Two Sunsets on the Hills of Jericho

His was the pomp, the crowded hall;

But where is now the proud display?
His riches, honours, pleasures, all

Desire could frame; but where are theyf
And he — as some tall rock that stands.

Protected by the circling sea,
SiUTOunded by admiring bands —

Seem’d proudly strong; and where is he?

“The life has gone, the breath has fled,
And what has been no more shall be;
The well-known form, the welcome tread,
Oh! where are they? and where is he?”

—l^EELE

“In his days did Kiel the Beth-elite build Jericho: he laid the foundation thereof in Abiram his first-born, and set up the gates thereof in h;a youngest son Segub, according to the word of the Lord, which he spake by Joshua the son of Nun.” — 1 Kings xvi. 34.

In the midst of the reiorn of an idolatrous king of Israel, we coine to an epitaph on the gravestone of two children, within the city of Jericho.

It is probable that the whole family of HiEL THE Beth-ELITE lie entombed in that rocky cave. Two blossoms, at all events, have been nipped in the bud — two “little suns’’ have set on the mountains of Judah, — going down “ere it is yet day.”

As we stand on the heights of Jericho, beside this newlyhewn sepulchre, with the Jordan flowing through the green plains below; — let us inquire why it is that these two youthful pilgrims have been called so soon to tread the waves of the typical Jordan; — why these two little lives have been so prematurely taken.

There is always a solemn and saddening interest surrounding the death-beds and the graves of the young. There are often, though we understand them not, wise and loving reasons for these early removals. It is God’s own inscription, though it often cannot be read through our blindingtears — “Taken from the evil to come.’* Parents often erroneously infer that the Lord has been inflicting merited retribution on themselves, for their own sins, by snatching away “the desire of their eyes with a stroke;” while in reality it was some gracious purpose regarding the little ones them-

selves, sparing them unforeseen experiences of sorrow and sin, and gifting them with an early crown.

In this passage of sacred story, however, we have a special exception. Jehovah here vindicates His own word and righteousness, in writing the household of this Beth-elite childless. It is a story of significant warning and instruction. Though dead, these silent tongues still solemnly speak.

Jericho, the old city of palms, had been lying in ruins for five hundred years, ever since the Israelitish conquest. God had pronounced by the lips of Joshua a solemn curse on the man who should dare to rebuild it — “Aid Joshua adjured them at that time, saying, Cursed he the man before the Lord, that riseth up and huildeth this city Jericho; he shall lay the foundation thereof in his first-born, and in his youngest son shall he set up the gates of it” That curse had been handed down from generation to generation. Many, doubtless, as they passed nigh the site of the old city, and saw the magnificence of its situation as “the hey of Palestine,” with its two valleys belnnd, each pouring into it a fertilising stream; — the magnificent forest of palm-trees for miles on every side — the Jordan flowing, with rapid torrent, amid rare luxuriance, on its way to the Dead Sea; — many who witnessed all these manifold natural advantaires, Vvould lono; to see the walls of the city again restored, and its ramparts rebuilt, as when Israel first beheld them from the Oi3posito valleys of J.Ioab.

But any such longing was immediately repressed, when they recalled the stringent prohibition which threatened bereavement and death to the man that should dare to contravene a Divine decree. It must have been an impressive sight to see the old ruins, “beautiful for situation,” scattered as they had been for ages, mitouched by the hand of man; the shepherd alone, perhaps, following his flock amid the rank herbage, — or the wandering ia’ab, then, as now, pitcliing his tent amid the moss-grown stones. But no builder dared set his foot among them, lest haply he might be found “fighting against God.”

At last a bold, defiant spirit rises up, to make the daring venture. A dweller in Jacob’s old city, — which had now, alas! by the worship of Ahab’s golden calves, sadly belied its name as “the House of God,” — Hiel the Beth-elite rises up, in impious pride, to brave the prohibition, and risk the awful consequences. But who hath hardened himself against God and prospered? He enters the proscribed ground, and already, — just as he has begun to dig the foundation for a new capital, — a messenger speeds from his dwelling with heavy tidings. In digging these forbidden foundations, he has dug the grave of his first-born son 1 On the first stone of the old ruins being removed, an arrov, sped from the quiver of God with unerring aim, and laid low the pride of his heart.

AVill he take warning? Another child still is left, — his youngest — probably his only other — his Benjamin — his best beloved. Amid the bitterness of the first bereavement, he fastens the severed tendrils of affection around his surviving boy, saying, “This same shall comfort us.” Surely now at least he will profit by the awful voice of warning! The Hebrew workmen will be disbanded from their cursed enterprise, and desolation will once more be installed amid the lonely ruins.

