2

FAR
ABOVE
RUBIES
By

ISABEL HILL ELDER

(MERCH O LUNDAIN DERRI)

THE COVENANT PUBLISHING CO., LTD.

6 Buckingham Gate, S.W.1

LONDON

1957

3
“The best way to come to Truth is to
examine things as they really are, and not
to conclude they are, as we fancy of
ourselves, or have been taught by others to
imagine.”
(Locke).

“The Lord giveth the word: the women

that publish the tidings are a great host.”

(Psalm 68:11, R.V.).

“Who can find a virtuous woman? for her

price is far above rubies.”

(Proverbs 31:10).

4
 FOREWORD

BY

THE HON. MRS. S. KAY SHUTTLEWORTH

THE author of this book, Mrs. I. Hill Elder,

here presents a number of fine portraits of
our ancestors. Let us read, mark, learn and
inwardly digest that which teaches us a little
more about the women who gave birth to the
men who saved the situation for the people
who Ruled-with-God — Isra-el.

5
6
 CONTENTS
PREFACE …………………………………………….. 9
1 SARAH (Gen. 17) …………………………………..... 13
2 REBEKAH (Gen. 24) ………………………………… 18
3 RACHEL (Gen. 29) …………………………………... 22
4 DINAH (Gen. 34) ……………………………………. 29
5 TAMAR (Gen. 38) …………………………………… 32
6 MIRIAM (Exod. 21:15; Num. 12) …………………… 36
7 RAHAB (Joshua 2) ………………………………….. 41
8 RUTH (Book of Ruth) ………………………………. 52
9 DEBORAH, PROPHETESS AND JUDGE (Jud. 4, 5) 71
10 JEPHTHAH’S DAUGHTER (Judges 11:30-40) ……. 82
11 HANNAH (I Sam. 1, 2) ……………………………… 85
12 ABIGAIL (I Sam. 25) ……………………………….. 89
13 BATHSHEBA (2 Sam. 11, 12) …………………….... 95
14 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA (2 Chron. 9:1-12) ……….. 103
15 HULDAH THE PROPHETESS (2 Kings 22) ………. 110
16 QUEEN ESTHER (Book of Esther) ……………….... 114
17 THE VIRGIN MOTHER ……………………………. 127
18 MARTHA AND MARY ……………………………... 136
19 THE WOMEN OF GALILEE ……………………….. 143
20 DORCAS (Acts 9:36-42) ……………………………. 147
21 LYDIA (Acts 16:8-15) ………………………………. 149
22 PRISCILLA (Acts 18:1, 2, 26) ………………………. 150
23 THE MOTHER OF ST. PAUL ……………………… 154
24 CLAUDIA (2 Tim. 4:21) ……………………………. 159

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8
 PREFACE
IN the following biographical sketches of the more
famous women of Israel an attempt has been made to supply
what can hardly be said to exist already: a short historical work
which might enable the reader of the Bible to realize that the
women of both the Old and New Testaments were characters
worthy of our highest esteem and very little removed in feeling
and thought from ourselves. If this little work has any real
value it is as a picture of manners and customs, a drama in
which the personages are living characters and not mere
historical names.
In the beginning woman was the equal of man in every
respect; in patriarchal times she had an independence
surpassing even today, and was entrusted with the
administration of her husband's property as well as her own.
The women of heathen nations were the first to lose
this independence which was retained by the women of Israel
until the captivities. Upon the return of the Jewish captives
from Babylon to Palestine a marked change is discernible;
family life was never again the same. The women of both
Houses of Israel had become degraded to the level of the
women of their captors, and a woman was viewed by her
husband as a mere chattel and his slave.
Perhaps no better illustration of the gradual decline in
the status of women of ancient times could be found than that
to be seen in the Gizeh Museum, near Cairo. Here there is
displayed a long line of Egyptian monarchs in stone; at the end
where the most ancient were placed the queen sat by the side of
the king, of equal size and importance. A few centuries down
the line the queen is found to be smaller than the king;
progressing farther down the line the queen is found to be
much smaller and to sit on a lower level than the king. Lastly,

9
the queen is no longer carved out of a stone block, she is
merely sketched in portraiture on the stool upon which the king
sat or upon the arm of his throne.
This gradual change was reflected in every home, in
every relation of life, until her degradation was complete and
the Israelites emerged from their captivities with the identical
ideas of their captors as to the status and treatment of women.
It is very significant that after Esther there is no Old Testament
record of any woman of distinction in Israel. This is to be
accounted for by the fact that the seventy Rabbis who
translated the Scriptures from the Hebrew into Greek, known
as the Septuagint, were influenced entirely by their contact
with heathen peoples. These Rabbis believed that nothing good
could be done or said by a woman, and in many instances their
translation was influenced by heathen ideas. The social or
moral status of any woman was of no account and the Talmud
abounds with instances of her degradation. This idea of
inferiority became so engrained that women, in spite of the
uplift which Christianity brought, were convinced until a few
decades ago that the woman should not aspire to be the equal
of the man.
In her monumental work, God’s Word to Women, Mrs.
Katherine Bushnell has given the history of women from Eve
onwards, and courageously challenges the misleading
translation of many parts of the Scriptures which treat of
women’s place in the nation Israel.
When we come to the opening of the New Testament a
marked change is discernible in the treatment of women, for
our Lord began that uplift of women which has continued to
the present day. He encouraged women to speak by addressing
them and conversing with them in public, a liberty strictly
forbidden by the Rabbis; even His disciples found it difficult to
alter the views with which they were imbued, and though not

10
daring to expostulate with Him on this point, they ‘marvelled
that He talked with the woman’.
Paul also found difficulty in changing over to our
Lord’s teaching regarding women, but gradually he came to
give them their place in the Church and honoured them as his
helpers.
Since then the all-too-slow upward movement in the
status and dignity of women has gone on, and greatly
accelerated in the past century, until today her ancient
independence is restored; every career is open to her and no
longer is she forced to occupy a position inferior in intelligence
and governing ability. Before her lies a great and Divinely-
appointed task in the part she has yet to play in leading the
world in righteousness. In the words of Patience Strong:

Lift up your voice and proclaim now your faith,

Lift up your eyes and behold:
The signs in the heavens, the glow in the East.
The wonder of things long foretold.

You who are heirs of the promise of Israel

Be not dismayed nor cast down.
You of the Commonwealth, yours is the heritage.
Yours is the cross — and the crown.

BANGOR, Co. DOWN. I. H. E.

11
 CHAPTER 1

SARAH
(Gen. 17)

THE great Mother of the Israel people, Sarah, the wife

of Abraham, whose name was changed by Almighty God from
the Chaldean ‘Sarai’ to the Hebrew ‘Sarah’ (signifying ‘prince
of the multitude’), was thereby marked for special blessing.
Abraham was to be a ‘father of many nations’, while
Sarah was to be a ‘mother of nations’ and, additionally, ‘kings
of people shall be of her’. Sarah’s titles did not depend upon
her position as wife of Abraham, the ‘mighty prince’; upon her
was bestowed the title of a female prince — Sarah.
It was not customary in ancient times for a wife to
follow her husband in his wanderings; in this instance,
however, when God called Abraham from Ur of the Chaldees,
He willed both husband and wife to come out from idolatrous
surroundings, and so we have Abraham saying to Abimelech,
‘When God caused me to wander from my father’s house. . . .’1
Professor Flinders Petrie, English Egyptologist and
archaeologist, has written on this subject, ‘We have become so
accustomed to the idea that women were always dependent in
the East — as they are now under Mohammedism — that we
need to open our eyes to a very different system which is
shown us in the early history of the patriarchal age. Broadly, it
may be said that our present system is the entire mixture of

1
Author’s Note.—An alternative rendering is: ‘When God caused
Sarah to wander with me’. See The Samaritan Pentateuch and Modern
Criticism by the Rev. J. Inverach Munroe, M.A.
men and women in society, while men retain all the rights and
property.
‘The early ideal in the East was separate worlds of men
and women, while women retained their own rights and. all the
property. . . . The first woman (aside from Eve) who appears as
a personality in the Old Testament is Sarah, “the Chieftainess”,
as her name implies. Sar is the regular old term for a chief, still
kept up in the East. . . . Her independent position is seen by her
living in the palace of Pharaoh or in the Court of Abimelech,
quite irrespective of Abraham. The attempt at explaining this
away by later writers will not at all account for this
independence, which was ignored in after ages. . . . Sarah had
her independent residence at Mamre, and lived there, while
Abraham lived at Beersheba, and it is said that he came to
mourn for her, and to bury her. Her position, therefore, during
her wanderings and in later life, was not by any means that of
secluded dependence, but rather that of an independent head of
the tribe, or tribal mother.’2
In the somewhat nomadic life upon which Abraham and
his wife embarked, by God’s command, Sarah’s tent held the
most important place when these temporary homes were
pitched at the appointed resting places.
In his work, Kingship and Marriage in Early Arabia,
Professor Robertson Smith states,

‘Originally the tent belonged to the wife and her

children’. The family home, therefore, belonged to the
mother, while the husband occupied a small tent in the
encampment. The unchanging East supplies us with
many pictures of life in the days of the patriarchs; the
following pen picture of the way of life of a Mongolian
prince and his princess while on travel reveals very
clearly the refinement and luxury maintained by people
2
Egypt and Israel.

14
 of affluence: ‘The prince, accompanied by an immense
retinue, was taking one of the fantastically long journeys
in order to pay a vow at a distant Tibetan Lamasery. He
was chief of a Kalmuk tribe whose home is in the more
distant regions of Mongolia, among the Altai Mountains.
. . . Our impression on entering the tent was that some
Arabian Nights’ fancy had materialized before our eyes.
The ground was spread with beautifully-woven rugs,
while inlaid boxes stood against the wooden trelliswork
which formed the lower support of the felt tent. The
smoke from a smouldering fire rose through the opening
above which likewise served to admit light and air. On a
low divan lay her sick child, and his mother sat beside
him. At our entrance she rose with a stately grace and
advanced to receive us. Her hair hung down in two long
glistening plaits outlining the pure oval of her face and
was gathered into jewelled sheaths forming part of the
regal-head dress. Jade, gold and silver ornaments covered
her breast, and a satin garment of sombre richness fell
from her shoulders to her feet.
‘A second tent held the servants, and was used as a
kitchen. . . . With amazing rapidity when an order is
given to strike camp, the goats’ and hair felts are rolled
up, the inlaid boxes placed in their cases, and rugs strung
into bales, the whole being secured to the pack saddles of
the kneeling camels. The Princess herself rode her own
splendid camel whose saddle was of most curious inlaid
metal-work.’3

In such surroundings Isaac was born and brought up,

until, as with his father Abraham, he had his own tent and
attendants.

3
Mildred Cable and Fransesca French, Through Jade Gates, p. 41.

15
 Sarah, in giving her maid Hagar to Abraham, was but
following the Hammurabi Law under which she lived, for it
was quite permissible under that law to divorce a childless
wife. Sarah did have some fear of divorcement and took the
course permitted by law in obtaining a child for Abraham.
Abraham accepted from his childless wife, Sarah, the gift of
her maid Hagar as a wife of inferior rank, in the hope that the
latter would bear a child whom her mistress might adopt; the
child, until adopted and formally declared free, is, like the
mother, a slave and the property of the mistress, and can be
sold or driven out as she pleases, the husband being helpless.
That Abraham hoped that Sarah would adopt the child Ishmael,
his son by Hagar, is clear from Abraham's prayer: ‘O that
Ishmael might live before Thee!’; and that Sarah did not adopt
him is further evidence of her faith in the promise of Almighty
God that she herself, though old and feeble, would yet bear a
son (see Heb. 11:11); hence, when Isaac was born Sarah
demanded the expulsion of the slave and her son.
In the separation of Abraham and Sarah from idolatrous
surroundings, and in the birth of Isaac, we see the first
beginnings of a Christian family; we see the character of Sarah,
especially, develop gradually under Divine grace, until she
realizes that her household must be purified from all
appearance of polygamy. The step she had to take was hard
upon both Sarah and Hagar; both suffered for Sarah’s fear of
the lot of the childless wife and her impatience to obtain a child
for Abraham by this quite lawful, though not Divinely-led,
means. To Abraham was given the unpleasant task of ‘sending
away’ Hagar and her son.
The ‘obedience’ of Sarah to Abraham is much stressed
by certain groups of Christians to the total obscuration of
Sarah’s exalted position.
‘As far as Abraham and Sarah are concerned, however,
we are left in no doubt as to this relation and respect being

16
mutual and reciprocal. God commanded Abraham to call Sarah
by the very respectful name of “Princess”.’ 4 When Abraham
was grieved that he was called upon to take this step, a Divine
voice spoke to him, saying, ‘In all that Sarah hath said unto
thee, hearken unto her voice; for in Isaac shall thy seed be
called.’
Sarah is extolled for her excellences by both St. Peter
and St. Paul, while Isaiah, in his exhortation to the nation
Israel, bids the people ‘look unto. . . Sarah that bare you’.
In the peoples, nations and kings who trace back to
Sarah, we see the ample fulfilment of the promises made by
Almighty God to Abraham and Sarah in those far-distant days
while they dwelt at Hebron. Sarah said, ‘God hath made me to
laugh, so that all that hear will laugh with me’. Her son, Isaac,
the child of promise, was given a name which signifies
‘laughter’. The Dead Sea Scrolls discovered by shepherds in
the Judean Desert in 1947 have aroused world-wide interest.
The seventh of these scrolls gives striking testimony to the
accuracy of the Scriptures and to the simple acknowledgment
of Abraham to his wife, Sarah, ‘Thou art a fair woman to look
upon’. The description of Sarah as given in this Scroll is that of
a woman of exquisite beauty with that rarity in the East, a pure
white skin. Other points of physical beauty were noted and
recorded so that today we have a quite accurate picture of the
appearance of Sarah when she won the admiration of kings and
princes and reigned as a great beauty among her
contemporaries.

4
Katharine C. Bushnell, God’s Word to Women, para. 301.

17
 CHAPTER 2

REBEKAH
(Gen. 24)

UPON the death of Sarah, Abraham set about the

resolving of a most important matter — that of finding a wife
for his son, Isaac, who would replace Sarah as ‘tribal mother’
and occupy Sarah’s state tent. How this was accomplished is
one of the most familiar episodes of the Bible.
It is noteworthy that when Abraham sent his steward,
Eliezer, to choose a wife for Isaac from among his own
relatives at Haran, the steward replied in astonishment,
‘Peradventure the woman will not follow me’, so unusual was
it in those days for a woman to leave her home upon marriage.
Abraham did not wish Isaac to live in idolatrous surroundings
and determined that the severance from such surroundings
would be as complete as in his own case. It should be made
clear, however, that Abraham’s relatives at Haran were
themselves, like Abraham, worshippers of the true God. The
success of the mission of the God-fearing steward, Eliezer, first
in meeting Rebekah, the beautiful daughter of Bethuel of
Padan-Aram at the well, and then in gaining her favour ere she
ran to her mother’s house to announce his arrival, convinced
the steward that Almighty God had answered his prayer, and
that his long journey was to end in a betrothal which would be
in complete compliance with Abraham’s wishes. Laban,
Rebekah’s brother, came forth to welcome Eliezer and to bring
him and his servants under his father’s hospitable roof.
It is noteworthy, as further evidence of the importance
of the wife and mother in patriarchal times, that Rebekah ran to
her mother’s house to report on her meeting with Abraham’s
steward, Eliezer.
With lavish hand Eliezer bestowed many and costly
gifts upon Rebekah and her family as a means of revealing to
them the affluence in which Rebekah would find herself as the
wife of Isaac.
The consent of Rebekah’s parents was not difficult to
obtain, but it was Rebekah herself who was to decide this
important matter; in her decisive, ‘I will go’, we see that in
those ancient times a woman was not coerced into marriage as
she was in later times. The blessings called down upon
Rebekah by her family, as she left her home, are remarkable
and have had a wonderful fulfilment.
The imposing cavalcade set out to follow Eliezer:
Rebekah, her nurse, Deborah, and her attendants all riding
upon camels. Almost at the end of the long journey south,
Rebekah, upon her first glimpse of her future husband, Isaac,
walking towards the mounted company, ‘lighted off the camel’
and ‘took a vail, and covered herself’. The original Hebrew
word signifies a ‘double’ garment, a mantle, or shawl to cover
up the dust of her travelling costume, probably embroidered on
both sides, and the same as that mentioned in Deborah’s song
as being coveted by the Canaanites. The veil to cover the face,
which at a later date became a necessary part of a woman’s
costume, had not in those early days come into use. And Isaac
brought her into his mother, Sarah’s, tent. Isaac had removed
three days’ journey from Mamre to Beer-lah-roi, and as soon as
Rebekah came she was installed in the state tent. After this,
Isaac married her, and she appears to have been quite as
independent as Sarah.
We do not find that Rebekah’s character improved with
the passing years as did Sarah’s under Divine grace. It should
be remembered, however, that while Abraham and Sarah
severed themselves from pagan surroundings in a

19
determination to worship the true God, Rebekah and her
family, though also worshippers of the true God, had no such
incentive.
Rebekah had much to learn, and perhaps much to
unlearn, when she came to Isaac; there was, in her, a natural
tendency to stray from the path of uprightness and truth which
could have been overcome only by Divine grace.
At the end of twenty years twin sons were born to
Rebekah and Isaac, and named Esau and Jacob. Rebekah does
not appear to have feared the fate of the childless wife as did
Sarah by giving her maid to her husband; we learn, however,
from Genesis 25:21 that it was Isaac himself who believed, as
heir to the promises of Abraham, that God would in His own
time fulfil His promise of multitudinous seed.
‘The character of the younger son, Jacob, was a
duplicate of that of his mother. As her pet she trained him,
perhaps, unconsciously in her own faults, and clearly he was an
apt scholar.
‘The sister of Laban, a man full of craft and deceit, was,
like her brother, not very open or straightforward. To make a
favourite of one of the family, at least so as to show preference
is a sign of narrow though perhaps deep affection; but to
overreach a husband like Isaac for the injury of one of her two
sons was as heartless as it was ignoble. . . . The deceit of
Rebekah and Jacob was sorely visited on both. It must have
been a great trial to the mother to lose her favourite son for
ever, for Jacob not only never saw his mother again, but lost all
the fruit of his years of toil under his father, and had to begin
the world again in Mesopotamia with a very hard master.’ 1
Another aspect of this ancient tale of scheming and
duplicity is that ‘Rebekah thinks — and thousands of people
while scanning her story think with her — that she is acting out
of a maternal partiality for her younger son. Actually she is
1
Cunningham Geike, D.D., The Holy Land and the Bible, pp. 404.

20
merely Jehovah’s tool. She takes advantage of an old blind
man, but was it not for this moment that he was made blind? . .
. Rebekah stands unique as the first woman to challenge the
man-instituted rule of primogeniture.
‘Thousands of women before her — as after — must
have deplored it and grieved over it, seeing in the younger son
the more worthy claimant to heirdom; Rebekah is the first
woman on record to have made nonsense of it.’2
Rebekah’s nurse, Deborah, who came with her from
Haran upon her marriage to Isaac, appears to have
accompanied Jacob when he was sent to his mother’s home to
escape the wrath of his brother Esau, from whom he had
obtained the birthright by deceit.
Had he the patience to wait God’s time the birthright
would have been his by special gift according to the sure word
of promise (Gen. 25:23).
Deborah and her brother, Rotheus, were of the family
of Abraham — ‘Chaldeans, God-fearing, free-born and noble’.3
Rebekah’s death is not recorded in the Scriptures: her
son Jacob, however, on his dying couch in Egypt, mentions her
burial place as being at Macphelah in the sepulchre with
Abraham, Sarah, Isaac and Leah.

2
N. Lofts, Women in the Old Testament, p. 34.
3
The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, trans. By R.H. Charles, [Link].,
D.D.

21
 CHAPTER 3

RACHEL
(Gen. 29)

THE story of Rachel has ever held a fascination for

readers of the Scriptures, and this in spite of the fact that our
translations, and lack of understanding of ancient terms, have
led the reader to believe that Rachel was an idolater and also
guilty of theft.
Rachel and Leah are first introduced to us as the
daughters of Laban of Haran, who was not himself an idolater,
otherwise Jacob would not have been sent to his house by Isaac
and Rebekah to obtain a wife.
The courtship of Jacob is one of the most familiar
stories of the Bible; the deceit of Laban in giving him Leah
instead of his loved Rachel at the end of seven years’ service
must have brought to Jacob a sharp realization that he was but
reaping as he had sown. Jacob served Laban yet another seven
years for Rachel and afterwards six years for his cattle.
At the end of twenty years Jacob, after many futile
attempts to sever his connection with Laban, decided upon
another course: he would steal away from Laban, who was now
about to travel to the hills for the annual sheep-shearing, but he
must first obtain the consent of his wives, Rachel and Leah, for
as the law then stood they could not be compelled to leave their
father’s house. And so it came to pass that when Jacob called
Rachel and Leah to the field to discuss with them this
momentous question of leaving Haran, they consented at once
saying:
‘Is there yet any portion or inheritance for us in our
father’s house? Are we not counted of him strangers? for he
hath sold us, and hath quite devoured also our money. For all
the riches which God hath taken from our father, that is our’s,
and our children’s: now then, whatsoever God hath said unto
thee, do.’
Thus the die was cast, and Jacob proceeded with his
preparations to leave Haran for his father’s house at Hebron,
taking his two wives and their maids, Zilpah and Bilhah, all the
sons and daughters he had by these four mothers, and all his
cattle and goods which he had acquired in Haran. Rachel and
Leah were well aware that once away from the house at Padan-
Aram, their mercenary father, Laban, would sell the property
which should be inherited by them and their children; with this
knowledge they devised a plan to outwit their father. Rachel,
being the stronger character of the two women, was the one to
carry it out. With her father, Laban, away from home, Rachel
secured the title-deeds to the property which she and Leah
should inherit, and hid them in the camel’s furniture; this was
done unknown to Jacob. Title-deeds and other valuables in
those days were known by the general term ‘gods’; even today
we speak of our ‘household gods’, when referring to objects of
value which we treasure. Jacob and his household, with all
their goods, moved off on their long trek to Hebron. When but
three days’ journey had been accomplished they were
overtaken by Laban pursuing in hot haste after the imposing
cavalcade.
Having returned from the hill country, the
sheepshearing over for another year, Laban, finding the Jacob
household gone, no doubt derived satisfaction from the thought
that now he could do as he wished with his daughters’
property, but in this he was completely baulked by the
discovery that the title-deeds were gone.
His suspicion at once fell upon Jacob and, pursuing
after him, he overtook the party at Mount Gilead. Accusation
of Jacob began immediately, which Jacob in astonishment

23
vehemently denied, and invited the irate Syrian to search his
stuff and find, if he could, his lost ‘gods’. Laban went from tent
to tent until he reached Rachel’s, and she, calmly apologising
for her inability to rise to make the customary curtsey,
continued to sit upon the camels’ furniture under which she had
hidden the precious title deeds.
The crafty Laban, in the belief that, after all, the title-
deeds must still be in their place at home, now proceeded to
make himself secure against attack from Jacob, in a future day,
if his wives should come back to Haran to claim their
inheritance, by erecting a heap of stones to be a ‘witness’. And
Laban said to Jacob, ‘This heap be witness and this pillar be
witness, that I will not pass over this heap to thee, and that thou
shalt not pass over this heap and this pillar unto me, for harm’.
Thus was Jacob unconsciously disarmed, and Laban turned his
steps homeward to Padan-Aram.
The title-deeds of those ancient times were small tablets
of stone or baked clay whereon were inscribed in closely-
written characters a description of the property: these
documentary evidences of ownership of property were often
called ‘images’, in the sense of being a representation of such,
and were closely guarded, as no claim to ownership could be
made without them. Very good examples of these ancient title-
deeds may be seen in the British Museum.
We are not left without evidence that Rachel, the wife
of Jacob’s choice, retained first place in his affections. In the
next stage of their journey, when Jacob was obliged to meet
Esau and to come in fear and trembling face to face with the
brother from whose wrath he had fled twenty years before, it is
Rachel and her little son Joseph, now twelve years of age, who
are given the place of most protection. ‘And he put the
handmaids and their children foremost, and Leah and her
children after, and Rachel and Joseph hindermost.’ The
dreaded meeting passed off without any untoward incident, and

24
Jacob came to ‘Shalem, a city of Shechem, which is in the land
of Canaan.’
While here, God appeared unto Jacob and said, ‘Arise,
go up to Bethel, and dwell there: and make there an altar unto
God, that appeared unto thee when thou fleddest from the face
of Esau thy brother’. In preparing to obey this command Jacob
gave an order which is often completely misunderstood in the
present day: ‘Then Jacob said unto his household, and to all
that were with him, Put away the strange gods that are among
you, and be clean, and change your garments. . . and they gave
unto Jacob all the strange gods which were in their hand, and
all their earrings which were in their ears; and Jacob hid them
under the oak which was by Shechem.’ Here again the word
translated ‘gods’ signifies articles of value, and ‘strange’ is
used in the sense of ‘new’; possibly jewellery, ‘in their hand’
denotes rings and bracelets which they had acquired after
leaving Haran; the earrings were, in the case of rich people,
very valuable. The position was that at Bethel there was a
‘makom’, a heathen temple, and marauders lay in wait to rob
travellers who came up to the temple to worship; this temple
was in course of erection when Jacob passed this way twenty
years earlier. The astute Jacob, travelling with his household in
considerable state, as all rich men do in the East, wished to go
up to Bethel as a poor man so that the cupidity of the
inhabitants should not be aroused. And so in obedience to
Jacob’s command they were ‘clean stripped’ of their valuables,
and changed their beautiful embroidered garments for the garb
of poor travellers.
Jacob hid all these valuables under an oak at Shechem;
according to Josephus the ‘gods’, i.e. the title-deeds, were also
buried under the oak at Shechem. There is no record of Jacob
having collected any of these valuables again, nor is it likely
that he did so, for Bethel is many miles south of Shechem, and

25
on the direct route to Hebron, the abode of his father Isaac;
they may still await the spade of the archaeologist.
The command of the Almighty to Jacob was, ‘Go up to
Bethel, and dwell there.’ Jacob does not appear to have obeyed
this command; eager to reach his father, Isaac’s, house, and
having visited Bethel as an act of worship, and built there an
altar, he appears to have continued his journey south, but camel
travelling over long distances was not suited to Rachel’s
condition and when there was ‘but a little way to come to
Ephrath’, Rachel’s second son, Benjamin, was born.
In commanding Jacob to dwell at Bethel it may have
been the Divine will that Rachel should rest there, and that at
Bethel her child should be born; if this was so, it must have
added greatly to the poignancy of Jacob’s grief I when Rachel
died at Ephrath in giving birth to Benjamin, and Jacob’s words
on his dying couch: ‘Rachel died by me in the land of Canaan. .
. when yet there was but a little way to come unto Ephrath’,
bear this out. The pillar or monument which Jacob raised over
his beloved Rachel’s tomb traditionally remains to the present
day — under the superstructure which has been built over it.
This monument, known at first as the Hippodrome, was
included in her son Benjamin’s territory when, under Joshua,
the land of Canaan was divided among the twelve tribes.
Rachel’s two little sons, Joseph, at this time about
twelve years of age, and the infant Benjamin, were at once the
solace and anxious care of the grief-stricken Jacob; it is
recorded that Bilhah, Rachel’s maid, herself nursed the infant
Benjamin.
Another great sorrow awaited Jacob when, five years
afterwards, Joseph was lost to him through the cruelty of his
brothers — to be found some years later as the Prime Minister
of Egypt, ‘the lord of the country’.
Of Joseph, Jacob in his prophetic blessing declared,
‘Joseph is a fruitful bough. . . by a well; whose branches run

26
over the wall’ — a prophecy which has been amply fulfilled
through his two sons: Ephraim, the birthright tribe and leader
of Anglo-Saxondom, and in Manasseh, the ‘great people’ of
the United States.
Of his youngest son, Benjamin, Jacob declared:
‘Benjamin shall ravin as a wolf: in the morning he shall devour
the prey, and at night he shall divide the spoil.’ In these words
we have a vivid portrayal of the warlike, yet generous, spirit of
the descendants of Benjamin.
Joseph inherited his mother, Rachel’s, beauty;
Benjamin her courageous and adventurous spirit. Benjamin in
Egypt became the founder of one of the fiercest tribes in Israel;
his fighting proclivities, however, were almost always on the
side of justice. It was said of the Benjamites that they were
‘sons of terror to their enemies, but sons of succour and
strength to their friends’. In this epitome of the character of the
younger son of Rachel, the fulfilment of the prophetic blessings
of both Jacob and Moses can be plainly discerned.
It is a remarkable fact that the massacre of the children,
by the command of Herod, in the hope that the child Jesus
would be slain, was carried out in Benjamin’s territory, and so
was fulfilled the prophecy of Jeremiah, ‘Rachel weeping for
her children refused to be comforted . . . because they were
not’. These words would have been without point had the
sufferers been Judah’s children, for Leah, not Rachel, was their
mother.
The Jews have no legitimate claim on Rachel; it is
therefore somewhat absurd to find the Jews making pilgrimage
to the tomb of Rachel, as to an ancestress, which they do to the
present day.
ZILPAH AND BILHAH
Upon their marriage to Jacob, Leah and Rachel were
each given a maid by their father Laban — the maid equivalent
to a lady-in-waiting of the present day. In this instance the

27
maids were relatives of the House of Padan-Aram at Haran, for
Rotheus their father, with his sister, Deborah, were of the
family of Abraham, a ‘Chaldean, God-fearing, free-born and
noble’ and had been taken captive in their youth to be bought
back by Laban and adopted into his household. Rotheus
married Euno of the House of Padan-Aram. Zilpah and Bilhah
were their daughters. Laban, as head of the household, had the
disposal of any purchased inmate, and so to Leah he gave
Zilpah, and to Rachel, Bilhah.
Bilhah died while mourning for Joseph after he had
been reported dead; and was buried near Rachel at Ephratah;
she was not, therefore, of the Jacob household which went
down to Egypt upon the discovery that Joseph was yet alive.
Many years later, upon the death of her sister in Egypt, Joseph
commands the sons of Zilpah: ‘And carry up Zilpah your
mother and lay her near Bilhah by the Hippodrome, near
Rachel’.1

1
The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, trans. By R.H. Charles, [Link].,
D.D.

28
 CHAPTER 4

DINAH
(Gen. 34)

Of the daughters of Jacob the name of but one has come

down to us, and this because of her more exalted position as
the daughter of Leah, the chieftainess.
Leah, as the eldest daughter of Laban, took precedence,
according to law, in supplying the next chieftainess in line of
descent, and Dinah, which signifies the female judge,
succeeded Leah as ‘tribal mother’. Thus it was that Jacob
needed to marry Leah first, and could not have Rachel until
Leah’s position was thus assured.1
According to Josephus, the Jacob household, on its
journey south to Hebron, came to Shalem, a city of Shechem,
at a time when the inhabitants were keeping a festival, and
Dinah went into the city to see the finery of the women. The
son of Hamor, the king, the prince of the city, captivated by her
beauty and grace, seized her. This treatment of Dinah among
these primitive Hivites really meant marriage. ‘On her
marrying a Hivite her brothers were furious, because she would
thus subjugate her judgeship to another race, and only the
incorporation of the Hivites with the Israel race by
circumcision could remedy the matter.’2
The prince and his father begged her in marriage
according to Hebrew law and custom, and offered Jacob any
price he pleased to obtain her; they even agreed to the carrying
out of the rite of circumcision proposed by Dinah’s brothers.

