Part 5

But this perplexing and contradictory people, superhuman and wretched, the first and the last of all, the happiest and the most unhappy of all, although it serves other nations, still dominates other nations with its money and with its Bible. Although without a country of its own for centuries, it is among the owners of all countries. Although it crucified its greatest Son with His blood, it divided the history of the world into two parts: and the progeny of those god-killers has become the most infamous but the most sacred of all the peoples.

THE PROPHETS

Never was a people so warned as were the Jews, from the beginning of the temporal kingdom to its dismemberment: in the great days of the victorious Kings, in the sorrowful days of exile, in the evil days of slavery, in the tragic days of the dispersion.

India has its ascetics, who hide themselves in the wilderness to conquer the body and drown the soul in the infinite. China had its familiar sages, peaceful grandfathers who taught civic morality to working people and emperors. Greece had her philosophers, who in their shady porticos contrived harmonious systems and dialectic pitfalls. Rome had its lawgivers who recorded on bronze for the peoples and the centuries the rules of the highest justice attainable to those who command and possess. The Middle Ages had their preachers, who wore themselves out in the effort to arouse drowsy Christianity to a remembrance of the Passion and the terror of Hell. The Jewish people had the Prophets.

The Prophets did not give forth their prophecies in caves, spitting out saliva and words together from their tripods. They spoke of the future, but not merely of the future. They foretold things not yet happened, but they also brought to mind the past. They possessed time in its three phases; deciphering the past, illuminating the present and threatening the future.

The Jewish Prophet is a voice speaking, or a hand writing, a voice speaking in the palace of the King or in the caves of the mountains, on the steps of the Temple and in the precincts of the capitol. He is a voice that prays, a prayer that threatens, a threat that breaks out into divine hope. His heart is afflicted, his mouth is full of bitterness, his arm is raised, pointing out punishment to come; he suffers for his people; because he loves his people, he vituperates them: he punishes them that they may be purified; and after massacres and flames, he teaches the resurrection and the life, triumph and blessedness, the reign of the new David and the Covenant not to be broken.

The Prophet leads the idolater back to the true God, reminds the perjurer of his oath, recalls charity to the oppressor, purity to the corrupt, mercy to the fierce, justice to kings, obedience to rebels, punishment to sinners, humbleness to the proud. He goes before the king and reproaches him, he goes down among the dregs of the people and scourges them: he greets priests with blame; presents himself to the rich and brings them to confusion. He announces consolation to the poor, recompense to the afflicted, health to the sick, liberation to enslaved peoples, the coming of the conqueror to the humiliated nation.

He is not a king, nor a prince, nor a priest, nor a scribe: he is only a man, a poor, unarmed man, without investitures and without followers. He is a solitary voice, a lamenting voice grieving, a puissant voice howling and calling down shame, a voice which calls to repentance and promises eternity.

The Prophet is not a philosopher; it matters little to him whether the world be made of water or of fire, if water and fire cannot purify men’s souls.

He is a poet, but without will or consciousness that he is, when the fullness of his indignation and the splendor of his vision create powerful images which rhetoricians never could invent. He is not a priest, for he has never been anointed in the temple by the mercenary guardians of the Book; he is not a King, for he does not command armed men, and as sword has only the Word which comes from on high; he is not a soldier, but he is ready to die for his God and his people.

The prophet is a voice speaking in the name of God; a hand writing at God’s dictation; he is a messenger sent by God to warn those wandering from the right path, who have forgotten the Covenant. He is the secretary, the interpreter, and the delegate of God, and thus superior to the King who does not obey God, superior to the priest who does not understand God, to the people who have deserted God to run after idols of wood and stone!

The Prophet is the man who sees with a troubled heart but with clear eyes the evil which reigns to-day, the punishment which will come to-morrow, and the kingdom of happiness which will follow punishment and repentance.

He speaks in the name of the mute, he is a hand for him who cannot write, a defender for the people scattered and oppressed, an advocate for the poor, an avenger for the humble who cry out under the heel of the powerful. He is not on the side of those who tyrannize, but of those who are trodden under foot. He does not seek out the satiated and the greedy, but the hungry and the wretched.

