CHAPTER XI

_The Strength of Judea_

[Sidenote: The Spirit of War]

The result of our deliberation was that Israel should be summoned to make a last grand effort; that Jerusalem should be left with a strong garrison, as the center of the armies; and that every chieftain should set forth to stir up the energies of his people.

Eleazar and his kinsmen were instantly upon the road to the mountains, and all was haste and that mixture of anxiety and animation which makes all other life tasteless and colorless to the warrior. With what new vividness did the coming conflict invest the varied and romantic country through which we had already journeyed so often! The hill, the ravine, the superb sweep of forest that we once looked on with but the vague indulgence of the picturesque eye, now filled us with the vision of camps and battles. Hunters of the lion, we had felt something of this interest in tracing the ground where we were to combat the kingly savage. But what were the triumphs of the chase to the mighty chances of that struggle in which a kingdom was to be the field and the Roman glory the prey!

[Sidenote: Salathiel Reflects]

Man is belligerent by nature, and the thought of war summons up sensations and even faculties within him that in the common course of life would have been no more discoverable than the bottom of the sea; the moral earthquake must come to open the heart for all men to gaze upon. Even Eleazar’s calm and grave wisdom felt the spirit of the time, and he reasoned on the probabilities of the struggle with the lofty ardor of a king preparing to win a new throne. Jubal’s sanguine temper was unrestrainable; he was the war-horse in the sight of the banners; his bronzed cheek glowed with hope and exultation. He saw in every cloud of dust a Roman squadron, and grasped his lance and wheeled his foaming charger with the eager joy of a soldier longing to assuage his thirst for battle.

The weight on my melancholy mind was beyond the power of chance or time to remove, but a new strength was in the crisis. The world to me was covered with clouds eternal, but it was now brightened by a wild and keen luster; I saw my way by the lightning. An irresistible conviction still told me that the last day of Israel was approaching, and that no sacrifice of valor or victory could avert the ruin. In the midst of the loudest exhilaration of the fearless hearts around me, the picture of the coming ruin would grow upon my eyes.[15] I saw my generous friends perish one by one; my household desolate; every name that I ever loved passed away. When I bent my eyes round the horizon luxuriating in the golden sunshine of the east, I saw but a huge altar, covered with the fatal offerings of a slaughtered people.

[Sidenote: The Memory of Past Years]

And this was seen, not with the misty uncertainty of a mind prone to dreams of evil, but with a clearness of foresight, a distinct and defined reality, that left no room for conjecture. Yet—and here was the bitterest part of my meditation—what was all this ruin to me? What were those men and women and households and lands but as the leaves on the wind to me! I might strive in the last extremities of their struggle. I might undergo the agonies of death with them a thousand times; and I inwardly pledged myself never to desert their cause while through pain or sorrow I could cling to it; but this devotion, however protracted, must have an end. I must see the final hour of them all, and more unhappy, more destitute, more undone than all, I must be deprived of the consolation of making my tomb with the righteous and laying my weary heart in the slumbers of their grave! Still, I experienced more than the keenest fervor of the impulse which was now burning around me. With me it was not kingly care, nor the animal ardency of the soldier. It was the high stimulation of something like the infusion of a new principle of existence. I felt as if I had become the vehicle of a descended spirit. A ceaseless current of thought ran through my brain. Old knowledge that I had utterly forgotten revived in me with spontaneous freshness. Casual impressions and long past years arose, with their stamps and marks as clear as if a hoard of medals had been suddenly brought to light and thrown before me. I ran over in my recollection persons and names with painful accuracy. The conceptions of those for whom I once felt habitual deference were now seen by me in their nakedness. All that was habitual was passed away; I saw intuitively the vanity and giddiness, the inconsequential reasoning, the bewildering prejudice, that made up what in other days I had called the wisdom of the wise.

As I threw out in the most unpremeditated language the ideas thus glowing and struggling for escape, I found that the impression of some extraordinary excitement in me was universal. Accustomed to be heard with the attention due to my rank, I now saw the eyes of my fellow travelers turned on me with an evident and deferential surprise. When I talked of the hopes of the country, of the resources of the enemy, of the kingdoms that would be ready to make common cause with us against the galling tyranny of Nero, of the glory of fighting for our altars, and of the imperishable honors of those whose blood earned peace for their children, they listened as to something more than man. “Was I the prophet delegated at last to lead Judea to her glory?”