Nay, it has been well said by the preacher, “The heart of the sons of men is full of evil; and madness is in their heart while they live, and after that they go to the dead.”’^ The arrow is again on the string. He refuses to humble hiii!- self by repentance, — own the Divine hand, and desist from his im2:)ious enterprise. With “hardened and impenitent heart” he spurns the awful counsel, and will none of the reproof!

He has cleared the foundations. Stone by stone, edifice by edifice is rising; — an imposing city again crowns the Jordanheights, and looks forth amid its forests of majestic palms. Hiel, inflated with pride, forgets the early warning. If staggered at first by the occurrence of the death of his first-born, simultaneously with the digging of the city’s foundations, he speaks of it, as we often find many still doing in similar circumstances, only as “a strange and unhappy coincidence.” His inmost thought is, “Let me bury my vain grief for the loss of my first-born. I have yet a son called by my name. He will be the pride of my fjimily. He will transmit my name to posterity as the founder of the second Jericho.”

The battlements are re.ired. The walls are completed. Perhaps thousands are congregated to witness the last act in the bold enterprise, — raising the ponderous gates of iron on their hinges. Something like the ovation of a conqueror awaits the hero of the day. Hiel’s bosom is swelling at the moment with the one dominant thought —” This is the great city I have hiiiW But another messenger, at that moment, — like him who sped to the yatriarch of a former age — comes * Eccles. ix. 3.

with the heaviest tidings a parent’s heart can hear. The voice of triumph is that clay turned to mourning. “Joseph is not, and Simeon is not,” and his own obdurate disregard of the Divine command compels the taking of “Benjamin a’so.” The first procession we see treading the new streets is a funeral C7vtvd. Hiel is the chief mourner. He is bearing his last — his only one — to the rocky vault where his first-born hes. He has rushed with madness against the bo&ses of Jehovah’s buckler, and terrible has been the price of his hardihood and sin; for “He has laid the foundation in Ahiram his first born, and set up the gates thereof in his youngest son Seguh, according to the word of the Lord, tohich he spake by Joshua the son of JSln.’*

As that mournful procession is pacing the streets, let ns join it in thought, and gather solemn lessons and warning for ourselves.

What could have induced Hiel to brave so solemn a prohibition, and risk incurring so awful a penalty? — A Bethelite — a “Hebrew of the Hebrews” — he must, like all his brethren, have been abundantly cognisant of the curse recorded by Israel’s leader. It was the nursery tale of every Hebrew mother to her child. How came he to be so mad and foolhardy as to dare the Almighty’s displeasure, and serve himself heir to the curse? To get his name immortalised as the founder of a city, was a poor equivalent for the irreparable loss. And, independent of natural affection, to a Jew, (as the possible ancestor of Messiah,) the heaviest infliction was the deprival of his offspring.

Let us try to conjecture one or two reasons for Hiel’s contemptuous disregard of the Divine command.

To tiike the extreme view of his character, Hid (Israelite by name as he was) may have been in heart, like many professing religionists still, a practical Infidel and Atheist. We know that, under Ahab’s reign of unparalleled wickedness and irreligion, many were contaminated with the impiety of the reigning monarch. God, the God of their fathers, was by multitudes virtually disowned. Hiel may have denounced the whole story of the threatened curse as a fable, — a bugbear and delusion; — some old legend of a lying prophet, — the falsehood palmed on a credulous age and people; and when, passing oftentimes along the valley of the Jordan, he saw that marvellous site abandoned to ruin and decay, solely, as he surmised, on account of a foolish superstition, he at length resolved to expose and unmask the lie. He put forth his hand, like Achan, to touch the accursed thing; saying in his heart, in the words of the wicked boasters of old, with a proud, self-confident, infidel sneer, “The Lord shall not see, neither shall the God of Jacob regard.” * But woe to the worm of the dust that contendeth with his Maker! As wave after wave sweeps over his household, the solemn truth is brought home to him, — the confession is extorted from him amid the wail of death — “Who hath hardened himself against the Lord, and prospered V’f ‘’It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” I

How many are there, it is to be feared, with Kiel’s spirit still amcmg ourselves! God has put a solemn curse on the man who will dare to upbuild the city of iniquity. He has put a curse, too, on the neglecter of salvation. He has solemnly declared,” Though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not

