1 Kings 21:17-20
But the Lord said to Elijah, who was from Tishbe, "Go down to meet King
Ahab, who rules in Samaria. He will be at Naboth's vineyard in Jezreel,
taking possession of it. Give him this message: 'This is what the Lord says:
Isn't killing Naboth bad enough? Must you rob him, too? Because you have
done this, dogs will lick your blood outside the city just as they licked
the blood of Naboth!'"
"So my enemy has found me!" Ahab exclaimed to Elijah.
"Yes," Elijah answered, "I have come because you have sold yourself to what
is evil in the Lord's sight.
They covet fields and seize them, and houses, and take
them. They defraud a man of his home, a fellowman of his inheritance.
Therefore, the Lord says: "I am planning disaster against this people, from
which you cannot save yourselves. You will no longer walk proudly, for it
will be a time of calamity." Micah 2:2-3
Our narrative once more brings us in contact with Ahab,
king of Israel, whom we now find in his palace of Samaria. How changed since
last we beheld him. Now he lies on a bed in one of the royal chambers in
helpless dejection--moaning and tossing in feverish and restless misery.
What catastrophe has overtaken that regal mourner?--why that settled gloom
on these regal brows? Has the hand of death been in the palace halls?--has
one of the princes of the blood royal been borne to the sepulcher of the
kings of Israel--and left the aching void of bereavement in that smitten
heart? Or, has it been some sudden overwhelming national disaster? Have the
billows of war swept over his territories?--is the tramp of Benhadad's
conquering armies heard at his gates, threatening to desolate his valleys,
and carry the choice of his subjects captive to Damascus? No, no. His family
circle is unbroken; and the trophies of recent victory adorn his walls. It
is a far more insignificant cause which has led the weak and unworthy
monarch to wrap himself in that coverlet, and to pout and fret like a
petulant child.
This lordly possessor of palaces cannot obtain a little
vineyard he has coveted--and life is, forsooth, for the moment, embittered
to him. Lamentable, but too truthful picture of human nature! Here is a
King--a man at the proud pinnacles of human ambition, the owner of vast
territories--the possessor of one of the most princely of estates--his ivory
palace perched on the wooded slopes of Gilboa--looking across the wide
fertile plain of Esdraelon. What our own Windsor is to Britain, or
Versailles to France, so was this Jezreel, with its noble undulating
grounds, to the kingdom of Israel. Even amid the miserable mud-huts of the
modern Zerin, the traveler can picture, from the unchanged features of the
site, what the beauty of that summer park and palace must have been. But on
the outskirts of this regal domain, there happened to be one small patch of
ground, the hereditary possession of a Jezreelite of the name of Naboth--and
on the occasion of one of the royal visits to this favorite hunting-place,
the eye of the king has settled upon it. Its acquisition seems so desirable,
that he resolves to have it at any cost, either by purchase or excambion. In
the true spirit of an Israelite, however, Naboth rejects the royal proposal
to alienate his patrimonial acres.
Without palliating Ahab's infantile conduct, we may, at
first sight indeed, deem that Naboth was an uncourteous, if not a disloyal
subject, in thus thwarting the royal wishes--that it would, at all events,
have been no more than a becoming and graceful deference to the will of his
sovereign, at once to surrender the desired possession. A little
consideration, however, not only justifies Naboth's determined refusal, but
greatly aggravates Ahab's guilt in urging the transaction. The soil of
Israel belonged neither to Ahab nor Naboth, but to JEHOVAH. By the law of
Moses, the owner of that vineyard at Jezreel was rigidly prohibited from
parting with his paternal inheritance. Even in the case where debt
necessitated a temporary transfer of property, that transfer was always
coupled with the condition that the land could be redeemed at any time by
the original and inalienable possessor; and, moreover, even without money
redemption, it again reverted to him on the arrival of the year of jubilee.
When Naboth therefore rejected Ahab's offer, it was not on the ground of
personal disinclination, far less in a fit of dogged obstinacy. There was
nothing of churlish rudeness--no boorish discourtesy in his reply. With the
calm self-possession of one who acted from high religious principle, he thus
grounds his refusal, "The Lord forbid it that I should give the inheritance
of my fathers unto you."