At those discourses, bursting from my lips with unconscious fire, the old men would vow the remnant of their days to the field; the young would sweep over the country performing the evolutions of the Roman cavalry, then return brandishing their weapons and demanding to be let loose on the first cohort that crossed the horizon. With me every pulse now was war. The interest which this new direction of our minds gave to all things grew more intense. I spurred to the barren heath; it had now no deformity, for upon it I saw the spot from which battle might be offered to an army advancing through the valley below. The marsh that spread its yellow stagnation over the plain might be worth a province for the protection of my camp. The thicket, the broken bank of the torrent, the bluff promontory, the rock, the sand, every repellent feature of the landscape was invested with the value of a thing of life and death, a portion of the great stake in the game that was so soon to be played for restoration or ruin.

[Sidenote: The Land of Judea]

Those are the delights of soldiership, the indescribable and brilliant colorings which the sense of danger, the desire for fame, and the hope of triumph throw over life and nature. Yet, if war was ever to be forgiven for its cause, to be justified by the high remembrances and desperate injuries of a people, or to be encouraged by the physical strength of a country, it was this, the final war of Israel. In all my wanderings I have seen no kingdom, for defense, equal to Judea.[16] It had in the highest degree the three grand essentials, compactness of territory, density of population, and strength of frontier. If I were at this hour to be sent forth to select from the earth a kingdom, I should say, even extinguishing the recollections of my being and the love which I bear to the very weeds of my country—for beauty, for climate, for natural wealth, and for invincible security, give me Judea!

The Land of Promise had been chosen by the Supreme Wisdom for the inheritance of a people destined to be unconquerable while they continued pure. It was surrounded on all sides but one by mountains and deserts, and that one was defended by the sea, which at the same time opened to it the intercourse with the richest countries of the west. On the north, opposed to the vast population of Asia Minor, it was protected by the double range of the Libanus and Antilibanus, a region of forests and defiles at all seasons almost impassable to chariots and cavalry, and during winter barred up with torrents and snows. The whole frontier to the east and south was a wall of mountain rising from a desert—a durable barrier over which no enemy, exhausted by the privations of an Asiatic march, could force their way against a brave army waiting fresh within its own confines. But even if the Syrian wastes of sand and the fiery soil of Arabia left the invaders strength to master the mountain defenses, the whole interior was full of the finest positions for defense that ever caught the soldier’s eye.

[Sidenote: The Preparations for War]

All the mountains sent branches through the champaign. As we spurred up the sides of Carmel, we saw an horizon covered with cloud-like hills. Every city was built on an eminence and capable of being instantly converted into a fortress. But while an army kept the field, the larger operations of strategy would have found matchless support in the course of the Jordan, the second defense of Judea; a line passing through the whole central country from north to south, with the lake of Tiberias and the lake Asphaltites at either extreme, at once defending and supplying the movements in front, flank, and rear.

The territory thus defensible had an additional and superior strength in the character and habits of its population. In a space of two hundred miles long by a hundred broad, its inhabitants once amounted to nearly four millions, tillers of the soil, bold tribes, invigorated by their life of industry and connected with one another by the most intimate and frequent intercourse, under the divine command. By the law of Moses—may he rest in glory!—every man from twenty to sixty was liable to be called on for the general defense; and the customary armament of the tribes was appointed at six hundred thousand men!

The munitions of war were in abundance. All the varieties of troops known in the ancient armies were to be found in Judea, in the highest discipline; from the spearsman to the archer and the slinger, from the heavy-armed soldier of the fortress to the ranger of the desert and the mountain. Cavalry was prohibited, for the great purpose of the Jewish armament was defense. The spirit of the Jewish code was peace. By the prohibition of cavalry, no conquests could be made on the bordering kingdoms of interminable plains. The command that the males of the tribes should go up thrice in the year to the great festivals of Jerusalem was equally opposed to the encroachments on the neighboring states. It was not until Israel had abandoned the purity of the original covenant with Heaven that the evils of ambition or tyranny were felt within her borders.

Israel’s whole policy was under a divine sanction, and her whole preservation was distinguished by the perpetual agency of miracle, for the obvious purpose of compelling the people to know the God of their fathers. But the physical strength of such a people in such a territory was incalculable. Severity of climate will not ultimately repel an invader, for that severity scatters and exhausts the native population. Difficulties of country have always been overcome by a daring invader in the attack of a feeble or negligent people. To what nation were their snows, their marshes, or their sands a barrier against the great armies of the ancient or the modern world? The Alps and the Pyrenees have been passed as often as they have been attempted. But no empire can conquer a nation of millions of men determined to resist; no army that could be thrown across the frontier would find the means of penetrating through a compact population, of which every man was a soldier and every soldier was fighting for his own.

