The Story of the Chosen People (Yesterday's Classics) (9 page)

It was here, on the lonely mountain top, that Moses, the servant of God, died; and we are told that God himself laid his body to rest. No one ever knew the place where Moses was buried, but the people mourned him for thirty days before they thought of making their way into the beautiful land which he had seen, although he was never allowed to enter it.

M
OSES,
the great lawgiver of Israel, was succeeded by Joshua, the great captain, whose mission it was to conquer the promised land for God's people.

Joshua was already eighty years of age, but he had shown his skill as captain in the beginning of his career by winning a victory over the Amalekites, and lately by conquering the land east of the Jordan. As he had always obeyed, and had never murmured, and as he had been faithful when all the rest were faithless, he was allowed to enter the promised land, and was well fitted to be the leader of the people.

As soon as the thirty days of mourning for Moses were ended, God appeared to Joshua, and bade him lead the people over the Jordan, into the land where spies had already been sent to see how the land lay. These scouts went to the walled city of Jericho, and entered the house of a woman named Rahab. Their strange looks excited the suspicions of the people, who hastily closed the gates of the city so that they could not escape, and began to search for them in order to put them to death.

But Rahab hid the spies so cleverly that no one could find them, and sent the pursuers off on a false track. When they had gone, and all danger was over, she lowered the Israelites in a basket from one of the windows of her house, which was built in the thick walls of the city.

RAHAB LOWERING THE SPIES

The spies were so grateful to Rahab for helping them that they promised to save her life in their turn. They bade her tie a scarlet thread to the window of her house, so that they would be sure to recognize it; and they promised that the persons in it should escape from all harm when the Lord gave the city into their hands.

By a roundabout way the spies then went back to camp, and made their report to Joshua. Early the next morning, the priests, carrying the Ark, went down to the banks of the Jordan, whose tide was much swollen at this season by the melting of the mountain snows. But as the Levites reached the water's edge, the river divided; "the waters which came down from above stood and rose up," while the remainder flowed down to the Dead Sea. Thus a wide channel was left bare, and the people could pass over dry shod.

By Joshua's command, the priests halted in the middle of the river until all the people had passed over. He also gave orders that twelve men, one from each tribe, should take stones from the river bed with which to build an altar. Then the priests also left the river bed, and the waters, no longer stopped in their course, again rushed downward to the Dead Sea. The army marched on to Gilgal, where the Israelites erected the altar of twelve stones, and celebrated the first Passover in the land which had been promised to them, forty years after their fathers had kept it before leaving Egypt.

Here all the people were circumcised, a religious ceremony which had been omitted during their desert wanderings. Here, too, the supply of manna ceased, and the people baked bread from the grain of the land which was soon to belong to them.

While Joshua was planning how to take the strong city of Jericho, an angel of the Lord appeared to him, and bade him march around the city once a day for six days, with all his host, and seven priests blowing the seven sacred trumpets as they marched before the Ark. The seventh day the army was to march around the city seven times; and when the last circuit was made, they were to blow a loud blast on the trumpets and to raise a sudden shout, at the sound of which the Lord would make the walls fall down flat.

All these directions were carried out with great care. The Israelites marched around the city daily, and when the seventh round had been finished on the seventh and last day, a mighty shout rent the air, and the strong walls of Jericho tottered and fell, as God had promised.

All the people, except Rahab and those whom she sheltered in her house, were killed; their property was destroyed, and the city razed, and Joshua pronounced a solemn curse upon any one who should attempt to rebuild it.

In reward for the good turn she had done the spies, Rahab was given in marriage to an Israelite. In time she became the mother of Boaz, the great-grandfather of David, a well-known king of the Israelites, or, as they are also called, the Jews.

G
OD
had ordered that all the property of the inhabitants of Jericho should be destroyed. Only one man dared transgress this command, by keeping back a small portion of the spoil. He hid it, and fancied that his disobedience would remain unknown and unpunished. But when the Israelites next tried to take a city, they were defeated. Joshua knew that this misfortune would never have happened if the people had obeyed God's commands; so he now fervently prayed that the sinner might be revealed.

Lots were drawn, first among the twelve tribes, then among the divisions of the tribe on which the first lot had fallen, and lastly among the families. By this means the sinner was discovered. He confessed having saved two hundred shekels, or pieces of silver, and was punished by being stoned to death with all his family.

This signal example having been made, Joshua again led the people against the city, which they succeeded in taking by stratagem. Thus the Israelites won all the passes from the valley of the Jordan; and, marching on to Shechem, they erected an altar upon which they inscribed the law.

While the Chosen People were tarrying at Shechem, the neighboring nations made a league against them; but the Gibeonites pretended to be friendly with them. Hoping to make the Israelites believe that they lived very far away, the Gibeonites came in tattered garments and worn foot gear, and brought no provisions but moldy bread.

Without consulting God, the Israelites now made an alliance with them; but when they found out the fraud three days later, they marched against Gibeon, and made all the people their slaves.

Shortly after this, Joshua's troops were attacked by the combined forces of five allied kings, and he would have been overwhelmed by their numbers had he not been helped by a violent hailstorm. Such was the fury of the storm, that there "were more which died with hailstones than they whom the children of Israel slew with the sword."