1
Sir Flinders Petrie, Egypt and Israel.
2
Katherine Bushnell, God’s Word for Women, para. 61.
 Dreading nothing, Shechem and Hamor, by hinting
to their people how it would gain them the wealth of Jacob and
his family, persuaded them to submit to the Hebrew’s proposal.
On the third day Simeon and Levi, own brothers to Dinah, and
perhaps a number of servants, entered the city, slew the
inhabitants, and brought away their sister Dinah, who was at
the time about fourteen years of age; the other sons of Jacob
coming up seized on the spoil. This they did to revenge the
treatment of their sister by a non-Hebrew prince.
According to Josephus, ‘when Jacob informed his sons
of the retention of his daughter in the city of Shechem, the
greatest part said nothing, not knowing what advice to give.
But Simeon and Levi, the brethren of Dinah by the same
mother, agreed between themselves upon the action following.
It being now the time of festival when the Shechemites were
engaged in feasting and revelry, they fell upon the watch when
they were asleep, and coming into the city slew all the males,
including the king and his son, but spared the women; and
when they had done this without their father’s consent they
brought away their sister. Now while Jacob was astonished at
the greatness of this act, and severely blaming his sons for it,
God stood by him and bid him be of good courage; but to
purify his tents, and to offer those sacrifices which he had
vowed to offer when he went first into Mesopotamia and saw
the vision. As he was, therefore, purifying his tents, he
happened to light upon the gods (title-deeds) of Laban, for he
did not know before that Rachel had secured them, and he hid
them in the earth, under an oak at Shechem,’ doubtless in the
same place and at the same time that he hid the valuables of his
household.
From this incident with the Shechemites there emerged
two great benefits for Israel: security for their women-folk (for
it was not until the era of the Judges that non-Hebrews dared to
interfere with them), and the discovery of the title-deeds,

30
enabling Jacob to hide them in a safe place against the day
when they will be produced as a witness to the accuracy of the
Biblical account of the ancient history of Israel.

31
 CHAPTER 5

TAMAR
(Gen. 38)

JUDAH, fourth son of Jacob and Leah, in direct

disobedience to the Hebrew unwritten law of marrying within
their own race — as so signally demonstrated in the cases of
Isaac and Jacob in their obtaining wives of their kindred in
Haran — married a woman of Canaan.
Three sons were born to them, and as the mother in
those ancient times had entire charge of the children, these sons
were brought up in the ways of the Canaanites and without that
respect for morality which ever marks the worshipper of the
true God.
Judah had long since realized his mistake in marrying a
woman of Canaan, and determined that his sons should have
wives of his own race. A Hebrew lady with a Hebrew name,
Tamar, the daughter of Aram (signifying palm tree), was
chosen by Judah for his eldest son, Er, who was the nephew of
Abraham.
These sons appear to have been addicted to all the sins
and wickednesses of the Canaanites. First, Er died shortly after
his marriage, and the next eldest son, Onan, refused to obey the
Hebrew Law of the next eldest son by marrying his brother’s
widow.
Judah became alarmed when Onan died; we are told
that the Lord ‘slew him also’. Judah now feared to give Tamar
to his youngest son, Shelah, ‘lest peradventure he die also, as
his brethren did’. Judah returned Tamar to her father’s house,
there to await his pleasure; in the meantime his Canaanite wife,
Bathshua, died.
 Tamar, in the belief that her father-in-law, Judah, would
marry a second time a woman of Canaan, determined to
remedy the racial descent problem in her own person. A
relative of the Jacob household, and well aware of the necessity
for racial purity in that House, Tamar embarked upon a course
which would prevent Judah’s immediate descendants being
other than Hebrew, and a very self-sacrificing course it was.
It was masterly strategy which brought about the
meeting of Judah with his widowed daughter-in-law by the
wayside, as recorded in the 38th chapter of Genesis, and the
pledges given by Judah, with which he was later confronted,
put all denial beyond peradventure.
Thus, by Tamar’s self-sacrificing action, the royal
enclosure within the House of Judah was saved from
contamination by forbidden blood stock. Tamar was well
aware that in taking the course she did to preserve the purity of
her race in the House of Judah she ran the risk of being burnt
by fire, and it was not until she was brought forth to receive
this punishment by her unsuspecting father-in-law’s command
that she revealed the true state of affairs. ‘Discern, I pray thee,
whose are these, the signet, the bracelets, and staff.’ The signet,
or ring, was the emblem of power and authority; the bracelet
was the cord, usually of gold, from which the signet was
suspended, and the staff, which also signified a sceptre,
emblem of authority as head of the tribe.
In the family records which were handed down from
father to son, Tamar would learn of the care exercised to
preserve purity of race; she would learn that her great ancestor,
Noah, ‘was a just man and perfect (tamim) in his generations’
from Seth. The word tamim means whole, flawless.
Twin sons were born to Tamar and named Pharez and
Zarah. Pharez became an ancestor of our Lord.
Shelah, the youngest son of Judah and Bathshua,
became quite an important House in Israel, but was

33
disqualified, by Divine intervention because of his spurious
birth, from becoming an ancestor of the Redeemer of Israel.
Judah, in his ‘Story of Tamar’, states that he lived a
good and pure life until he met Bathshua, the Canaanite.
‘I said to my father-in-law, I will take counsel with my
father, and so will I take thy daughter. And he was unwilling,
but he shewed me a boundless store of gold in his daughter’s
behalf; for he was a king. And he adorned her with gold and
pearls and caused her to pour out wine for us at the feast. And
the wine turned aside my eyes, and pleasure blinded my heart.
And I became enamoured of her and I transgressed the
commandment of the Lord, and the commandment of my
fathers, and I took her to wife. And the Lord rewarded me
according to the imagination of my heart, inasmuch as I had no
joy in her children. . . . I turned aside to Tamar, and I wrought a
great sin. . . . for I gave my staff, that is the stay of my tribe;
and my girdle, that is, my power, and, my diadem, that is, the
glory of my kingdom.
‘And indeed I repented of these things. Wine revealeth
the mysteries of God and men, even as I also revealed the
commandments of God and the mysteries of Jacob my father to
the Canaanitish woman, Bathshua, which God bade me not to
reveal. . . . For the sake of money and beauty I was led astray
to Bathshua the Canaanite. . . . For even wise men among my
sons shall they mar, and shall cause the kingdom of Judah to be
diminished, which the Lord gave me because of my obedience
to my father. For I never caused grief to Jacob my father; for
all things whatsoever he commanded I did. And Isaac, the
father of my father, blessed me to be king of Israel, and Jacob
further blessed me in like manner. And I know that from me
shall the kingdom be established. . . .
‘For the sake of money I lost my children, and had not
my repentance, and my humiliation, and the prayers of my
father been accepted I should have died childless. But the God

34
of my fathers had mercy on me because I did it in ignorance. . .
. And I learnt my own weakness while thinking myself
invincible.’1
Of the four women mentioned in connection with
the ancestry of our Lord: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba,
Tamar is the first to have the honour of taking a definite step
for racial purity, and it was indeed a great tribute which Judah
paid her in his pronouncement, ‘She hath been more righteous
than I’ (Gen. 38:26).

1
The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, (Judah), p. 57, trans. By R.H.
Charles, [Link]., D.D.

35
 CHAPTER 6

MIRIAM
(Exod. 2; 15; Num. 12)

THREE remarkable children were born in Egypt to

Amram and Jochebed of the House of Levi. Amram, according
to Josephus, was ‘one of the nobler sort of the Hebrews’.
Miriam, the eldest, was, like her brothers, Moses and Aaron,
destined to be an instrument in the hands of Almighty God for
the release of Israel from bondage in Egypt.
We first meet Miriam as a young girl, in obedience to
her mother, watching from the banks of the river Nile the fate
of her baby brother who was by his parents, in faith and hope
of preservation, laid in an ark and set among the bulrushes,
near the river’s edge. It was an exciting moment for Miriam
when Princess Thermuthus, Pharaoh’s daughter, appeared
walking by the river’s edge followed by her attendants. The
Princess, noticing the ark, sent one of her maids to fetch it. The
beauty of the babe appealed irresistibly to the Princess, while
his weeping aroused her compassion.
Miriam, watching from the river bank, saw the babe
turn away from the Egyptian nurses brought by order of the
Princess. Miriam approached as though from curiosity and
enquired of the Princess if she might fetch a Hebrew nurse, in
case the babe would only be consoled by one of his own race.
The Princess agreed at once, and Miriam hurried away to fetch
Jochebed, the child’s mother. With the now familiar words:
‘Take this child away, and nurse it for me, and I will give thee
thy wages’, the princess committed the babe, Moses, to the
care of his own mother, who bore him home in triumph,
accompanied by the no less rejoicing Miriam.
 We do not again hear of Miriam until she is a very
elderly woman, and as a prophetess and leader of the women,
taking part in the exodus from Egypt. After the crossing of the
Red Sea Miriam composed a song of deliverance for the
women of Israel, of which it would appear that the refrain
alone has come down to us. ‘And Miriam the prophetess, the
sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand; and all the women
went out after her with timbrels and with dances. And Miriam
answered them, “Sing ye to the Lord, for He hath triumphed
gloriously, the horse and his rider hath He thrown into the
sea”.’
According to Jewish tradition Miriam married Hur of
the tribe of Judah; he it was who, with Aaron, ‘stayed up his
(Moses’) hands, the one on the one side, and the other on the
other side’ until the going down of the sun, when the
Amalekites were utterly defeated.
With Aaron, Hur was left in charge of the people while
Moses was on Mount Sinai. Bezaleel, the grandson of Miriam
and Hur, a clever designer and craftsman, was charged to
execute the works of art for the Tabernacle in the wilderness,
and was appointed superintendent of the other craftsmen; both
he and his assistants executed the work with the utmost
exactness.
About one year after the crossing of the Red Sea,
Miriam, with Aaron her brother, took umbrage at their brother
Moses ‘because of the Ethiopian woman he had married’.1
The Midianites were descendants of Abraham through
Keturah, and were viewed by the descendants of Isaac as
inferior in social status, as well as being completely outside the
great promises made by Almighty God to the descendants of
Isaac. In Egypt Miriam and her brothers enjoyed considerable
prestige; Moses having been brought up at the Court of

1
The Midianites occupied the territory formerly inhabited by the
Ethiopians.

37
Pharaoh where he was the acknowledged heir to the throne as
the adopted son of Princess Thermuthus, herself next in
succession.2
Aaron was in Egypt in circumstances superior to those
of his people held in bondage, and though their family had no
pretensions to sovereign authority by descent, they were of
consideration by their property or their office.
Miriam therefore left Egypt as a person of distinction,
not only because of her family connections, but as a recognized
prophetess, with the additional reputation of possessing the gift
of poetry.
Both Miriam and Aaron believed that by his Midianite
marriage Moses had forfeited his title to authority over the
chosen people, and reproaching him asked if they were not also
prophets. ‘Hath He not spoken also by us?’ They quarrelled
with Moses as though he now managed affairs by the advice of
his Midianite wife (who had succeeded Zipporah), and had not
consulted them in the affairs of the elders. Although Miriam
did have a Divine mission, it was necessary that she and Aaron
should learn once and for all that Moses was the Divinely-
appointed leader vested with authority to bring the children of
Israel through the wilderness to the Promised Land.
‘And the Lord spake suddenly unto Moses, and unto
Aaron, and unto Miriam, Come out ye three unto the tabernacle
of the congregation. And they three came out. And the Lord
came down in the pillar of the cloud, and stood in the door of
the tabernacle, and called Aaron and Miriam; and they both
came forth. And He said, Hear now My words: if there be a
prophet among you, I the Lord will make Myself known unto
him in a vision. . . . My servant Moses is not so, who is faithful
in all Mine house. With him will I speak mouth to mouth, even
apparently, and not in dark speeches; and the similitude of the
Lord will he behold: wherefore then were ye not afraid to
2
Josephus, Antiq., Bk. II, Chap. IX.

38
speak against My servant Moses? And the anger of the Lord
was kindled against them; and He departed. And the cloud
departed from off the tabernacle and, behold, Miriam became
leprous, as white as snow; and Aaron looked upon Miriam,
and, behold, she was leprous. And Aaron said unto Moses,
Alas, my lord, I beseech thee, lay not the sin upon us, wherein
we have done foolishly, and wherein we have sinned. Let her
not be as one dead. . . . And Moses cried unto the Lord, saying,
Heal her now, O God, I beseech Thee. And the Lord said unto
Moses. . . Let her be shut out from the camp seven days, and
after that let her be received in again. . . . And the people
journeyed not till Miriam was brought in again.’
In this signal manner was the authority of Moses
established, never again to be questioned; he was the Divinely-
appointed supreme leader, and recognized as such until the end
of his days.
It is certain that the Hebrews brought leprosy with them
from Egypt, for at the very commencement of their forty years’
wanderings Moses commanded that every leper should be put
out of the camp, and the disease could not have been brought
on in the wilderness.
In this connection Moses commanded the Israelites to
abstain from pork, leprosy being a disease to which the pig is
liable. In studying the Bible account of leprosy it should be
borne in mind that the Mosaic Law had in view a wide class of
diseases, the symptoms of which were eruptions on the skin.
Thus the words which we translate ‘leper’, ‘leprous’,
and ‘leprosy’ were undoubtedly used in a loose and general
way and not in every instance is true leprosy intended.
Miriam’s mission as a leader in Israel came to an end
almost at the completion of the forty years in the wilderness;
her death took place in the same year as that of Aaron; she was
buried at Kadesh, not far from Mount Hor, the burial-place of
Aaron.

39
 The prophet, Micah, in a review of the way in which the
children of Israel had been led and guided, declares, ‘For I
brought thee up out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed thee
out of the house of servants; and I sent before thee Moses,
Aaron and Miriam’ (6:4).
Miriam’s name is thus recorded as not only an
illustrious woman of Israel, but as a leader who had a great part
to play in the exodus from Egypt and wilderness training, as
organizer and superintendent of the women’s welfare; her task
was an onerous one, calling for ability in leadership, and
resourcefulness in a new and untried path.

40
 CHAPTER 7

RAHAB
(Joshua 2)

THE story of Rahab begins, actually, at the time Joseph

brought his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, to his aged
father's couch to receive the patriarchal blessing. Jacob (Israel)
recited the great covenant blessings of multiplicity of seed and
accession of land to be inherited by his descendants, in
fulfilment of the Abrahamic Covenant.
In addition Jacob now bestowed on Joseph’s younger
son, Ephraim, the birthright, with which went leadership and
all the privileges of the firstborn.
These were strange words to fall upon the ears of the
young boy, Ephraim: ‘His younger brother (Ephraim) shall be
greater than he (Manasseh) . . . and he set Ephraim before
Manasseh.’
Ephraim was already a very important boy; his mother
was the Princess of On, of the Royal House of Egypt; his
father, Joseph, Prime Minister of Egypt, ‘the lord of the
country’, who had proved himself a man of exceptional ability
and wisdom. The tribe of Ephraim was ennobled at its source
by descent from the Princess of On — as all Israel was
ennobled by descent from Sarah who was titled Queen of the
multitude that their seed was to become.
Ephraim, brought up at the exclusive Court of Egypt,
received the best education the world could afford, Egypt at
that time being the centre of the world’s culture.
Ephraim, grown to manhood, married and had three
sons, the names of whom are recorded in Numbers 26:35. They
were brought up in the knowledge of the inherited blessings
bestowed not only on the Israel family but those special
promises of which the descendants of Ephraim were to be
heirs. These family traditions were passed on to Ephraim’s
grandsons, whose names are recorded in I Chronicles 7:20, 21.
These three sons and six grandsons of Ephraim became
impatient to enter upon their inheritance. The latter were the
sixth in descent from Abraham, with whom the great land
covenant was made (Gen. 15:18).
Here were the descendants of Abraham in Egypt, and in
Egypt they seemed likely to remain. These sons of Ephraim
decided to visit the land of Canaan and perhaps make a
beginning in the colonization of the land.
There was no difficulty in obtaining a footing in the
Promised Land, for at that time and for long afterwards Canaan
was under the over-lordship of Egypt.
The sons of Ephraim would, therefore, enter Canaan
with a good measure of prestige as princes of Israel living in
close contact with the Egyptian Court. All might have gone
well, the Canaanites tolerating if not welcoming their
settlement in the land, but for the behaviour of the would-be
colonizers ‘whom the men of Gath . . . slew, because they came
down to take away their cattle’ (I Chron. 7:21).
The reason for this act of robbery is difficult to
understand. It was certainly not induced by lack of funds.
Overconfidence in the success of the expedition may possibly
have led them to take the cattle for the purpose of a sacrificial
thank-offering. This premature attempt to enter upon their
inheritance, and its tragic sequel are recorded in I Chronicles
7:20, 22: ‘And Ephraim their father mourned many days, and
his brethren came to comfort him.’ All these princes of Israel,
Ephraim’s heirs, were slain by the men of Gath. What a
tragedy! Where now the birthright? Where now the succession
to the inheritance? But in his old age Ephraim had another son

42
who was given the dismal name of Beriah, ‘because it went
evil with his house’.
Beriah grew to manhood and married; the ninth in
descent from this youngest son was Joshua, the one appointed
to lead Israel into the Promised Land.
Moses, of the. tribe of Levi, shepherded the Israelites
out of Egypt and through the wilderness, there to give them by
God’s command the laws and ordinances which would guide
them in their national and spiritual life. But only one of the
birthright tribe, Ephraim, could conduct them over the river
Jordan.
Moses brought them almost to the brink of this river,
and from the highest peak on Mount Nebo, Pisgah, in their first
inheritance, ‘the land of Moab’, on the east side of the river, he
was permitted to view the Promised Land.
Here his splendid and faithful leadership came to an
end. There is another important link in the chain of events
between the time of Ephraim and that of Joshua. Sherah, the
daughter of Beriah, went into the land of Canaan and settled
there. This great chieftainess proceeded to build three cities or
castles, Beth-horon the Lower, Beth-horon the Upper, and
Uzzen-sherah, or the Stronghold of Sherah (I Chron. 7:24).
That Sherah was already married, and had a family, also many
servants and attendants, is evident from the fact that so much
building was necessary in order to accommodate this important
woman and her retinue.
Here, in the centre of Canaan, Sherah, the
granddaughter of the Princess of On and Joseph, took up her
abode, and here her descendants lived until they were joined by
their kinsmen of Israel, under their great leader, Joshua, also of
the birthright tribe of Ephraim.
We can imagine the stories that would be passed on
from one generation to another in Sherah’s family; of their past
glories in Egypt; of their royal descent; their birthright as

43
Ephraimites, and they would hear from time to time of the
reverse of fortune suffered by their kinsmen in Egypt when
‘there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not
Joseph’; of the bondage; the exodus; the wilderness training;
the first conquest under Moses of ‘the land of Moab’ on the
east side of the river Jordan.
With all these events in Israel’s national life these
families descended from Sherah would be more or less
acquainted, and when to one of these families Rahab was born,
she was given this name which signifies ‘remembering Egypt’,
in token of her people’s pride in their connection with Egypt in
days now long past. No Canaanite would dream of giving a
child such a name ‘remembering Egypt’; they would have no
occasion to do so. The Egyptians were their overlords to whom
the Canaanites paid tribute.
With the aid of archaeology we can now obtain a clear
picture of Canaan in the time of Joshua. The Tel-el-Amarna
tablets, discovered in 1887 among the ruins of the palace of the
Egyptian King Amenhotep IV, consist very largely of letters
from native Canaanite rulers to their overlords, and are full of
appeal for help against the Israelite invaders. 1 The tablets show
that in each of the Canaanite cities of Palestine, there was, in
addition to the native ruler or king, an Egyptian official called,
according to Major Conder, a Paka, who was, presumably,
placed there to guard the Egyptian interests.
For no reason which appears the Egyptians withdrew
their troops from Canaan. Major Conder remarks: ‘The
Egyptian troops had been withdrawn from Palestine in the year
that the Israelites came out of the desert.’ 2 This explains the
words of Joshua, in his report to Moses, as one of the twelve
spies sent out to view the land of Canaan: ‘their defence is
departed from them’.

1
Sir Charles Marston, The Bible Comes Alive, pp. 89-108
2
Palestine Fund Reports, Conder’s Handbook.

44
 The house of the Paka, equivalent to our modern
Embassy, would naturally be in a prominent position, such as
the town wall, and close to the Citadel. The Tel-el-Amarna
tablets give the name of one Egyptian representative in
Canaan: Zimrida, Governor of Lachish.3
Archaeology may yet reveal the name of the Egyptian
Paka in Jericho in the clays of Joshua.
We shall now return to Rahab, and try to ascertain how
the obnoxious appellation, ‘harlot’, came to be attached to her.
In Eastern languages the same word is often used for ‘harlot’
and ‘widow’ as, for instance, in the Urdu language. The same
word would appear to describe a woman no longer a virgin, but
without a husband, whether she had been legally married or
not. It is a striking fact that in the Authorized Version of the
Scriptures, Jeroboam’s mother, Zeruah, is recorded as ‘a
widow woman’ (I Kings 11:26) while in the Septuagint the
word used is ‘harlot’.
If the translators had inserted ‘widow’ in the margin
opposite Rahab’s name in Joshua, Chapter 2, it would at once
have been clear to the reader that ‘harlot’ and ‘widow’ were
interchangeable terms.
Ferrar Fenton, in his translation, omits the moral status
of Zeruah, while Rahab is put down as an ‘innkeeper’, and by
Coverdale as a ‘taverner’. These are but brave attempts to clear
the fair name of Rahab from the objectionable term ‘harlot’.
‘Innkeeper’ and ‘taverner’, however, convey no historical truth,
for in the East the inns or khans had neither host nor hostess.
The Septuagint, from which our Authorized Version is
derived, was translated at a time when the women of Israel had
lost almost all their social status, through contact with the
Babylonians during the captivity. The Rabbis, therefore, would

3
The Bible Comes Alive, p. 112.

45
be at no pains to convey the truth regarding the moral or social
standing of any woman.4
As for Rahab’s presence in Jericho and not with her
Israel kinsfolk in one of the Beth-horon cities, the situation
now seems to explain itself. The Egyptian representatives had
departed upon the withdrawal of the troops from Canaan. It
would appear that the last Paka in Jericho had died and his
widow, Rahab, did not vacate the Embassy. Though not
encouraged, it was not forbidden to Israelites to intermarry
with Egyptians; therefore, Rahab, in marrying the Paka, was
guilty of no breach of Israel law, nor of disobedience to a
Divine Command.
The house, which has been identified as that of
Rahab’s, astride the walls of Jericho, is in the position the
Paka’s would have been. ‘At the north-west end of the city
stood the great Citadel or Migdol whose walls still rise to
nearly forty feet. Rahab’s house was astride the walls not far
from this building. . . . Rahab’s house did not share the
destruction of the falling of the walls, since she and her family
were saved alive. The proximity of the Citadel certainly
appears to have held up the walls in the neighbourhood in its
immediate vicinity. It is evident, therefore, that Rahab’s house
adjoined the Citadel.’5 This is precisely where we should
expect to find the Egyptian Embassy, a specially-appointed
official building as the ‘House on the Wall’ where Rahab lived.

4
In Cruden’s Concordance, under the word ‘harlot’ we read:
‘Some think she was only an hostess or inn-keeper; and that this is the true
significance of the original word. Had she been a woman of ill fame, say
they, would Salmon, a prince of the house of Judah, and one of the
Saviour’s ancestors, have taken her to wife, or could he have done it by the
law? Besides, The spies of Joshua would hardly have gone to lodge with a
prostitute, a common harlot; those who were charged with so nice and
dangerous commission.’
5
The Bible Comes Alive, p. 84.