[Sidenote: The Effect of Determined Resistance]

The Jew was, by his law, a free proprietor of the soil.[17] He was no serf, no broken vassal. He inherited his portion of the land by an irrevocable title. Debt, misfortune, or time could not extinguish his right. Capable of being alienated from him for a few years, the land was returned to him at the Jubilee. He was then once more a possessor, the master of a competence, and restored to his rank amongst his fellow men. This bond, the most benevolent and the strongest that ever bound man to a country, was the bond of the Covenant. If Israel had held the institutions of her lawgiver inviolate, she would have seen the Assyrian, the Egyptian, and the Roman, with all their multitudes, only food for the vulture. But we were a rebellious people; we sullied the purity of the Mosaic ordinances; we abandoned the sublime ceremonial of divine worship for the profligate rites of paganism; we rejected the Lord of the theocracy for the pomps of an earthly king. Then the mighty protection that had been to us as an eagle’s wings and as a wall of fire was withdrawn. Our first punishment was by our own hand; the union of Israel was a band of flax in the flame. The tribes revolted. The time was come for the hostile idolater to do his work. We were overwhelmed by enemies in alliance with our own blood. The banners of Jacob were seen waving beside the banners of Ashtaroth and Apis. An opening was made into the bosom of the land for all invasion; the barriers of the mountain and the desert were in vain; the proverbial bravery of the Jew only rendered his chain more severe; and the policy that of old united the highest wisdom with the most benevolent mercy became at once the scoff and problem of the pagan world.

[Sidenote: The Land of Invasion]

But opulence, salubrity, and luxuriance of production belonged to the site of the land of Israel. It lay central between the richest regions of the world. It was the natural road of the traffic of India with the west; that traffic which raised Tyre and Sidon from rocks and shallows on a fragment of the shore of Judea into magnificent cities, and which was yet to raise into political power and unrivaled wealth the rocks and shallows of the remotest shore of the Mediterranean. Our mountain ranges tempered the hot winds from the wilderness. The sea cooled the summer heats with the living breeze, and tempered the chill of winter. Our fields teemed with perpetual fruits and flowers.

The extent of the land, tho narrow, when contrasted with the surrounding kingdoms, was yet not to be measured by its lineal boundaries;[18] a country intersected everywhere by chains of hills capable of cultivation to the summit, alike multiplies its surface and varies its climate. We had at the foot of the hill the products of the torrid zone; on its side those of the temperate; on its summit the robust vegetation of the north. The ascending circles of the orange-grove, the vineyard, and the forest covered it with perpetual beauty.

This scene of matchless productiveness is fair and fertile no more. For ages before my eyes opened on the land of my fathers the national misfortunes had impaired its original loveliness. The schism of the tribes, the ravages of successive invaders, and still more, the continued presence of the idolater and the alien in the heart of the land, turned large portions of it into desert. The final fall almost destroyed the traces of its fruitfulness. What can be demanded from the soil lorded over by the tyranny of the Moslem, stripped of its population, and given up to the mendicant, the monk, and the robber?

But more than human evil smote my unhappy country. The curse pronounced by our great prophet three thousand years ago has been deeply fulfilled. “The stranger that shall come from a far land shall say, when he beholdeth the plagues of the land, and the sickness that the Lord hath laid upon it, the land of brimstone and salt and burning, even all nations shall say, Wherefore hath the Lord done this unto this land? What meaneth the heat of this great anger? Then men shall say, Because they have forsaken the covenant of the Lord God of their fathers!”

The soil has been blasted. Sterility has struck into its heart. Whole provinces are covered with sands and ashes. It has the look of an exhausted volcano.

[Sidenote: What Might Have Been]

Yet, what might have been the progress of this people! The glory of Israel is no fine vision of the fancy. The same prophetic word which has given terrible demonstration of its reality in our ruin declares the hope once held forth to our obedience. Judea was to have borne the first rank among nations; to have been an object of universal honor; to have been unconquerable; to have enjoyed unwearied fertility; to have been protected from the casualties of the elements; to have been free from disease, the life of its people continuing to the farthest limit of our nature. A blessing was to be upon the labors, the possessions, and the persons of the tribes; all Israel a holy nation in the highest sense of the word—a sovereign race to which the world should pay a willing and happy homage.

What must have been the operation of this illustrious instance of the preservative power of Heaven on the darkened empires; of the scriptural lights perpetually beaming from Judea; of the living, palpable happiness and obedience to the Supreme; of the perpetual security of the land in the divine protection; of the internal peace, health, plenteousness, and freedom? Man is weak and passionate, but no blindness could have hid from his contemplations this proof of the human value of virtue.

[Sidenote: The Influence of Judea]

We must add to this the direct influence of a governing people, placed in its rank for the express purpose of a guide to nations. Combining the knowledge and devotedness of a priesthood with the actual power and dignity of kings; by its own constitution as safe from all encroachments as prohibited from all aggression; informed by the immediate wisdom and sustained by the visible arm of Omnipotence, Judea might have changed the earth into a paradise, and raised universal man to the highest happiness, knowledge, and grandeur of human nature!