We may not indeed altogether exclude the influence of
personal considerations on Naboth's conduct. Like other Jews, he was
doubtless deeply attached to the heritage of his ancestors. His vineyard
would be a spot endeared by sacred associations. It had been the hallowed
home of childhood; the cradle of his earliest recollections. On these
mountains of Gilead and Samaria, childhood's eye had gazed. Childhood's ear
had drunk delight from the murmurs of the still existing fountain. Seated
under the purple clusters of its trellised vines, he may have listened to
instruction from reverenced lips. More than all--the honored dust of his
sires doubtless reposed in some adjoining rocky cave; and holy memories
would endear his "inheritance" beyond the compensation of all Ahab's gold.
But this, we repeat, was not his main motive in refusal;
it was the resolve of a high-minded patriot Israelite, to fear his God, even
though in doing so he should incur the displeasure of his king. That little
ancestral plot of ground he felt to be his by a divine tenure. Obligated by
Jehovah himself, and loyal to a Greater than Ahab, he had no alternative
left him in dealing with the regal bribe. All honor to this noble-minded
citizen, who resisted the talents and the royal smiles that would tamper
with his conscience and his duty. We shall think of him as one of the seven
thousand who loved, from his inmost soul, the God of his fathers, and
refused to kiss the shrine of Baal. A pattern is he, to the many in every
age, who would too often sacrifice principle and right on the altar of
worldly policy; and, by base expediency, truckle to power and patronage. In
these days, when we collect photographs of the great and good among our
contemporaries, we may well find room for this bold sturdy peasant or
vine-dresser of Jezreel--enrol him among the number of our moral heroes, and
write under his name the motto--"I must obey God rather than man."
But what is conscientious scruple? It is a myth and
delusion to a mind blinded and debased like that of Ahab. He leaps in a
tantrum into his chariot. As he drives back that long twenty-five miles to
Samaria, it is with his countenance fallen. His wishes have been
thwarted--his royalty insulted--his dignity compromised--his will
gainsaid--his pride injured--by a petty subordinate. The result is, he is
miserable--all his magnificent possessions appear nothing, because he
cannot call that patch of ground his own. Unworthy of a king--unworthy of a
man--he flings himself on his bed, and sobs out to himself the tale of this
most miserable disappointed ambition!
Is there no way by which these unroyal tears may be wiped
away, and the coveted possession be yet obtained? If Ahab himself lacks the
moral courage to reach the wish by some foul and dastard deed, is there no
one in the courtly circle who can gratify him, by means which imperious
wills have often adopted before--cutting in two that conscientious scruple
with the sword? One there was, able and willing for the task. Jezebel, who,
as we already know, had inherited all the bold passions and oriental vices
of her father, was the very heroine for the emergency. Quick as thought, she
devises her accursed plot. By a series of easily planned perjuries, the
royal equanimity will soon be restored; the royal park and pleasure-grounds
soon have the desired appendage; and, what was better to her vindictive
nature, Naboth shall learn at what cost he spurns the royal wish, and
questions the royal prerogative. Getting into her possession the king's
signet-ring, to give the appearance of a regal mandate to her proclamation,
she causes letters to be written to the nobles and elders of Jezreel, to
proclaim a fast; accusing Naboth at the same time of high treason--the
charge to be supported by two perjured witnesses. Never was queen-craft more
apparently triumphant and successful. Once get that incompliant citizen
accused of blasphemy, and, by a divine law, the property of the
blasphemer and rebel reverts to the crown. Ahab, by an old statute, would
become at once lawful lord of this petty vineyard.
Two depraved men are induced without difficulty to
perjure themselves, in order to compass the destruction of an innocent man.
A fast is proclaimed. It is a hideous mockery in the name of religion. "A
fast!" as if some dire disaster, in the shape of famine, pestilence, or war,
impended over the city, or some dire sin needed expiation. The two "sons of
Belial"--the bribed witnesses who charged Naboth with the fictitious
crime--demand from the people summary vengeance on his head. He had
"blasphemed God and the king"--the King as the visible representative of
God. He had incurred the terrible penalties annexed to the boldest of
transgressions, "You shall not curse God, nor revile a prince among your
people."
O Justice! under your sacred name how many crimes have
been perpetrated--how many traitors to sacred truth have dragged the
innocent to destruction! It does give a terrible picture of the moral
debasement at this period of Israel's history, that so many were to be found
among nobles and elders--(the privileged classes--the aristocracy of their
day)--to aid and abet in so foul a deed. Not even one voice was raised in
protest against the enormous wickedness. No wonder, after weaving such a
network of deceit as this, that Jezebel's name should have been handed down
from generation to generation as the symbol and by-word of all that is
execrable--that it should be used in the last book of the inspired volume,
by lips which cannot lie, as the emblem of wild fanaticism and
licentiousness.