46
 We shall now go over to the other side of the river
Jordan where Joshua is making careful preparation for the
conquest of Canaan. Joshua is determined to take no step but at
Jehovah’s command; he will not make the mistake of his
forefathers in their premature attempt to anticipate their
inheritance. The Israelites are instructed in the part each one
must play in the conquest, and they are brought into perfect
obedience to their leader, Joshua, who himself takes his
instructions from the great Leader and Commander, the
‘Captain of the hosts of the Lord’. Joshua’s first step is to send
two spies, to ‘view the land, even Jericho. And they went, and
came into an harlot’s (widow’s) house, named Rahab’.
It is evident from these words that Joshua was well
aware of his kinswoman’s presence in Jericho, and sent the two
spies to her house. This is borne out in the reference to the
spies by St. James where they are termed ‘messengers’.
Messengers are sent on a specific errand to a definite place or
address. Arrived there, they were welcomed by the Lady
Rahab, and once over her threshold they were safe, for the
Embassy was extra-territorial and so the spies, or messengers,
had the privilege of being out side Canaanitish territory.
The news of their arrival soon reached the native ruler,
or king of Jericho; he sent his officials to Rahab with the
request, ‘Bring forth the men that are come to thee, which are
entered into thine house’.
But why this request? Why not send his officials into
Rahab’s house to institute a search? Because no native could
enter the Embassy uninvited. The spies were now legally in
Egypt. In this incident may be seen the strong line of
demarcation between Rahab and the Canaanites among whom
she lived.
Although the Egyptian representative was no longer at
the Embassy the Canaanites did not admit that the Egyptians
had withdrawn permanently, for one letter from the King of

47
Jerusalem to Amenhotep complains: ‘Since the Egyptian troops
have gone away quitting the land of the King my lord. . . let
him be kind, and let him regard the entreaties’ etc.6
Rahab, in conversation with the spies says, ‘I know that
Jehovah hath given you the land’. Not only in her use of the
memorial name, Jehovah, but in her knowledge of the great
Land Covenant does Rahab prove herself to be an Israelite,
though her ancestors for eight or nine generations had been
separated from the main body of Israel. It is this fact which
makes Rahab anxious to be assured that when the conquest
does take place, she and her kindred will be secured against the
fate of the iniquitous and idolatrous Canaanites.
The ‘line of scarlet thread’ was to mark off the
Embassy for the invading Israelites, and so once again the
redemption colour was the token of safety for Israelites ‘in
Egypt’. When the spies returned to the camp, they brought
from Rahab precisely the news which Joshua wished to learn:
‘All the inhabitants of the land faint because of you.’
The conquest, therefore, would not be difficult. Who
but one of his kinsfolk could or would supply this information
for use of the Israelite leader?
While Joshua on the east side of Jordan made
preparation to cross the river — the vanguard being composed
of warriors from the tribes of Reuben, Gad and the half-tribe
Manasseh, according to their promise given to Moses (Josh.
22:1-4) — Rahab was occupied in sending urgent messages to
her family and kindred in Beth-horon the Upper and Lower,
and Uzzen-Sherah, to come to her in the Egyptian Embassy for
safety. No time must be lost, for presently ‘Jericho was straitly
shut up because of the children of Israel: none went out and
none came in’. And when in due course the walls of Jericho
fell, and its utter destruction compassed, Joshua sent the same
two young spies to the intact Egyptian Embassy to bring out
6
Conder, p. 142.

48
‘Rahab, and her father, and her mother, and her brethren and all
that she had; and they brought out all her kindred (many
families), and left them without the camp of Israel’. The
families of Israel in the cities of Sherah would, by the eighth
generation, have increased to a considerable number of
persons; they were, however, all housed in safety within the
walls of the Embassy.
How helpful they would be to Joshua in the conquest of
Canaan. They prepared the way for the settlement of their
brethren in the Land of Promise, as Joseph prepared the way
for the settlement of his brethren in Egypt.
These Israelites, with Rahab taking a leading part, were
the Divinely-chosen pioneers in the entering in of the Israel
people to their inheritance.
These Israel families, housed in the Egyptian Embassy
for safety, were, we have sought to show, Ephraimites, and as
such were entitled to the privileges of the first-born or leading
tribe. ‘For with a strong hand hath the Lord brought thee out of
Egypt’ (Exod. 13:9). ‘When Israel was a child, then I loved
him, and called my son out of Egypt’ (Hosea 11:1).
When the infant Jesus was taken into Egypt for safety,
He was brought out in fulfilment of the prophecy, ‘Out of
Egypt have I called My son’ (Matt. 2:15). This is the last and
final occasion upon which Egypt is referred to in Scripture as a
place of refuge for an Israelite.
That the rulers of Egypt gave help to Israel in their
conquest of Canaan may be gathered from both the Scriptures
and the Tel-el-Amarna tablets. The ‘hornet’ was the badge of
Thotmes III and his successors. Joshua, at God’s command,
reminds Israel, ‘I sent the hornet before you, which drove them
out from before you, even the two kings of the Amorites; but
not with thy sword, or with thy bow’.
Sir Charles Marston, from archaeological research,
agrees that Israel did have such help from the rulers of Egypt

49
east of Jordan, and also in the withdrawal from Palestine of all
Egyptian troops, when Israel came out of the wilderness.
The reason for the friendly attitude of Egypt towards
Israel at this time may be found in the fact that Queen Thyi, the
wife of Amenhotep II, and mother of Amenhotep IV, came
from Northern Syria which was inhabited by descendants of
Terah.
This fair, blue-eyed queen of the Egyptian monuments
could, therefore, claim kinship with the descendants of Terah’s
son, Abraham, who, it will be remembered, was declared by
the children of Heth to be ‘a mighty prince among us’ (Gen.
23:6). Rahab, the widow, married Prince Salma, or Salmon, of
the House of Pharez-Judah, and so was brought into the
exclusive and royal family from which the House of David was
built (Matt. 1:5).
No woman of questionable character would have been
admitted to this Divinely-protected royal enclosure, for
marriage with a Canaanite was strictly forbidden (Deut. 7:1-3).
Rahab’s son, Boaz, married Ruth. Consequently Ruth’s
mother-in-law by her first marriage, Naomi, and that by her
second marriage, Rahab, were women destined to be famous in
history, and to have their names recorded in the lineage of
Israel’s Redeemer and King.
It is a striking fact that the Epistle to the Hebrews and
the Epistle of St. James (addressed to the ‘twelve tribes
scattered abroad’), are both addressed primarily to Israelites,
and that mention is made of the strength of faith and character
of their ancestors, Rahab of Jericho being one of them. ‘By
faith. . . Rahab perished not with them that believed not, when
she had received the spies with peace’ (Heb. 11:31). The Greek
word used here for peace — eirene — connotes unity; unity,
surely, in identity of race with the messengers sent by Joshua.
‘Was not Rahab . . . justified by works, when she had
received the messengers, and had sent them out another way?'

50
(James 2:25). Justify — dikaios — I defend the cause of — I
acquit and justify. Rahab defended the cause of her people
Israel in the help she was able to render Joshua in his conquest
plans.
Rahab’s faith was the faith of an Israelite; the faith of
one who, like Abraham, was justified by works, and likewise,
with faithful Abraham, received the commendation and
blessing of the God of Israel.

51
 CHAPTER 8

RUTH
(Book of Ruth)

THE story of Ruth provides a beautiful illustration of

the Redemption Law of Israel, while its pastoral theme is an
abiding delight. In these pages, however, the story is presented
in the light of the origin of Ruth and Orpah, with special
emphasis on Ruth’s place in the royal line of the House of
David and as an ancestress of our Lord.
Of prime importance in this study is the understanding
where, precisely, lay the territory known as ‘the land of Moab’
which enters so largely into the story of Ruth.
The route taken by the Israelites upon leaving Egypt is
traced along the borders of Edom and Moab until they reached
the river Arnon: immediately upon crossing the Arnon and in
prospect of a speedy entrance into the Promised. Land, having
arrived at Beer-elim ‘the well of heroes’, they broke forth into
‘the song of the well’ (Num. 21:17). The Israelites now had a
formidable foe to meet in Sihon, king of the Amorites, whose
territory extended from the river Arnon along the northern
shores of the Dead Sea and the east side of the river Jordan to
the river Jabbok. This territory had been wrested from Moab by
the Amorite king and now came into the hands of the Israelites
by conquest.
The next conquest of the Israelites was over Og, king of
Bashan, who ruled in the territories east of the Sea of Galilee
and the north-eastern portion of the valley of the Jordan.
The Israelites were now in possession of all the territory
from the river Arnon in the south to Mount Hermon in the
north. The river Arnon was thus the dividing line between the
territory of racial Moab and that of Israel. Of the territory of
Moab and Edom south of the Arnon the Almighty had declared
through Moses, ‘I will not give thee of their land for a
possession’.
Under the leadership of Moses the Israelites acquired
all the territory east of Jordan which gave them free access to
the river Jordan, and completed their conquest of all the
territory from the Arnon to Mount Hermon.
This country east of the river Jordan, a land of
unparalleled fertility, appealed irresistibly to the tribes of
Reuben, Gad and Manasseh as being extremely desirable for
their great herds of cattle. It was a combination of rich arable
and pasture land with fine forests. Here the tribes of Reuben,
Gad and the half tribe of Manasseh desired to have their
allotment. Moses granted their request upon certain conditions,
with which they faithfully complied (Num. 32:1-40). These
two and a half tribes settled down on an inheritance which
brought them great wealth and prosperity. Numerically they
increased so rapidly that they were able to send 120,000 men
fully armed to King David’s coronation at Hebron.
The territory continued under its ancient name, ‘land of
Moab’, during its Amorite occupation, and when now by
conquest it became the possession of the Israelites the name
was not altered by the new owners.
Moses leaves posterity in no doubt as to the location of
the newly-acquired ‘land of Moab’ as distinct from the
Moabite territory south and south-east of the Dead Sea to
which racial Moab was now confined. On nine occasions the
great leader describes the new Israelite possession as ‘the land
of Moab by Jordan opposite Jericho’. There is no ambiguity
here. It cannot be made to mean the territory occupied by racial
Moab.
It is perfectly clear from Deuteronomy 2:34 that every
man, woman and child was driven out of the ‘land of Moab’ in

53
obedience to the Divine command ‘for the wickedness of these
nations the Lord doth drive them out from before thee’.
Immediately after this cleansing the two and a half
tribes took possession, and so it became and continued purely
Israelite territory, as Jephthah, after 300 years of Israel
ownership, in his argument with the Ammonites, informs them.
From this ‘land of Moab’ Moses was permitted to view
the Promised Land of Canaan and on its highest peak (Pisgah)
he died. It cannot be maintained that Moses delivered the Law
or any part of it to Israel in the country of racial Moab when
they had recently acquired the Moabite territories of Sihon and
Og, nor that it was in the land of racial Moab that this great
leader died, for Mount Nebo was situated in their new territory,
‘by Jordan opposite Jericho’.
Gilead, in the land of Moab, is mentioned as the home
of Jair, of Jephthah and of Elijah, who returned here at the end
of his long life to be taken up ‘into heaven’. It was the refuge
of Israelites from the Philistines, of Saul’s sons, of David when
fleeing from Absalom who followed him thither. The crossing
and recrossing of Jordan by David and his household are
recorded in the second Book of Samuel, chapter 19.
The country on the west side of Jordan conquered and
inhabited by the remaining tribes of Israel, that is the nine and
a half tribes who passed over the river Jordan under Joshua’s
leadership, continued to be known by its ancient title, ‘land of
Canaan’, and, dissociated from its pre-conquest heathen
ownership, entered quite largely into Christian expression and
hymnology.
The casual reader could easily imagine that the
personnel of David’s bodyguard were non-Israelites. One of
the Apostles, Simon, though actually an Israelite, was called a
Canaanite through being a native of Cana in Galilee. His
appellation, ‘The Zealot’, comes from the Hebrew, ‘canna’,
zealous; in Greek, Zelotes. It is, therefore, not remarkable that

54
the territory on the east side of Jordan should continue to be
known by its original title, ‘land of Moab’, and its inhabitants
referred to as Moabites.
The racial Moabites were the determined enemies of the
Israelites and much fighting was called for to keep them within
their own boundaries. David subdued them at one time, as
recorded in 1 Chronicles 18:2. At a later date Jehoshaphat won
a great battle over the Moabites. Jeremiah, chapter 48, is
wholly devoted to the ‘land of Moab’ on the east side of Jordan
occupied by the Israelites. Of the numerous references to Moab
in the Old Testament more than one half concern Moab on the
east side of Jordan in the occupation of Israel.
After the death of Joshua, whose energetic leadership
brought Israel into possession of their inheritance, the
Promised Land, and in the beginning of the time of the Judges,
a famine occurred in the recently-acquired land of Canaan. As
recorded in the Book of Ruth, a family of Bethlehem-Judah,
Elimelech, Naomi, and their two delicate boys, Mahlon and
Chilion, crossed the river Jordan to the ‘land of Moab’ which
was, at the time, in sharp contrast to the land of Canaan, a place
of peace and plenty.
Elimelech, a member of the princely House of Pharez-
Judah, with his little family sought and found refuge from
stress of circumstances and want among their own kith and kin,
and they are not alone in the Scripture records as having had
intercourse with their brethren on the east side of Jordan. It is
not logical, apart from other evidence, to suppose that this
family of Israelites should cross the Jordan to their own ‘land’
or ‘country’ of Moab, occupied by their fellow Israelites,
which was well watered and where there were no famine
conditions, and pass through it to reach the Arnon, then cross
this considerable river to reach enemy country as the land of
racial Moab was. Food was their object and the eastern tribes
possessed it in abundance. Here, therefore, they found all

55
things needful for their sustenance, and here they settled down
to await the coming of relief to the homeland in Judea.
The sojourn in ‘the land of Moab’ proved to be a time
of sorrow for Naomi in the loss of her husband, Elimelech, and
later her two sons, Mahlon and Chilion. ‘And they took them
wives of the women of Moab; the name of the one was Orpah,
and the name of the other Ruth.’ There is no indication in the
Scripture records to which of the eastern Israelite tribes these
young women belonged. In view of the fact that ‘Ruth’ and
‘Reuben’ have very largely the same meaning, namely,
‘friendship’, it is more than probable that it was to this tribe
that Ruth belonged.
It was not permitted to Israelites to marry women of
racial Moab; such unions would have met with immediate and
condign punishment (Num. 25:1-8). In further support of
Ruth’s Israel origin is the fact that her reputed historian, the
prophet Samuel, could not consistently enforce the Divine
command, ‘A Moabite shall not enter into the congregation of
the Lord; even to their tenth generation shall they not enter into
the congregation of the Lord for ever’ (Deut. 23:3), and at the
same time condone so flagrant a disregard of that command on
the part of a prince of Pharez-Judah, as was Ruth’s first
husband, Mahlon, and also her second husband, Boaz. This
racial Law never was cancelled nor annulled. The House of
Ephratah and all those connected with it were fully aware of
the sacred charge which had been given into their hands not
only for those days but for future generations. The people of
Bethlehem-Ephratah seem always to have been a people apart
as though conscious of a determined destiny in the Divine plan
for the Israel nation. Even in their dress they differed from the
main body of Israel; thus the dress of Naomi, this lady of the
exclusive House of Ephratah in Bethlehem, differed
considerably in design and detail from the remainder of
Western Israel and markedly so from the dress of the people of

56
Eastern Israel, or trans-Jordania from whence came Ruth and
Orpah, Naomi’s daughters-in-law.
At the end of a residence of ten years in ‘the land of
Moab’, on the opposite side of Jordan, Naomi decided to return
to her home in Bethlehem-Judah, having heard that the famine
conditions were past and that ‘the Lord had visited His people
in giving them bread’. Her daughters-in-law prepare to
accompany her, for as Israelites they are acquainted with the
Mosaic Law which enjoins that ‘the wife of the dead shall not
marry without unto a stranger’. When, however, Naomi and her
retinue, accompanied by Ruth and Orpah, began the journey to
Bethlehem it is evident that Naomi believed that her daughters-
in-law were but accompanying her part of the way, perhaps to
the banks of the river Jordan, as revealed by the conversation
which followed the halt called by Naomi. Also she was aware
that no thought other than the strict observance of the Mosaic
law had entered the minds of these young widows, Ruth and
Orpah, hence her argument, ‘If I should have an husband. . .
and should also bear sons; would ye tarry for them till they
were grown?’ And so Naomi proceeds to release them from the
legal tie which bound them to her as widows of her departed
sons.
According to the marriage law, at that time in force, a
woman remained with her own people after marriage, and also
in the event of widowhood and re-marriage to her late
husband’s nearest kinsman. This marriage law, which was
observed by Israel and non-Israel nations alike, could under
exceptional circumstances be set aside, of which there are
several instances in the Scripture records.
Naomi’s advice to these young widows to return to
their people, is evidence that they had never left the maternal
roof, and also that Naomi had been living in close proximity to
them, for she says, ‘The Lord deal kindly with you, as ye have
dealt with the dead, and with me’. Orpah, not difficult to

57
persuade, returns to her people. Ruth heeds not the words of
release and advice to return, but pours out her heart to Naomi
in the immortal words, ‘Intreat me not to leave thee, or to
return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will
go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be
my people, and thy God my God: where thou diest, will I die,
and there will I be buried: Jehovah do so to me, and more also’
(literally, ‘May Jehovah slay me and worse’), ‘if ought but
death part thee and me’. All words in italics in the Scriptures
are supplied by the translators and are not in the translations
they copied from: ‘Thy people (shall be) my people — Thy
God my God.’ In the actual words spoken Ruth points out to
Naomi that leaving her own family is not so great a sacrifice in
view of the fact that they are one in race and worship.
We read in Ruth 1:15 that Naomi refers to Orpah as
having ‘gone back unto her people, and unto her gods’.
The Hebrew word used by Naomi is Elohim, which
carries several meanings, amongst them God, angels, goddess,
gods, judges, etc. Therefore, this. word might, as correctly,
have been translated ‘judges’, and the context warrants this
translation. The same word, ‘gods’, occurs in Exodus 22:28
and against it in the marginal note the word ‘judges’ is written.
Elohim-judges were those representing God in His nation
Israel, dispensing justice for God in judging His people. The
judges would, Naomi assured her daughters-in-law, see to it
that they were provided with husbands from among their own
people in view of the fact that their late husbands left no
brothers to carry on the name. Naomi, true worshipper of
Jehovah, would have had no use for heathen gods or their
devotees; she would grieve, indeed, at any indication of
defection or back sliding on the part of the trans-Jordanic
tribes. The use of the title ‘Jehovah’ is evidence that Ruth was
of pure Israel stock; that Holy name ‘Jehovah’ was to be a
memorial between the Ever-Living and His chosen nation unto

58
all generations. Ruth’s words were prompted by a deep
religious feeling.
Naomi had reasons for returning to Bethlehem-Judah
other than those of freedom from want and the call of home.
The seventh jubilee was near when ‘the parcel of land’ reverted
back to Naomi as the widow of Elimelech, but both her sons
having died also, there was no male person to take it as the
inheritance of the family. By Boaz marrying Ruth this
difficulty was overcome. The Jubilee was the crowning
enforcement of Israel’s Sabbath system. Not only every
seventh day but every seventh year, and not only every seventh
year but after every seven times seven years there was to be a
Sabbath. The Jubilee was a Sabbath year. It had a religious
object as well as a humanizing one.
Of the journey from ‘the land of Moab’ to Bethlehem
Judah taken by Naomi and Ruth no details are recorded, but the
story of their arrival at the beginning of barley harvest (in the
month of April) is recorded in a beautiful word picture (Ruth
1:19-22). How glad Naomi would be of the companionship of
the lovely young matron, Ruth, whose unselfish devotion was
to cheer and gladden her sorrowing heart and to solace her
declining years.
Naomi had evidently sent messengers beforehand to
have her home made ready. When they arrived at the gate of
Bethlehem they were given a civic welcome and ‘all the city
was stirred by their arrival’ Moffatt). A city is not usually
moved over a couple of travel-stained, weary women arriving
at its gates, one of them returning after an absence of ten years.
Rather as the widows of princes of the great House of Pharez-
Judah they arrived in all the eastern pomp and state which
befitted their rank. The title of ‘prince’ for the Chiefs of
Houses is well established in the Scriptures. How glad the
people were to have Naomi again amongst them; she had been
in all probability ‘the lady bountiful’ and greatly missed. The

59
people can scarcely believe that she has come back again, they
say questioningly, ‘Is this Naomi?’ The sound of her name
strikes a sad note. From her sorrowing heart come the words of
grief and disappointment. ‘Call me not Naomi (pleasant), call
me Mara (bitter): for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with
me. I went out full, and the Lord hath brought me home again
empty: why call ye me Naomi, seeing the Lord hath testified
against me, and the Almighty hath afflicted me?’ Not yet, so
blinded is she by painful memories and the sense of loss, can
Naomi see the purpose of Almighty God in bringing her home
again ‘empty’. Nor can she have any idea of the great part she
has yet to play in the building of the House of David as the
guide and guardian of Ruth, her son’s widow, until she is
wedded to Prince Boaz of the same kindred as her departed
husband.
The name Mara, assumed by Naomi instead of her
former one, is one which, in the form of Mary, became a
notable one in Israel and in this same place, Bethlehem. ‘So
Naomi returned, and Ruth the Moabitess, her daughter-in-law,
with her.’ Ruth, belonging as she did to a country still known
as the ‘land of Moab’, it was natural and quite in accord with
usage in those ancient times that Ruth should be called a
Moabitess or ‘a lady of Moab’. There are numerous instances
of this in Scripture.
It is significant that immediately upon settling down in
Bethlehem, Ruth, with Naomi’s consent, went out to glean in
the fields. The ‘city’ of Bethlehem stands on an eminence
2,500 feet above the sea, its slopes terraced into hanging
gardens and a pleasant valley lying underneath on its three
sides, while the eastern end is almost touched by the wilderness
of Judea. From this fertile grain-producing valley, Bethlehem,
‘House of Bread’, derives, linked as it often was to the more
ancient name of Ephratah. It is significant that here was born
He Who is the ‘Bread of Life’. As they looked down on the

60
harvest fields in the valley Naomi and Ruth could observe the
harvest operations in progress. In those days assisting in this
work was an honourable occupation for women in any station
of life so Ruth only wanted to do what many others were
happily engaged in.
Having chosen the field in which she wished to work
Ruth, later in the day, met the owner of the estate, Boaz, her
late husbands kinsman ‘who was of the kindred of Elimelech’.
There was no difficulty in recognizing this important personage
as he strode into the field wearing his scarlet cloak, the insignia
of his rank as chief.1 As the star guided the Magi to Bethlehem
so the unseen hand of God directed Ruth to the fields of Boaz.
Ruth in conversation with Boaz refers to herself as a
‘stranger’. The word used by Ruth is ‘nokri’ and not ‘zar’
which is the word used only for an alien and of another race,
but Ruth is speaking of herself as one strange to those of her
own blood and in the land which she had not visited hitherto.
The word ‘nokri’ in the Hebrew is, therefore, the correct term
for the sort of stranger Ruth was. An Australian, though of the
British race, would refer to himself as a ‘stranger’ in this
country. ‘The land beyond the Jordan’ from which Ruth came
was, by virtue of its position, as a portion and yet not a portion
of Israel, invested with a touching interest in that it was to the
main body of Israel emphatically the land of exiles — the
refuge of exiles.2 In addition, the trans-Jordanic tribes,
beginning with Reuben, inclined to separation when they began
to fall into idolatry, and gradually lost all community of
interest with the western tribes.
‘Under whose wings thou art come to trust’ (Ruth
2:12). These words have been taken to mean that Ruth was
hitherto an idolater and on coming to Bethlehem had changed
over to the worship of Jehovah. This assumption is based upon

1
J.L. Porter, D.D., The Giant Cities of Bashan, p. 193.
2
Dean Stanley, Sinai and Palestine, p. 328.

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a misunderstanding of Hebrew terms. David begs of the
Almighty to hide him under His wings; to protect and defend
him as a hen doth her chickens under her wings (Psa. 17:8).
Ruth was brought up under matriarchal law then still in force;
it was thus a most unusual proceeding for a woman to leave her
own people to reside at her husband’s home; yet Ruth
courageously broke through custom and, trusting in the
protection of Jehovah, came to another part of Israel, a part
entirely unknown to her, in the belief that there the Lord would
make provision for her. There is also the possibility that if the
tribe from which Ruth came, probably either Gad Or Reuben,
or a Levitical House in their territory had, by her day, begun to
depart from the worship of Jehovah ‘to serve other gods’, it
would be matter for rejoicing and thanksgiving that Ruth was
once again under the protecting wings of Jehovah. The ‘full
reward’ which Boaz; wished for Ruth, was, of course, a
husband to take the place of the departed Mahlon.
‘Though I be not like unto one of thine handmaidens.’
It should be noted that the word used by Ruth is ‘amah’ which
is also the Hebrew word for maiden. It is highly unlikely that
this no longer young prince of the House of Ephratah, Boaz,
was unmarried; he may have had daughters only and wished
Ruth to ‘abide here fast by my maidens’ or daughters. It was
the task of the young men to reap and that of the maidens to
gather. To refer to oneself as ‘handmaiden’ or even ‘servant’
was in the east a formal courtesy. The marked difference which
existed between the eastern and western Israelites can only be
rightly understood in the light of historical fact.
Dean Stanley states; ‘However much connected by
vicinity and race with their western kinsmen the dwellers in
Eastern Palestine have always been distinct. It has been to the
main body of the people what Scotland or Ireland has been to
the main course of English history. . . . The Israelite tribes who
settled there hardly ever exercised any influence over their

62
countrymen on the western banks. . . . This separation was, in
part, owing to the great natural rent which the Jordan has
created between the two districts. . . . From first to last the
eastern tribes (Reuben, Gad, and the half tribe of Manasseh)
never emerged from the state of their patriarchal ancestors. . . .
When on their return from the conquest of Canaan under
Joshua, they reached the Jordan, the boundary between them
and their more settled brethren, the western tribes, they erected,
like true children of the Desert, the huge stone of division to
mark the frontier, which their more civilized brethren mistook
for an altar’3 (Joshua 22:4-34).
The ‘altar’ or stone erected by these tribes ere they
departed from the western side of the river Jordan, and which
was mistaken by their brethren on the Canaan side for an altar
of sacrifice, is clear evidence of their fear that they might
eventually lose their identity with the main body of Israel. The
river Jordan, the great dividing line, did tend to different habits
and modes of life on each side of it, though not in worship,
until the Reubenites introduced the worship of Chemosh, the
god of war. With very worthy zeal the trans-Jordanic tribes
made quite certain by this ‘altar of witness’ that their right as
Israelites in future years to appear at Shiloh could not be
questioned (Joshua 22). In the light of the above it is not
surprising that Ruth, the country cousin, as it were, from
Eastern Jordan should express herself as being unlike the
women of Bethlehem.
No racial Moabitess would have been invited by Boaz
to sit at meat with him. The Israelite of old, likewise the
orthodox Jew, has always avowed to the Gentile, ‘I will not eat
with thee, drink with thee, nor pray with thee’. This attitude
towards the Gentiles or non-Israel peoples did not arise from a
supercilious superiority on the part of Israel. ‘An holy nation; a
chosen generation; a peculiar people; a separate people’ is the
3
Dean Stanley, Sinai and Palestine, p. 323.

63
decree of the Almighty which at the same time enjoined that
Israel should be a blessing to all nations. Racial purity was in
the forefront of all God’s dealings with His chosen people.
When Ruth elected to accompany her mother-in-law on
her return to Bethlehem, Naomi was faced with a new problem
— a husband for Ruth. The nearest kinsman to the departed
Mahlon who, according to Hebrew law, should have married
the widow, Ruth, was not acceptable to Naomi as a husband for
her beloved daughter-in-law. With a woman’s wit, and with
consummate skill, Naomi evolved a plan which met with entire
success. Naomi was well aware that Boaz, on whom she had
set her heart as a husband for Ruth, would not think of Ruth
with a view to matrimony, while the nearer kinsman, with a
prior claim, if he chose to exercise it, was still living. If this
unnamed kinsman had been a desirable person, Naomi would
have contacted him at once in regard to the redemption of the
property and the raising up of children to Mahlon by his widow
Ruth; that she was exercised lest the unnamed kinsman would
claim his right to redeem is very evident from chapter 3, verse
18. Naomi set about ways and means whereby Ruth and Boaz
would become acquainted with each other during barley
harvest and the following wheat harvest. During all this time
Ruth acted in perfect obedience to her mother-in-law,
obedience which sprang from love and understanding. And
when at the end of wheat harvest Naomi felt it was now time to
convey to Boaz Ruth’s preference for him rather than for the
nearer kinsman, Naomi called for Ruth’s co-operation in the
delicate task. Naomi had complete confidence in her daughter-
in-law, whom she knew to be a woman of great ability and
strength of character; the plan which she now unfolded
depended entirely upon Ruth’s willingness to undertake it, and
the calm and cool courage to carry it out. ‘Spread therefore thy
skirt (Hebrew, ‘thy wing’) over thine handmaid; for thou art a
near kinsman’ (3:9). That is, ‘Take me into thy protection, by

64
taking me to be thy wife’. The allusion seems to be to a custom
still observed amongst the Jews of covering the bride with the
Tallith or fringed garment belonging to the bridegroom in
token of his obligation to protect her. According to the
sentiment of the time there was nothing immodest nor
unwomanly in this bold and unusual line of action. Rightly
understood it was only a gentle and delicate way of appealing
to a kinsman’s chivalry — and Ruth did not appeal in vain. His
reply is precisely the one we should expect, ‘It is true that I am
thy near kinsman: howbeit there is a kinsman nearer than I . . .
if he will perform unto thee the part of a kinsman, well; let him
do the kinsman’s part: but if he will not do the part of a
kinsman to thee, then will I do the part of a kinsman to thee, as
the Lord liveth’. ‘All the city of my people doth know that thou
art a virtuous woman.’ This word ‘virtuous’ in the Hebrew is
‘chayil’ and signifies force, strength of mind or body. The
Septuagint reads, ‘Thou art a woman of strength or power’.
Boaz was not referring to any moral characteristic regarding
virtue or modesty, but telling Ruth that not only he, but all the
townsfolk of Bethlehem knew her to be a woman of courage
and strength of purpose which had enabled her to set aside age
long custom and leave her own people on the other side of
Jordan to take up residence amongst them. The townsfolk
would not have so approved of a woman of racial Moab.
There is no evidence that Boaz was unmarried or had
not been married previously. That he was no longer young may
be concluded with some degree of certainty from the fact that
his mother was Rahab of Jericho fame; also in view of his
words to Ruth, ‘Thou hast shewed more kindness in the latter
end than at the beginning’ i.e., the kindness shown to Boaz in
accepting him who was so much older than herself as her
second husband, was greater than her previous kindness to
Mahlon and Naomi. ‘And now it is true I am thy near
kinsman’, literally ‘a goel’ i.e., a kinsman-redeemer.

