Hebrew Heroes: A Tale Founded on Jewish History

  CHAPTER VI.

  THE JOURNEY HOME.

  Before the sun had risen above the horizon on that day, Judas, son ofMattathias, of the noble family of the Asmoneans, started on his longhomeward journey. He had not re-entered Jerusalem during the night;almost as soon as he, with the assistance of Joab and Isaac, two of hiscompanions, had filled up with earth the grave of the martyrs, he hadskirted the city from the east to the west, and turned his face towardsModin.

  It would scarcely have been deemed by any one who might have seen theprincely Hebrew ascending the western hill with his quick, firm tread,that the greater part of the preceding night had been spent by him insevere toil, and none in sleep. His soul, filled with a lofty purpose,so mastered the infirmities of the flesh, that the Asmonean seemed tohimself scarcely capable of feeling fatigue, and set out, withouthesitation, on a journey which would have severely taxed the powers ofa strong pedestrian after long uninterrupted repose.

  As he reached the highest point of one of these hills which stand roundJerusalem, like guardians of the holy and beautiful city, Judas pausedand turned round to take what he felt might be a last look of Zion,over which the sun was about to rise. He gazed on the fair towers, thegirdling walls, the sepulchres in the valleys, the temple crowning theheight, with that intense love which glows in the bosom of every Hebrewdeserving the name, a love in which piety mingles with patriotism,glorious memories with still more glorious hopes. From the Asmonean'slips burst the words in which the Psalmist has embalmed that love forall generations,--_Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth,is Mount Zion, the city of the great King. Mark ye well her bulwarks,consider her palaces; that ye may tell it to the generation following.Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee.Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces. If Iforget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning; if I donot remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth_.

  Faith was to the Asmonean as the rosy glow preceding the sunrise, whichthen flushed the eastern sky. His eye rested on the Temple; nowdesecrated, defiled, abandoned to the Gentile, and he remembered thepromise regarding it: _The Lord whom ye seek, shall suddenly come, toHis Temple, even the Messenger of the Covenant whom ye delight in_(Mal. iii. 8). Then the Hebrew's gaze wandered beyond to a fair hill,clothed with verdure, and his faith grasped the promise of God: _Thenshall the Lord go forth ... and His feet shall stand in that day uponthe Mount of Olives_ (Zech. xiv. 3, 4). Hope and joy were kindled atthe thought. As surely as the hill itself should remain, so surelyshould a Temple stand on Mount Zion, till the Messiah should appearwithin it. _God is not a man, that He should lie; neither the son ofman, that He should repent: hath He said, and shall He not do it?_(Num. xxiii. 19).

  "Oh, that the Messiah might come in my day!" exclaimed the Asmonean;"that my eyes might behold the King in His beauty; that my voice mightjoin the united acclamations of Israel, when the Son of David shall beseated on the throne of His fathers, and His enemies shall be made Hisfootstool! That I might see the whole world worshipping in thepresence of the Seed of the woman who shall bruise the serpent's head!"(Gen. iii. 15). The Hebrew grasped his javelin more firmly, and hisdark eye dilated with joy and triumph. "But the night is not yet pastfor Israel," he added, more sadly; "the voice is not yet _heard in thewilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord_ (Isa. xl. 8); we may haveyet much to do and to suffer ere the Sun of Righteousness arise."

  Then a softened expression stole over the features of the Asmonean, ashe gazed in another direction, but still with his face turned towardsthe east. He could not see a white dwelling nestling under the shadowof a hill, but he knew well where it lay, and where she abode to whomhe had bidden on that night a long, perhaps a last, farewell. TheAsmonean stretched out his hand, and exclaimed, "Oh! Father of thefatherless, guard and bless her! To Thy care I commit the treasure ofmy soul!" And without trusting himself to linger longer, Judas turnedand went on his way.

  It was the month of Shebet, answering to the latter part of ourJanuary, and Palestine was already bright with the beauty of earlyspring. The purple mandrake was in flower, the crocus, tulip, andhyacinth enamelled the fields, with the blue lily contrasting withthousands of scarlet anemones. The almond-tree and the peach were inflower, and fragrant sighed the breeze over blossoms of lemon andcitron. The winter had this year been mild, and some figs left fromthe last season still clung to the boughs yet bare of foliage. Thevine on the terraced hills was bursting into leaf, and already in thefields the rising corn showed its young blades above the ground. ButJudas was too much absorbed with his own thoughts to pay much attentionto the landscape around him; with Israel the spiritual winter was notover, her time for the singing of birds had not come.

  Onwards pressed the traveller without resting, till at about noonday hereached the valley of Ajalon. There was a fountain by the side of theroad, and here the weary man slaked his thirst, and sat down for awhileto rest beneath the shade of some date-palms. The Asmonean took fromthe scrip which he carried his simple repast of dried figs, laved hisbrow and hands in the cooling water, blessed God for his food, andbegan to eat.

  Ere many minutes had elapsed, a woman in the widow's garb of mourning,bearing a child of about six years old on her back, dragged her wearysteps to the fountain by which the traveller was seated. She placedher boy on the ground, drank of the water herself, and gave to her sonto drink. Her appearance denoted extreme poverty, and the child wasevidently suffering from sickness.

  Judas divided this slender supply of provisions into three portions,and with the courteous salutation of "Peace be with you," offered oneto the widow, and one to the boy.

  "The blessing of the God of Abraham be with you!" exclaimed the poorwoman; "your servant hath not tasted food since sunset." And, seatedon the turf not far from Judas, the widow and her son partook of thedried figs with the eagerness of those who are well-nigh famished.

  "Your child looks ill," observed the Asmonean, regarding withcompassion the wasted shrunken frame of the boy.