* Ps. xciv. 7. t Job, ix. 4. + Heb. x. 31.

he unpumslied!’ * But there are those (bearing, it may be, like Hiel, the name of Israelite), — outward professors, — who carry inwardly Kiel’s atheist heart. They spurn God’s curse; they treat His solemn averments about death, judgment, eternity, as idle tales. Ay, and there is so much, to them, startling, and apparently inconsistent, in the providential government of God, that, in their secret thoughts, they deny alike a moral government and a moral Governor. Regardless of consequences, “they will take their chance;” they will outbrave these denunciations; — they will build where God has forbidden to build. They say, with the people to whom Ezekiel prophesied, ‘’The Lord hath forsaken the earth;’’f — what care we for lying prophets — enthusiastic dreamers! — neither nature nor experience endorses these pulpit utterances and Bible threats. “We will walk in the light of our own eyes. Who is the Lord, that He should reign over us?”

“Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight!” “Woe unto the wicked! it shajl be ill with him; for the reward of his hands shall be given him.’’ I God may not, as in the case of Hiel, undeceive you, in this world, in your atheist-dream. He seldom now, as in the old dispensation, makes visible and temporal retribution to descend on the scorners of His word and warnings; sentence against an evil work is not now, as it then v.’as,” executed speedily,” and therefore the hearts of the sons of men are all the more ‘’fully set in them to do evil.” Bud there is a day coming, when, as the gates of death close upon you, (as Hiel’s gates closed on Jericho,) the Divine denunciations shall be awfully verified; and the conviction be * Prov. xi, 2L f Ezek. viii. 12. t Isa. iil 11.

solemnly flashed upon yon, (shall it be for the first time?) before the great white throne, “Verily there is a God that judgeth in the earth!”

But let us ]Dass to a more modified view of Hiel’s self-delusion. In rebuilding Jericho, he may have had an honest belief in the being and power of the God of his fathers, as well as in the truthfulness and reality of Joshua’s warning. But he may have been influenced by the thought that the stringency of the old prohibition may now have been relaxed; that what was imperative enough in Joshua’s time, was not so binding after the lapse of five centuries. Time does much in softening the rigour of man. He may have measured the Divine feelings and procedure by a comparison with the human; he may have concluded that God had now modified the severity of the olden curse. “There surely” (he would argue) “could be no great sin, or risk, or danger now, in rescuing a noble site from ruin, and erecting a strong frontier-city to guard incursions from the bordertribes of Moab. The curse, binding and literal at the time, had now, surely, become obsolete.” He may have even made out a case of necessity; that he was only doing a patriot’s deed, for which he would be lauded in all coming time as one of the heroes of the nation!

Man may change, but God never can.” One day is with the Lord as a thousand years!’ When God pronounces a curse, it is not as a human being, who is influenced by momentary emotion, passion, prejudice. The wrath of God is not a passion, but £1 principle. It is the calm, deep, deliberate recoil of His nature from sin. His word is unalterable, — His judgments are subject to no waywardness or caprice.

How many there are, in these days of ours, who apply Hiel’s false reasoning to the Word of God and its solemn averments. Disciples, as they call themselves, of a dreamy dogma; — or theoiy of “development,” who dare to speak and write of the Bible as an antiquated book, containing only the utterances of some Jewish shepherds, and vinedressers, and fishermen; and whose day, and meaning, and obligations are p;ist. As “progress,” say they, is the world’s normal law, so there is advance here, as in everything else. This Bible, with its old-world threatenings, was all very well for that old-world state of things, — when it was a child, and spake as a child, and understood as a child. But now the world has reached its manhood, and “put away childish things.” The Bible curses are contained in the code of” the law which gendereth to bondage.’’ We live under the Gospel, and the truth has made us free. The God that spoke in curses amid the blackness, darkness, and tempest of Sinai, is not the God who now S23eaks to us from heaven.