A troublesome importunate and inopportune voice, hated by the great, out of favor with the crowd, not always understood even by his disciples. Like a hyena scenting from far the stench of carrion, like a raven always croaking out the same cry, like a hungry wolf howling on the mountain top, the prophet goes up and down the streets of Israel followed by suspicion and malediction. Only the poor and the oppressed bless him; but the poor are weak and the oppressed can only listen in silence. Like all loud truthtellers, who disturb the slumbering majority, who unsettle the sordid peace of the masters, he is avoided like a leper, persecuted like an enemy. Kings can barely tolerate him, priests regard him as an enemy, the rich detest him.

Elijah is forced to flee before the wrath of Jezebel, slayer of prophets; Amos is banished beyond Israel by Amaziah, priest of Bethel; Isaiah is killed by the order of Manesseh; Urijah cut down by King Jehoiakim; Zacharias stoned between the temple and the altar; Jonah thrown into the sea; the sword is prepared for the neck of John, and the cross is ready from which Jesus will hang. The Prophet is an accuser, but men are not willing to admit that they are guilty. He is an intercessor, but the blind are not willing to be guided by the enlightened. He is an announcer, but the deaf do not hear his promises. He is a saviour, but men rotting in fatal diseases delight in their maladies and refuse to be cured. Yet the word of the Prophets shall be the eternal testimony in favor of this race which exterminated them but was capable of generating them. And the death of a prophet, who is more than all the prophets, shall suffice to expiate the crimes of all the other peoples who grub about in the dirt of the earth.

HE WHO WILL COME

In the house at Nazareth Jesus meditates on the Commandments of the Law, and in the fiery laments of the Prophets He recognizes His destiny. The promises are insistent like knocking on obstinately closed doors. They are repeated, reiterated, never denied, always confirmed. Precise, minute with irrefutable testimony, they foretell the story. When Jesus at the beginning of His thirtieth year presents Himself to men as the Son of Man, He knows what awaits Him, even to the last: His life to come is already set down day by day in pages written before His earthly birth.

He knows that God promised Moses a new prophet, “I will raise them up a prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him.” God will make a new covenant with His people. “Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers ... but I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts.... I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” A covenant inscribed upon souls and not upon stone; a covenant of forgiveness and not of punishment!

The Messiah will have a precursor to announce Him. “Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me.”

“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.” But the people will be blind to Him and will not listen to Him: “Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes: lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and convert, and be healed.”

“And he shall be a stone of stumbling and for a rock of offence to both the houses of Israel, for a gin and for a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem.”

He will not magnify and flaunt Himself: He will not come in proud triumph, “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion, shout O daughter of Jerusalem, behold thy King cometh unto thee: he is just and having salvation, lowly and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt, the foal of an ass.”

He will bring justice and will lift up the unhappy; “... because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; ... to comfort all that mourn.” “The meek also shall increase their joy in the Lord, and the poor among men shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel. For the terrible one is brought to naught, and the scorner is consumed, and all that watch for iniquity are cut off.”

“Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing.”

“I, the Lord, have called thee in righteousness ... to open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness from the prison-house.”

But He will be vilified and tortured by the very people He comes to save: “he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised and we esteemed him not.

“Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.

“But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.

“He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth ... for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken.

“Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. He shall see of the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death; and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sins of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.”

He will not draw back before the vilest insults. “I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair: I hid not my face from shame and spitting.”

All will be against Him in the supreme moment. “They have spoken against me with a lying tongue. They compassed me about also with words of hatred; and fought against me without a cause. For my love they are my adversaries.”

The son cries to the Father:

“Thou hast known my reproach, and my shame, and my dishonor: mine adversaries are all before thee.

“Reproach hath broken my heart; and I am full of heaviness: and I looked for some to take pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none.

“They gave me also gall for my meat; and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.”

They pierce Him with nails and divide His clothes among themselves.

“For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet

“... they look and stare upon me. They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.”

Too late they will understand what they have done and will repent.

“... and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his first born.”