  "He will not suffer long," replied the widow, with the calm apathy ofdespair. "I laid his father's head in the grave last month, and Ishall lay Terah's head beside him this month. The seal of death isupon him; I shall soon be alone in the world."

  "Nay, despair not, God is good; the child may yet live," said Judas.

  "Why should I wish him to live," murmured the widow. "His father wastaken from the evil to come, the boy will be taken from the evil tocome. Jerusalem is defiled, the land is in bondage, Israel is given aprey to the heathen! The faithful are few in the land, and persecutionwill sweep these few away. There is no resting-place but under thesod, no freedom but in the grave. The name of Judah will soon beblotted out from amongst the nations!"

  "Never!" exclaimed Judas, with energy; "never, while the God of Truthlives and reigns! Judah can never perish. The vine that was broughtout of Egypt may be broken, her branches torn away, her fruitscattered, the boar out of the wood may waste it, and the wild beast ofthe field devour, but yet _Israel shall blossom and bud, and fill theface of the world with fruit_ (Isa. xxvii. 6). Were but one man leftof God's chosen people, yet from that one man should spring theDeliverer who shall yet speak peace to the nations, and reign for everand ever!"

  "Could I but hope--" faltered the widow.

  "Can you not _believe_?" exclaimed the Asmonean. "See yonder--look tothe east--there is Gibeon, over which the sun stayed at the voice ofJoshua; over this valley of Ajalon hung the moon arrested in her coursein the day when the Amorites fled before Israel. He who raised upMoses, Joshua, and Gideon, can by human instruments, or without them,repeat the miracles wrought of old, and again deliver His people."

  As he concluded the last sentence, the Asmonean rose to continue hisjourney; he could give his weary limbs but little time for rest, forlong was the distance which he yet had to traverse.

  "My home is but a furlong further on," said the widow, also rising,"and
I have again strength to go forward."

  She was about to lift up her boy, but Judas prevented her. "I canrelieve you of that burden," he said, and raised the child on hisshoulders.

  They had proceeded for some way in silence, the widow pondering overthe speech of the wayfaring man, when from behind was heard the clatterof hoofs and the jingle of steel. The child, whom the Asmonean wascarrying, turned to gaze, and exclaimed in fear as he grasped the locksof his protector, "See--horsemen in bright armour, with banners andspears! fly, fly!--the Syrians are coming!"

  Judas did not turn nor alter his pace, he merely went closer to theside of the cactus-bordered road, to give more space to the horsemen topass him. On rode the Syrians in goodly array, their steel glitteringin the sunlight, the dust rising like a cloud around the hoofs of theirhorses. In the centre of the line was a gorgeous arabah, or coveredcart with curtains, to which the troop of soldiers appeared to form anescort. There was an opening in the roof of this arabah, evidently forthe convenience of accommodating within it a figure too high to beotherwise carried in the conveyance, for out of the opening appeared awhite marble head of Grecian statuary. Judas and his companionregarded it with the aversion and horror with which the sight of anidol always inspired pious Jews.

  When the Syrians had passed the travellers, and the clatter of theirarms had died away in the distance, the widow wrung her hands andexclaimed, "Yonder ride Apelles and his men of war to Modin, to do thebidding of the tyrant; and they bear the accursed thing with them, tobe set up on high and worshipped. Alas! they will compel all theHebrews at Modin to bow down to their idol of stone."

  "Perhaps not," said Judas, calmly.

  "All men will be forced to offer sacrifice," cried the woman; "therewill be no way of escaping the pollution."

  "Solomona and her sons found one way," observed the Asmonean, "and Godmay provide yet another."

  The traveller had now reached the door of the widow's humble dwelling.Judas set down his living burden, and the mother thanked the kindstranger, and asked him to come in and rest.

  "I cannot abide here," replied Judas; "a long journey is yet before me;I must be at Modin this night."

  "At Modin!" exclaimed the astonished woman, glancing up at the wornweary countenance of the speaker. "Why, the horsemen will scarcelyreach Modin this night, unless, indeed, the king's business be urgent."

  "My King's business is urgent," said the Asmonean, as he tightened hisgirdle around him, and with a grave, courteous salutation to the woman,he went on his way.

  The widow watched his princely form for some time in silence, thenexclaimed, "That can be none other than Judas, the son of Mattathias;there is not a second Hebrew such as he. Ah, my Terah," she added,addressing herself to her son, "there is a man whom the Syrians willnot frighten."

  "He will rather frighten the Syrians," said the boy.

  Many a time was that childish saying repeated in after-days, as if ithad been prophetic, when Judah had long had rest from her foes, andTerah himself was an old man. When he sat beneath his own vine andfig-tree, no man making him afraid, he never wearied describing to hisgrand-children that form which had made the earliest impression whichhis memory had retained. He would speak with kindling enthusiasm ofthe princely man who had taken him in his arms and carried him on hisshoulders--who had been as tender to a sick child, as he had afterwardsbeen terrible to Israel's foes.

  The sun had just sunk when the foot of the Asmonean trod the greenvalley of Sharon. It was well that from thence every step of the waywas familiar to Judas, for he had soon no light but that of the starsto guide him. The wind was rising; it rustled amidst the tamarisks,and shook the leafy crests of the evergreen palms; it bore to the earof the almost exhausted traveller the wild howl of the jackals, risinghigher and higher in pitch, like the wail of a human being in distress.Weary indeed and footsore was the Asmonean, but still he bravelypressed forward, till at length he heard the welcome sound of the wavesof the Mediterranean lashing the coast near which stood Modin, about anEnglish mile from the town of Joppa.

  Thankful was Judas to reach his father's home, where, the heavy strainupon his powers being for awhile relaxed, he slept the deep sweet sleepof the weary, after a journey which could have been accomplished onfoot in a single day only by a man possessing great powers ofendurance, as well as physical strength.