65
 At the council meeting summoned by Boaz on that
eventful morning at the gate of the city (the customary place
for such gatherings), composed of ten of the aldermen of the
city and the nearer kinsman, Ruth is not referred to as other
than an Israelite. The national law of redemption was only
given to Israel and only to be administered for Israelites and
never to aliens.
It should be understood that Ruth was no mere chattel
simply to be sold with a ‘parcel of land’ as it were, but a
‘woman of great price’ far above rubies in the eyes of those
who knew her well, and a Princess of the House of Ephratah;
one whose hand could only be won by a noble Prince, not only
in blood and family, but also in character and life.
When Naomi decided that her husband’s kinsman,
Boaz, ‘the mighty man of wealth’ second in succession was the
one she desired as a redeemer of the family property and as a
husband for Ruth if the nearer kinsman would agree to
relinquish his claim, she was evidently aware of the selfish
character of the latter and so passed him over in favour of
Boaz. The nearer kinsman would have been willing to redeem
the property, but upon learning that the redemption included
marriage with Ruth straightway declined, the reason being that
in the event of a son being born of the union the child would
be, according to Mosaic law, the inheritor of the redeemed
property. The unnamed kinsman would have had no objection
to redeeming the property if thereby he could perpetuate his
own name on the inheritance. Boaz, by his readiness to ‘mar’ if
need be his own inheritance and to espouse his kinsman,
Mahlon’s, widow, became enrolled among the ancestors of
Jesus Christ, the Divine Son of Mary. This nearer kinsman was
passed over, not only by Naomi, but by the Almighty in His
selection of fit persons to become the ancestors of the
Redeemer of Israel. The House of Ephratah, which contained
within it the royal line from which presently would come the

66
Psalmist of Israel, and of which, finally, Jesus Christ was born,
was no chance affair, stained here and there by the introduction
of forbidden alien blood.
This august assembly who witnessed the renouncement
to redeem by the nearer kinsman now proceeded to bestow its
blessing upon Boaz (4:14): ‘And do thou worthily in Ephratah
(the princely House of Pharez-Judah), and be famous in
Bethlehem (the city).’
In their day Ezra and Nehemiah were distressed that in
some instances men of Israel had married Moabite and other
foreign women, and this at a time when such defection might,
if ever, have been condoned on account of their captivity in a
foreign land. How then did it come to pass that these Aldermen
of Bethlehem welcomed this ‘Moabitess’ into the exclusive
House of Ephratah if she were racially of the forbidden
Moabites? Will it be maintained that this august assembly was
not acquainted with the law in these matters? Would Ezra and
Nehemiah, had they been present, have given their consent and
blessing to the union of a Prince of Pharez-Judah with a
woman of racial Moab? And how could Ezra and Nehemiah
inflict punishment upon those of the returned Israelites who
had married Moabite and other foreign women while in their
midst they had Zerubabel of the House of Pharez-Judah,
Governor of Jerusalem, who would have been of sullied
ancestry if, indeed, Rahab were a Canaanitess and Ruth a
Moabitess. The contention that Ruth was racially a Moabitess
is illogical in the light of Ezra and Nehemiah alone.
Doubtless the whole city was ‘moved’ over this
marriage in the House of Pharez-Judah as it had been ‘moved’
when Naomi came home at the end of her long absence in the
‘land of Moab’. With what joy would Naomi see her beloved
Ruth united in marriage with this scion of the House of Pharez-
Judah, a man of ability, power and wealth.

67
 Naomi appears to have had property of her own for she
made Ruth her heir, probably by way of providing a dowry so
that Ruth might enter the married state with Boaz in dignity
and some affluence. All Mahlon’s property would descend to
Ruth’s first-born child.
Ruth, by marrying Boaz, her late husband’s kinsman,
according to the law given by Jehovah to Israel, provided in her
first-born a son and heir for the House of Ephratah which had
been lacking through Mahlon, Naomi’s firstborn son whom
Ruth had married first.
Therefore the royal House of David is built upon this
child — Ruth’s first-born son. The congratulations and
blessings are showered upon Naomi principally, as the
maternal head of the family whose descendants would inherit
the future fame and glory which would yet come to Bethlehem.
This would appear to be the reason why Naomi became nurse
to the child which, legally, was her son Mahlon’s, ‘There is a
son born to Naomi’ (4:17) and the inheritor of his property.
Matriarchal law is in evidence in the fact that it was
Naomi and her kinswomen who named the child Obed ‘serving
for’ — serving for an heir to Mahlon. ‘And he shall be unto
thee a restorer of thy life, and a nourisher of thine old age.’ The
child Obed was thus acclaimed an earnest of the great Kinsman
Redeemer Who would, at the appointed time, be born from the
royal House of David in Bethlehem; He who came ‘not to be
ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom
for many’ (Matt. 20:28).
Ruth’s mother-in-law by her first marriage, Naomi, and
that by her second marriage, Rahab, were, with Ruth, women
of outstanding character who became famous in Israel. Rahab,
if still living, would have reached an advanced age when Boaz,
himself no longer young, became Ruth’s husband.
If Ruth lived to see her great-grandson David grow up,
which in those days of general longevity is not improbable, she

68
may have been present at his coronation at Hebron when her
kinsfolk on the east side of Jordan, ‘the land of Moab’, sent
120,000 men fully armed to this historic crowning. There is
strong probability that Ruth was acquainted with at least some
of the Psalms of David, and none could appreciate them better
than she, for it was from Ruth that David, quite possibly,
inherited his wonderful gift of poetry. In the sublime words of
entreaty from Ruth to Naomi while yet on the east side of
Jordan, the mind and soul of the poet is revealed.
It was while still in the ancestral home that David
‘heard’ that from Bethlehem-Ephratah the Davidic dynasty
would take its rise, from which would be established ‘the
throne of the kingdom for ever’; and not only of his yet future
election to the throne of Israel, but of the part he would take in
finding ‘an habitation for the mighty God of Jacob’ (2 Sam.
7:13; Psa. 132).
The ‘horn of David’ was to bud in the royal line: his
enemies are those who are against the throne. This House of
Ephratah from which the royal House of David was built was,
as it were, the ‘Holy of Holies’ in the Tabernacle of David,
whose course God guided from Abraham and Sarah onwards,
and which eventually matured in Mary, the Mother of the Son
of God.
It is beside the point to assert, as many do, that there are
no racial distinctions in Christ Jesus and that the Gentiles come
into the Kingdom of God in its spiritual aspect in the same way
as racial Israel. That is a matter of grace and not of race. We
send the Gospel message to the heathen by our missionaries,
but it is significant that intermarriage with their converts is not
encouraged. The evangelist with his enthusiasm and worthy
zeal for conversions at home and abroad would be amongst the
first to protest if an heir to the British throne were to marry a
native woman of a heathen nation be she ever so soundly
converted. The ‘grace’ would be, for the time being,

69
completely lost sight of in the zeal for ‘race’. The Almighty
never confuses Race with Grace in any of His racial laws.
Contrary to the received interpretation of Scripture, due to
faulty apprehension of historical facts, there is no alien blood
in our Lord’s ancestry. The women by whom this element is
supposed to have been introduced were women of Israel,
specially chosen for purity of descent and spiritual qualities.
Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba were all of Israel stock.
When the chosen family of Abraham expanded into the chosen
nation Israel, racial purity had premier place in the Divine
commands. The chief reason for the existence of Israel at all
was the preservation of a nation and within it a ‘House’
containing a line of Divinely-selected individuals of pure Israel
descent carried on from generation to generation until finally
Mary was born of that ‘House’, not only racially pure but
spiritually equipped to be the Mother of the Man, the Son of
God, the Redeemer of Israel and the Saviour of the world. The
fact should not be overlooked that Israel could only be
redeemed by one of their brethren.
The generations of the House of Ephratah of
Bethlehem-Judah: Pharez; Hezron; Ram; Arninadab; Nahshon;
Salmon; Boaz; Obed; Jesse; David.

‘And thou, Bethleem, house of Ephratha,

Art few in number to be among the thousands of Juda.
Out of thee shall One come forth to me, to be a Ruler of
Israel;
And His goings forth were from the beginning, from
Eternity’ (Micah 5:2, Septuagint).

‘Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for He hath visited

and redeemed His people, and hath raised up an horn of
salvation for us in the house of His servant David’ (Luke 1:68,
69).

70
 CHAPTER 9

DEBORAH — PROPHETESS
AND JUDGE
(Judges, chaps. 4, 5)

THE Book of Judges, which records the story of

Deborah, receives its title from those who, after the death of
Joshua, were raised up to be the deliverers of the Israelites
from their enemies. Raised up on extraordinary occasions,
vested with special powers for the emergency, the judges
delivered the nation from some pressing danger and their
power generally terminated with the crisis which had brought
them forth.
Hostility to the Israelites dated from the days of Joshua
who soon after his entry into the Promised Land subdued the
Northern Canaanites, slew their king, Jabin, and burned his city
of Hazor to the ground. The Israelites were commanded to
have no dealings with these Canaanites because of the diseases
from which they suffered, diseases induced by their
wickedness and because their religion was of a licentious
nature.
In the period of the Judges which succeeded Joshua,
ever and anon the Israelites sinned and ever and anon when
they cried to God they were delivered from their enemies.
The fourth of the judges, Deborah, holds first rank
among the illustrious women mentioned in the Scriptures: she
freed Israel from the yoke of the Canaanite and ruled them
during forty years with as much glory as wisdom.
 A French writer has observed that the Bible, which has
not hidden the failings of the Patriarchs, the mistrust of Moses
and Aaron, the imprudence of Joshua, the fall of David and the
follies of Solomon, has recorded nothing of Deborah but her
hymns and prophecies, her victories and her laws.1
We are told very little about Deborah as a person;
she was married to a chieftain named Lapidoth, and lived in a
pleasant spot in Mount Ephraim in a house overshadowed by
palm trees. It seems that she was made a Judge in Israel
because of her outstanding ability and because of her gift of
prophecy. ‘It was this gift of being able to look into the future
and accurately to predict coming events which lifted Deborah
out of the general run of women and gave her influence in a
sphere wider than her own household; she was a poet with a
gift as spontaneous as Moses or David, and as the event proved
she was also something of an astronomer. But it is not as a
prophetess or as a poet that Deborah takes her place in Israel
history, it is as the person who instigated and organized the
campaign that ended the twenty years’ tyranny which Jabin, the
Canaanite king of Hazor, exercised over the tribes.’2
Deborah used her great influence and gifts to rouse the
people in a time of despair and confusion to withstand the
encroaching Canaanites under their king, Jabin, a grandson of
the Jabin whom Joshua slew; the city of Hazor had been rebuilt
and the Canaanite army greatly increased. Not only did Jabin
continuously harass the Israelites but his commander-in-chief,
Sisera, was as a sleuth-hound in pursuing and capturing the
women of Israel to rob them of their beautiful double-
embroidered garments (embroidered on both sides) and hand
the maidens over to his soldiers.

1
[Link] Moigne. Quoted by Matilda Betham, Celebrated Women, p.
314.
2
N. Lofts, Women in the Old Testament, p. 75.

72
 Deborah, as she sat in Mount Ephraim to judge the
people and heard their distress, decided upon a course of action
to free them from the Canaanite oppressor. She sent for Barak,
Prince of Issachar, the general of the Israel forces and put
before him a proposal to go to war against the Canaanites.
Barak hesitated to undertake the expedition with his small
army. Jabin was reputed to have 30,000 footmen, 3,000
horsemen and 900 chariots of iron,3 a formidable army.
Deborah was adamant, confident that God would give Israel
the victory. Barak replied, ‘If thou wilt go with me, then I will
go: but if thou wilt not go with me, then I will not go.’ The
reason for this condition was that in ancient Israel it was the
custom for a prophet or high-standing priest to accompany the
armies to the battlefield to bless and to encourage in the name
of the Lord. The people of Israel had so departed from God,
practising the sins of the heathen, that religion was at a low ebb
and neither priest nor prophet could be found to accompany the
armies. Barak flatly refused to go unless Deborah, a prophetess
and woman of saintly character, consented to accompany him.
Deborah consented but not without a warning. Together they
went down to Barak’s headquarters at Kadesh (where was also
a sanctuary, the word Kadesh signifying ‘holy’), and there they
laid their plans. First, messengers were sent across the river
Jordan to urge the tribes of Reuben, Gad and the half-tribe of
Manasseh to come to their aid against the Canaanites. These
tribes hesitated to leave the security of their homes on the east
side of Jordan although they did have a conscience in the
matter; in the end they refused to leave their pastoral life and
the care of their flocks to fight the battles of their western
brethren. Deborah and Barak had no greater success with the
seafaring tribes of Dan and Asher. Dan chose to abide by his
ships, probably many of the tribe were on the high seas, and
Asher preferred to remain in his ports where he carried on a
3
Josephus, Antiq., Bk. V. Chap. V.

73
flourishing import and export trade. Four and a half tribes had
refused their assistance in this time of distress and turmoil in
Israel. The northern tribes of Issachar, Napthali and Zebulon
responded willingly as did also the tribes of Ephraim,
Benjamin and the other half tribe of Manasseh.
Judah and Simeon do not appear to have been
summoned; possibly they needed to defend their own territory
against the Canaanites of the south.
Deborah appears to have given the order for battle and
for procedure for she directed Barak to dispose his men on the
slopes of Mount Tabor while the mighty host of the Canaanites
assembled on the Plain of Esdraelon beneath. The Plain of
Esdraelon has seen more fighting than any other part of
Palestine: situate in the centre of Palestine it is ideal fighting
ground in dry weather but in rain or storm quickly becomes a
swamp; also the winding river Kishon which runs alongside
and has many rivulets running into it rapidly overflows its
banks. Deborah announced to Barak that she herself would go
up to the top of Mount Tabor and, at a given word of command
from her, Barak and his men would rush down the mountain
and join issue with the Canaanites on the plain beneath. The
summit of Mount Tabor is flat, about a mile in circumference
and commands magnificent panoramic views of all Palestine.
Here Deborah took up her position. Day after day the
prophetess anxiously scanned the skies; at length her patience
was rewarded with the first indication of the annual shower of
meteors which occurs in Palestine in November. Deborah had
learned from observation that the meteoric display was
followed by storms of rain and sleet; she therefore with
marvellous strategy, upon the first sign in the heavens, gave the
order to Barak, ‘Up; for this is the day in which the Lord hath
delivered Sisera into thine hands: is not the Lord gone out
before thee? So Barak went down from Mount Tabor, and ten
thousand men after him’. As they swiftly descended the

74
mountain the storm broke, rain and hail driven by an east wind
blinded the oncoming Canaanites across the plain, which
rapidly became a quagmire in which the chariot wheels stuck
and the hoofs of the terrified horses were broken. The Israelites
rushing down the mountain had the storm on their backs and
were sheltered to a great extent by the mountain. The plain
beneath soon presented a fearful scene of destruction, the river
Kishon overflowed its banks and those who fell by the sword
of the Israelites were swept away by the raging torrent. Sisera
saw at once the defeat of his army and descending from his
chariot fled away on foot north-eastwards to a small colony of
Kenites where he believed he would be safe from the pursuing
Israelites. The story is well-known of Sisera’s reception at the
tent of Jael, wife of Heber, prince of the Kenites: upon making
request for a drink the Canaanite Commander in-chief was
given a preparation of goat’s milk, known as leben; it, is highly
soporific and soon the warrior was fast asleep. The Scripture
narrative adds that Jael gave Sisera butter in a ‘lordly dish’.
This was the ‘prince’s bowl’, a beautiful and costly dish found
in every house of any standing and kept for important visitors;
no doubt Sisera noted with satisfaction that he was thus
honoured.
‘When the children of Israel entered the Promised
Land, the children of the Kenite, Moses’ father-in-law, went
with them from Jericho into the land of Judah, at the south, and
settled there. But Heber removed his tent from there and was
living far to the north, near the southern extremity of (what was
later called) the Sea of Galilee. The encounter with Sisera took
place at the western part of the plain of Jezreel, or Esdraelon,
by the river Kishon, and Sisera fled north-eastwards to the tent
of Jael for shelter and protection, arriving, perhaps, three days
after the battle. The effrontery of it! A man out capturing
women is in danger of being captured, and runs to a woman for
protection!’

75
 ‘He would have probably captured Jael herself, at
another time if he could. She knew this very well. The House
of Heber was at peace with Jabin, Sisera’s king, but that is not
saying Jael was at peace with Jabin or Sisera, for women were
very independent in those days, and only a treacherous woman
loses the sense of loyalty towards her sex. Sisera stood a
suppliant at the door of Jael’s tent while Barak was in hot
pursuit. It is not likely that Jael recognized him at the moment,
but she would under the circumstances be filled with fear lest
an armed warrior meant mischief to herself; and realizing that
the giving of the hospitality he desired meant her own safety,
while the refusal of that hospitality meant peril, bade him
welcome and when he asked for water gave him milk.’
‘Once inside, his quick request for her to stand at the
door and tell a lie when his enemy came — she an unarmed
woman and he a warrior armed to the teeth, would arouse her
suspicions; she probably then realized who this man was,
Sisera the despoiler of the women of Israel — Israel with
whom the Kenites from the days of Moses, had had a most
sacred Covenant; among whom in fact the Kenites dwelt as
guests (1 Sam. 15:6).’
‘She hesitated no longer. He had thought to entrap her
by the Arab custom of desert hospitality, which carries the
promise of protection with the giving of food. Fired with
indignation at once she dispatched him by the only means she
had at hand. Barak now stands at the tent door, but too late.
Jael has the honour of slaying the enemy. And a few miles
away a woman of fashion and of folly is saying to the women
of her train, “Have they not found, have they not divided the
spoil? A damsel, two damsels to every man?” Commentators
have wrangled over the question whether Jael ought not to have
obeyed that custom of Arab hospitality and spared Sisera. Jael

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knew better than to transgress a covenant made with God’s
people for the sake of man-made custom.’4

Deborah celebrates this victory of two women over

a capturer of women in a song which knows no rival for beauty
in Hebrew literature. The Song of Deborah is pronounced by
scholars the most remarkable specimen of Hebrew poetry in
the Bible: but, ‘The closing part of Deborah’s song has justly
been regarded as a specimen of poetical representation that
cannot be surpassed’5
The song was evidently composed for a victory
parade or festival for Prince Barak, their general, and the troops
have their part along with Deborah, as made clear by Ferrar
Fenton in his translation of the Bible in modern English
(Judges, chap. 5).

THE SONG OF DEBORAH

DEBORAH:
For free freedom in Israel,
You heroes and people bless the Lord.
BARAK:
Let kings hear, let princes listen,
I, to the Lord, myself will sing;
I chant to the Ever-Living God of Israel.
THE TROOPS:
Lord, in Your advance from Sair,—
In Your march thro’ the field of Edom,—
The earth shook, the heavens poured down,
The storm clouds poured out water!
The mountains melted before the Lord;
Sinai itself before the Living God of Israel!
4
Katherine Bushnell, God’s Word to Women, para. 649.
5
Cassell in Lance’s Commentary on Authorized Version.

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DEBORAH:
In the days of Shamgar, son of Anath,
In the days of Yal the caravans ceased,
And travellers went in the bye-paths,—
Judges ceased — in Israel ceased,—
Till I, Deborah, arose,—
Till I arose, a mother to Israel!
BARAK:
They chose for themselves new gods!—
When there was war at the gates,
Was a shield or a spear to be seen,
In forty thousand of Israel?
DEBORAH:
My heart can picture Israel!—
Heroes among the people bless the Lord!
THE TROOPS:
You riders upon white asses,—
And you who dwell in the plain,—
And the travellers by roadways publish,
With the sound as of rushing waters,
The kindness the Lord has done;
The kindness to Israel’s hamlets,
When the Lord’s force rushed down to the dales!
BARAK:
Arise! arise you! Deborah!
Awake, awake! and utter a song!
DEBORAH:
Arise, Barak, and conquer,—
Conqueror, son of Abinoam!
Let the Nobles and People descend;
The Lord sent me to summon heroes:
Come to me, Ephraim, rooted in Amalek;
Follow me, Benjamin, from your caves;
Come to me, Makir, with your chieftains;

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 With Zebulon wielding the writer’s pen,
And Issakar’s eloquent Princes;—
And along with Issakar, Barak,
Who directs the march with skill.
My heart aches for Reuben’s absence;—
Why stayed he among the sheepfolds,
To hear the cries of his flocks?
My heart aches for Reuben’s absence!
Ghilad remained beyond the Jordan;—
But why stayed Dan in his ships?
And Ashur rest on the shore of the sea,
And continue to lie in his ports?
Zebulon’s men risked their lives to death,
With Naphthali from the highlands.

BARAK:
Kings came out to the war,
Like Canan's Kings at Thanak,
Who fought by the Brook of Megiddo:—
They took no silver as plunder;—
The stars, they fought from the skies,
The stars from their high course fought against
Sisera!—
The river Kishon swept them away,
That ancient river — the river Kishon!
DEBORAH:
Rush strongly along, my life!
How the hoofs of the horses sound,
With their mighty leapings and prancings!
“Curse Meroz”, said the man of the Lord,
“When cursing, curse its people,—
For they came not with help to the Lord,
To help the Lord and His heroes!”
But bless the children of Jael,—

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 The wife of Heber the Kenite,
Bless all the sons of her tent.
He asked her water, — she gave him milk!
She offered him butter on a beautiful (lordly) dish!
Then she stretched her hand to the nail,
Her right hand to the workman’s hammer,—
And Sisera pierced through his head,
And broke, and drove through his temples!
At her feet he bowed, — fell down,—
When he bowed, he fell down dead!
THE TROOPS:
Sisera’s mother, at the evening hour,
Bent and watched from her window;—
“What prevents his chariot's return?
What delays the tramp of his chargers?”
Her wise women answered to her,—
Nay, continued her words to herself,—
“Have they not found plenty of plunder?
A lovely girl for the generals,
And a plunder of robes for Sisera?
A plunder of robes embroidered,—
Embroidered robes for the necks of the victors?”
DEBORAH, BARAK AND THE TROOPS:
Lord! thus destroy Your foes:—
But let Your friends march on,
Like the sun in his glory6

And the land had rest for forty years.

In Deborah’s Song, verse 4, the natural elements of

storm used by the God of Israel for the destruction of the
Canaanites is a reminder to the people of the same elements
used which their ancestors experienced at Sinai.
6
Ferrar Fenton’s Translation.

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 The roads had become unsafe, the Israelites kept to
bypaths because of their enemies, even the caravans ceased.
‘Judges ceased. . . till I, Deborah, arose, a mother in Israel.’
This word ‘mother’ means, according to Semitic usage, in this
connection ‘female chief’ — a female ruler in Israel.
Deborah complains (v. 8) that when Israel entered the
Promised Land, forty thousand armed men marched before
them; now, not a spear or a shield had been lifted to defend
Israel against Sisera. ‘Riders upon white asses’ (v. 10). Princes
and the nobility were distinguished by the white asses which
they invariably rode. ‘You who dwell on the plain’, a term for
the leisured classes; some translators have ‘you who sit on rich
carpets’. The ‘travellers by roadways’, i.e. the common people.
Thus all classes are called upon to speak of the kindness of the
Lord to Israel. ‘The stars in their courses fought against Sisera’
(v. 20). Deborah here refers to the annual shower of meteors
which guided her in ordering the battle which resulted in so
singular a victory over the enemy. The Canaanites were
terrified by the meteoric display.
It is Deborah herself who sings the praises of Jael and
asks the God of Israel to

‘Bless the children of Jael,—

The wife of Heber the Kenite,
Bless all the sons of her tent.’

According to Jewish tradition Deborah and Barak died

about the same time and were buried in the same tomb at
Kadesh where a national monument was erected to their
memory. This monument stood to within a few centuries of the
present era.

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 CHAPTER 10

JEPHTHAH’S DAUGHTER
(Judges 11:30-40)

THE ninth judge in Israel, Jephthah, is recorded as the

son of a harlot; in like manner Jeroboam is so recorded in the
Septuagint, while the Authorized Version has, ‘son of a widow
woman’; it was unfortunate that the alternative translation,
‘widow woman’, recognized in some Eastern languages, was
not given in the case of Jephthah’s mother. His father, Gilead,
appears to have married as his second wife a widow who,
dying before her son Jephthah grew up, left him at the mercy of
his step-brothers and sisters. Driven cruelly from his father’s
house Jephthah became, through adversity, a great soldier and
leader of men with the additional quality of loyalty to Jehovah.
The Israel tribes on the east of the river Jordan have
been regarded by the historian as less civilized than their
western brethren and yet these trans-Jordanic tribes produced
some outstanding characters, valiant chiefs and national heroes.
The grandest and the most romantic character that Israel ever
produced, Elijah the Tishbite, came from the forests of Gilead
as did Jephthah.
Jephthah, an outcast from his father’s house, became
the leader of a band of freebooters. The eastern Israelites, long
oppressed by the Ammonites and aware of his reputation for
valour, begged that he would become their captain and lead
them against the enemy.
Jephthah, animated of God, levied an army on the east
of Jordan; as he prepared for battle he rashly vowed that if the
Lord should grant him success he would devote or sacrifice
whatever should first meet him from his house.
 ‘If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of
Ammon into mine hands, then it shall be, that whatsoever
cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I
return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the
Lord’s, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering.’
In the Ferrar Fenton translation the word ‘burnt’ does
not appear and according to the People’s Bible Encyclopaedia
the words could equally well be translated, ‘shall surely be the
Lord’s, or I will offer a burnt offering.’ A misunderstanding of
the nature of the vow caused the spread of the story in the East
that Ipheginea, the daughter of Jephthah, had been sacrificed.
To arrive at the truth of the matter it should first be
remembered that Jephthah, a Judge in Israel, was well
acquainted with the law and having made his vow in the
presence of the Lord was aware that the vow could be fulfilled
by a person devoted to the service of God or by a burnt
offering. Dr. Adam Clarke, the distinguished Bible
Commentator, refutes the popular idea that Jephthah’s daughter
was sacrificed; she was merely dedicated to the Tabernacle
service with a burnt offering and this is all Jephthah’s vow
implied.
The victorious Jephthah, on his return home, was met
by his daughter, his only child, ‘behold, his daughter came out
to meet him with timbrels and with dances’. Her father realized
what a terrible sacrifice it would be to give her over to the
service of the Tabernacle and to perpetual virginity in
fulfilment of his vow — which also meant parting from her for
ever. The faith of the young woman is seldom taken into
account when considering her story; she was God-centred
rather than self-centred and instead of reproaching her father
helped him to see the necessity for fulfilling his vow, ‘My
father, if thou hast opened thy mouth unto the Lord, do to me
according to that which hath proceeded out of thy mouth;

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forasmuch as the Lord hath taken vengeance for thee of thine
enemies, even of the children of Ammon. And she said unto
her father, Let this thing be done for me: let me alone two
months, that I may go up and down upon the mountains, and
bewail my virginity, I and my fellows’. The word virginity
signifies ‘separation’ and so the daughter of Jephthah, with her
friends who also were dedicated and about to relinquish the life
of the world to devote their lives to the service of God, spent
the next two months in freedom and fellowship, ‘And it came
to pass at the end of two months, that she returned unto her
father, who did with her according to his vow which he had
vowed’. The daughters of Israel, probably many relatives,
came yearly to celebrate or praise her celibacy, the word
‘lament’ here, according to Gesenius, really meaning ‘praise’.
The R.V. says celebrate’.
Paul (Heb. 11:32) extols Jephthah among the heroes of
Israel. Had he been guilty of human sacrifice, which was ‘an
abomination unto the Lord’, the Apostle would not have
included him among those who ‘through faith subdued
kingdoms, wrought righteousness. . . of whom the world was
not worthy’.