“Yea, all kings shall bow down before him: all nations shall serve him.

“For he shall deliver the needy when he crieth; the poor also, and him that hath no helper. He shall spare the poor and needy, and shall save the souls of the needy.”

“The sons also of them that afflicted thee shall come bending unto thee; and all they that despised thee shall bow themselves down at the soles of thy feet.”

“For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee.

“And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.

“Lift up thine eyes round about, and see: all they gather themselves together, they come to thee: thy sons shall come from far, and thy daughters shall be nursed at thy side.”

“Behold, I have given him for a witness to the people, a leader and commander to the people. Behold, thou shalt call a nation that thou knowest not, and nations that knew not thee shall run into thee because of the Lord thy God.”

These and other words are remembered by Jesus in the vigil before His departure. He foresees it all and does not turn away from it. From now on He knows His fate, the ingratitude of heart, the deafness of His friends, the hatred of the powerful, the scourgings, the spittings, insults, scoffings, obloquy, piercing of the hands and feet, tortures and death. He knows that the Jews, carnal-minded materialists embittered by humiliation, full of rancor and evil thoughts, are not awaiting a poor, gentle, despised Messiah. They all, except a few of clear and prophetic vision, are dreaming of a terrestrial Messiah, an armed King, a second David, a warrior who will shed real blood, the red blood of enemies, who will rebuild more splendidly than ever the palace of Solomon and the Temple. All the kings will bring tribute to Him, not tribute of love and reverence, but of massy gold and silver coin. This earthly King will revenge Himself on the enemies of Israel, on those who make Israel suffer, who hold the people of Israel in slavery. The slaves will be masters and the masters slaves, and all the countries of the world will have their capital at Jerusalem and crowned kings will kneel before the throne of the new king of Israel. The fields of Israel will be more fertile than all the others, their pastures richer, their flocks will multiply endlessly, wheat and barley will be harvested twice a year, the ears of wheat will be heavier than in the past, and two men will bend under the weight of a single bunch of grapes. There will not be enough wine-skins to contain the vintage nor enough jars to hold all the oil, and honey will be found in the hollows of the trees and in the hedges of the roads. The branches of the trees will break under the weight of the fruit, and the fruit will be pulpy and sweet as it never was before.

This is the Messiah expected by the Jews who surround Jesus. He knows He cannot give them what they seek, that He cannot be the victorious warrior and the proud king towering up among subject kings. He knows that His kingdom is not of this earth and that He will be able to offer only a little bread, all His blood and all His love. They will not believe in Him, will torture Him and will kill Him as a false pretender. He knows all that. He knows it as if He had seen it with His eyes and endured it with His body and soul. But He knows that the seed of His word thrown into the earth among thistles and thorns, trampled under foot by assassins, will start into life when spring comes. At first beaten down by the wind, little by little it will grow, until finally it becomes a tree stretching its branches up to the sky, covering the earth with the boughs. And all men can sit round about it, remembering the death of Him who planted it.

THE PROPHET OF FIRE

While Jesus, in the poor little work-shop at Nazareth, was handling the ax and the square, a voice was raised in the desert towards Jordan and the Dead Sea. Last of the Prophets, John the Baptist called the Jews to repent, announced the approach of the Kingdom of Heaven, predicted the coming of the Messiah, reproved the sinners who came to him, and plunged them into the water of the river, that this outer washing might be the beginning of an inner purification.

In that dark age of the Herods, old Judea profaned by the Idumean usurpers, contaminated by Greek infiltration, scorned by the Roman soldiery; without King, without unity, without glory; already half dispersed throughout the world; betrayed by their own priests; always remembering the grandeur of their earthly kingdom of a thousand years ago; always obstinately hoping for a great vengeance, for a miraculous resurrection, for a return of victory in a triumph of its God, in the coming of a Saviour, of a liberator, of an anointed one who should reign in a new Jerusalem stronger and more beautiful than that of Solomon, and from Jerusalem dominate all the peoples, overcome all other monarchs, conquer all empires and bring happiness to its nation and to all men,—old Judea hating its masters, robbed by the publicans, plagued by the mercenary scribes and by the hypocritical Pharisees, old Judea divided, humiliated, plundered and yet in spite of all its shame full of faith for the future, willingly lent an ear to the voice of the desert, and hastened to the banks of the Jordan.