Joshua began to pursue the fugitives, and seeing that daylight would fail him before the victory was really assured, he commanded: "Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, moon, in the valley of Ajalon." In obedience to this order both sun and moon stood still until Joshua had won a great victory.

Joshua pursued the people to a place where the five kings, his enemies, were hiding in a cave. These monarchs were dragged from their retreat and led away and hanged, just as the sun at last went down and closed the longest day which has ever been known.

By a few more battles Joshua became master of all the southern half of the country, and now he prepared to march northward, and subdue another king, who had an army "as the sand that is upon the seashore in multitude." In spite of this array of warriors, Joshua defeated the king, burned his principal city, put the inhabitants to death, seized their property, and then took possession of all the northern part of the promised land.

Although Joshua had thus conquered all the promised land, many of his enemies were not entirely subdued, and the Canaanites and Philistines still owned much territory. The conquest of their land, however, was reserved for another leader; for Joshua was now very weary and old, and he felt that his end was near.

He therefore called the heads of the remaining ten tribes to him, and portioned out by lot the land which he had conquered. The city of Hebron, however, was given as a reward to Caleb, a man who had never murmured, and who was now the only one left of the twelve spies that had visited the Holy Land forty years before.

The only tribe which received no province at all was that of Levi, because the Levites were chosen to serve the Lord. They were to receive a certain amount from all the people, and the Lord himself "was their inheritance."

Peace now reigned everywhere, and the two tribes of Reuben and Gad, which had received their portions long before, prepared to recross the Jordan, and go home. As soon as they reached the other side of the river, they began to build an altar. Their brethren, fearing that they were about to forget God and worship idols, immediately sent Phinehas, the son of the high priest, to inquire what it meant.

This messenger soon came back, and the people were greatly relieved when they heard that the new altar was not for the worship of foreign gods. The men had built it merely to remind their children that they too belonged to the Chosen Race, although they were separated from the rest of it by the Jordan's rushing tide.

When all these matters had been satisfactorily settled, Joshua called the heads of the people together, and exhorted them "to keep and to do all that is written in the book of the law of Moses." He prophesied that, if they dared serve other gods, they would lose the land which their God had given them.

Then, after receiving a solemn promise from all the people to remain faithful, and after writing the history of his time, Joshua died peacefully, at the age of one hundred and ten. He was buried in the country which he had won for Israel, a country which is called the Promised Land, the Holy Land, or Palestine.

J
OSHUA'S
death was soon followed by that of the high priest Eleazar, who was succeeded by his son Phinehas. It was at this time, also, that Joseph's remains, so carefully brought from the land of Egypt, were buried at Shechem.

Now all the people went on serving God faithfully as long as the elders lived. This period lasted about forty years, at the end of which time there arose another generation who "knew not the Lord, nor yet the works which he had done for Israel;" so the people of the Lord forgot him, and began to worship the heathen gods.

In punishment for their idolatry, they were given over into the hands of the people whose gods they served, and were forced to endure much ill treatment.

But, although punished, they were not utterly forsaken; for, whenever it was necessary, God always provided judges, who freed them from their oppressors.

No sooner were the Israelites free again, however, than they would return to their old sins, worship false gods, and refuse to obey the law. It was because of this oft-renewed unfaithfulness that God delayed the full accomplishment of his promise to drive all the heathen nations out of the country. The story of these troublous times is written in the Book of Judges, which begins with an account of the efforts made by the tribes of Judah and Simeon to drive out the Canaanites and the Perizzites.

The two tribes of Israelites won a victory and captured the tyrant who ruled over their enemies. This was a man who openly boasted of having cut off the thumbs and great toes of seventy kings, and of having amused himself in watching their vain efforts to pick up the crumbs that fell from his table. In punishment for such deeds of cruelty, the Israelites treated him in the same way, and then killed him in the city of Jerusalem.

Many other attempts to drive the heathen out of the land are recorded in the Book of Judges; but none of them were entirely successful. Indeed, it was not long before the Israelites, in punishment for their sins, were allowed to fall into the hands of the King of Mesopotamia. They suffered under his tyranny eight years, before the Lord heard their cries of distress, and sent them a deliverer in the person of Othniel, a nephew of Caleb.

Othniel ruled the people wisely, and died forty years after Joshua. But as soon as he was gone, the Israelites again fell into idolatry, and because they did so, they were conquered by the Moabites and Amalekites, their old foes, who tyrannized over them for eighteen years.

When their woes had become unendurable, another deliverer arose—Ehud, who was a left-handed man. This fact proved fatal to the Moabites, for Ehud killed their king with his left hand while delivering a pretended written message with his right.

This murder was not discovered till Ehud had escaped. He at once rallied the Children of Israel around him, led them on to battle, and completely routed the Moabites.

Shamgar, the next judge, delivered the Israelites from the hands of the Philistines, and showed his unusual strength by killing six hundred of his foes with an ordinary oxgoad.

As the people had fallen back into idolatry, they were next given over to the cruel treatment of the King of the Canaanites, who allowed his captain, Sisera, to oppress the land for twenty years. At the end of that time, the Lord sent a woman named Deborah to the rescue of his people. This Deborah was a prophetess, and as she herself could not go forth and fight, she sent Barak, the fourth judge, against the enemy.