Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers. William Hale White

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СКАЧАТЬ wrath upon Amalek, therefore hath the Lord done this thing unto thee this day. Moreover, the Lord will also deliver Israel with thee into the hand of the Philistines; and to-morrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me: the Lord also shall deliver the host of Israel into the hand of the Philistines." For this cause Saul was to fall, and his three sons, and there was to be a great slaughter of Israel. When David the adulterer murdered Uriah, was that not a worse crime, yet was his punishment as Saul's? And what punishment there was fell not on David as it would have fallen upon my lord and upon me. After David's son died, he straightway rose up, eat and drank, and went in unto Bathsheba the whore; and she, the wife of Uriah, whom he had murdered, submitted to be comforted by him.

      When Saul heard the words of Samuel, he fell straightway in the darkness all along on the earth, and there was no strength in him, for he had eaten no bread all the day nor all the night. The woman offered him bread, but he sat on the bed and would not eat. At last, as the morning was breaking, he consented to eat, and he went away to make ready for the fight. He was assured he would perish that day, and that before the sun set he would be in Sheol with Samuel, bat he did not play the coward and nee. He fought as the king he was, but the Philistines were too many for him; the curse from the Lord was upon the Israelites, so that they feared and fled. Jonathan, with Abinadab and Melchishua, his brothers, were around Saul to the last, but they were slain. The men-at-arms dared not come near Saul, but the archers pressed him sorely from afar, and he could not close with them, and he saw his end was at hand. He would not have the Philistines take him alive, wounded for sport, even if they might spare his life; and he therefore prayed his armour-bearer to thrust him through, but his armour-bearer would not. Thereupon Saul took his sword, and fell upon it; and his armour-bearer fell likewise upon his sword, and died with him. The next day, when the Philistines came to strip the slain, they found Saul and his sons dead on Gilboa, and carried off their bodies, shamefully using them. But though the alarm at the victory was great, there were men in Israel who dared do anything for their master, the men of Jabesh-gilead, who remembered what Saul had done for them against the Ammonites; and they went by night and rescued the bodies, and burnt them, and buried them under this tree in Jabesh, whence they afterwards came to Zelah, where I shall lie.

      David, when he heard that Saul was dead, sang a song in his praise—David turned everything into songs; but nevertheless he made himself king, and warred against the house of his master. Ever singing and dancing! When the Ark was brought from the house of Obed-edom, David leaped, and danced, and played before it like an empty fool. Michal, who was her father's own daughter, despised her husband—as well she might—for his folly, and rebuked him because he behaved as a vain fellow rather than as a king; but she was abused, and he told her that if she did not honour him, he would be honoured by her maids; and this was true, for he never held back from a woman if she pleased him, and of concubines had a score. My lord never sang, nor danced, nor played; it was as much as he could do if he smiled. Would to God he had smiled oftener; and yet if he could not laugh, he could love. Ah me! how strait was his embrace. Was the love of that ruddy-faced, light-minded, lying dancer a thousandth part of Saul's? If David had loved Bathsbeba, would he have sought by the basest of deceit to force Uriah to her after she had fallen, so that her son might be taken to be his? And yet if Samuel had been alive, would he have cursed David as he did my lord? I think not, for the sin and the lie with Bathsheba, and the murder of Uriah, were not a crime like that of sparing the Amalekite Agag. Nevertheless the Lord visited him also, and he tasted the bitterness of revolt, for Absalom, his own son, turned against him, and lay with his father's concubines in the sun in the sight of all Israel, and sought his father's life. Why do I talk thus? I meant not to talk of David, but of my lord. One word more. We never speak without coming to that dreadful day. Your husband, Armoni, was shamefully handed over to the Gibeonites and hung. May every messenger of evil that does the bidding of Baal and Jehovah for ever follow the man who consented to that deed because Saul had rooted out the Gibeonites from the land in his zeal for the Lord. In his zeal for the Lord! His zeal for the Israelitish Lord, and at Samuel's bidding! It was not the desire of Saul to deal thus with the Gibeonites, for he, the husband of a Horite, was never a fool in his wrath for his God; but Samuel, whom he dreaded more than the Philistines, bade him. And the plague came, and they said it was from the Lord, because of these Gibeonites whom the Lord, through Samuel, had directed should be slain. Ah me! I, a Horite, know not the ways of Jehovah. I sit here in Jabesh and wait till I shall be with those whom I loved, with Saul, Armoni, and his brother. I go down into the darkness with them, but it will be better than the light. Maybe though dark I shall see them, and be something of a queen—I, Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, queen of the first king of Israel, he who has made it a nation.

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