city which he was besieging, showed
its defenders his ghastly hurts--nose, ears shorn off--and pointed to
the bleeding wounds as _proofs_ that Darius the tyrant, by inflicting
such injuries upon him, had won a right to his deathless hatred.[1]
The Babylonians believed the proofs, they received the impostor, and ye
know the result. Babylon fell, not because the courage of her
defenders quailed, or famine thinned their numbers; not because the
enemy stormed at her wall, or pestilence raged within it; but because
she had received, and believed, and trusted a traitor, who had
sacrificed his own members to gain the opportunity of destroying those
who put faith in his honour! Hebrews! a Zopyrus has now come into our
camp! Will ye open your arms, or draw your swords, to receive him?"
A wild yell of fury arose from the listening throng, so fierce, so
loud, that it drew towards the spot Hebrews from all parts of the
encampment. It drew amongst others the young proselyte, who came eager
to know the cause of the noise and excitement, quite unconscious that
it was in any way connected with himself. As Lycidas made towards the
centre of the crowd, it divided to let him pass into the immediate
presence of Jasher, his accuser and self-constituted judge, and then
ominously closed in behind him, so as to prevent the possibility of his
retreat.
Lycidas had come amongst the Hebrew warriors with all the frank
confidence of a volunteer into their ranks; and the Greek's first
emotion was that of amazement, when he found himself suddenly the
object of universal indignation and hatred. There was no mistaking the
expression of the angry eyes that glared upon him from every direction,
nor the gestures of hands raising javelins on high, or unsheathing keen
glittering blades.
"Here he is, the traitor, the Gentile, led hither to die the death he
deserves!" exclaimed Jasher.
"What mean ye, Hebrews--friends? Slay me not unheard!" cried Lycidas,
raising on high his voice and his hand. "I am a proselyte; I renounce
my false gods,--"
"He has their very effigies on his arm!" yelled out Jasher, pointing
with frenzied action to the silver bracelet of Pollux worn by the
Greek, on which had been fashioned heads of Apollo and Diana encircled
with rays.
Here was evidence deemed conclusive; nothing further was needed. "He
dies! he dies!" was the almost unanimous cry. The life of Lycidas had
not been in greater peril when he had been discovered at the midnight
burial, or when he had wrestled with Abishai on the edge of the cliff.
In a few moments the young Greek would have lain a shapeless trampled
corpse beneath his murderers' feet, when the one word "Forbear!"
uttered in a loud, clear voice whose tones of command had been heard
above the din of battle, stayed hands uplifted to destroy; and with the
exclamation, "Maccabeus! the prince!" the throng fell back on either
side, and through the ranks of his followers the leader strode into the
centre of the circle. One glance sufficed to inform him sufficiently
of the nature of the disturbance; he saw that he had arrived on the
spot barely in time to save his Athenian rival from being torn in
pieces by the crowd.
"What means this tumult? shame on ye!" exclaimed Maccabeus, sternly
surveying the excited throng.
"We would execute righteous judgment on a Greek--an idolater--a spy!"
cried Jasher, pointing at Lycidas, but with less impassioned gesture;
for the fanatic quailed in the presence of Maccabeus, who was the one
man on earth whom he feared.
"He is a Greek, but neither idolater nor spy," said the prince. "He is
one of a gallant people who fought bravely for their own independence,
and can sympathize with our love of freedom. He has come to offer us
the aid of his arm; shame on ye thus to requite him."
"I doubt but he will play us false," muttered one of the warriors,
giving voice to the thoughts of the rest.
"We shall soon have an opportunity of settling all such doubts," said
Maccabeus; "we shall attack the enemy at noon, and then shall this
Greek prove in the battle whether he be false man or true."
The prospect of so soon closing with the enemy was sufficient to turn
the attention of every Hebrew warrior present to something of more
stirring interest than the fate of a solitary stranger. Jasher,
however, would not so easily let his intended victim go free.
"He's an Achan!" exclaimed the fanatic; "if he fight amongst us, he
will bring a curse on our arms!"
"He is a proselyte," replied Maccabeus in a loud voice, which was heard
to the farthest edge of the crowd; "our priests and elders have
received him--and I receive him--as a Hebrew by adoption, companion in
arms, a brother in the faith!"
The words of the prince were received with respectful submission, if
not with satisfaction. Maccabeus was regarded with enthusiasm by his
followers, not only as a gallant and successful leader, but as one
whose prudence they could trust, and whose piety they must honour. No
man dare lay a finger upon him over whom the chief had thrown the
shield of his powerful protection.
Lycidas felt that for the second time he owed his life to Judas
Maccabeus. There was a gush of warm gratitude towards his preserver in
the heart of the young Athenian; but something in the manner of the
prince told Lycidas that he would not listen to thanks, that the
expression of the Greek's sense of deep obligation would be regarded as
an intrusion. Lycidas therefore, compelled, as it were, to silence,
could only with fervour ask Heaven for an opportunity of showing his
gratitude in the coming fight by actions more forcible than words.
"Now, sound the trumpets to arms," exclaimed Maccabeus, "and gather my
troops together. If God give us the victory to-day, the way to
Jerusalem itself will be open before us! Here will I marshal our ranks
for the fight." Maccabeus strode to the summit of the rising ground
from which Jasher had just been addressing the crowd, and beckoned to
his standard-bearer to plant his banner behind him, where it could be
seen from all parts of the camp. Here, with folded arms, Maccabeus
watched the movements of his warriors as, at the signal-call of the
trumpet-blast, they hastened from every quarter to be marshalled in
battle-array, by their respective captains, under the eye of their
great commander. With rapid precision the columns were formed; but
before they moved on to the attack, Maccabeus, in brief but earnest
supplication, besought the Divine blessing on their arms.
[1] The student of history need not be reminded that the fall of
Babylon through the stratagem of Zopyrus was quite distinct from and
subsequent to its conquest by Cyrus. (See Rollins's "Ancient History.")