He is! The same “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son.”* And hear how that Son speaks; — they are his own living utterances: — “Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise jxiss from the law, till all be fulfilled.” f His word is very faithful. His word and His throne have immutability to rest upon. “/ am the Lord; I change not.” l “These things,” he says to every such pre- * Heb. i. 1. + Mat. v. 17, 18. J Mai. iii. 6.

sumptuous dreamer, “these things hast thou do7ie, and I kept silence; thou thoughtest’’ that I was changed, — that I had altered the thing that had gone forth out of my mouth, — “that I luas altogether such an one as thyself.” But I will demonstrate my righteous adhesion to every threat against ‘’ the workers of iniquity.”” / will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes.’’^

Let us beware of measuring God by our puny selves. Oblivion does its work with us. Time, like the waves of the sea on the rippled sand, obliterates much of the memories of sin; and because it does so, we are apt impiously to dream that such is the case with God also. But He is “the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever!’ The past, and present, and future are to Him alike. There was to Him, no measurable period of time between Joshua’s utterance of the curse against a builder of the doomed city, and Hiel’s futile attempt to fio:ht a2:ainst it. Be assured, all that God hath said in His Word in ages past remains uncancelled, unaltered, and unalterable, to this hour. We may well write,” Thus saith the Lord,” on every curse, as well as every blessing. With the memorable example and signal retribution of Hiel before us, let us make it our earnest prayer, ‘’Keep hack thy servant also from pr’esumptuous sins”

We have just surmised, that one false idea which Hiel may have fostered, and trusted in, was, that the lapse of ages had modified the stringency of the old prohibition. He may also have been influenced in his undertaking by an expectation that God would not rigidly stand to His word — * Ps. 1. 21.

that He would not adhere so sternly to His threat, as many supposed and dreaded He would.

Perhaps he might be strengthened in this supposition by what he had observed in his own native city of Bethel. He had there seen that same God of Israel foully dishonoured, — His name blasphemed, — His word and authority scorned, — golden calves and Baal-shrines polluting the sacred places; — and yet, notwithstanding, He had interposed with no visible judgment. He seemed to “wink” at these heinous sins. He had visited the idolaters with no retribution. Hiel, from all this, may have drawn the unwarrantable conclusion that Jehovah was not rigid in the enforcement of His threats; — that He did not mean all He said; — that, having apparently overlooked the Bethel calf-worshippers. He would not be over severe on the less heinous sin of braving His curse in the building of Jericho,

He makes the awful venture. But first, over the grave of his elder, and then of his younger son, he is brought to read the inscription — “God is not a man that he should lie, or the son of man that he should repent.” As he returns, through the streets of the new-built city, to his rifled home, and as he marks the two vacant seats in his desolate house, he could say — (may we hope it was through penitent tears of shame and sorrow and devout humiliation), — “God hath spoken once, yea, twice have I heard this, that yower belong eth unto God!”

Ah! is not Hiel’s reasoning here, too, the ruinous, souldeluding reasoning of multitudes still? There is no more common or fallacious argument than this: — “God will not. l)e over-strict. His nature and His name are love. He never could, and never will, curse the creature of His own making. These denunciations will be modified and softened at the Great Day. His justice will merge into compassion. Stern Retribution will descend these iron steps, and Mercy will ascend triumphant to her golden throne.”

“Nay, hut, 0 man, who art thou that repliest against God? ‘* Go back to these twin graves at Jericho, and read in them the great principle of God’s moral government — that when He says, *’ Cursed he the muM,’’ He means “cursed,” and when He says, “Blessed,” He means “Messed”

You remember, when Saul ventured on a similar unworthy tampering with the Word of God, in the commanded extirpation of Amalek, and reserved (contrary to an express injunction) King Agag and the goodliest portion of his flocks and herds. He doubtless imagined that there was no great evil in the reservation itself; — that, at all events, God would overlook it; — that He would visit so trivial a departure from the letter of His Word with no great severity. What was the result? Saul lost his kingdom. The prophet of Jehovah stood before the monarch, confronting him with the question, *’ What meaneth this hleating of sheep in mine ears, and the lowing of the oxen which I hear? “‘’ Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, he hath also I’ejected thee from heingking.“^ The Lord is not slack concerning His promises, (and that is a blessed truth to us!) But let us always view it side by side with its counterpart —” The Lord is iwt slack concerning his threatening sJ’ When we see vice apparently unrebuked, walking with unblushing front, pillowed often in affluence, — the wicked apparently with no

1 Sam. XV. 23.

bands either in their life or death; — we are apt to draw the false inference that God is, like Baal, “asleep” — that He has filing the reins of His moral government loose to chance — that He takes ‘’ no account of these matters.” But though it is true that His dealings now-a-days are so far altered from those of the earlier dispensation, that transgression is not followed by temporal retribution, — yet judgment is in awful reversion. The sinner treasures up to himself “wrath against the day of wrath,” God is sa3dng now, in words He uttered of old to Isaiah, “/ will take my rest; I will consider in my dwelling -place.” This is the time for His “considering!* The weapon of vengeance is still sheathed. He has no pleasure in the death of him that dieth. He waits to be gracious. But let us not misconstrue His forbearance as if it denoted any alteration in His purposes. If not now, at least hereafter, on the Great Day, the awful truth shall be made manifest: “Be sure your sin luill find you out.” “Walk in the tvays of thine heart and in the sight of thine eyes; hut know that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment “f*

The great practical lesson from all this subject is. Beware of resisting God.