John’s figure was one to conquer the imagination. A child sprung by a miracle from parents of great age, he was set apart from his birth to be Nazir—pure. He had never cut his hair, had never tasted wine or cider, had never touched a woman nor known any love except that for God. While he was still young, he had left his parents’ home and buried himself in the desert. There he lived for many years alone, without a house, without a tent, without servants, with nothing of his own except what he had on his back. Wrapped in his camel’s skin, his flanks girt by a leather belt, tall, bony, baked by the sun, his chest hairy, his hair hanging long on his shoulders, his long beard almost covering his face, his piercing eyes flashed like lightning from under his busy eyebrows when from his mouth hidden by his beard burst out the tremendous words of his maledictions.

This hypnotic wild man, solitary as a Yogi, despising pleasure like a stoic, seemed to those whom he baptized the last hope of a despairing people.

Jesus heard the people talk of those “washed ones” who returned from Jordan and took up their former lives, as in the morning a garment is resumed which was thrown away with relief the evening before; and He understood that His day grew near. He was now in His thirtieth year, the right and destined age. Before he is thirty, a man is only a sketch, an approximation, dominated by the common sentiments and common loves of all. He does not know men well, and hence cannot love them with that love, sweet with compassion, with which they should be loved. And without knowing them or knowing how to love them, he cannot speak with authority, cannot make himself heard, has not the power of saving them.

THE FIRST ANNUNCIATION

The desert sun burned John’s body and his fiery longing for the Kingdom burned like a flame in his soul. He was the foreteller of fire. He saw in the Messiah, soon to appear, the master of flame. The New King will be a fierce husbandman. Every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire. He will thoroughly purge His floor and gather His wheat into the garner, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire. He will be a baptizer who will baptize with fire.

Rigid, wrathful, harsh, shaggy, quick to insult, impatient and impetuous, John was not gentle with those who came to him. He took no satisfaction in having drawn them to take this first step towards repentance. When Pharisees and Sadducees, notable men, learned in the Scriptures, esteemed by the crowd, of authority in the temple came to be baptized, he shamed them more than the others. “O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance: And think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham for our father: for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.”

You who lock yourselves up into houses of stone as vipers hide themselves under the rocks, you Pharisees and Sadducees, are harder than stone: your minds are petrified in the letter and the rites of the law: your selfish hearts are stony: to the hungry who ask bread of you, you give a stone, and you throw the stone at him who has sinned less than you. You Pharisees and Sadducees, you are haughty statues of stone which only fire can conquer, since water poured over you is quickly dried up. But God, who from a handful of earth made Adam, could make from stones from the shore, with rocks from the cliff, other men, other living beings, other sons for Himself. He could change granite into flesh and soul, while you have changed soul and flesh into granite. It is not enough therefore to bathe in the Jordan. That ablution is holy and salutary. Change your life, do the opposite of what you have done until now, if you do not wish to be burned up by Him, who will baptize by fire. “And the people asked him, saying, What shall we do then? He answereth and saith unto them, He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none, and he that hath meat, let him do likewise.”

“Then came also publicans to be baptized and said unto him, Master, what shall we do? And he said unto them, Exact no more than that which is appointed you.

“And the soldiers likewise demanded of him, saying, And what shall we do? And he said unto them, Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely; and be content with your wages.”

Compelling, almost superhuman when he announced the terrible separation of the good from the bad, John becomes commonplace when he descends to particulars and falls, one might say, exactly into the Pharisean tradition. His only advice is to give alms, to give away the superfluous. From the publicans he asks only strict justice: let them take what has been allotted and nothing more. To the fierce, thieving tribe of soldiers, he recommends only discretion! “Be satisfied with your pay and do not rob.” This is nothing more or less than the Mosaic law. Long before him, Amos and Isaiah had gone further.