The deed is done. The exasperated rabble have dragged
Naboth out of the city, and "stoned him with stones;" and, as we learn
subsequently, his innocent family were simultaneously involved in the
cold-blooded massacre. The king loses no time in forthwith claiming the
wages of unrighteousness. He confiscates Naboth's goods; the coveted
vineyard has lapsed into his hands. "And Ahab," we read, "rose up to go down
(that is, from Samaria to Jezreel) to the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite
to take possession of it."
Yes, the plot had succeeded to a wish--a triumph of
female sagacity. Not one noble or elder had divulged the terrible secret,
which had given the semblance of legality to atrocious villainy. The bones
of the murdered were heaped out of sight in some forgotten grave; and what
was perhaps more than anything else to Ahab, Elijah was now, as he imagined,
out of the way. He had heard nothing lately of his old troubler and
tormentor. Perhaps some confused story had reached him of the wilderness
flight--that in a fit of cynical temper, the Prophet had turned at once
coward and hermit, and was spending the dregs of a fanatic life in the
untrodden wilds of the Arabian desert. The king's fleet horses bear him
along the highway to take formal possession of his dearly-bought possession.
He enters the gates, and is already planning how this aceldama--this "field
of blood"--can be turned to the greatest advantage. Ah, he hears it not! The
dulled ear of conscience is closed; but the voice of Naboth's blood is
crying from the ground, "O God, to whom vengeance belongs, show yourself."
Soon is the prayer heard. There was one close by, whose
presence he little dreamt of--one who had last conducted him in triumph,
after a day of miracle and grace, to these same gates of Jezreel. Now he
stands before him the messenger of wrath--the "Prophet of Fire"--an
incarnate spirit of evil tidings. It is ELIJAH?--his own great, bold, brave
self again no longer daunted and panic-stricken by Jezebel, and ready, when
his malediction is delivered, to gird himself for flight. The prediction of
Ahab's dreadful end might indeed well have struck fresh terror into his
heart as he uttered it. But he is another man since we recently met him in
the Sinai desert. The frenzied queen may again vow vengeance as she pleases;
he will not shrink from duty. The old visions of Horeb--the wind, and
earthquake, and fire--proclaim in his ears that "Jehovah lives."
A career of unblushing impiety, on the part of Ahab, had
now culminated in the most hideous of crimes, and the Herald of vengeance
delivers unabashed his message. It is one of his former rapid, sudden,
meteor-like appearances. Without warning or premonition, he confronts Ahab,
like the ghostly shadow of the monarch's own guilty conscience; and, with a
tongue of FIRE, flashes upon him the accusation--"Have you killed, and also
taken possession?" We know not a grander subject for a great picture than
this--the hero-prophet standing erect before the ghastly, terror-stricken
king; breaking through the barriers of court etiquette, and caring only for
the glory of the God he served and the good of Israel, charging him with the
murderer's guilt, and pronouncing upon him the murderer's dreadful doom. The
trembling monarch, awaking in a moment from his dream of iniquity to a sense
of the presence which confronted him, shrieks aloud--"Have you found me, O
my enemy." "I have found you," is the reply, "because you have sold
yourself to work evil in the sight of the Lord." And then he proceeds to
deliver the terrible sentence--The sword was to avenge the blood of the
innocent. His family, root and branch, were to be extirpated--the wild dogs
of the city and the winged vultures of heaven should banquet on the flesh of
his sons!
The king cowered in despair. He tore his clothes, put
sackcloth on his flesh, and in bitter misery bewailed, when it was too late,
his aggravated sin. So heartfelt, however, was this agony of remorse, that
the God he had insulted graciously respites his sentence. For three years,
opportunity was given him, though in vain, for a fuller repentance and
amendment, before the weapon of deferred retribution descends. But
the day of vengeance comes at last. At the end of that period, in going up
to battle, to Ramoth-Gilead, he is mortally wounded. In a crimson pool, at
the foot of the chariot, he lies in the last convulsions of ebbing
life--"The chariot was washed in the fountain of Samaria, and the dogs
licked his blood!"
Jezebel's end was more signal and appalling still. At
that moment, which we have described, when Ahab entered to take possession
of the vineyard of Naboth, two attendants were seated at the back of his
chariot, who overheard the stormy interview between him and the Prophet. The
words Elijah then uttered, sank deep into the heart and memory of one of
these. It was Jehu the son of Nimshi. And when, from the position of an
attendant he rose to the dignity of a conqueror, and entered with a
triumphant army the streets of Jezreel--though twenty long years had
elapsed, he seems neither to have forgotten nor misunderstood his
commission, as the scourge of God, and the avenger of innocent blood.