Ever and anon He speaks to all of us solemnly in His providences. Let us beware of attempts to stifle His voice and precipitate our own ruin. Hiel’s offence was deeply aggravated. When the impious builder, in digging the city’s foundation, carried to the grave his elder-born, — he might well have bowed his head in the dust, — owned God’s sovereignty, and” turned at His reproof.’’ But he despised all

* Isa. xviii. 4. t Eccles. xi. 9.

146 SUNSETS ON THE HELEEW MOUNTAmB.

His counsel. The solemn warning failed to impede him in his unrighteous resolution. The buildings rose; but he was only thereby exposing his bosom to another dart of death.

How many there are among ourselves like Hiel! Reader! God has spoken to you once by some solemn warnir.i*;; — by sickness — by worldly loss — by opening perhaps the grave of your child. Have you listened to His voice? — Have you bowed to the rod? — Have you profited by the warning? — Or is it the case that the monition has passed and gone? — that the Jericho of pleasure or sin is rearing just as before,- — provoking Him to new, and, it may be, severer judgments?

^’ Haiden not your hearts J’ “Exhort one another,” says the apostle, “while it is called to-day, lest any of you be HARDENED through the deceitfulness of sin.” Beware, like Moab, of “settling on your lees,” of getting into that awful state of callousness and indifference, alike under warning and mercy; — “nourishing your hearts for a day of slaughter.’’ * In the case of Hiel, it was a presumptuous hardening after God had solemnly pled with him through tears of parental anguish. Remember that solemn word —” He that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy.” * Are any who read these words sinning in the face of solemn monitions, when God is giving them “line upon line, precept upon precept “— sjoeaking to them by “earthquake,” or “whirlwind,” or “fire,” or “the still small voice? “Be assured He will yet make inquisition for these rejected warnings — this unrequited love! Go in thought to Jericho. Stop and read the epitaph on that tombstone —” Consider this, ye that forget God!’*

* Prov. xxis. 1.

One. other sentence in conclusion. Let none suppose, from all that has been suggested by this subject, that we entertain a repulsive theology; — a theology that would represent God — the loving Father of His people — as a vindictive Being, nrraed with curses, stronger to smite, than “strong to save.” He visits indeed ‘’ iniquity imto the third andfouiih generation of them that hate him;’’ but He shews ‘’mercy unto thousands of them that love him.’’ While “He can by no means clear the guilty,” yet “He delighteth in mercy.” His blessings are more abundant than His curses. His gospel message begins with the proclamation of “peace on earth and good-will to men; “and it ends with the invitation,” Whosoever will, let him come and take of the water of life freely.” * The infatuated builders of every city of sin — what can they expect but ruin and disaster? But ‘’ we have a strong city — salvation will God appoint for walls and bulwarks; “and He who, by His own blood, purchased a right to bestow upon us that city, says, as He stands by its gates, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” f Yes, say not that we teach a gloomy theology Vvith such a God as this; — who, in order that He might be a Father to us, “spared not His oiun Son.” Hiel, from pride and vainglory, sacrificed HIS son in laying the foundation of an earthly city. But tue can tell of a great Being who, in laying the foundations of a more magnificent city than earth ever saw, surrendered ‘’His only-begotten,” His ‘’well-beloved.” He laid its foundations, — He set up its immortal gates in the death of His First-born; and all in order that guilty, worthless sinners might be saved! — that in the exercise of His * Rev. xxii. 17. t Matt. xi. 28.

paternal love, He might embrace a lost world in the arms of His mercy, and exclaim, “This my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found I”

That city expands its sheltering portals to all. None are forbidden to enter. We are encouraged to” open the gates, that the righteous (those made righteous through the righteousness of another) may enter in.’’ A city in which — unlike that of which we have been speaking — the wail of the mourner is never heard, and where death never enters!

Oh, look away from all human shelters to that “city luhich hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.” Be assured, all who are content with building for earth the Jerichos of the present, shall fmd there the grave of their hopes. But “they of this city shall flourish like grass on the earths “The world passeth aiuay, and the lust thereof hut he that doeth the will of God ahidethfor ever I”