Stories of the Prophets Part 7

Then Jezreel heard the street door close with a bang.

Going to the window that looked out into the street, Jezreel saw his mother standing alone in front of the house. It was an unusually moonlit night. Samaria, a beautiful city in the daytime, was a very dark and gloomy place at night, except when the moon and stars reigned in their glory in clear skies. This happened to be just such a night.

The yellow moon was reflected from the red-tiled housetops. In the distance were the famous Samarian houses of stone and marble, dark and foreboding against the moonlight. Above all the houses towered the royal palace--in which Zechariah, Jeroboam II's son, had been king since his father died, six months before--with its bright, gilded domes, like a sentinel wearing a bra.s.s helmet.

But the little boy, in his night clothes, looking out of the window of his room into the moonlit and shadowed street, saw only his mother standing there below.

His attention was called suddenly away from the window by loud sobbing. He hurried to the door, but did not dare open it. He listened until the sobbing ceased. Then he returned to the window, to find the street empty and deserted. His mother had evidently gone away.

He s.h.i.+vered. He folded his arms tightly, as if hugging himself to keep warm. Then he brought his chair from the door to the table, sat down and listened. In the room below he heard his father walking up and down with regular step. The house was completely silent but for Hosea's footfalls.

Jezreel drew his legs up under him on the chair. He was tired and rested his head upon his arms on the table. The silence and the monotony of the regular heavy walking in the room under him, made him drowsy. His little heart ached, though he could not explain why. He tried hard to keep awake, but finally fell asleep, there at the table.

At one time he s.h.i.+vered, when the street door of the house shut again with a bang; but he did not wake up.

Below, a great big, powerful man had been keeping up a continuous march up and down the room. He was brooding over the events that had just preceded and thinking over the years of his married life.

When Hosea first met Gomer, she lived in her father's home in one of the poorest sections of Samaria. Diblaim, Gomer's father, was a poor man and could not give his daughter the advantages other girls in Samaria enjoyed. But Hosea loved Gomer most devotedly and he married her.

Son of the priest Beeri, Hosea inherited great wealth and a position among the priests at the Bethel sanctuary. He was thus able to give Gomer not only a beautiful home in one of the city's most beautiful suburbs, but also to introduce her to the royal and social leaders of Samaria.

After a few years, however, everything seemed to go wrong in the Hosea household. Gomer developed a weakness for luxury and jewels and fine clothes; she used to be away from the house and the children most of the time; she did not understand her husband, his desire for quiet evenings at home with the children and his dislike of the pomp and display at the court and in society. And that night, Hosea and Gomer parted, Gomer going home to her father.

Hosea felt very much oppressed. Walking up and down the room brought him no relief. So he rushed out of the house into the night, into the open, where he could breathe more freely--and think. It was the bang of the door behind him that disturbed Jezreel, asleep at the table.

But Hosea's brain was all clogged up. It could not dwell upon a single line of thought for five consecutive minutes. And yet he was so thoroughly absorbed in his thoughts, that he did not notice any number of people excitedly hurrying past him.

He walked on toward the center of the city in a daze. The first time he realized that he was not alone on the streets of Samaria was when he found himself being jostled in a wide thoroughfare leading to the market place.

Then he was awakened out of the stupor in which he had left his home by cries, coming from several directions:

"Shallum!"

"Long live the king!"

"Long life to Shallum!"

Shallum? Who was Shallum? Why was the name being shouted in the streets of Samaria?

Hosea, trying to find his bearings, was asking himself these questions when he arrived in the market place.

There an unusual and most unexpected sight met him. The place was filled with people. Troops were fighting in front of the royal palace.

From the palace, which was brightly illuminated, soldiers and plain citizens were pouring forth in a stream. Above the shrieking of men and women and the clang of contending arms, he heard enthusiastic shouts:

"King Zechariah is dead! Long live King Shallum!"

What? Zechariah dead!

In a flash the whole situation was made clear to Hosea. Now he recalled that down at Bethel, the king's sanctuary, someone had spoken to him of a movement that was on foot to depose the king.

Hosea knew that Zechariah was unlike his great father, Jeroboam II, whom he succeeded in the year 742 B. C. E. The new king was a weakling. Upon his accession to the throne, Syria refused to pay the annual tribute, revolted, and Zechariah could not help himself. The wealth of the people, the luxury they lived in, the disorganization of the army by corruption, the oppression of the poor, the injustices practiced in business and in the courts of law, had unfitted Israel to wage war against Syria, or any other nation, for that matter.