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 CHAPTER 11

HANNAH
(1 Sam. 1, 2)

THERE are many instances in the Old Testament where

a man possessed two wives; not, however, in every instance is
volitional polygamy implied, for according to the Mosaic law a
man must take his brother’s widow to wife whether he were
already married or not. It is not possible to state whether the
case of Elkanah was such. In the Scripture narrative we learn
that Elkanah was a Levite of Mount Ephraim; that he had two
wives, Hannah and Peninnah. The former was extremely pious
and greatly beloved of her husband but the latter, who had
children, upbraided Hannah with her lack of them.
As Elkanah and his whole family attended one of the
solemn feasts at Shiloh, from his share of his sacrifices he gave
Peninnah and her children portions, but to Hannah he gave the
best part of the peace-offering, ‘a worthy portion’ of the
Passover lamb which fell to his share.
At these feasts it was Peninnah’s common practice to
reproach Hannah with her lack of children. Hannah, at last,
took it so ill that she refused to eat. Elkanah, to comfort her,
told her that his deep affection for her was better than ten sons.
Hannah, still in distress of mind, entered the Tabernacle
and prayed with intense fervour for a child and vowed to
surrender him as a Nazarite for life, to the service of God. The
old priest, Eli, sitting at the door of the Tabernacle, observing
her imploring attitude in prayer, on hearing her case, gave her
his blessing and wished that the Lord might grant her request.
Hannah again became cheerful and returned to her home
Divinely impressed that God would grant her request. ‘And Eli
answered and said, “Go in peace: and the God of Israel grant
thee thy petition that thou hast asked of him.” And she said,
“Let thine handmaid find grace in thy sight.” So the woman
went her way, and did eat, and her countenance was no more
sad’ (I Sam. 1:17, 18).
In the following year, when the Passover was again to
be celebrated, Hannah had a little son whom she named
Samuel, which means, ‘asked of the Lord’. After she had
weaned the child and he was about three years’ old Hannah
carried him to Shiloh and took with her three bullocks and one
ephah of flour and a bottle of wine and presented him before
the Lord and put him under Eli’s tuition. And she said, ‘Oh my
lord, as thy soul liveth, my lord, I am the woman that stood by
thee here, praying unto the Lord. For this child I prayed; and
the Lord hath given me my petition which I asked of Him:
therefore also I have lent him to the Lord: as long as he liveth
he shall be lent to the Lord’.
On this occasion — the presentation and dedication of
Samuel to the Lord — Hannah composed a song celebrating
the holiness, greatness, wisdom, power and mercy of God.

‘And Hannah prayed, and said, My heart rejoiceth in

the Lord, mine horn is exalted in the Lord; my mouth is
enlarged over mine enemies; because I rejoice in thy salvation.
There is none holy as the Lord: for there is none beside thee:
neither is there any rock like our God. Talk no more so
exceeding proudly; let not arrogancy come out of your mouth:
for the Lord is a God of knowledge, and by Him actions are
weighed. The bows of the mighty men are broken, and they
that stumbled are girded with strength. They that were full have
hired out themselves for bread; and they that were hungry
ceased: so that the barren hath born seven; and she that hath
many children is waxed feeble. The Lord killeth, and maketh
alive: He bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth up. The

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Lord maketh poor, and maketh rich: He bringeth low, and
lifteth up. He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up
the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes, and to
make them inherit the throne of glory: for the pillars of the
earth are the Lord’s, and He hath set the world upon them. He
will keep the feet of His saints, and the wicked shall be silent in
darkness; for by strength shall no man prevail. The adversaries
of the Lord shall be broken to pieces; out of heaven shall He
thunder upon them: the Lord shall judge the ends of the earth;
and He shall give strength unto His king, and exalt the horn of
His anointed.’

The Hebrew word ‘Jehovah’ of the Old Testament and

from the Septuagint Greek version can be identified with the
New Testament name ‘Lord’. The Hebrew word ‘Anointed’,
that is ‘Messiah’, is identical with Christ. The name ‘Jesus’ of
the New Testament is identical with Joshua in the Old
Testament — the One Who leads into the Promised Land of
rest from all our enemies. Eve bestowed on Him the title
‘Lord’; Hannah first called him ‘the Anointed’, that is ‘Christ’,
and the Virgin Mary was instructed to name Him, before He
was born, Jesus. These names were bestowed upon Him by
three holy women of old, prophetesses of God — Eve, Hannah
and Mary.
In her Song, Hannah brings in the resurrection, the
‘horn’ or power of the Lord, and prophesies the preservation of
the nation: ‘He will keep the feet of His saints.’
Hannah’s gift of song was inherited by her son Samuel,
the last of the Judges and the founder of the schools of the
prophets, who taught his young prophets, whom he had in
training, to praise the Lord in song. Dean Payne-Smith says,
‘One of that choir (of the prophet Samuel) was Heman, the son
of Joel, Samuel’s first-born, who there acquired that mastery of
music which made him one of the three singers selected by

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David. . . to arrange and preside over the Temple service.
Blessed with a numerous family, who all seem to have
inherited Samuel’s musical ability, he trained them for song in
the house of Jehovah, with cymbals, psalteries and harps, and it
is remarkable that no less than fourteen of the twenty-four
courses of singers were Samuel’s own descendants, and that as
long as the first Temple stood they were the chief performers
of that psalmody which he had instituted.1
‘God gave to Heman fourteen sons and three
daughters’ (I Chron. 25:5). And if as Dean Payne-Smith says,
‘Psalmody commenced with that hymn of triumph sung by
Miriam and the women on the shores of the Red Sea with
timbrel and dance’, it was, as pointed out by Mrs. Bushnell, 2
introduced into the Temple service by the Song of Hannah,
taken up by Samuel and his female descendants, as well as his
male, through Heman and extended through the days of Ezra
and Nehemiah by both women and men; also the mention of
‘women-singers’ and the description of a religious procession
in Psalm 68:25 is clear evidence that women had an important
part in the psalmody of the Temple. Hannah might be termed
the Mother of Psalmody in the Temple and with those other
gifts which she possessed, gifts of prophecy and grace,
Hannah, the Mother of Samuel, towers above the women of her
day.

1
Prophecy a Preparation for Christ.
2
God’s Word to Women, paras, 783, 784.

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 CHAPTER 12

ABIGAIL
(I Sam. 25)

IT is believed that through the covetousness of her

parents Abigail was married to Nabal, a man of great wealth
but of a churlish disposition withal and a drunkard.
Nabal was a prince of the tribe of Judah, a descendant
of Caleb, son of Jephunneh, one of the two spies who were
permitted to see the Promised Land and to have inheritance
therein. One of Caleb’s grandsons was named Ziph and the
descendants of this grandson were known as Ziphites. Ziph had
his settlement in Canaan close to Caleb’s inheritance in the
Hebron country. Nabal belonged to the House of Ziph and by
Josephus is called a Ziphite.
Abigail, whose name signifies ‘a father’s joy’, was also
of the tribe of Judah, a descendant of one of the Judah families
who settled around Carmel; possessions in this country caused
Nabal and Abigail to be known as Carmelites and it is possible
that as Abigail was known as the Carmelitess she was a
chieftainess in her own right.
Nabal’s immense wealth appears to have been derived
from numerous flocks of sheep and goats which had their
pastures south of Carmel, near Maon.
David, in his exile, lurked in the neighbouring
wilderness of Paran. His men not only did no hurt to Nabal’s
flocks, but protected them from the Arabs and wild beasts, and
assisted the herdsmen in every possible way.
When Nabal held his shearing-feast David in very
polite language sent to desire a present from his kinsman of
whatever part of the provision he pleased. Nabal, in the most
harsh and surly manner, told David’s messengers that he knew
better things than to give his servants provisions to a fellow
who had run away from his master to his partisans. Apart from
his natural churlishness there was another reason why Nabal
subjected David to so humiliating treatment. Nabal, as a prince
of Judah, had been brought up in the belief that the future king
of Israel would come from that tribe, and he was well aware
that David was a scion of the House of Caleb-Ephratah of the
royal line from Pharez-Judah. But, to the satisfaction of the
cynical Nabal, Saul of the tribe of Benjamin had been elected
King; hence he sought to wound David’s feelings by referring
to Saul as his master and in this way seeking to disparage
David’s importance as a prince of Judah and by saying to the
messengers, ‘Who is David?’ and ‘Who is the son of Jesse?’ It
was this insult, rather than the refusal of the food of which he
and his band of followers stood in need, which aroused David’s
wrath and caused him to swear to exterminate every person in
the House of Nabal.
When the messengers hastened back to David and told
him how they had been received, David lost no time. He
immediately armed and equipped four hundred of his men and
set forth upon the road to give the egregious Nabal a lesson in
manners. Meanwhile, one of Nabal’s servants who had seen
what had happened reported the whole incident to Abigail,
Nabal’s lovely and intelligent wife. He told her how well
David’s men had treated them, how boorish Nabal’s behaviour
had been, and expressed his fears as to the vengeance that
David would take. They would all suffer for Nabal’s rudeness,
but what was to be done for, as he put it, ‘he is such a son of
Belial, that one cannot speak to him’. Abigail does not appear
to have resented this description of her husband and acted with
commendable promptitude. She took two hundred loaves, two
bottles of wine, five sheep ready dressed, five measures of
parched corn, a hundred clusters of raisins, and two hundred

90
cakes of figs. This substantial gift she put on the backs of asses
and, without saying a word to Nabal; set forth with them in the
direction of David’s camp. When therefore David, cursing
Nabal and swearing to destroy him and his whole household,
was advancing in the direction of Carmel, he found himself
suddenly met by a train of heavily-laden asses conducted by
serving-men and, riding at the head of them, a beautiful
woman.
She, on seeing him, immediately dismounted and,
falling at his feet, addressed him eloquently, not seeking to
excuse her husband but roundly condemning him, and
explaining that all would have been different if she had been
allowed to see David’s emissaries herself. She also recognized
David as the future ruler of Israel and intimated with exquisite
tact that both for the present and for the future it would be wise
to avoid entanglement in a blood feud with a powerful person
like Nabal. She begged him therefore to accept, as a peace
offering, the present that she had brought.
David was deeply moved by her eloquence and beauty.
He also appreciated the sound sense of her words. It was
terrible to think that she might have been among the victims of
his vengeance, and he thanked the Lord for having kept him
from hurting her. He accepted the gift which she had brought
and bade her go in peace.
When she returned home she found a tremendous feast
in progress, and Nabal very drunken. She wisely refrained from
telling him her news that night. It could not, however, be kept
from him for, avaricious as he was, he would soon ask for the
supplies that were missing. On the following morning,
therefore, when Nabal was feeling far from well, Abigail
gently informed him of all that had happened. She had
expected an outburst of fury, but fortunately the anger that
Nabal felt was too much for him. The result was a stroke that

91
rendered him speechless and paralysed, and in ten days he was
a dead man.1
Nabal, upon hearing from Abigail the account of
her meeting with David and her conversation with him,
realized the seriousness of the offence he had caused to the
man who, in spite of appearances would one day be ruler in
Israel. It was this shock more than any of his enormities which
hastened Nabal’s demise.
Abigail’s address to David not only disarmed his
rage but procured his highest esteem for her virtue and her
wisdom; her faith in God and in the fulfilment of prophecy on
his behalf moved him deeply.

‘And (Abigail) fell at his (David’s) feet, and said, Upon

me, my lord, upon me let this iniquity be: and let thine
handmaid, I pray thee, speak in thine audience, and hear the
words of thine handmaid. Let not my lord, I pray thee, regard
this man of Belial, even Nabal: for as his name is, so is he;
Nabal is his name, and folly is with him: but I thine handmaid
saw not the young men of my lord, whom thou didst send. Now
therefore, my lord, as the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth,
seeing the Lord hath withholden thee from coming to shed
blood, and from avenging thyself with thine own hand, now let
thine enemies, and they that seek evil to my lord, be as Nabal.
And now this blessing which thine handmaid hath brought unto
my lord, let it even be given unto the young men that follow
my lord. I pray thee, forgive the trespass of thine handmaid: for
the Lord will certainly make my lord a sure house; because my
lord fighteth the battles of the Lord, and evil hath not been
found in thee all thy days. Yet a man is risen to pursue thee,
and to seek thy soul: but the soul of my lord shall be bound in
the bundle of life with the Lord thy God; and the souls of thine
enemies, them shall He sling out, as out of the middle of a
1
Duff Cooper, David, p. 83.

92
sling. And it shall come to pass, when the Lord shall have done
to my lord according to all the good that He hath spoken
concerning thee, and shall have appointed thee ruler over
Israel; that this shall be no grief unto thee, nor offence of heart
unto my lord, either that thou hast shed blood causeless, or that
my lord hath avenged himself: but when the Lord shall have
dealt well with my lord, then remember thine handmaid. And
David said to Abigail, Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,
which sent thee this day to meet me: and blessed be thy advice,
and blessed be thou, which hast kept me this day from coming
to shed blood, and from avenging myself with mine own hand.
For in very deed, as the Lord God of Israel liveth, which hath
kept me back from hurting thee, except thou hadst hasted and
come to meet me, surely there had not been left unto Nabal by
the morning light (so much as one man child) (R.V.)’ (1 Sam.
25:24-34).

It is said by some Bible students that it is impossible to

trace the source of Abigail’s information with regard to
David’s future greatness, and that it may have been derived
from Samuel or from one of his students at the school of the
prophets. But Abigail did not have to go beyond her own home
for this information, for if she were not aware of the prophecies
concerning the House of Bethlehem-Ephratah to which David
belonged she would learn of them after her marriage to Nabal.
Abigail believed these covenant promises and in God’s
faithfulness to appoint David ‘a sure house’ and to make him
ruler over Israel: ‘The soul of my lord shall be bound in the
bundle of life with the Lord thy God’ — these words have
reference to temporal security as well as to the blessing of God
Almighty upon David as king.
‘When the news was brought to David (of Nabal’s
demise) he was delighted to hear it. It was long since he had
met anyone so beautiful as Abigail, and her intelligence was

93
remarkable. She had made a deep impression upon him during
their short interview, and her faith in his future made him feel
that she would not be unwilling to share it.
He therefore sent to her a proposal of marriage which
she immediately accepted. She returned with the messengers
which he had sent and brought with her five ladies; one of them
was as pretty as herself, and came from an equally honourable
family. Her name was Ahinoam and, with Abigail’s cheerful
consent, David married both of them. The three lived in
complete harmony, and it was Ahinoam who first produced an
heir for David, to whom he gave the name Ammon’. 2
Significantly, the number five occurs in the story of
Abigail: fiye sheep ready dressed; five measures of parched
corn and five ladies who accompanied her when she came to
David for, according to the science of numerics, the number
five signifies ‘Divine Grace’.3 In this connection it is
interesting to note that the Israelites came out of Egypt in ranks
of five and that the number five was an abomination to the
Egyptians.
Again, when under Joshua they took possession of the
Promised Land, the vanguard from the eastern side of Jordan
passed over the river marshalled in fives. Thus were the
Israelites given the seal of ‘Divine Grace’ or ‘Divine Strength’
for the fulfilling of God’s purposes in the world.

2
Duff Cooper, David, p. 84.
3
See Dr. E. W. Bullinger, Number in Scripture, Part 2.

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 CHAPTER 13

BATHSHEBA
(2 Sam. 11, 12)

THE seventh daughter, as the name Bathsheba

signifies, of Eliam, son of Ahithophel and wife of Uriah, the
Hittite, has been recorded in history as having been married to
a foreigner. On this point it cannot be too emphatically stated
that in ancient Israel it was the custom to take the name of the
conquered country, and as the Hittites were among the nations
to be driven out of Canaan the Israelites would take the name
of the people they supplanted and the territory they conquered.
Thus Uriah the Israelite would become known as Uriah the
Hittite because he lived in what was at one time Hittite
territory.
The mysterious empire of the Hittites had by Joshua’s
day dwindled to a few unimportant colonies: in Canaan they
were confined to a small area in southern Judea and were
eventually driven out.
In this way David’s bodyguard who were all of Israel
bore names of foreign and heathen people.
Uriah is a Hebrew name signifying ‘Jehovah is light’, a
name not likely to be found among a heathen people.
The Hittites were an ugly people, with yellow skins,
whose mongoloid features are faithfully represented both on
their own monuments and on those of Egypt. They were squat
and stout; their eyes were dark and their black hair they wore in
pigtails. No racial Hittite would have been accepted as a
husband for the beautiful Bathsheba, of the House of Israel.
While Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, was employed at
the siege of Rabbah she happened to bathe herself in her
garden; David espied her from the roof of his adjacent palace
and sent for her. Bathsheba had little option but to obey the
king’s command. David’s sin with her was made blacker still
when he procured the death of her husband Uriah. When this
foul deed was accomplished David made the widow his wife.
The fact that Bathsheba was granddaughter of Ahithophel may
explain his defection from David.
‘To David Bathsheba seemed not only the most
beautiful but by far the most intelligent woman he had ever
known. She was clever and ambitious. She was determined to
please him and to prove the companion whom he had always
sought in vain. She sincerely loved him as a man — it was
difficult not to — and she loved him the more for being king.
She had been brought up on the fringe of the court. From her
earliest years she had heard little but court gossip: and high
position at court had always been presented to her as the goal
of man’s endeavour, the highest reward that merit could obtain.
Her grandfather had been held out to her as an example of all
that was admirable and he had himself impressed upon her
young mind the importance of worldly success. She had
therefore, believing in her own capabilities, resented her
enforced marriage with an officer who was never likely to rise
high in his profession or to occupy any influential post.
Ahithophel had insisted upon it and his word was law to the
whole family so that it was useless to protest. Now she
suddenly found herself raised to a pinnacle of power, whence it
seemed that she could control the fate of Ahithophel himself,
and come near to ruling the whole kingdom. It was a high test
of character but Bathsheba kept her head. . . . David himself
found it difficult to believe that there could be great evil at the
root of so much good. For he was happy as he had never been,
having in one person the wife whom he adored, the counsellor
whose advice he respected and the sweet companion of whom
he was never weary. His relations with God were of so intimate

96
and close a character that he could not feel happy if he thought
that God was angry. Conversely, he could not believe that God
was angry when he felt so supremely happy. The laws of
religion were not so hard and fast as they came to be at a later
period. They had been very fluid in the days, of the patriarchs,
and had permitted much that future generations would
condemn. He himself was no ordinary man, and he knew it,
and the ordinary rules need not apply to his every act. . . . The
part Bathsheba had to play in public was easy, for custom laid
down in the minutest particulars the forms of mourning which
a widow was required to observe. So long as these were carried
out correctly, nobody was concerned as to the degree of
sincerity that underlay the conventional acts. . . . Nor was there
anything surprising in the fact that when the period of
mourning was completed the king should cast his eye upon the
beautiful young widow and take her into his household as one
of his many wives. Public comment was therefore not aroused,
and if there was some private whispering it was almost entirely
confined to court circles.
‘All these things might indeed so easily have happened
in the natural course of events that there were moments when
David could almost persuade himself that they had done so,
and could forget the terrible message that he had sent to Joab
(11:15). But there were other moments when the sense of guilt
was heavy upon him. He was accustomed to discuss with his
God all matters that closely affected him. He would take to
God the problems that puzzled him, and would usually obtain
assistance in solving them; he would complain to God bitterly
when he met with misfortune, and would thank God from his
heart when all went well. But in his communings with God this
matter of Uriah was never mentioned. . . .
‘It was the business of the prophets to know
everything, and it was not long before the whispers of the court
reached their ears. The two principal prophets at this period

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were Gad and Nathan. The latter was the younger of the two
and the one whom David preferred. He, in turn, deeply loved
his master, whose complex character he understood and
admired. Nathan thought it his duty to ascertain the true facts
upon which the rumours that reached him were based. When he
knew all he felt that he should approach David, for he could
see that the king was unhappy, and he knew that he would
remain so as long as he refused to admit to himself or to God
that he had done grievous wrong.
‘Nathan knew to its depths the generous and
compassionate heart of David, and he knew also that he had
only to touch that heart in order to correct the moral obliquity
which was the cause of his mental distress. Nothing throws a
more revealing light upon the true beauty of David's character
than the story which Nathan from his intimate knowledge of
the man invented in the certainty of the effect it would produce.
‘ “There were two men”, so he began, “in one city; the
one rich, and the other poor. The rich man had exceeding many
flocks and herds: but the poor man had nothing, save one little
ewe lamb, which he had bought and nourished up: and it grew
up together with him, and with his children; it did eat of his
own meat, and drank of his own cup, and lay in his bosom, and
was unto him as a daughter. And there came a traveller unto
the rich man, and he spared to take of his own flock and of his
own herd, to dress for the wayfaring man that was come unto
him; but took the poor man’s lamb, and dressed it for the man
that was come to him.”
‘Before Nathan had finished speaking, David, who had
been seated, sprang to his feet, his eyes blazing with
indignation.
‘ “As the Lord liveth”, he exclaimed, “the man that
hath done this is worthy to die: and he shall restore the lamb
fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no
pity”. Then Nathan, rising also and gazing with stern and

98
sorrowful eyes upon the king, said in a low voice that David
long remembered, “Thou art the man”.
‘Like one walking in darkness suddenly arrested by a
dazzling light shining into his eyes, David remained staring at
the prophet who in a few sentences showed the similarity of his
conduct towards Uriah to that of the rich man in the parable.
When he had ended David had only these words to say, “I have
sinned against the Lord”. . . .
‘Nathan knew when David had confessed his sin that
his penitence came from the depths of his being, and that he
would never again be guilty of such an act. Passionately he
prayed for forgiveness:

‘ “Wash me throughly from mine iniquity

And cleanse me from my sin.
For I acknowledge my transgression
And my sin is ever before me.
Against thee, thee only, have I sinned,
And done this evil in thy sight.”

‘When he had largely eased his mind of remorse and

when he could begin to believe that the sincerity of his
repentance had earned forgiveness, the child who had been
born to Bathsheba fell seriously ill. David felt for all his
children the most tender affection, and this one, the first-born
of the woman whom he loved the best, had already won his
heart. When, therefore, it was stricken by disease he was in
despair. For several successive days he would not eat, nor
drink, nor wash, but continued in unremitting prayer for the
child’s life. When at the end of a week the child died his
servants dared not break the news to him. While the child was
still alive and there was hope, he behaved like one distraught,
and they therefore dreaded what the effect might be when they
told him that all was over. But he read the news in their

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frightened faces and asked them calmly, “Is the child dead?”
And when they, trembling, replied that it was so, he
immediately rose from his knees “washed and anointed
himself, and changed his apparel”. He then worshipped in a
normal manner, and on his return sat down to a meal.
‘His servants were astonished at such unconventional
behaviour, and the bolder among them asked him to explain it.
‘ “What thing is this that thou hast done?” they
enquired, “Thou didst fast and weep for the child, while it was
alive; but when the child was dead, thou didst rise and eat
bread”.
‘He replied, sadly and coldly, “While the child was yet
alive, I fasted and wept: for I said, Who knoweth whether the
Lord will not be gracious to me, that the child may live? But
now he is dead wherefore should I fast? Can I bring him back
again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me”. To
Bathsheba David remained devoted until the end; and she
proved that perfect companion whom he had missed so long
and found at last. Another son was born to her, to whom was
given the name of Solomon.
‘And the Lord loved him; and he sent by the hand of
Nathan the prophet, and he called his name Jedidiah, because
of the Lord.’1 The name Jedidiah given to the child Solomon
by Divine command signifies ‘Pardoned by the Ever-Living’.2
This token of Divine mercy was received by the chastened
David with fervent expressions of gratitude, reflected in many
of his Psalms, notably the fifty-first Psalm.
Bathsheba bore yet three other sons, Nathan, Shimea
and Shobab; she was extremely careful in the education of her
sons, particularly of Solomon, concerning whom many
promises had been made.

1
Duff Cooper, David.
2
2 Sam. 12:24, 25, Ferrar Fenton Translation.

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 David became aware in after years that Bathsheba was
his Divinely-appointed wife and would have been his in God’s
own time; this awareness made his sin appear yet more
heinous, though it also brought home to him a realization of the
tender mercy and forgiveness of his Lord.
And now David the king is an old man and about to quit
this earthly sphere. There is much plotting and intrigue at court
in connection with his successor. One of his sons, Adonijah,
hopes by swift action, ere his father departs, to have the crown
placed upon his own head. Bathsheba, however, had the
solemn promise from David that the crown of Israel should
descend to her son Solomon.
Upon the advice of Nathan, the prophet, her friend and
counsellor, she sought an audience of the king, when she
reiterated his promise of the crown to Solomon. When she left
the king’s apartment Nathan entered to confirm her words.
Then the aged King, roused to indignation, upon hearing of
Adonijah’s attempted usurpation, said to the prophet, ‘Call me
Bathsheba’. When his beloved wife re-entered the apartment
and stood before the King he uttered the words which put all
her fears at rest: ‘As the Lord liveth, that hath redeemed my
soul out of all distress, even as I sware unto thee by the Lord
God of Israel, saying, Assuredly Solomon thy son shall reign
after me, and he shall sit upon my throne in my stead; even so
will I certainly do this day. Then Bathsheba bowed with her
face to the earth, and did reverence to the king, and said, Let
my Lord king David live for ever’ (I Kings 1:28-31).
It has been said of Bathsheba that she never performed
a single action under the thrust of her own impulse; never
uttered a word which was not put into her mouth by some man.
This criticism is but the result of scanty historical records.
Bathsheba, the mother of Solomon, was instrumental in
obtaining the throne for him and because of her the temple at
Jerusalem bore Solomon’s name, not David’s.

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 Bathsheba would be the most honoured woman at
Solomon’s coronation; it was indeed a proud moment for her
when the crown of Israel was placed upon his head.
According to Jewish tradition Bathsheba composed and
recited the thirty-first chapter of Proverbs to her son Solomon
upon the occasion of his marriage to the daughter of Pharaoh.
Bathsheba is one of the four women mentioned in the
Scriptures as ancestresses of our Lord and who, when they
were brought into the royal enclosure in the House of Judah,
were widows.

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 CHAPTER 14

THE QUEEN OF SHEBA

(2 Chron. 9:1-12)

THIS picturesque queen of ancient history, whose

correct title was Queen of Saba, was ruler of the Sabeans, a
people distinct from the Ethiopians and Arabs; it was a custom
among them to have women for their sovereigns in preference
to men. Her name, the Arabs say, was Belkis; the Abyssinians,
Maqueda.1 Our Lord referred to her as ‘the queen of the south’
without mentioning any other name, but gives His sanction to
the truth of the expedition.
This famous royal lady was an Israelite, traditionally
called a Jewess, but whether her ancestors of the tribe of Judah
emigrated from Egypt or Palestine, it is impossible to say; she
was yet a worshipper of the Lord God of Israel although
Sabaism, the worship of sun, moon and stars, was the religion
of her country and of all the East and a constant stumbling-
block to the Israelites.
How large a following of Israelites the Queen had in
her own country is not now known but evidently it was
sufficient to allow of the worship of the God of Israel without
let or hindrance.
There are many instances in history of an Israelite of
the tribe of Judah settling in a foreign country, and with that
Divine gift for rulership which marked this tribe becoming,
with his followers, the dominant party and in time occupying
the throne.