When the Queen, savage and debased as ever, tried first
by pretentious arts, and then by insult, to conquer or defy her invader, the
blood of the incensed warrior rose in his veins; by his orders, she was
thrown from her window outside the city wall--trampled under feet of the
horses, and torn to pieces by the dogs.
2 Kings 9:30-36– When Jezebel, the queen mother, heard
that Jehu had come to Jezreel, she painted her eyelids and fixed her hair
and sat at a window. When Jehu entered the gate of the palace, she shouted
at him, "Have you come in peace, you murderer? You are just like Zimri, who
murdered his master!"
Jehu looked up and saw her at the window and shouted,
"Who is on my side?" And two or three eunuchs looked out at him. "Throw her
down!" Jehu yelled. So they threw her out the window, and some of her blood
spattered against the wall and on the horses. And Jehu trampled her body
under his horses' hooves.
Then Jehu went into the palace and ate and drank.
Afterward he said, "Someone go and bury this cursed woman, for she is the
daughter of a king." But when they went out to bury her, they found only her
skull, her feet, and her hands.
When they returned and told Jehu, he stated, "This
fulfills the message from the Lord, which he spoke through his servant
Elijah from Tishbe: 'At the plot of land in Jezreel, dogs will eat Jezebel's
flesh.
There are many voices addressed to us from Naboth's
vineyard.
One of these is– Beware of covetousness!
That vineyard has its counterpart in the case and conduct of many still.
Covetousness may assume a thousand chameleon hues and phases, but these all
resolve themselves into a sinful craving after something other than what we
have. Covetousness of fortune--a grasping after more material
wealth, the race for riches. Covetousness of place--aspiring
after other positions in life than those which Providence has assigned
us--not because they are better--but because they are other
than our present God-appointed lot--invested with an imaginary
superiority.
And the singular and sad thing is, that such inordinate
longings are most frequently manifested, as with Ahab, in the case of those
who have least cause to indulge them. The covetous eye cast on the
neighbor's vineyard is, (strange to say;) more the sin of the affluent than
of the needy--of the owner of the lordly mansion than of the humble cottage.
The man with his clay floor, and thatched roof, and crude wooden rafters,
though standing far more in need of increase to his comfort, is often (is
generally) more contented and satisfied by far than he whose cup is full.
The old story, which every schoolboy knows, is a faithful picture of human
nature. It was Alexander, not defeated, but victorious--Alexander, not the
lord of one kingdom, but the sovereign of the world, who wept unsatisfied
tears.
Ahab had everything that human ambition could desire. The
cities of Israel his father had lost, had been all restored--peace was
within his walls, and--prosperity within his palaces. His residences were
unparalleled for beauty. His lordly park, and territories, and gardens at
Jezreel--stretching for miles on every side of the city--had every rare tree
and plant and flower to adorn them. But what pride or pleasure has he now in
all these? Plants bloom, and birds sing, and fountains sparkle, in vain. So
long as that one patch of vineyard-ground belonging to Naboth is denied him,
his whole pleasure is blighted. He cannot brook that insult of refusal. It
has stung him to the quick, and sends him to pout and fret, in unroyal
tears, on his couch in Samaria!
How many there are, surrounded with all possible
affluence and comfort, who put a life-thorn in their side by some similar
chase after a denied good, some similar fretting about a denied trifle. They
have abundance; the horn of plenty has poured its contents into their lap.
But a neighbor possesses something which they imagine they might have also.
Like Haman, though their history has been a golden dream of
prosperity--advancement and honor such as the brightest visions of youth
could never have pictured--yet all this avails them nothing, so long as they
see Mordecai the Jew sitting at the king's gate!
Seek to suppress these unworthy envious
longings. "For which things' sake," says the apostle, (and among these
things is covetousness,) "the wrath of God comes on the
children of disobedience." Covetousness, God makes a synonym for idolatry.
He classes the covetous in the same category with the worshipers of stocks
and stones. "Be content with such things as you have." Paul was ever sound
in philosophy as in religion--his ethical, as well as his theological
system, is one worthy of our profoundest study and imitation. Here is one of
his maxims--"I have learned in whatever state I am therewith to be content.
I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound; every where, and in
all things; I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound
and to suffer need."