Zechariah, in the six months that he ruled Samaria, therefore, lost all that had been gained by his ill.u.s.trious father. Hosea, however, did not look for an insurrection in Samaria.

But here it was: Zechariah was dead and Shallum--yes, Shallum, the son of Jabesh, the one mentioned to Hosea as the probable successor--had been proclaimed king. When Shallum was spoken of, down at Bethel, Hosea had paid no particular attention. He was occupied with his own family troubles then, as he was in the presence of this history-making event. The threatened revolution was the farthest thought from his mind, at that time as it was at this moment.

Therefore, before Hosea had grasped the full significance of either of the two events that had occurred that night, he was jostled into a side street by the mob that now filled the market place.

Sick at heart, Hosea did not stop to see the bloodshed and the horror, nor to listen to the story of the revolt, but walked on to the outskirts of the city.

His head swam from the excitement. His temples pounded like sledge hammers. As he walked on, his feet grew heavy and dragged. Just how he got there Hosea did not know, but suddenly he found himself in front of his own home.

The day was now dawning. The first rays of the sun were shooting their way through the early morning mist and playing on the bedewed stones of the house. Hosea entered quietly, and walked up to the children's bed room. To his amazement he found Jezreel asleep on his arms at the table.

As he gazed for a moment upon the children, Hosea's heart was wrung with sorrow. He picked Jezreel up from the chair. The boy, asleep, clung tightly about his father's neck. Hosea laid him in his bed, covered him, kissed him and, with bowed head, went to his own room.

And while little Jezreel was dreaming that a great giant came to his home, picked up the house and shook it, carried it away to a beautiful valley and brought back his mother, Hosea sat at the window and watched and watched, until the morning's duties called him.

CHAPTER II.

_The Tragedy With a Purpose._

King Shallum soon discovered that a stolen throne is no sweeter than any other stolen thing. A palace is no more protection against conscience than a hovel; and Shallum pa.s.sed miserable days of fear and nights of sleeplessness, because of his murder of Zechariah.

Smitten by his conscience and tortured in mind, Shallum was not able to collect a large force of followers to protect him or his ill-gotten throne. When, therefore, a plot was set on foot to dethrone him, Shallum was helpless.

Menahem, the son of Gadi, one of Jeroboam II's generals, organized an expedition against the usurper in Tirzah, the city that was the capital of Israel for fifty years after the Kingdom of Solomon was divided. Within a month after Shallum had proclaimed himself King of Israel, Menahem marched from Tirzah to Samaria, attacked Shallum, defeated him, and, in turn, mounted the throne of Jeroboam.

Instead of ruling peaceably in Samaria, however, Menahem started a reign of terror, until n.o.body in the country seemed safe in his home or in his possessions.

Trouble came for the new king thick and fast.

Tiglath-Pileser III, who had been ruling in a.s.syria since 745, and against whom Amos had warned the weakened Kingdom of Israel, had accomplished many conquests north of Israel, in Phoenicia and in the frontier lands of Damascus.

In the year 738, Tiglath-Pileser was knocking at the gates of Damascus and threatening Samaria. In order to keep the a.s.syrian conqueror off, and save their countries the spoliation and ruin that followed in the wake of the a.s.syrian armies, Menahem, together with Rezin, King of Damascus, the Kings of Tyre, Hamath, and other small states, agreed to pay him tribute.

Menahem's share was the enormous sum of one thousand talents of silver. To raise this amount, he levied a tax of fifty silver shekels each on "all the mighty men of wealth," both priests and merchants, in the kingdom.

Now, the lawlessness started by Shallum and the anarchy continued by Menahem had had their effect. The great sum of money needed for Tiglath-Pileser was raised by "all the mighty men of wealth;" but it was ground out of the poor by cheating, robbery and even murder.

The conditions against which the Prophet Amos cried out were now apparent to all observers. The final overthrow of the kingdom, which Amos declared to be but a matter of time, was now evident to all patriotic lovers of their country.

These conditions were clear as the light of day, especially to Hosea.

Being a priest himself, he knew how the very priests at the sanctuaries had entered upon secret understandings with rebel a.s.sociates of Menahem and the wealthy merchants to raise the a.s.syrian tribute at the expense of the people. Being a lover of his fatherland, he knew that these sins and crimes against G.o.d and men must react upon the nation as a whole and rush it on to destruction.