1
James Bruce, African Travels, Vol. I, p. 110.
 Solomon, who in her day sat upon the throne of Israel,
had announced his intention of building a great Temple at
Jerusalem, in the course of which his servants travelled in
many directions to collect material. Southern Arabia was
famous for almug trees or sandal-wood and gold, the gold of
Ophir, a district of south-east Arabia, being greatly prized.
When the emissaries of Solomon came to Southern Arabia for
supplies of timber, gold and precious stones the Queen may
have heard from them of the great wisdom of the King of
Israel. Herself a person of learning and that kind of learning
which was peculiar to Palestine, she could not believe that
these were other than exaggerated stories which she heard, and
determined to test the truth of these reports for herself; she
would take the long journey to Jerusalem and try her kinsman
Solomon with ‘hard questions’. Solomon had the reputation of
solving theological enigmas or parables in which he had been
instructed by Nathan the Prophet. It was, therefore, theological
rather than philosophical questions which she wished to put to
her kinsman Solomon; there was, however, no question too
hard for Solomon for ‘he knew more than all men of the orbits
of the planets, of the origination of light, and fixed sustaining
systems, and the results of the revolving spheres, and his fame
was spread among all the nations around’ (I Kings 5:11-12,
Ferrar Fenton translation).
From her home at Saba, or Azaba on the Arabian Gulf,
the Queen came to Jerusalem, a distance of 1,500 miles, under
the protection of Hiram, King of Tyre, whose daughter is said,
in the forty-fifth Psalm, to have escorted her into Solomon’s
Court. She went not in ships nor through certain parts of Arabia
for fear of attack by Ishmaelites and was escorted by
shepherds, her own subjects, to Jerusalem and back again,
making use of her own country vehicle, the camel — her own
camel a white one of prodigious size and exquisite beauty. 2 In
2
James Bruce, African Travels, Vol. I, p. 122.

104
Israel, royal personages and the nobility rode on white camels
or asses.
The Queen of Sheba’s arrival at Jerusalem was made a
state occasion. Solomon received his kinswoman with every
mark of respect and honoured her at his Court.

‘And when the queen of Sheba heard of the fame of

Solomon she came to prove him with hard questions. And she
came to Jerusalem with a very great train, with camels that bare
spices, and very much gold, and precious stones: and when she
was come to Solomon, she communed with him of all that was
in her heart. And Solomon told her all her questions: there was
not any thing hid from the king, which he told her not. And
when the queen of Sheba had seen all Solomon’s wisdom, and
the house that he had built, and the meat of his table, and the
sitting of his servants, and the attendance of his ministers, and
their apparel, and his cupbearers, and his ascent by which he
went up unto the house of the Lord; there was no more spirit in
her. And she said to the king, It was a true report that I heard in
mine own land of thy acts and of thy wisdom. Howbeit I
believed not the words, until I came, and mine eyes had seen it:
and, behold, the half was not told me: thy wisdom and
prosperity exceedeth the fame which I heard. Happy are thy
men, happy are these thy servants, which stand continually
before thee, and that hear thy wisdom. Blessed be the Lord thy
God, which delighted in thee, to set thee on the throne of Israel:
because the Lord loved Israel for ever, therefore made He thee
king, to do judgment and justice. And she gave the king an
hundred and twenty talents of gold, and of spices very great
store, and precious stones: there came no more such abundance
of spices as these which the queen of Sheba gave to king
Solomon’ (I Kings 10:1-10).

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 We are indebted to the Queen of Sheba for so graphic a
description of the splendour of King Solomon’s Court and the
ascent by which he went up to the house of the Lord. The word
‘ascent’ would have been better translated ‘causeway’ as
elsewhere in the Scriptures. This roadway from Mount Zion
where was the King’s palace and across the valley of Hinnom
to Mount Moriah on the opposite hill where stood the newly-
erected Temple was evidently a great feat of engineering skill
— probably a winding road with many retaining walls — to
have excited the wonder and admiration of the much-travelled
queen of Sheba. It is said that Solomon caused all the roads in
and around Jerusalem to be paved with black basalt brought
from the eastern shores of the Dead Sea.
Apparently the Queen of Sheba came to Jerusalem with
the idea of impressing the King of Israel with her own
splendour, wealth and learning, for when she came to his Court
and beheld so much greater magnificence and wisdom than her
own, ‘there was no more spirit in her’. The reports she had
heard, so far from being exaggerated stories, were
underestimates of Solomon’s glory and scientific knowledge;
her spontaneous confession to Solomon of his greater glory and
wisdom reveals the nobility of her character.
But above all her motives for coming to Jerusalem one
stands out in high relief; we are told that it was ‘concerning the
name of the Lord’ that this queen came to consult Solomon. To
the theological questions which she put to the King she
received the enlightenment which she desired. The Queen of
Sheba’s confidence in the Lord God of Israel to fulfil His
covenant with Abraham is strikingly borne out in her words,
‘because thy God loved Israel, to establish them for ever’. This
is by no means the language of a pagan but of a person skilled
in the ancient history of Israel.3

3
James Bruce, African Travels, Vol. I, p. 112.

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 The Scripture record of the visit of the Queen of Sheba
to the king of Israel ends with the simple statement, ‘She
turned and went to her own country, she and her servants’.
A wealth of legend has grown around this famous royal
visit to the entire obscuration of the germ of truth in the
tradition which lies buried beneath.
The territory of, the Queen of Sheba included the land
on the opposite shores of the Red Sea from Arabia, Ethiopia or
Cush, now known as Abyssinia, derived from the Arabic name
Habesh; there was also another Ethiopia to the east of Arabia,
known at that time as Cush, as shown on ancient maps.
According to the law of her country the reigning
sovereign must be a woman; therefore the Queen of Sheba
could not be succeeded by her son. It was probably on the
advice of King Solomon that the Queen of Sheba decided to
make her son Viceroy, or Governor, on the opposite shores of
the Red Sea, for on her return to her capital, Azaba, she sent
her son to Jerusalem to be trained in rulership. This task was
faithfully carried out by the King of Israel and upon the
completion of the young man’s training in governorship,
Solomon had the Queen of Sheba’s son ordained and anointed
Viceroy of Ethiopia in the Temple at Jerusalem, and the name
Menelik bestowed upon him which signifies, ‘to set up and
ordain’. The young man, being of the Israel faith, Solomon sent
with him a number of high-standing priests and a large
following of Israelites, chiefly of the tribe of Judah, so that the
newly-appointed Governor entered upon his duties in dignity
and with the support of the influential King of Israel.
Also with Menelik came many Doctors of the Law,
particularly one of each tribe to make judges in the kingdom
from whom the present Umbares or Supreme Judges derive,
three of whom always attend the king; and with these came

107
also Azarias, son of Zadok, the High Priest who brought a
Hebrew transcript of the Law. 4
In time this governorship became a dynasty which
continues in Abyssinia to the present day; also the descendants
of the Israelites who came with Menelik remain a distinct
though greatly impoverished people, practising a corrupt
Hebrew religion, and known as the Falasha.
The female succession continued in the Arabian
territory down to, at least, New Testament times, for we read of
Candace, Queen of the Ethiopians (another of the Arabian
titles) whose steward, a man of great authority at her Court and
an Israelite who had come up to Jerusalem to worship; his
meeting with Philip, the Evangelist, and his conversion and
baptism, are recorded in the eighth chapter of the Acts of the
Apostles.
It is said that the name Candace denotes ‘royal
authority’ and was commonly given to the queens of Meroe in
Ethiopia. It is certain that Kanadah in the Abyssinian language
signifies a governor. Pliny says that the government of Ethiopia
subsisted for several generations in the hands of queens named
Candace. It is said that by the preaching of her eunuch, the
queen, Candace, was converted to the Christian faith.
The Queen of Sheba’s visit to King Solomon received
lasting fame and approval from our Lord’s references to this
event. Addressing the Pharisees who had gathered around Him
our Lord made several references to well known events in
Israel history, one of which was relating to the Queen of Sheba:
‘The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with the
men of this generation, and condemn (convict) them: for she
came from the utmost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of
Solomon; and, behold, a greater than Solomon is here’ (Luke
11:31). This is one of our Lord’s few recorded references to the
resurrection.
4
James Bruce, African Travels, Vol. I, p. 113.

108
 Our Lord never would have brought in the name of this
great queen if the charge of immorality could have been
levelled against her; nor would the Pharisees, who were well
versed in their ancient history, have tolerated hearing this
queen held up to them as an example had her character been
besmirched in the manner we are so glibly told today.
How meticulously correct was our Lord’s reference to
her as ‘the queen of the south’, for from Jerusalem looking
south, it is an almost straight line to Southern Arabia. And
again, how precise is His description, ‘the utmost parts of the
earth’, for again looking south the land surface ends where
Southern Arabia is joined by the sea.

109
 CHAPTER 15

HULDAH THE PROPHETESS

(2 Kings 22)

IN the days of Solomon’s son the whole body politic of

Israel was changed by the secession of ten tribes and, having
with them the birthright tribe of Ephraim they retained the
name, House of Israel. Two tribes only, Judah and Benjamin,
remained loyal to the throne of David, and were known as the
House of Judah. Henceforth the history of these two Houses
was separate and distinct. The House of Israel was taken
captive in c. 725 B.C.; 140 years earlier than the final downfall
of the House of Judah. The prophecies concerning the
restoration and expansion of the House of Israel have been
amply fulfilled; the prophecies concerning the partial
restoration of the House of Judah have been fulfilled and await
the final stage when the House of Israel and the House of Judah
will again become one nation. ‘And I will set up one shepherd
over them, and he shall feed them, even My servant David; he
shall feed them, and he shall be their shepherd. And I the Lord
will be their God, and My servant David a prince among them'’
(Ezek. 34:23, 24).
‘And there shall be one fold, and one shepherd’ (John
10:16).
In the reign of Josiah, called ‘the faithful’, last king of
Judah prior to the captivity, when all but a few in the nation
had forgotten God and the teaching of Moses, a general repair
and restoration of the Temple of Jerusalem was ordered by the
king, himself a good man who ‘walked in all the paths of his
ancestor David, and did not turn to the right or left’ (Ferrar
Fenton Translation).
 While this important work was in progress a book was
found by Hilkiah the High Priest which proved to be the
‘original Book of the Law. . . the autograph copy engraved by
Moses and placed in the Ark’ (Ferrar Fenton Notes). 1 Hilkiah
handed the book to Shaphan the scribe, saying, ‘I have found
the book of the law in the house of the Lord . . . and Shaphan
the scribe told the king, saying, Hilkiah the priest hath
delivered me a book. And Shaphan read it before the king.
‘And it came to pass, when the king had heard the
words of the book of the law, that he rent his clothes. And the
king commanded. . . Go ye, inquire of the Lord for me, and for
the people, and for all Judah, concerning the words of this book
that is found: for great is the wrath of the Lord that is kindled
against us, because our fathers have not hearkened unto the
words of this book, to do according unto all that is written
concerning us’.
So Hilkiah the priest went to Huldah the prophetess, the
wife of Shallum, keeper of the ward-robe, and communed with
her. This Shallum was a man of dignity and of an eminent
family.2 His wife, Huldah, was well known for her piety and
gift of prophecy. Some translations have ‘she dwelt in
Jerusalem in the college’; ‘she dwelt in Jerusalem in the second
rank of the Levites’, and ‘she dwelt in Jerusalem in the second
quarter’.
When the deputation from Josiah, the king, came to her
‘she said unto them, Thus saith the Lord, the God of Israel: Tell
ye the man that sent you to me.
‘Thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will bring evil upon this
place, and upon the inhabitants thereof, even all the words of
the book which the king of Judah hath read. Because they have
forsaken Me, and have burned incense unto other gods, that
they might provoke me to anger with all the work of their

1
Now believed to have been the Book of Deuteronomy.
2
Josephus, Antiq., Bk. X, Chap. IV.

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hands; therefore My wrath shall be kindled against this place,
and it shall not be quenched. But unto the king of Judah, who
sent you to inquire of the Lord, thus shall ye say to him, Thus
saith the Lord, the God of Israel: As touching the words which
thou hast heard, because thine heart was tender, and thou didst
humble thyself before the Lord, when thou heardest what I
spake against this place, and against the inhabitants thereof,
that they should become a desolation and a curse, and hast rent
thy clothes and wept before Me; I also have heard thee, saith
the Lord. Therefore, behold, I will gather thee to thy fathers,
and thou shalt be gathered into thy grave in peace, neither shall
thine eyes see all the evil which I will bring upon this place.
And they brought the king word again’ (R.V.).
So great was the esteem in which Huldah, the
prophetess was held, that the high dignitaries of the Temple
and the Royal Court came to her to obtain light upon God’s
Law.
It is perfectly clear that women were admitted to the
highest office of teaching, that of prophets, and that Huldah
was the wisest prophet of the times. To her the deputation from
the king came to learn whether the book they had found was
really the ‘Law of the Lord’. The revelation of God given her
led to national reform and revival of religion.
Schroeder remarks in his Commentary, ‘Prophecy was
a gift of the Spirit and as being so had no restriction as to sex’.
If the question be asked, ‘What is it to prophesy in the
Biblical sense of the word?’ the answer must be, ‘To speak for
God’.3
Huldah was one of the great and wise women of her
day, used of God for the reproof and reform of His people
Israel, and whose name in the nation was never forgotten. It
was the ideas and views of a later age when woman had lost

3
Katharine Bushnell, God’s Word to Women, para. 778.

112
much of her dignity which led Luther to express the opinion,
‘No gown worse becomes a woman than to be wise’.
The prophecy of Huldah was literally fulfilled; the
reform carried out by Josiah was of short duration, and after his
death all the evil foretold by Huldah overtook the nation, and
the House of Judah was led away into captivity.

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 CHAPTER 16

QUEEN ESTHER
(Book of Esther)

THE Apostle Paul in his second letter to Timothy

states: ‘All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is
profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for
instruction in righteousness’ (3:16), and so every Book that
God has written has a Divine Idea which it is our business to
discover and to study; it will thus become obvious that the
Book of Esther is inserted in our Holy Scriptures for the
purpose of ‘instruction in righteousness’.
The late Rev. Dr. Pascoe Goard pointed out that the
Book of Esther is the story of the final drama in the history of
the Amalakites and that the story begins actually in the Book of
Numbers where the utter destruction of the Amalakites is
foretold. In the destruction of the House of Haman and the
contemporary Amalakites this prophecy was fulfilled.
The story belongs to the captive House of Judah and is
one of the very few we possess which tell of the conditions
under which the tribes of Judah and Benjamin lived in the land
of strangers.
When Jeconiah, king of Judah and grandson of the good
king Josiah, was taken captive to Babylon he had in his
entourage a man of the tribe of Benjamin named Kishai, a
typical Benjamite name. This man’s grandson was Mordecai
and it would seem that this Benjamite family continued to fill
posts of distinction at the Court of Nebuchadnezzar as they had
at the Court of Judah. When the Babylonian empire was
conquered by the Persians Mordecai was granted a post at the
Court of Ahasuerus.
 The identity of Ahasuerus has puzzled commentators
and students of the Scriptures and on this point no agreement
has been reached. Ferrar Fenton, however, in his translation of
the Scriptures has unwittingly given the clue to the identity of
Ahasuerus.
Among the Persians Ahaz was a title meaning king. The
personage of history who liberatedd the House of Judah was, as
we know him, Cyrus. Ferrar Fenton gives the more correct
spelling and pronunciation of his name Kerosh, and sometimes
Khushrush. This name is spelt and pronounced according to the
nationality of the person recording his history and so in the
Hebrew we have Ahashuerus or King Kerosh, while his throne
name was Artaxerxes and under his throne name much of his
history was recorded.
This discovery opens up the Book of Esther in a
wonderful way and makes much that was obscure more easily
understood.
This Cyrus, or Keros, or Ahaz Kerosh or Ahasuerus
conquered the Babylonian Empire and so had under his rule
many races.
To celebrate his victory Cyrus gave a great feast lasting
eighty days. It was a Persian custom to unite great councils
with great festivities and this celebrated feast was carried out
with more than usual Oriental splendour.
Towards the end of the feast the supreme Queen,
Vashti, was summoned by the king to appear before the
assembled guests. Vashti signifies simply ‘beauty’ and was not
her real name, which was said to be Amestris. The king sent his
seven chamberlains to conduct Vashti in state into his presence,
and with that disregard for the rights of others which marked
Eastern potentates Cyrus expected his command to be obeyed
forthwith; no small consternation was caused at Court when
Vashti refused to appear. The king himself was ‘wroth’ and
consulted the seven princes who were his counsellors as to the

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steps which should be taken to punish Vashti for this flagrant
act of disobedience. Something must be done, but it must be
according to law. As the law then stood a wife could be
divorced for disobedience and the same law must apply even
were the wife a queen, and so Vashti was deposed in the third
year of the reign of Cyrus.
Cyrus appears to have taken little notice of the Jewish
captives in his conquered territory and does not appear to have
been acquainted with their appearance as distinct from his
other subjects. The king readily acquiesced in the suggestion of
his counsellors that another wife should be found to replace
Vashti, and so from all the provinces of his kingdom young
women were brought to be prepared and trained in Court
etiquette, that from among them the king might choose one to
take Vashti’s place.
Mordecai, the Benjamite, had brought up a young
cousin, Hadassah, which name signifies ‘myrtle’, ‘that is,
Esther, his uncle’s daughter: for she had neither father nor
mother, and the maid was fair and beautiful; whom Mordecai,
when her father and mother were dead, took for his own
daughter’. On her mother’s side Hadassah was of the royal
House of Judah.1
To the dismay of Mordecai, this beloved young cousin
was among the maidens chosen to be prepared for the king’s
palace. In parting with Hadassah, one of Mordecai’s many
injunctions to her was that she should not ‘shew her people nor
her kindred’. Probably with this in view it was Mordecai
himself who changed her name from the Hebrew Hadassah to
the Persian Esther — a star — and so the myrtle that bloomed
in the Hebrew home became a star to shine in the Persian
palace.
Soon, Esther found favour with Hegai, the governor of
the women’s quarters. Mordecai, in deepest concern for the
1
Josephus, Antiq., Bk. XI, Chap. VI.

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fate of his beloved young kinswoman, paced before the court
of the women’s quarters every day ‘to know how Esther did,
and what should become of her’. It was only as a court official
himself that Mordecai dared to venture on to the forecourt of
the women’s quarters. Not yet were Esther and Mordecai aware
that their separation and association with the Persian monarch
was part of the Divine plan for the liberation of their people.
Esther’s exaltation was soon to be announced. Once the
beautiful young Hebrew woman appeared before Cyrus the
king, her fate was sealed: none but she had the remotest chance
of becoming ‘Queen of Queens’.
‘Esther had not yet shewed her kindred nor her people;
as Mordecai had charged her: for Esther did the commandment
of Mordecai, like as when she was brought up with him.’ And
Mordecai also was honoured for he was promoted at Court and
‘sat in the king’s gate’ as one of the king’s counsellors. On the
occasion of his marriage to Esther, Cyrus ‘made a great feast
unto all his princes. . . even Esther’s feast’, a feast in her
honour which was marked by a release of prisoners and
remittance of tribute.
The description of this feast corresponds to the
statements of ancient Persian luxury and magnificence which
the Greek authors have sent down to us, and which they state to
have been remarkably evinced in their banquets. Their
sumptuousness in this respect became proverbial. The vast
numbers of persons entertained at their great feasts, as well as
the long continuance of these feasts, are points noted by
ancient writers.
The advancement of Mordecai at the Court of Cyrus
was a .source of annoyance and jealousy to the Prime Minister,
Haman, the Agagite, friend and counsellor of the king, and
who, much in the royal favour, induced Cyrus to issue a
command that his more exalted status should be acknowledged
by the people, and that he should receive from them that

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reverence and popular worship which he craved. Haman was
exceedingly mortified to find that Mordecai, whom he had
discovered to be a Jew, would take no part in this popular
homage and worship of the Prime Minister.
Mordecai would not bow because it involved religious
homage and this he was not prepared to give to any but the
Lord God of Israel. Haman’s mind became filled with ideas of
revenge and, scorning to lay hands on Mordecai, he resolved to
have the whole race of the Jews in the Persian territories
exterminated.
Representing to Cyrus that ‘There is a certain people
scattered abroad and dispersed among the people in all the
provinces of thy kingdom; and their laws are diverse from all
people; neither keep they the king’s laws: therefore it is not for
the king’s profit to suffer them. If it please the king, let it be
written that they may be destroyed: and I will pay ten thousand
talents of silver to the hands of those that have the charge of
the business, to bring it into the king’s treasuries. And the king
took his ring from his hand, and gave it unto Haman, the son of
Hammedatha the Agagite, the Jews’ enemy. And the king said
unto Haman, The silver is given to thee, the people also, to do
with them as it seemeth good to thee. Then were the king’s
scribes called on the thirteenth day of the first month, and there
was written according to all that Haman had commanded unto
the king’s lieutenants, and to the governors that were over
every province, and to the rulers of every people of every
province according to the writing thereof, and to every people
after their language; in the name of king Ahasuerus (Cyrus)
was it written, and sealed with the king’s ring. And the letters
were sent by posts into all the king’s provinces, to destroy, to
kill, and to cause to perish, all Jews, both Young and old, little
children and women, in one day, even upon the thirteenth day
of the twelfth month, which is the month Adar, and to take the
spoil of them for a prey. The copy of the writing for a

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commandment to be given in every province was published
unto all people, that they should be ready against that day. The
posts went out, being hastened by the king’s commandment,
and the decree was given in Shushan the palace. And the king
and Haman sat down to drink; but the city Shushan was
perplexed’ (3:8-15).
Mordecai, with consternation, read this decree of the
king and ‘rent his clothes, and put on sackcloth with ashes’.
Queen Esther, in the seclusion of the palace heard of it from
her maids and her chamberlains. ‘Then was the queen
exceedingly grieved’, and she sent one of the king’s
chamberlains to Mordecai with a request for further particulars
of the threatened disaster to their people. Mordecai had already
declared himself to be a Jew and now it was necessary that
Esther also should declare her race at Court.
The Persians at that time had the most wonderful postal
system in the world and from Shushan, ‘The City of the Lily’;
the decree of death to the Jewish people throughout the Empire
was being prepared. Hatach, the king’s chamberlain, deputed to
wait upon Esther, was the medium by which the Queen
communicated with her cousin, Mordecai, outside the palace,
and now to convince Esther of the desperate situation of the
Jewish people, Mordecai ‘gave him the copy of the writing of
the decree that was given at Shush an to destroy them, to show
it unto Esther, and to declare it unto her, and to charge her that
she should go in unto the king, to make supplication unto him,
and to make request before him or her people. And Hatach
came and told Esther the words of Mordecai. Again Esther
spake unto Hatach, and gave him commandment unto
Mordecai; All the king’s servants, and the people of the king’s
provinces, do know, that whosoever, whether man or woman,
shall come unto the king, into the inner court, who is not
called, there is one law of his to put him to death, except such
to whom the king shall hold out the golden sceptre, that he may

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live: but I have not been called to come in unto the king these
thirty days. And they told to Mordecai Esther’s words. Then
Mordecai commanded to answer Esther, Think not with thyself
that thou shalt escape in the king’s house, more than all the
Jews. For if thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, then
shall there enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from
another place; but thou and thy father’s house shall be
destroyed: and who knoweth whether thou art come to the
kingdom for such a time as this? Then Esther bade them return
Mordecai this answer, Go, gather together all the Jews that are
present in Shushan, and fast ye for me, and neither eat nor
drink three days, night or day. I also and my maidens will fast
likewise; and so will I go in unto the king, which is not
according to the law: and if I perish, I perish. So Mordecai
went his way, and did according to all that Esther had
commanded him’ (4:8-17).
It is instructive to observe how little the heart of Esther
was changed by her elevation to the throne. As an Israelite she
believed it to be a principle in the Divine government that
whenever a child of God occupies a position by the
appointment of Providence it is that he (or she) may there
perform some specific work for God.
It seemed to Mordecai also that the strange life of
Esther was designed by Providence to effect the safety of the
Israel of God: ‘Who knoweth whether thou art come to the
kingdom for such a time as this’.
The answer of Esther to Mordecai’s appeal was one
that, manifesting Esther’s piety, must have greatly comforted
him. It is evident from the words of Esther that her maidens
also were of her own race, otherwise they could not have
united with her in fasting and in prayer to the Lord God of
Israel.
‘Now it came to pass on the third day, that Esther put
on her royal apparel, and stood in the inner court of the king’s

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house, over against the king’s house: and the king sat upon his
royal throne in the royal house, over against the gate of the
house. And it was so, when the king saw Esther the queen
standing in the court, that she obtained favour in his sight: and
the king held out to Esther the golden sceptre that was in his
hand. So Esther drew near, and touched the top of the sceptre.
Then said the king unto her, What wilt thou, queen Esther? and
what is thy request? It shall be even given thee to the half of
the kingdom. And Esther answered, If it seem good unto the
king, let the king and Haman come this day to the banquet that
I have prepared for him.’
It was a custom of the Persians to grant requests at
banquets, and so Queen Esther invited the King and his Prime
Minister Haman to a banquet. On the night prior to the banquet
‘could not the king sleep’, and calling for the Court chronicles
and having the latest records read to him it was found that
Mordecai had rendered signal service to the king by
discovering and revealing a plot by two of the king’s
chamberlains, Bigthan and Teresh, to take the life of the king.
And the king said, ‘What honour and dignity hath been done to
Mordecai for this?’ And his servants answered, ‘There is
nothing done for him’. The Persians had an order called
‘Orongae’, or ‘Benefactions of the King’; men who had
rendered signal service were duly and sometimes extravagantly
rewarded.
The King and Haman came in state to the banquet
which Queen Esther had prepared. Though a king ate alone, his
guests were allowed to take wine with him afterwards, and this
was the moment when requests were made.
The request of Queen Esther was a large one in face of
an unalterable decree; the king, however, in granting her
request found a way out of the difficulty: the decree could not
be reversed but an antidote was provided; the Jews were
allowed to act on the defensive and so the force of the decree

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was broken. The king honoured Mordecai as the saviour of his
life and the relative of his queen, Esther, by making him Prime
Minister instead of the wicked Haman who ended his life on
the gallows which he had prepared for Mordecai.
In the homes of the Jews sorrow and fear of coming
destruction was replaced by joy and gladness and the exchange
of presents. A memorial feast was instituted to be known for all
time as the ‘Feast of Purim’; not only was the deliverance to be
remembered but those religious acts by which it was preceded.
Not only was Queen Esther, at the peril of her life,
instrumental in the deliverance of her people but also by her
noble conduct and prayers effecting a change of heart in her
husband Cyrus. The heathen king became a true follower of the
Lord God of Israel, thus fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah:

‘Who calls His Shepherd, Cyrus,

Who will effect My plans;
Who Jerusalem will rebuild,
And found a Temple there!
Thus saith the Lord to His Messiah,
To Cyrus, whose right hand He wields . . .
Who called your name, am Israel’s God,
For Jacob’s sake, My friend,
And Israel’s, whom I chose
I call you by your name,
To an Office you know not.’2

This was foretold of Cyrus one hundred and forty

years before the Temple at Jerusalem was demolished. Cyrus
was called God’s Shepherd by Xenophon as well as by Isaiah.
When Esther’s husband, Cyrus, read the prophecy of
Isaiah, he declared: ‘Thus saith Cyrus the King: Since God
Almighty hath appointed me to be king of the habitable earth, I
2
Isa. 44:28; 45:1, 4, Ferrar Fenton Translation.