The secret of his contentment was, that he was possessor
of those "true riches," which made him independent of all worldly honors and
gains and distinctions. "I have coveted," says he, "no man's silver or gold
or apparel." Why? because he had nobler treasures than the mines of the
earth could yield or its looms fabricate. Having Christ for his portion, he
could say--"I have ALL and abound." The vineyard which he coveted, was that
which "God's own right hand had planted, and the Branch he had made strong
for Himself!" Be assured that nagging discontent will grow, if you feed it,
until it comes to eat out the kernel of life's happiness--a discontented
manhood or womanhood culminating in that saddest of conditions, a peevish
old age.
In other sorrows, (the real trials of life,) the heart is
upheld and solaced by sympathy, and by the nobler consolations of God's
truth. But who or what could minister to a mind thus diseased? Who could
pity the soul whining and murmuring in the midst of plenty? Who could throw
away balm-words of comfort on those piercing themselves through with many
sorrows, when these sorrows are imaginary--ghosts of their own
discontented brain? As you value your peace, exorcize the foul fiend. Let
Naboth alone in his vineyard, and enjoy yours just as it is.
Impose not self-inflicted torture by longing for what you are better
without. When shall we be taught in this grasping, avaricious, unsatisfied
age, that a man's life, (his true being--his manhood--his glory,) consists
not "in the abundance of the things which he possesses!"
Another of the voices from Naboth's vineyard is–
Keep out of the way of temptation! If AHAB, knowing his own weakness
and besetting sin, had put a restraint on his covetous eye, and not allowed
it to stray on his neighbor's forbidden property, it would have saved a
black page in his history, and the responsibilities of a heinous crime. Let
us beware of tampering with evil. "If your right eye offends you, pluck it
out, and cast it from you." "Avoid it," says the wise man, speaking of this
path of temptation, "pass not by it, turn from it, and pass away."
If ACHAN had not cast his eye on the goodly Babylonish
garment, the shekels of silver, and the wedge of gold, he would have saved
Israel a bloody debacle and himself a fearful end. But he saw them;
and the sight fed and fostered and stimulated the covetous
master-passion--the latent avarice of his greedy heart. It was DAVID'S
wandering eye that led to the twin crime of adultery and murder. He, also,
ventured to the place of temptation. He had become an idler when he should
have been a worker. The old, heroic, chivalrous days were over, when he
would have despised luxurious ease, and been away rather to share the
hardships of his brave army then in the field. Instead of this, he was
basking in inglorious unsolderlike fashion, after his noontide meal, on the
roof of his palace. He was out of the way of duty, and in the
way of temptation; and one fatal look, and one fatal thought, entailed a
heritage of bitter sorrow on himself and on his children's children.
Each has his own strong temptation--the fragile part of
his nature--his besetting sin. That sin should be specially watched,
muzzled, curbed--that gate of temptation specially padlocked and sentineled.
One guilty neglect of duty--one unhappy abandonment of principle--one
inconsistent, thoughtless word or deed--may be the progenitor of unnumbered
evils. How many have bartered their peace of conscience for worthless
trifles--sold a richer inheritance than Esau's birthright for a mess of
earthly pottage! And once the first fatal step is taken, it cannot be so
easily undone. Once the blot on fair character is made, the stain is not so
easily erased.
Ahab's first and irretrievable blunder, was dated long
anterior to the coveting of the vineyard. We have before noted that his
thoughtless, unlawful, unprincipled union with a heathen princess, whose
father's name and throne were blackened with infamy, was the commencement of
his downward career--the first instalment of that price, by which, we read,
"he sold himself to work iniquity." He would never, in any
circumstance, have been a great man; he had no native vigor or independence
of character for that; but, under better fostering influences, he might have
been molded into a useful one. His facile, vacillating nature, might, by a
better adaptable power, have been brought to incline to the side of virtue.
But Jezebel was his evil genius. He was a mere puppet in her hands. She took
anything that was noble and generous from him--instigating him only to
execrable deeds. His better self surrendered to her base artifices, he
became a depraved, effeminate weakling.
