History of the Jews (Vol. 1-6). Graetz Heinrich

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      No sooner had the Assyrians extended their territory in the north, east and west, than they turned their attention to the south. They intended, in the first place, to gain possession of the sea-coast of the Phœnicians, and thus obtain control over the wealth of that commercial nation. The next point in view was Egypt, the wealth and renown of which attracted their ambition. For the first time an Assyrian army appeared on Israelitish ground, when King Pul invaded Samaria. King Menahem did not dare summon his forces against the mighty Assyrian hosts. The internal confusion must have crippled his powers to such an extent that he could not think of resistance. The curse of the regicide rested heavily on his head, but it pressed with equal, if not greater, severity on his nation. Menahem was hated by his people, for the cruel means by which he had obtained possession of the throne were ever fresh in their memories, and the friends of the murdered king nursed this hostile feeling. When Pul arrived on Israelitish ground, it appears that the enemies of Menahem suggested to the invader the advisability of dethroning the king. Menahem, meanwhile, betook himself to the Assyrian conqueror, and promised him a large sum of money on condition that his government was left secure. Pul accepted the money and retired from the country, carrying his booty and prisoners with him. Menahem did not draw the money from his own treasury, but forced wealthy individuals to provide it. Each one had to pay what was at that time a heavy sum, viz., 50 shekels.

      Thus came the beginning of the end, and the fate which Amos had clearly predicted half a century before, appeared to be in process of realisation. He had said that a distant nation would carry off the Israelites to a foreign land beyond Damascus. The Israelites were in fact carried off to the region of the Tigris, or to some other division of the large Assyrian kingdom. The power of the kingdom of the Ten Tribes, however, remained to all appearance unbroken. It still numbered 60,000 wealthy men, who could pay large sums of tribute money. Menahem still had his cavalry, his war materials, and the fortresses on which he thought he could place dependence. But, unknown to him, old age (as one of the prophets had rightly designated the national decadence) had now crept over the people. Menahem probably introduced the Assyrian mode of worship. One characteristic feature of this consisted in the adoration of Mylitta, the goddess of love, and the duties of her creed included the renunciation of virtue and the adoption of an immoral life. This innovation, added to the already existing internal dissensions, gradually sapped the foundations of the state. When the cruel Menahem died, and his son Pekahiah succeeded (757), the latter was able to retain the throne for scarcely two years. His own charioteer, Pekah, the son of Remaliah, headed a conspiracy against him, killed him in his palace in Samaria (756), and placed himself on the vacant throne. The mode of this regicide, the seventh which had occurred since the commencement of the kingdom of the Ten Tribes, is wrapped in darkness; it seems, however, that Pekah had to remove two other competitors before he could himself ascend the throne of Samaria.

      The son of Remaliah, the last king but one in Israel (755–736), was an inconsiderate and ruthless man, who oppressed the country to an even greater extent than his predecessors. He was characterised as a faithless shepherd, "who deserted his flock, who sought not the missing ones, who healed not the wounded, who tended not the sick, and who even devoured the flesh of the healthy." In order to protect himself against the attacks of the Assyrians, he joined an alliance which the neighbouring princes had formed in order to resist the encroachments of the Assyrians. The plan probably originated in Damascus, which now once more owned a king, named Rezin, and which would be the first to suffer from the Assyrian conqueror. Judah was also drawn in. Uzziah, the king, having died in the leper's house, his son Jotham, who had ruled for many years as viceroy, assumed the title of king (754–740). Jotham had no very striking qualities. He was neither ambitious nor statesmanlike, but he kept in the grooves in which his father had moved. Civic peace seems to have remained undisturbed; there is at least no account of any conflict between him and the high priest. The material condition of the country also remained the same as under Uzziah. There were the squadrons of cavalry, the war chariots, the ships of Tarshish which navigated the Red Sea, and wealth and splendour. Jotham also strengthened the fortifications of Jerusalem. He maintained friendly relations with the kingdom of the Ten Tribes, or rather with their king, Pekah, and there seems to have been a very intimate connection between the two sovereigns. This friendship, however, as well as the rise of an ambitious nobility in Judah, exerted an injurious influence on the morals of the people, the evil being especially strong in the capital. Through circumstances which cannot now be traced, some of the noble families had attained a height of power that exalted them almost to equality with the king. The princes of Judah led the councils, decided the most important affairs of state, usurped the powers of justice, and so thoroughly obscured the dignity of the house of David, that but a mere shadow of its authority remained. There existed a junior branch of the royal family, the house of Nathan, from which the superintendent of the palace seems always to have been chosen. This high official ruled court and attendants alike, and gradually attained to such power and influence, that he was considered the actual regent. He was known by the title of Manager of the Court (Sochen).

      Other evils arose out of these abuses. The princes of Judah sought to enrich themselves by all possible means, and to extend their territories by obtaining possession of the pasture lands, vineyards, and meadows of the country people. Things seem to have come to such a pass that the nobles and elders employed slaves, or the poor whom they had reduced to slavery, to cultivate their vast estates. They did not hesitate to make serfs of the children of those poor who were unable to pay their debts, and force them to tread the mill. To this cruel injustice, they soon added the vices of debauchery. They arose early in the morning and had recourse to the wine-cup, and till late at night they inflamed their blood with wine. At such entertainments they had the noisy music of flutes, trumpets, harps, and lutes. This was an innocent amusement compared with the excesses resulting therefrom. But the severe morality enjoined by the Sinaitic law was hostile to dissipation. As long as this law held sway, the love of licentious pleasures could not be fully gratified. But this restriction disappeared, when Judah entered into connection with the kingdom of the Ten Tribes. Here, and especially in the capital Samaria, the greatest excesses wore, so to say, a sacred character, forming, as they did, a constituent part of the Baal worship. Here there were temple priestesses in numbers; sacrifices were offered on the summits of the mountains and hills, whilst vice held its orgies in the shade of the oaks and terebinths. So great had been its progress, that Israelitish daughters unblushingly followed the example of their fathers. Wine and depravity had so vitiated the minds of the great, that they consulted blocks of wood and sticks as oracles concerning the future. From these nobles of the kingdom of the Ten Tribes,—"the drunkards of Ephraim,"—the princes of Judah learnt how to follow their evil desires without restraint. Divine service in the Temple of Jerusalem was, it is true, officially recognised; but this did not prevent the princes from following their own mode of worship privately. The brotherly fusion of Israel and Judah chiefly resulted in making idolatry, dissipation, intoxication, pride, and scorn of what was right, the common character of both kingdoms.

      However, depraved as the Israelitish and Judæan nobles had become, there existed a safeguard which prevented depravity from becoming an established institution of law. In Israel, injustice could never pass as public justice. Here there were men who loudly declaimed against the mockery of justice, and the degradation of the poor; men who defended justice and morality as the only right course; men who supported the weak against the mighty. Just at this period of degradation, while Jotham ruled in Judah and Pekah in Israel, several God-inspired men arose, who spoke with words of fire against the vices of the nobility. These men were the third generation of great prophets who succeeded Amos, Joel, and Hosea, as these had followed Elijah and Elisha.

      The most important amongst them was Isaiah, son of Amoz, from Jerusalem. With his contemporary prophets, Zechariah, Hosea II., and Micah II., he shared the courage which calls vice and crime by their right names, and which mercilessly brands the guilty. But he surpassed them and all his predecessors in depth of thought, beauty of rhythm, exaltation of poetical expression, in the accuracy of his similes, and in the clearness of his prophetic vision. Isaiah's eloquence combined simplicity with beauty of speech, conciseness with intelligibility, biting irony with СКАЧАТЬ