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believe that he is that God which the nation of the Israelites
worship; for indeed He foretold my name by the prophets, and
that I should build Him a house at Jerusalem, in the country of
Judea.’3
It is recorded that when Cyrus read the prophecy ‘and
admired the Divine Power’ an earnest desire seized upon him
to fulfil what was so written . . . ‘Cyrus also sent back to
Jerusalem the vessels of gold which king Nebuchadnezzar had
pillaged out of the Temple, and had carried to Babylon’.
As instance of the complete change in Cyrus, the
onetime heathen potentate, he declares in his decree giving the
Jews liberty to return to Palestine and to rebuild the Temple at
Jerusalem; ‘I permit them to have the same honour which they
were used to have from their forefathers. . . . The priests shall
also offer these sacrifices according to the laws of Moses in
Jerusalem; and when they offer them, they shall pray to God
for the preservation of the king and of his family, that the
kingdom of Persia may continue’.4
The inventory of the Temple treasures was put into the
hands of Cyrus; the king passed it on to his treasurer and at the
same time gave order for their return to Jerusalem, ‘The whole
of them were carried by Shashba-zar with the returning
transports from Babel to Jerusalem’.
It is recorded that Cyrus died in peace in Persia but
whether Esther or Vashti was the mother of the heir to the
throne is not recorded. That Cyrus died before his queen is
practically certain for Esther and Mordecai were entombed in
the same spot in Hamadan.
The Jewish people have never forgotten the debt they
owe to the great Queen Esther: the feast of Purim is kept up to
this day and the story of their deliverance which her noble and
courageous action, together with the deep piety and reliance on

3
Josephus, Antiq., Bk. XI, Chap. I.
4
Ibid.

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the Lord God of Israel to save His people, evinced by both
herself and Mordecai, is recited at this annual feast.
Sir John Malcolm in his Sketches on Persia, tells us that
the sepulchre of Esther and Mordecai stands near the centre of
the city of Hamadan. It is a square building terminated by a
dome, with an inscription in Hebrew upon it, translated and
sent to him by Sir George Gore Ouseley, late Ambassador to
the Court of Persia. It is as follows:

‘Thursday, fifteenth of the month Adar, in the year

4474 from the creation of the world was finished the building
of this temple over the graves of Esther and Mordecai, by the
hands of the good-hearted brothers, Elias and Samuel, the sons
of the deceased Ishmael of Kashan.’

In a description of the interior Sir R. E. Porter states,

‘On passing through the little portal which we did in an almost
doubled position, we entered a small arched chamber in which
are seen the graves of several rabbis. Having trod lightly by
their graves a second door of such very small dimensions
presented itself at the end of this vestibule that we were
constrained to enter it on our hands and knees, and then,
standing up we found ourselves in a larger chamber to which
appertained the dome. Immediately under its concave stand
two sarcophagi, made of a very dark wood, carved with great
intricacy of pattern and richness of twisted ornament, with a
line of inscription in Hebrew running round the upper ledge of
each. The Sarcophagi were rescued from the ruins of the first
edifice at its demolition by the Tartars and preserved on the
same sacred spot.’
Dr. J. E. Polak, formerly physician to the late Shah of
Persia, gives similar information in his work, Persia: ‘The only
national monument which the Jews possess in Persia is the
tomb of Esther at Hamadan, the ancient Ecbatana whither they

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have made pilgrimage from time immemorial. . . . In the
entrance hall which has but a low ceiling are recorded the
names of pilgrims; also the year when the building was
restored. Then one gains entrance to a small four-cornered
chamber in which there are two high sarcophagi made of oak
which are the monuments of Esther and Mordecai. On both of
them are inscribed in Hebrew the words of the last chapter of
the Book of Esther as well as the names of three physicians at
whose expense the tomb was repaired’ (p. 26).
The last chapter of the Book of Esther, with the last
verse of the previous chapter, states:

‘And the decree of Esther confirmed these matters of

Purim; and it was written in the book. And the king Ahasuerus
(Cyrus) laid a tribute upon the land, and upon the isles of the
sea.
And all the acts of his power and of his might, and the
declaration of the greatness of Mordecai, whereunto the king
advanced him, are they not written in the book of the
chronicles of the kings of Media and Persia? For Mordecai the
Jew was next unto king Ahasuerus (Cyrus), and great among
the Jews, and accepted of the multitude of his brethren, seeking
the wealth of his people, and speaking peace to all his seed.’

In this connection Professor Upham, in his Wise Men

(p. 117), observes:

‘In the historical cycles of the ancient world, wherever

the centre of power is, there the Hebrew is sure to be, and sure
to draw to himself the chief interest. So it is on the shores of
the Nile, by the rivers of Babylon and in the palace of the great
King in Sushan. With this people the true interest of history
begins; and it seems ordained that it shall never afterwards be
wholly separated from them. The predestined end of the culture

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of the Greeks was reached when Hebrew evangelists and
apostles made their language imperishable.’

Queen Esther stands out in ancient history as a great

Hebrew woman who ‘wrought her people lasting good’ and
provided that ‘example in righteousness’ which the
descendants of her race, the English-speaking people, ever tend
to follow.

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 CHAPTER 17

THE VIRGIN MOTHER

THE prophecy of Isaiah, ‘Behold, a virgin shall
conceive, and bear a son, and shall call His name Immanuel’
(7:14), is the Word of God written in the Old Testament to be
fulfilled in the New in the birth of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus
Christ. Not only was His virgin birth foretold, but also the
place of His nativity, for the prophet Micah is most explicit on
this point:

‘And thou Bethleem — House of Ephratah, art few in

number to be reckoned among the thousands of Judah; yet out
of thee shall One come forth to Me, to be Ruler of Israel; and
His goings forth were from the beginning, from eternity’ (v. 2,
Septuagint).

Some time before the incarnation of our Lord an

opinion prevailed among the more pious Jews that Jehovah
would condescend to favour them with a clearer revelation by
the mission of some eminent person qualified from above to
instruct them in the things pertaining to the Kingdom of God.
This opinion was founded on the prediction of the ancient
prophets, who had described with the utmost beauty and
cleverness the person, character and glory of the Messiah.
Relying on the fulfilment of these prophecies, the
devout persons amongst the Jews imagined the time appointed
by God to be at hand, and that the promised Messiah would
shortly make His appearance, and therefore are said to have
waited night and day for ‘the consolation of Israel’. A mighty
Deliverer, a conquering Saviour, was their conception of what
the first Advent should be and as a result very few of these
watchers recognized in the child Jesus, born of a Virgin, and in
some obscurity, the fulfilment of the very prophecies on which
they relied.
Today the virgin birth of Christ is generally accepted,
yet there is a modern tendency to reject this great fundamental
of the Christian Faith, upon which one theologian has written
warningly: ‘It is well known that the last ten or twenty years
have been marked by a determined assault upon the truth of the
virgin birth of Christ. . . because it is supposed that the
evidence for this miracle is more readily got rid of than the
evidence for public facts such as the resurrection. The result is
that in very many quarters the virgin birth of Christ is treated as
a fable. . . . Among those who reject the virgin birth of Christ
the Lord, few will be found — I do not know any — who take,
in other respects, an adequate view of the Person and work of
the Saviour. . . . Rejection of the virgin birth seldom, if ever,
goes by itself. Those who take the lines of denial. . . do great
injustice to the evidence and importance of the doctrine they
reject. The evidence, if not of the same public kind as that for
the resurrection, is far stronger than the objector allows, and
the fact denied enters far more vitally into the essence of the
Christian faith than he supposes. It is in truth a very superficial
way of speaking or thinking of the virgin birth to say that
nothing depends on this belief for our estimate of Christ. Who
that reflects on the subject can fail to see that if Christ was
virgin born — if He was truly conceived as the creed says, “by
the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary” — there must of
necessity enter a supernatural element into His Person: while if
Christ was sinless, much more if He was the Word of God
incarnate, there must have been a miracle — the most
stupendous miracle in the Universe — in His origin.
‘One’s mind turns first to that oldest of all evangelical
promises that the seed of the woman would bruise the head of
the serpent. “I will put enmity”, says Jehovah to the serpent-

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tempter, “between thee and the woman, and between thy seed
and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his
heel”. It is a forceless weakening of this first word of Gospel in
the Bible to explain it as a lasting feud between the race of men
and the brood of serpents. . . . The “Seed”, who should destroy
him is described emphatically as the woman's seed. . . . It
remains significant that this peculiar phrase should be chosen
to designate the future Deliverer. . . .
‘By general consent the narrative in Matthew (ch. I, 2)
and in Luke (ch. I, 2) are independent-that is they are not
derived one from the other — yet they both affirm in detailed
story that Jesus, conceived of the Holy Spirit, was born of a
pure virgin, Mary of Nazareth, espoused to Joseph whose wife
she afterwards became, a perusal of the narratives shows
clearly — what might have been expected — that the
information they convey was derived from no lower source
than Mary and Joseph themselves. There is a marked feature of
contrasts in the narratives — that Matthew’s narrative is all
told from Joseph’s point of view, and Luke’s is all told from
Mary’s. The signs of this are unmistakable. Matthew’s tells
about Joseph’s difficulties and action, and says little or nothing
about Mary’s thoughts and feelings. Luke tells much about
Mary — even her inmost thoughts — but says next to nothing
directly about Joseph. The narratives are not contradictory, but
are independent and complementary. The one supplements and
complements the other. Both together are needed to give the
whole story. They bear in themselves the stamp of truth,
honesty and purity and are worthy of all acceptation.’1
The Virgin, being ordained by the Most High to be the
mother of the Redeemer of Israel and the Saviour of the World,
was saluted by the angel in language becoming her lofty
destiny, ‘Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with
thee’. Perceiving the goodness of her heart the angel
1
Prof. James Orr, The Fundamentals, Vol. I.

129
vouchsafed an immediate answer to her enquiry as to how this
could be brought about, ‘The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee,
and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee’, or in
other words, this marvellous event shall be brought about by
the aid of the Holy Spirit and wonderful exertion of the power
of the most High. ‘And the angel said unto her. . . . Therefore
also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called
the Son of God.’
It has been rightly pointed out that ‘Mary had a
wonderful character which is not sufficiently appreciated. She
had reached that high pinnacle of purity and self-renunciation
from which she could regard dishonour with scorn and allying
her will with the will of her God she became in her own person
the one to realize the promise that the Seed of the woman
should bruise the serpent’s head’. The self-dedication of Mary
is emphasized in the marginal reading of Luke 1:28 (A.V.),
where for ‘highly favoured’ we read ‘graciously accepted’.
Thus Mary believed unhesitatingly the announcement of the
angel, ‘The Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of His
father David: and He shall reign over the house of Jacob for
ever; and of His kingdom there shall be no end’.
When the Virgin realized that she was indeed to
become a mother, to be blessed above women, for she, with the
rest of the daughters of Israel had grown up with the hope of
being selected by God to be the honoured mother of the
Redeemer of Israel, she arose and went ‘with haste’ far away
from Nazareth to a city of Judah, perhaps more correctly the
city Juttah in Judea, a Levitical city, ninety miles from
Nazareth, to the house of her cousin Elizabeth, the wife of a
high-standing priest there, Zacharias, both of them descendants
of Aaron.
Upon reaching her cousin’s house, where she abode
three months, Mary’s joy was expressed in the beautiful song
of the Magnificat:

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 My soul doth magnify the Lord.
And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.
For He hath regarded the low estate of His handmaiden:
For, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call
me blessed.
For He that is mighty hath done to me great things; and
holy is His name.
And His mercy is on them that fear Him from
generation to generation.
He hath shewed strength with His arm;
He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their
hearts.
He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and
exalted them of low degree.
He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich
He hath sent empty away.
He hath holpen His servant Israel, in remembrance of
His mercy.
As He spake to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed
for ever.

These deathless words of the blessed Virgin have been

the comfort and joy of Christians for countless generations and
in every clime.
Joseph, by Divine command, now became the husband
and protector of Mary. ‘Fear not to take unto thee Mary thy
wife’ and so together they went up to Bethlehem, ‘the City of
David’, to be taxed or enrolled according to the decree of
Caesar Augustus that ‘all the world should be taxed’, i.e. the
Roman world.
The word translated ‘inn’ in Luke 1:7 as the place in
which Mary and Joseph could not find shelter was not a ‘khan’
but a private dwelling house so full of guests at the time that

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hospitality could not be shown to Mary and her husband, 2 and
so our Lord was born in one of the outbuildings and ‘laid in a
manger’. This, however, was a temporary measure for when
the ‘wise men from the East’ arrived in Bethlehem they found
Mary and her Divine Child ‘in the house’. This house was,
possibly, the ‘House of Ephratah’, the ancestral home of David.
Both Mary and Joseph were of the House and lineage of David:
Mary through Nathan, and Joseph through Solomon, the sons
of David by Bathsheba, his beloved wife.
Immediately after the departure of the ‘Wise Men’
Joseph was warned of God in a dream to take the young child
and His mother and flee into Egypt in order to escape the
ruthless slaying of young children by Herod, and there they
remained until after the death of Herod, when was fulfilled the
final event in a great national prophecy: ‘Out of Egypt have I
called My Son’. This is the last occasion on record upon which
Egypt was used as a place of refuge for an Israelite.
At the three great feasts of the year when the Jews
flocked into Jerusalem, it was the custom for afternoon lectures
to be delivered in the Temple by the learned Rabbis of the day.
It was encumbent upon the Jew to remain but three or four days
at the seven days’ Feast. Mary, with her husband, began the
return journey to Nazareth as soon as they had performed those
acts of worship required of them on these occasions. She
believed her Son to be travelling in one of the companies of
their relatives who had come up to the Feast. When at the first
stopping place, Arimathea, eight miles north of Jerusalem, she
could not find her young Son among any of these companies of
their relatives, Mary, accompanied by Joseph, anxiously
retraced her steps to Jerusalem, and after a three days’ search
found Him in the Temple attending one of the lectures, and
with His questions and answers confounding the learned
professors. When gently rebuked, He replied in some
2
Geikie, Life and Words of Christ, Vol. I, p. 113.

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astonishment, ‘How is it that ye sought Me? wist ye not that I
must be about My Father’s business?’ In His later years, during
His three years’ ministry He stated specifically what that
business was: ‘I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the
house of Israel’.
The next scriptural notice of the Virgin Mother is on the
occasion of the marriage at Cana of Galilee. Mary interested
herself in the conduct of the feast at which there happened to
be a scarcity of wine. Representing to her Son, also a guest at
the feast, that they had no wine, He gently replied, ‘Woman,
what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come,’ that
is, the time or period of His public ministry had not yet arrived,
nor was it time yet for Him to exercise His powers in public.
These words were not a rebuke to His mother; they were
simply an explanation why He had not, without being asked,
miraculously brought about a supply of wine. Mary’s
injunction to the servants, ‘Whatsoever He saith unto you, do
it’, was followed immediately by beholding her Divine Son
perform His first public miracle.
There can be no doubt that the Virgin Mother was an
onlooker at many of the miracles performed by our Lord,
although, indeed, there is little mention of her in the Scripture
records until we find her standing with her sister, the wife of
Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene at some distance from the
Cross, when the prophecy of Simeon was fulfilled, ‘Yea, a
sword shall pierce through thy own soul’.
When the sufferings of our Lord were almost at an end
and the veil of darkness began to extend over the face of
nature, they, with the beloved disciple, John, drew near to the
foot of the Cross. Our Lord, beholding His mother and her
companions, was greatly affected by their grief, especially that
of His mother. He said, ‘Woman, behold thy son!’ and to John,
‘Behold, thy mother!’

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 The disciple immediately took her into his charge by
leading her away from the dreadful scene to his own home,
where he left her in the loving care of his family while he
returned to the scene of the Crucifixion to be a witness of the
last act in the cruel drama, and so was enabled to write, ‘And
he that saw it bare record, and his record. is true: and he
knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe’.
It was surely an honour which our Lord conferred upon
John by committing to his trust and care His sorrowful and
disconsolate mother.
Luke gives many details not found in the other three
Gospels: this is to be accounted for by the fact that this Apostle
became a special friend and confidant of the Virgin Mary, who
evidently told him secrets of her life which were hidden from
the other evangelists.
In considering whether or not the Virgin Mother had
other children after the birth of our Lord, there are several facts
to lead us entirely away from this idea.
If our Lord had had blood brothers He could not, and
would not, as a strict observer of the Mosaic law have
committed His mother to the care of John for, according to that
law, this duty was the responsibility of the next eldest son:
neither, by the same law, could Joseph of Arimathea have
obtained the body of our Lord; the brother next in succession
must make the claim. Thus Joseph of Arimathea, his mother’s
uncle, was proclaimed for all time our Lord’s nearest male
relative.
Joseph, by his marriage to Mary, became the protector
of both herself and her Son, and stood to our Lord legally in
place of an earthly father; he was known locally as such and his
children by a former wife were known as our Lord’s ‘brothers
and sisters’. We must remember also that in those days
‘brethren’ was a very wide term, and if we made incursion into

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the realm of tradition we would find support for Mary having
borne no other children.
‘It is popularly conceived that Jesus, as the eldest of
the family, had the numerous family of Joseph and Mary to
support. This is all popular tradition, fostered by the Roman
Catholic Church from its very beginning, but in reality does not
contain one shred off actual truth.’3
It is said that Mary, the mother of our Lord, lived at
Jerusalem for fifteen years with St. John, and that this Apostle
did not begin his missionary labours in Asia Minor until after
her death and burial. Her grave is shown at Nazareth; it is said
to be at the Mount of Olives; in the South of France, and at
Glastonbury. Well it is that the burial place of the Virgin
Mother is not known with any degree of certainty, for the
Mariolatry which constitutes so great a menace to true
Christianity would thereby be strengthened by pilgrimages to
the spot, and in time obscure the sacrificial work of her Son,
Jesus Christ: Son of God, Redeemer of Israel and Saviour of
the World.

3
J. O. Kinnaman, Diggers for Facts, p. 214.

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 CHAPTER 18

MARTHA AND MARY

THE historical background of the Bethany family is
found in literature outside the Scriptures, yet none the less is it
of special interest to those who have come to love the story of
the sisters and their brother, whose devotion to our Lord is so
beautifully portrayed for us in the Gospels.
According to the eighth-century writer, Rabanus,1 who
based his work on earlier manuscripts and documents, Martha,
Mary and their young brother Lazarus were of noble birth, their
mother being Eucharia, descendant of the royal family of the
House of David, and their father, Theophilus, a Syrian prince
and Governor of the maritime country. These children were
noted for their fine character and intelligence, and for their
knowledge of the Hebrew language in which they had been
well instructed. Martha is described as being much older than
the other children.
They possessed a rich patrimony of lands, money and
slaves; a great part of the city of Jerusalem belonged to them,
also the village of Bethany, besides lands at Magdala (on the
west side of the Lake of Galilee) and at another Bethany, or
Bethabara.
The three lived together and Martha, as the eldest of the
family, had the administration of their property. As the younger
and beautiful sister, Mary, grew up she moved from Bethany
and took up her residence at Magdala on her own property
there, and it is said that there she lived a life of sin, in
conscious disobedience to the command of God and to the
wishes of her family until aroused by the preaching of our Lord

1
Life of Rabanus, Mount Sinai. In Magdalen College Library, Oxford.
and pardoned by Him in the house of Simon the Pharisee,
where the first anointing took place immediately after her
conversion. Simon is said to have been related to the Bethany
family by ‘ties of blood and of friendship’.
Another view of the history of Mary of Magdala or
Mary Magdalene is that she had been insane. This view is
based on the words ‘out of whom went seven demons’, for
there is no proof that she was ever impure in life. Whatever her
malady ‘her name stands security, as it were, for every penitent
Magdalen’.
It was at Magdala at the estate of Mary Magdalene, that
she with her sister Martha entertained our Lord and His
disciples as recorded by Luke 10:38. In the company of Jesus
were the twelve apostles, the seventy disciples and a large
following of illustrious women, so it was natural that Martha,
as the elder sister and chief hostess, should have been
somewhat anxious about the preparation for so large a
gathering. Marcella, stewardess of the house, a woman of great
devotion and faith, together with Joanna and Susannah, assisted
Martha in waiting on the guests. It is said that Marcella was the
‘certain woman’ of Luke 11:27.
At times our Lord is said to have used the other
residences of the Bethany family, and that when He was gone
on any distant journey and they could not accompany Him,
refreshments and other necessities were sent to Him by the
hands of the servants or by Judas Iscariot who had charge of
the money and provisions.
According to a very old tradition Mary Magdalene was
none other than Mary of Bethany, a tradition accepted by
Tertullian, St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, St. Augustine, St.
Gregory, the Venerable Bede, Rabanus, St. Odo, St. Bernard
and St. Thomas Aquinas.
At the first anointing of Jesus’ feet by Mary, Simon, in
whose house the anointing took place, thought Jesus’

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admission to such familiarity, similar to that of affectionate
daughters towards their father, was an evidence that He knew
not her character or that she had been demon possessed and so,
at one time, not responsible for her actions. Our Lord at once
made it abundantly clear to Simon that Mary, by her works,
was expressing her gratitude for forgiveness, while he, His host
and supposed friend, had done nothing for Him, not even
providing the customary basin of water to wash the dust of the
journey from His feet. Mary’s loving act was evidence that her
sins were forgiven, but for the benefit of the onlookers He said
to Mary ‘Thy faith hath saved thee’.
Soon after, Mary is mentioned as one of our Lord’s
ministering attendants.
The Bethany family found no difficulty in recognizing
Jesus as the Messiah. The instruction in the Hebrew language
which they had received in their early years was not without its
thorough grounding in the Scriptures; they were not among
those who preferred the Talmud and ‘traditions of men’ to the
pure Word of God.
Mary’s better part, or good part was to sit at the feet of
Jesus and learn of Him; He was to her not only Lord but
Master and Teacher. She sat at His feet as Paul, referring to his
university days, states that he sat at the feet of Gamaliel, the
learned Rabbinical professor.
John appears to have been a very special friend of the
family and records (ch. 11) the greater part of what we know
about them. He it is who tells us that ‘Jesus loved Martha, and
her sister, and Lazarus’.
And when Lazarus fell ill and rapidly grew worse, the
sisters became alarmed and sent messengers to the place where
Jesus then was — at Bethabara beyond Jordan, where Mary
had her estate — with an urgent note: ‘He whom Thou lovest is
sick.’

138
 There was no hurried return to Bethany as the sisters
expected, and the beloved brother passed away ere the Lord
came. Martha, confident of His sympathy, went out to meet
Him when she heard of His approach. Mary, we are told, sat
still in the house. Our Lord evidently enquired about her for
Martha hurried back to say to Mary, ‘The Master is come, and
calleth for thee’.
The mournful utterances of both sisters, and their
perfect confidence in the power of their Lord was expressed in
the identical words: ‘Lord, if Thou hadst been here my brother
had not died.’
It was necessary for our Lord to have both sisters
present to be witnesses of their brother’s resurrection, to
prepare them to expect His own resurrection after the soon-to-
take-place Crucifixion.
But before Martha brought her sister, and, whilst in
conversation with her Lord and Master, she made her
wonderful affirmation of His Messiahship and power over life
and death.
‘Then said Martha unto Jesus, Lord, if Thou hadst been
here, my brother had not died. But I know, that even now,
whatsoever Thou wilt ask of God, God will give it Thee. Jesus
saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise again. Martha saith unto
Him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the
last day. Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life:
he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:
and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die.
Believest thou this? She saith unto him, Yea, Lord: I believe
that Thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come
into the world.’
No hint of our Lord’s conversation with Mary is
recorded, it is His words to Martha that have rung down the
ages. She, the busy woman burdened with much care and
responsibility, reveals her inner spiritual life in the simple

139
words of her affirmation ‘Lord I believe that Thou art the
Christ, the Son of God’.
And now, in the raising of Lazarus from the dead, the
sisters have a demonstration of the power of their Lord over
life and death, as also the beloved brother restored to them.
Another link had been forged in their chain of friendship, a link
of deepest love and gratitude. Already they had stood loyally
by Him in days of persecution; they loved to entertain Him and
His disciples. How greatly they were the means of increasing
His following by introducing their friends to Him, and now at
the resurrection, of their brother, Lazarus, many Jews believed
on Him because of the astounding miracle.
It is a remarkable fact that the Bethany family had
greater experience of resurrection than any other of our Lord’s
friends and followers.
With the happy family life restored the sisters were
more than ever devoted to their Lord and Master; when next
He came to Bethany they must entertain Him royally, and so
we read that ‘Jesus six days before the passover came to
Bethany, where Lazarus was which had been dead, whom, He
raised from the dead. There they made Him a supper; and
Martha served: but Lazarus was one of them that sat at the
table with Him. Then took Mary a pound of ointment of
spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and
wiped His feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the
odour of the ointment’.
This second anointing by Mary was again an act of
gratitude — this time for the restoration to life of her brother.
The ordinary anointing of hospitality was of the feet and head
but Mary invested the anointing with the deeper meaning of the
preparation of the body for burial, and the act was recognized
and accepted by our Lord as such.
Mary attended our Lord on His last journey to
Jerusalem, and witnessed His triumphal entry into Jerusalem

140
on that first Palm Sunday. Five days later, with the deepest
anguish, she witnessed His crucifixion.
Early on the third day thereafter she and Mary, the wife
of Cleophas, took the spices which they had prepared and went
to the sepulchre to embalm the body — Joseph of Arimathea
and Nicodemus having carried out the burial hastily with myrrh
and aloes only, but finding His body gone an angel informed
them that He was risen. As they were going to tell the disciples,
Mary Magdalene returned and stood weeping at the sepulchre.
There Jesus met her; she supposed He was the gardener, and
asked Him if He knew what was become of her Lord’s body
that she might take care of it.
With His known air of speech, Jesus called her by her
name. Recognizing Him immediately, she cried out in a rapture
of joy, ‘Rabboni’, which signifies ‘Master’, and fell at His feet
to embrace them, but He bade her forbear and go and inform
His disciples that He was risen. As she went and overtook the
other Mary, and other women, Jesus appeared to them. After
this joyful reunion ‘Mary Magdalene came and told the
disciples that she had seen the Lord, and that He had spoken
these things unto her’.
Beyond this meeting with Mary there is no Scripture
reference to any member of the Bethany family after the
Resurrection, but very credible tradition has it that in the
persecution of Christians following upon the death of Stephen,
these loved friends of our Lord, with other of His followers,
were compelled to leave Palestine. According to a strong
unvarying tradition to be found at many places along the coast
of the Mediterranean, Lazarus, with some of his friends, came
to Cyprus where he became the island’s first missionary
bishop, but afterwards sailed to Marseilles where he continued
his missionary labours until his death.
Martha, according to the same tradition, came to
Marseilles, accompanied by her stewardess, Marcella, and

141
other early Christians. She travelled up the Rhone valley to
Tarascon where she and her companions settled and spent
many years in missionary work.
Mary, with some of the less-known disciples,
proceeded to Aix where she lived a life of extreme
abstemiousness and laboured successfully for the Gospel of
Jesus Christ. The sisters, it is said, possessed ‘a noble beauty,
an honourable bearing, and a ready grace in language that was
captivating’.
Martha’s age at her death is given as sixty-five; the
sisters died within eight days of each other.
The tradition of Martha at Tarascon, and Mary at Aix,
dominates both town and church, while at Marseilles the
memory of Lazarus has never died out.
We first meet this little family in the East; we bid them
farewell in the West. They were but a part of that great East-
West movement which brought the Gospel to our own shores
from whence it has gone out to all the ends of the earth.