What we have already said, in a previous chapter,
regarding the marriage union, is equally applicable to all business and
social connections. How many, in the formation of these, by looking merely
to worldly advantages, make shipwreck of faith and of a good conscience! How
many a young man has been lured, by the prospect of monetary recompense,
where his religious principles will be tampered with, or where he will be in
danger of scheming at dishonest gains! The high sense of honor and integrity
once lost or compromised, he becomes an easy prey to base arts--underhand,
dishonorable ways, and double dealings. No worldly gains or position can
make up for the absence of true wealth of character and principle. All
that Phoenician riches could secure or lavish, followed the Sidonian
princess to her Hebrew home in Samaria. But what of this? Under that Tyrian
purple there lurked a heart, which turned all she had into counterfeit and
base alloy. Oh, rather far, the poorest, lowliest, most unostentatious lot,
with character unsoiled, than gilded ceilings and array of servants, plate,
and equipage, where the nobler element of moral riches is lacking. Rather
the crust of bread and the crippled means, with unsullied principle and
priceless virtue, than all that boundless wealth can procure without them.
Another voice from Naboth's vineyard is– Be sure
your sin will find you out! Ahab and Jezebel, as we have seen, had
managed to a wish, their accursed plot. The wheels of crime had moved softly
along without one rut or impediment in the way. The two murderers paced
their blood-stained inheritance without fear of challenge or discovery.
Naboth was in that silent land where no voice of protest can be heard
against high-handed iniquity. But there was a God in heaven who makes
inquisition for blood, and who "remembered them." Their time for retribution
did come at last, although years of gracious forbearance were allowed
to intervene. As we behold the mutilated remains of that once proud,
unscrupulous queen, lying in the common receptacle of filth and carrion
outside the city of her iniquities, her blood sprinkling the walls--or, in
the case of the partner of her guilt, as we see the arrow from the Syrian
bow piercing through "the jointed armor"--or as he lies weltering in his
blood--his eyes closing in agony--the wild dogs, by the pool of Samaria,
lick the crimson drops from the wheels of his chariot and the plates of his
armor--have we not before us a solemn and dreadful comment on the words of
Him who "judges righteous judgment"--"These things have you done, and I kept
silence; you thought that I was altogether such a one as yourself--but I
will reprove you, and set them in order before your eyes. Now consider this,
you that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to
deliver." "He that, being often reproved, hardens his neck, shall suddenly
be destroyed, and that without remedy."
And are the principles of God's moral government
different now? It is true, indeed, that the present economy deals not so
exclusively as the old in temporal retribution. Sinners now have before them
the surer and more terrible recompense and vengeance of a world to come.
But not infrequently here also, retribution still follows, and sooner or
later overtakes, the defiant transgressor. They who "sow to the wind" are
made to "reap the whirlwind;" the solemn assertion of a righteous God is not
uttered in vain--"I will search with lanterns in Jerusalem's darkest corners
to find and punish those who sit contented in their sins, indifferent to the
Lord, thinking he will do nothing at all to them."
Yes, and moreover, even should crime and wrongdoing be
successfully hidden from the eye of man, CONSCIENCE, like another
stern Elijah in the vineyard of Naboth, will confront the transgressor and
utter a withering doom. How many such an Elijah stands a rebuker within the
gates of modern vineyards, purchased by the reward of iniquity! How many
such an Elijah stands a ghostly sentinel by the door of that house whose
stones have been hewn and polished and piled by illicit gain! How many an
Elijah mounts on the back of the modern chariot, horsed and harnessed,
pillowed and cushioned and liveried with the amassings of successful
roguery! How many an Elijah stands in the midst of banquet-hall and
drawing-room scowling down on some murderer of domestic peace and innocence,
who has intruded into vineyards more sacred than Naboth's--trampled VIRTUE
under foot, and left the broken, bleeding vine, to trail its shattered
tendrils unpitied on the ground!
And even should Conscience itself, in this world be
defied and overborne; at all events in the world to come, sin must be
discovered; retribution (long evaded here) will at last exact its uttermost
farthing. The most dreadful picture of a state of eternal punishment, is
that of sinners surrendered to the mastery of their own special
transgression; these sins, like the fabled furies, following them, in
unrelenting pursuit, from hall to hall and from cavern to cavern in the
regions of unending woe--and they, at last, hunted down, wearied,
breathless, with the unavailing effort to escape the tormentors, crouching
in wild despair, and exclaiming, like Ahab to Elijah, "Have you found me,
O my enemy?"
We may appropriately close this chapter with the
impressive words and prayer of the Psalmist--
O God, surely you will destroy the wicked!
Get out of my life, you murderers!
They blaspheme you;
your enemies take your name in vain.
O Lord, shouldn't I hate those who hate you?
Shouldn't I despise those who resist you?
Yes, I hate them with complete hatred,
for your enemies are my enemies.
Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my thoughts.
Point out anything in me that offends you,
and lead me along the path of everlasting life.
Psalm 139:19-24