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 CHAPTER 19

THE WOMEN OF GALILEE

AGAINST a background of much opposition to our
Lord and His Gospel, there stands out the story of the
courageous devotion of the women of Galilee, as recorded by
the four Evangelists. The names of but a few of these women
have come down to us.
It is necessary to have a proper understanding of the
term Galilee, as distinct from the neighbouring Judea. Galilee
was Benjamite territory, while the latter was inhabited by the
descendants of Judah, more correctly a remnant of Judah.
There was, far to the north, another Galilee, known as Galilee
of the Gentiles because of the cosmopolitan character of its
inhabitants and where Greek was the chief language. The
people of lower Galilee and of Judea differed considerably in
political outlook and even in speech, as borne out in the words
of the bystanders to Peter, ‘Surely thou art one of them: for
thou art a Galilean, and thy speech agreeth thereto’ (Mark
14:70). This was, of course, difference of accent, for all spoke
the Aramaic language and in religion all were Hebrews and
strict observers of the Mosaic law.
In Galilee our Lord had a large following: His disciples,
with the possible exception of Judas Iscariot, were Galileans.
In Judea He was persecuted and rejected; in Galilee He had a
host of friends, many of them rich and influential. On one
occasion while in Galilee His disciples expostulated with Him
because He proposed to go again into Judea, saying ‘Master,
the Jews of late sought to stone Thee; and goest Thou thither
again?’ (John 11:8). It was in Judea only that our Lord had not
anywhere to lay His head. In Galilee, and also when He went
up to Jerusalem, a little group of women followed from place
to place devotedly ministering to His needs.
‘They are first mentioned clearly in Luke 8:2, 3, as
“Mary, called Magdalene. . . Joanna the wife of Chuza,
Herod’s steward, Susanna and many others”. Those that are
mentioned by name are probably the women of comfortable
means “who ministered unto Him of their substance”. Three of
the “many others” can be identified, “Mary the mother of
James and Joses; and the mother of Zebedee’s children”
(whose children were James and John, and the mother’s name
Salome): and the mother of Jesus, frequently mentioned. . . .
From the expression “many others” we infer that the number of
women who accompanied Jesus in His three years’ ministry
was not inconsiderable. They must have witnessed most of His
miracles: heard most of His discourses, seen His sufferings,
and known His claims — that He was the Messiah. These
women had no more lofty ambition for themselves than to
minister unto their Lord. To be sure, the mother of Zebedee’s
children, the aunt of Jesus Christ, is shown as asking for a high
place for her sons in Christ’s kingdom: but it is evident that she
was pressed into this service by her sons — since the Lord
answers, not her, but the sons, “Ye know not what ye ask”: and
“When the ten heard it they were moved with indignation
against the brethren”. This shows that they did not hold the
mother culpable. Mark does not even mention the mother as
voicing the request of the sons. No, these women who followed
the Lord had no wishes of their own to be gratified. Their
service was a disinterested one.’1
The women of Galilee accompanied our Lord on His
last journey to Jerusalem. They followed Him weeping,
whereupon He turned and addressed them, ‘Daughters of
Jerusalem, weep not for Me, but weep for yourselves’. Our
Lord here used a very precise geographical term, for Jerusalem
1
Katharine Bushnell, God’s Word to Women, paras. 742-757.

144
was in Benjamin’s inheritance and so these Galilean women
were strictly ‘daughters of Jerusalem’. They followed Him to
Calvary; they remained to witness the tragedy of the Cross:
when all was over, yet they lingered; and when the body was
laid in the tomb ‘The women also, which came with Him from
Galilee, followed after, and beheld the sepulchre, and how His
body was laid’. Evening came on, the last service to the dead
body was performed, the stone closed over the tomb, but yet
‘there was Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary, sitting over
against the sepulchre.’ The question might be asked, Did Jesus
have no higher choice for the women who came with Him out
of Galilee, and accompanied Him throughout His three years’
ministry — the women who were “last at the Cross and first at
the tomb” on the Resurrection morn — than to let them feed
and clothe Him? Were they not all unconsciously to themselves
in a school of training as His witnesses? His twelve apostles
called for this special work all, but one, failed Him, when
danger was at hand. But He had His chosen witnesses: the
women of Galilee. They had humbled themselves; Christ
exalted them. He gave them visions on the Resurrection
morning that no one else had. He made the witness of women
the very meat and marrow of His Gospel’.2
After our Lord’s ascension a remarkable feature of
these earliest Christian women was the jealous way in which
they guarded the bodies of their dead. ‘They had seen the Lord
after He had risen from the dead, and must have been at first
uncertain as to what might be expected regarding the bodies of
those they loved, and especially the bodies of those who had
died for the Faith. Until this could be certain they hoped
against hope for those whom they had loved and honoured and
revered, that some morning the lifeless clay might have

2
Katharine Bushnell, God’s Word to Women, para. 758.

145
vanished from its resting place, and the risen master, or father
or son be waiting to greet the watching disciple.’3
The dislike of the earliest Christians for burial in
pagan cemeteries is thus easily understood: the setting apart of
ground to receive the bodies of those who had died in the Lord
gave rise to the idea of a hallowed enclosure which persists to
this day in the term ‘consecrated ground’.
The Prophet Joel declared, ‘Your daughters shall
prophesy. . . and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those
days of My Spirit; and they shall prophesy’ (Acts 2:17, 18).
The women of Galilee were thus spiritually equipped to be
witnesses and messengers of the Gospel and to fulfil the
prophecy of Isaiah, ‘Oh thou woman,4 that bringest good
tidings to Zion, get thee up into the high mountain; Oh thou
woman that bringest good tiding to Jerusalem, lift up thy voice
with strength; lift it up, be not afraid; say unto the cities of
Judah, Behold your God!’ (Isa. 40:9) — a command which will
find its final fulfilment as a great prophecy towards the end of
the Gospel Dispensation.

3
J. W. Taylor, The Coming of the Saints, p. 221.
4
Author’s Note.—This is the precise meaning if correctly
translated

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 CHAPTER 20

DORCAS
(Acts 9:36-42)

IN the earliest days of the Church there dwelt at Joppa,

now Jaffa, a much beloved Christian woman whose name,
Dorcas, was the Greek form of the Aramaic Tabitha, signifying
‘gazelle’ because of the animal’s large eyes, a woman
venerable for her piety and extensive charity.
Dorcas possessed the faith, humility, diligence and
perseverance of the true disciple. Widows, being the poorest
and most helpless in the community, were the chief objects of
her charity. ‘This woman was full of good works and alms
deeds which she did’, or charities to the poor. Latimer wrote,
‘He loveth thee with his hands that will help thee in time of
necessity by giving some almsdeeds, or with any other
occupation of the hands’. When this loved benefactor sickened
and died they were filled with sorrow and dismay.
The last offices had been performed and Dorcas laid ‘in
an upper chamber’. Then with that faith in the power of the
risen Christ which marked the early disciples, and having heard
that Peter was at Lydda, twelve miles away, ‘they sent unto
him two men, desiring him that he would not delay to come to
them. Then Peter arose and went with them. When he was
come, they brought him into the upper chamber: and all the
widows stood by him weeping, and shewing the coats and
garments which Dorcas made, while she was with them’.
The mourners, wearing the garments which Dorcas had
made, sought to impress Peter with the value of her life to
them. ‘But Peter put them all forth, and kneeled down, and
prayed; and turning him to the body said, Tabitha, arise. And
she opened her eyes: and when she saw Peter, she sat up. And
he gave her his hand, and lifted her up, and when she had
called the saints and widows, presented her alive. And it was
known throughout all Joppa; and many believed in the Lord.’
On this miracle St. Cyprian in the third century wrote,
‘She, who to suffering widows had dispensed the means of
living, earned a recall to life through the widows’ intercession’.
Life returned to Dorcas without violent emotion,
calmly, as to one awakened out of sleep, to resume her good
works and to continue her witness for her Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ.
The restoration to life of Dorcas was an unspeakable
benefit to the world. So wonderful an event was soon widely
published and many believed in the Lord. The good work of
this saintly woman was taken up as a challenge by Christian
women throughout the centuries and the name ‘Dorcas’ given
to guilds and societies which had as their object the making of
garments for the poor. A small charge was made in cases of
ability to pay but the very poor were ever provided with
garments free of charge. .
The site of the house in which Dorcas lived, and her
tomb, are still shown as among the sights of Jaffa.

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 CHAPTER 21

LYDIA
(Acts 16:8-15)

THE scene by the riverside at Philippi in Macedonia on

the Sabbath morning was one of peace and quietness even if
nearby there was all the bustle and activity of a Roman Colony.
A Colonia was Rome transplanted, and these colonies were
primarily intended as military safeguards of the frontiers. The
colonists went out with all the pride of Roman citizens to
represent and reproduce the city in the midst of an alien
population.
Here, in Philippi, Paul found himself in obedience to
the voice of the vision at Troas, ‘Come over into Macedonia
and help us’, and a more uncongenial or unlikely field for the
preaching of the Gospel it would have been difficult to find.
By the riverside there was a quiet spot, a retreat known
to the Jews, where they could assemble unmolested and ‘where
prayer was wont to be made’, there being no synagogue in the
place. Here, one Sabbath morning, as Paul was proceeding
along the river-bank to join the little company, he ‘sat down,
and spake unto the women which resorted thither’.
Among them there was a woman of Thyatira, who had
come to Philippi in connection with her business as ‘a seller of
purple’, that is a seller of fabrics dyed purple. Those engaged
in this business were known as Lydians, from Lydia, the
country where the fabrics were woven and dyed, the
inhabitants being famed for this industry. The art of dyeing is
still practised in the modern town, called Akhissar. When Paul
began to explain the way of salvation, this woman known to us
as Lydia, indifferent and self-satisfied, heard the eloquent
words of the Apostle as he delivered his great message of the
Gospel, and as she listened conviction began to steal upon her
‘whose heart the Lord opened, that she attended unto the things
which were spoken of Paul’. Lydia is described as one who
‘worshipped God’, therefore she was not a pagan, but probably
a Jewess or one of the Greek-speaking Israelites who at that
time were domiciled in Asia Minor.
The consequence of the opening of her heart was an
earnest attention to the Word: a public profession of her faith
and the baptism of herself and her household. Immediately
afterwards there was the manifestation of a self-sacrificing
spirit: ‘She besought us, saying, If ye have judged me to be
faithful to the Lord, come into my house, and abide there. And
she constrained us’. Lydia modestly desires this to be decided
for her by others. Henceforth Paul and his companions were
the welcome guests of Lydia when they came to Philippi; a
home provided for them in a strange city as the result of the
conversion of Lydia; and to the house of Lydia Paul and Silas
resorted upon their release from prison (v. 40).
In the history of the primitive advance of Christianity
the name of Dorcas is outstanding as an example in charitable
deeds, while that of Lydia is outstanding as an example of that
hospitality which ever marks the true Christian. In the Acts of
the Apostles their names are recorded as worthy of
remembrance by future generations.

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 CHAPTER 22

PRISCILLA
(Acts 18:1, 2, 26)

WHEN the Apostle Paul arrived in Corinth from

Athens he ‘found a certain Jew named Aquila, born in Pontus,
lately come from Italy, with his wife Priscilla (because that
Claudius had commanded all Jews to depart from Rome) and
came unto them’. It would appear from the wording of the text
that Aquila and Priscilla were old friends of Paul. He ‘found’
them there and immediately took up his abode with them. They
had already become converts to Christianity before Paul met
with them at Corinth.
According to a very strict law every Jew was obliged to
learn a trade: the professional classes were not exempt from
this, and to be able to earn a living with work of the hands was
viewed as security against poverty. The trade chosen by the
highly-educated Paul was that of tent-making, which was also
the trade of his friend, Aquila. Their work, that of making
leather tents for the Roman troops, was skilled labour, and in
much demand. Some of our Lord’s disciples appear to have
been scribes, while fishing was merely their chosen trade, for
when He spoke to them in parables and then asked them, ‘Have
ye understood all these things? They say unto Him, Yea, Lord’,
it is as scribes that He then addresses them: ‘Therefore every
scribe which is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven is like
unto a man that is an householder, which bringeth forth out of
his treasure things new and old’ (Matt. 13:51, 52).
The co-operation in crafts, as also in missionary work,
created between Paul, Aquila and Priscilla a strong bond of
friendship, the latter being especially helpful to the Apostle.
 Priscilla was a very able person and well known ‘to all
the churches of the Gentiles’; she it was who, with her
husband, Aquila, expounded unto Apollos ‘the way of God
more perfectly’. Dean Alford, in his Commentary on the New
Testament, says, ‘There are certain indications that he himself
(Aquila) was rather the ready and zealous patron than the
teacher: and this latter work, or a great share of it, belonged to
his wife, Prisca or Priscilla. She is ever named with him even
where the instruction of Apollos is described’.
On Priscilla’s position, in The Apostolic Church,
Professor Harnack says: ‘In any case she must have been
associated with and more distinguished than her husband. This
is verified from Acts 18 and Romans 16 convincingly. For
according to the former not only Aquila but she also instructed
Apollos. One is allowed to infer from it that she was the chief
instructor: otherwise she would scarcely have been mentioned.
And in the Roman Epistle Paul calls her and Aquila — not the
latter only — his fellow labourers in Christ Jesus. This
expression, not so very frequently employed by Paul, signifies
much.’ By its use Priscilla and Aquila are legitimized official
Evangelists and Teachers. Paul adds, moreover, the following:
‘Who for my life laid down their own necks: unto whom not
only I give thanks, but also all the churches of the Gentiles.’ To
what heroic service the first half of this clause refers we
unfortunately know not. From the second part it follows that
the Christian activity of the couple was a genuinely ecumenical
work. Why all the Churches of the Gentiles were obliged to
thank Priscilla and Aquila Paul does not say. Dr. Harnack adds
in a footnote, quoting the views of Origen and Chrysostom as
in accord with his own, ‘That the thanks of the Gentile
Churches relate only to the fact that Priscilla and Aquila saved
the life of the Apostle is to me not probable’.
In the appalling persecution and martyrdom which
befell the Christians through Nero’s ferocity, Paul lost many of

152
his friends and fellow helpers named by him in the sixteenth
chapter of Romans. That Priscilla escaped martyrdom is certain
from the Apostle’s mention of her name in his second Epistle
to Timothy, chapter 4, verse 19.
Priscilla is worthy of grateful remembrance by the
entire Christian Church for the devoted and sacrificial
assistance she rendered the great Apostle as his hostess, fellow
worker and ‘helper in Christ’.
In the reign of Domitian (A.D. 81-96), Juvenal records
a great and wealthy Jewish colony on Mount Aventine where
was the house of Aquila and Priscilla, and where Paul
ministered to the Christian Jew-converts who would not mix
with the Christian Gentiles.
Dr. Harnack, a German writer, says that in Rome
Priscilla, with the help of Aquila, wrote the Epistle to the
Hebrews.

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 CHAPTER 23

THE MOTHER OF ST. PAUL

THE Apostle Paul, in his letter to the Romans (ch. 16),

sends salutations to a number of Christians and kinsfolk in that
city including ‘Rufus chosen in the Lord, and his mother and
mine’.
Behind this simple message there lies a wealth of
family history unrecorded in the Scriptures, but found from
unpublished sources and tradition and published by Edwin
Wilmshurst in his St. Paul in Britain. Two special journeys to
Rome and one to Jerusalem enabled this writer to discover
much that is of the highest importance and interest.
The grandfather of Saul (Paul) was a very wealthy
Benjamite of Tarsus, capital of Cilicia, the rocky province in
Asia Minor, due north of Syria. Romano-Graeco Hebrew, he
had purchased ‘with a great sum’ the Roman citizenship for
himself and family, and had added a Roman name to his
Hebrew patronymic. His son, Davidus, as was usual, added a
Roman nomen — Appius Tullius — being possibly adopted
into the Tullian Gens. He took service in the Roman army; rose
to be a centurion in a legion; and it was he who said to the
Christ ‘speak the word only and my servant shall be healed’.
Of him the Jews said, ‘He hath built us a synagogue’, an act
inexplicable if the Romanized centurion had had no interest in
the scorned religion of the Jews. His wife, Prassede, was left a
wealthy widow, cultured by a Roman education. Pudentinus
the Patrician was in Asia Minor on civil (not military) duty as a
high Roman official, and he married the widow Prassede, a
marriage probably very displeasing to her son Saul, who was
an ultra-orthodox and intolerant Pharisee, of the strictest sect of
their religion, and who assumed the Roman name of Paulus.
Pudentinus and his wife, Prassede, returned to Italy, and one
child, Rufus Pudens, was born to them. Saul, highly educated
in the school of Gamaliel, the most orthodox in Jerusalem, was
a fierce and uncompromising opponent of the sect of the
Nazarenes, and his wealth and social position among the Jews
was so high that he was entrusted by the High Priest with the
mission to Damascus, with a military escort, to extirpate the
heresy in that city.
Many wealthy Jews took service in the Roman army: it
is not surprising then that Saul’s father, Davidus of Tarsus, was
either destined for that career by his father, or embarked upon
it of his own volition.
That he was early impressed, while a centurion at
Capernaum, with the claims of our Lord to be the Messiah, and
also beloved of his countrymen, the Jews, for his generosity
(‘He hath built us a synagogue’), is evident from the Scripture
narrative.
It was a common practice among the inhabitants of
Tarsus to send their children into other cities for learning and
improvement, especially to Jerusalem, where they were so
numerous that they had a synagogue of their own, called the
synagogue of the Cilicians. To Jerusalem Davidus, the
centurion, sent his son Saul (Paul) to be brought up at the feet
of the eminent Rabbi, Gamaliel, in the most exact knowledge
of the law of Moses. It was common for the descendants of
Benjamin to give the name of Saul to their children ever since
the time of the first king of Israel, who was chosen out of that
tribe, and Paul was a name common among the Romans.
When Davidus, the centurion, met his son at Jerusalem
or when home on leave at Tarsus, he did not hesitate to declare
his belief in Jesus of Nazareth as the long-expected Messiah
Who had miraculously healed his servant. The centurion’s
wife, Prassede, quickly grasped the truth and became a convert,

155
but their son Saul would have none of it. Having obtained a
thorough knowledge of the sciences cultivated by the Jews, and
being naturally of a hot and fiery temper, he became impatient
of any opposition to the doctrine he had imbibed, and a
vehement blasphemer and persecutor of the Christians. Had not
the Pharisees declared that Jesus of Nazareth was not the
Messiah? Did not he himself know that his nation expected
their king to come in majesty and power?
Saul’s father, Davidus, died, leaving his son quite
unconvinced of the truth of this New Way. Now that his father
was gone he would try by every means in his power to destroy
this new religion: his social rank and wealth enabled him to
approach the Sanhedrin with suggestions to this end, and from
the High Priest he obtained letters of authority to proceed to
Damascus to exterminate the Christians who had fled there for
safety. Saul was provided with a military escort and set out on
the long journey of 150 miles.
As he rode along he began to feel less zeal for this
malicious enterprise. What if, after all, his father was right? He
had been so certain that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and
Saul had noticed a change in his father’s demeanour, a gracious
tolerance and spirit of love towards those with whom he came
in contact. And his sweet and gentle mother, was she, too,
really deceived? But he would put these uncomfortable
thoughts from him; his conscience was getting troublesome:
soon now he would reach Damascus and do away with these
Christians who dared to say that the Sanhedrin was in error in
rejecting Jesus of Nazareth. And then again his conscience
became uneasy: the incidents of his father’s last illness and the
pained expression on his mother’s face at his attitude to this
New Way rose up before him. And then there was Stephen, to
whose death he had consented, with forgiveness on the
martyr’s lips and holy confidence in God, breathing out his last
words ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit’. But why did his

156
conscience prick him so? He was surely in the right to get rid
of these Christians.
Such were Saul’s thoughts as he was about to enter
Damascus when ‘suddenly there shined round about him a light
from heaven: and he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying
unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me? And he said,
Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou
persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. And he
trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to
do? And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the city,
and it shall be told thee what thou must do. And the men which
journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice, but
seeing no man. And Saul arose from the earth; and when his
eyes were opened, he saw no man: but they led him by the
hand, and brought him into Damascus. And he was three days
without sight, and neither did eat nor drink. And there was a
certain disciple at Damascus, named Ananias; and to him said
the Lord in a vision, Ananias. And he said, Behold, I am here,
Lord. And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the street
which is called Straight, and enquire in the house of Judas for
one called Saul, of Tarsus: for, behold, he prayeth, and hath
seen in a vision a man named Ananias coming in, and putting
his hand on him, that he might receive his sight. Then Ananias
answered, Lord, I have heard by many of this man, how much
evil he hath done to thy saints at Jerusalem. And here he hath
authority from the chief priests to bind all that call on Thy
name. But the Lord said unto him, Go thy way: for he is a
chosen vessel unto Me, to bear My name before the Gentiles,
and kings, and the children of Israel: for I will shew him how
great things he must suffer for My name’s sake’(Acts 9:3-16).
The conversion of Paul is perhaps the most dramatic
incident in the Apostolic Church, and with what joy his mother,
Prassede, heard of the great change which had taken place in
her son.

157
 Saul had probably never seen his half-brother, Rufus
Pudens, and certainly had never visited his mother in Rome
before his conversion, but after then, in his letter to the Romans
(ch. 16), he writes, ‘Salute Rufus’, calling him by his domestic
and family name, ‘and his mother and mine’.
It is a remarkable fact that Prassede’s two sons are the
only two persons mentioned in the New Testament of whom
the term ‘chosen’ is specially used. The mother of Paul was at
hand to comfort and encourage him during his imprisonment in
Rome. Of both her sons, Prassede must have been justly proud:
her elder son ‘a chosen vessel unto the Lord’; the younger son,
named by Paul as ‘chosen’ in the Lord, who, by his gifts and
endowments, did so much for the early Christian Church.
The sister of Prassede, Saul’s mother, was named
Mariamne but upon marriage with another Roman patrician she
assumed the name of Priscilla. She also was left a rich widow,
was converted, and on her own property outside the Salarian
Gate, as was the custom, she constructed a private cemetery,
still known as the Catacomb of Priscilla. Both sisters were
members of an illustrious group of Christians in Rome, many
of whom were martyred for their faith in Christ. The great
Apostle was ever upheld by their prayers and loving sympathy
and not least by Prassede, his mother, nor was she least among
the women of Israel.

158
 CHAPTER 24

CLAUDIA
(2 Tim. 4:21)

THE fellow-helpers and friends of Paul are gratefully

mentioned by the Apostle throughout his Epistles; in the
absence of historical records the majority of these must remain
mere names to the reader. Of one of these friends, however,
Claudia, mentioned in the Apostle’s charge to Timothy, there is
a wealth of documentary evidence of her noble birth, her
literary attainments and her support, with her husband, of the
early Church.
The story, briefly told, begins in the early days of the
Christian era in Britain, when Caractacus succeeded his father,
Cunobeline, the British king (the Cymbeline of Shakespeare)
and became Arviragus, or ‘high king’. By both these
appellations he was well known to the Romans.
Upon his succession, this warrior (now also Pendragon,
or leader in war) continued the struggle against the invading
Romans and scorned the offers of peace made by the Emperor,
Claudius Caesar, who had landed in Britain with a fresh
military contingent; his nobles, however, advised him to accept
the offer of reconciliation made by Claudius: that of marriage
with the Emperor’s daughter (the Venissa of the Welsh
records).1 This marriage proved entirely happy and of the five
children born to them, Claudia, so named after her grandfather,
Claudius, was the eldest; the Roman name Claudia becomes
Gladys in the Celtic language. It is said that Claudia received a
Roman education under the personal supervision of the

1
Geoffrey of Monmouth’s British History, Ch. XV.
Emperor. There at Rome, in a later year, with her parents and
brothers and sister, Claudia met the Apostle Paul and with
them embraced the Christian faith, the New Way which was
the subject of so much controversy and persecution.
On the return of the British royal family to Britain,
Caractacus, the Arviragus, found that the peace treaty had been
broken and that his people were again being harassed by the
Roman Generals. In A.D. 51, after only eight years of peace,
Caractacus was once more obliged to take up arms against the
invader. Again his bravery was at once the admiration and fear
of the Romans; the stern Chief was betrayed, not conquered,
through the treachery of his step-mother, Cartismandua, and
carried to Rome in triumph. His wife, Venus Julia, and his
young daughter Claudia, accompanied him, and there before
the Senate he delivered his eloquent and moving speech.
Release was immediately granted on the condition that never
again would he bear arms against Rome.2
On his return Arviragus encouraged and assisted those
Britons who had become Christian, as also the persecuted
Christians who had fled to these shores; of great practical
assistance was the gift of twelve hides of land at Glastonbury,
free of tax, on which was built the first Christian church in
Britain. This land has never paid tax.3 One hide of land was
sufficient to support a household.
In A.D. 60, at the age of seventeen, Claudia was united
in marriage with Rufus Pudens (who had been in Britain on
military duty), son of Prassede and Pudentinus, and therefore
half-brother to the Apostle Paul. Thereafter, Claudia was
known as Claudia Rufina, the latter name to designate her as
wife of Rufus Pudens — philosopher and member of the
Equestrian Order.

2
British Chronicles.
3
Domesday Survey, fol. . 449.

160
 From the Epigrams of the poet Martial, we find that
about A.D. 60 Rufus Pudens, upon the death of his father, had
succeeded to the ancestral estates; this writer records the
Senator’s marriage in Rome to the British Claudia. The poet
extols her beauty, learning and eminent virtues:

‘Claudia, the fair one from a foreign shore

Is with my Pudens bound in wedlock’s band’

and in a later Epigram, the poet writes:

‘Our Claudia, named Rufina, sprung we know

From blue-eyed Britons; yet behold she vies
In grace with all that Greece or Rome can show,
As born and bred beneath their glowing skies’ 4

We learn from the Roman martyrology that Claudia

wrote several volumes of odes and hymns; these were
preserved at Verulam (St. Albans in Hertfordshire) down to the
thirteenth century. Of the poetic writings of Claudia, Balaeus
(A.D. 400), mentions a book of Epigrams: Elegy on her
Husband’s Death, and other verses.
Four children were born to Claudia and Rufus Pudens,
named Timotheus and Novatus, sons, and Prassede and
Pudentiana, daughters. All four suffered martyrdom for the
Faith.5
From before the reign of Augustus Caesar, the
Senatorial family of the Pudentini held a high position among
the great patrician families of Rome. Their palatium, or town
house, with its grounds and detached buildings, covered more
than twenty acres on the crest of the Esquiline Mount, and four

4
Epigrams 32, 40.
5
Roman Martyrology.

161
hundred slaves of both sexes, born on their ancestral estates in
Umbria, formed apart of their numerous retinue. .
When Paul came to Rome he was received as a relative
and honoured guest at the Palatium of Claudia and Pudens,
parts of which still remain perfect. The chamber in the
basement of the detached building of the Palace where Paul
officiated in the Christian services is shown under the present
upper St. Pudentiana. The theologian, Alban Butler, calls it the
oldest Church in Rome; here is the earliest mosaic in Rome, in
which are portraits of Claudia, Rufus Pudens and their four
children.
Paul, on his release from custody, three days after his
arrival in Rome, would be at home at once among his friends
and relatives. From ‘his own hired house’, which he was
obliged to retain as a prisoner in free custody, the Apostle
would often repair to the magnificent home of the British
Claudia6 — an ever-welcome guest, and it is even said that her
children were brought up ‘on the knees of the Apostle’.
It was in the home of Claudia that Paul wrote his last
letter to Timothy, then at Ephesus, and conveys to his beloved
fellow-worker the greetings of Claudia, her husband, Pudens,
and her brothers, Eubulus and Linus — the latter the first
Bishop of Rome (2 Tim. 4:21).
Rufus Pudens was assassinated in A.D. 96. Claudia
died in peace in Umbria about A.D. 100.
King Lucius, the grandson of Claudia and Rufus
Pudens, in A.D. 155, at a National Council held at Winchester,
established Christianity as the national religion instead of
Druidism; in this royal family there began to be fulfilled the
prophecy, ‘Kings shall see and arise, princes also shall
worship’. ‘Kings shall be thy nursing fathers and their queens
thy nursing mothers’ (Isa. 49:7, 23).

6
It was the hospitium for Christians from all parts of the world.

162
 Claudia lived at a time when Christianity was beginning
to influence the Judaizers, and those who would keep women
in subjection, while in Asia Minor women were long since
emancipated from pagan tyranny. Sir William Ramsay, in his
The Church in the Roman Empire, says: ‘The honours and
influence which belonged to women in the cities of Asia Minor
form one of the most remarkable features in the history of the
country. In all periods the evidence runs on the same lines. On
the border between fable and history we find the Amazons.
Under the Roman Empire we find women magistrates,
presidents at games and loaded with honours. The custom of
the country influenced even the Jews, who, at least in one case
appointed a woman at Smyrna to the position of “Ruler of the
Synagogue”.’
This emancipation was lost when, as Sir William
Ramsay points out, the universal and catholic type of
Christianity became confirmed in its dislike of the prominence
and public ministrations of women.
Many centuries were to elapse ere woman was again in
her rightful position; throughout these ages woman has paid the
price and lived subject to the rule of man. Jesus Christ taught
rules of life as God requires, not as man would have it, and for
the first time in history women were given hope in this world
and the next. This teaching was revolutionary considering the
status of women at that time, and far-reaching in its effect upon
her restoration to freedom, civil rights, abolition of injustices,
and that equality which is her right by Divine decree.

163
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