LITMIR.BIZ

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who were doomed to fall by their sins. I toiled daily to preserve the Law, and to insist upon the observance of its ceremonies, knowing full well that if the people let them go, they would let go the commandments from Sinai; would let go the sobriety and the chastity of their bodies; would mix in the worship of Baal, and be lost. Saul was no observer of ceremonies, and considered them naught, the idiot, who forgot that they were ordained of God, with whom there is no small nor great, and that through them the people are taught. More solitary than ever I was, I say; but I sought the Lord more than ever, and kept closer to me the memory of the Voice which first called me. If Israel is to live, it will not be because Saul overcame the Amalekites and Philistines, but because the Lamp of God in my hands has not been extinguished. When the Philistines came against us at Michmash, Saul was in Gilgal, and I went to meet him there. Because I came not at the time appointed, he, the impious one, took upon himself to offer the sacrifice, pleading that the people were leaving him, and that the Philistines were encamped against him. He forgot the thunder and lightning at Mizpeh, and that it was his duty to obey the least word of the Lord, whatever might happen. It was a surer way to save Israel than to teach it by the king's example that the ordinances of the Lord could be set aside because it was convenient. I cared not for myself: how can he who is His messenger care for aught save His honour? But I saw by this act of Saul what was in him—that it was an example of his heart—that if he could conquer the Philistines he cared not for the Law. His victories without the Law would have melted away like snow in summer. They would have been as the victories of Philistines over Amalekites, or Amalekites over Philistines. It was one of the first things he did after becoming king, and the Spirit of the Lord came upon me, and I denounced him, and was directed to seek a successor outside his house. If the kingdom had remained in the house of Saul, Israel would have become a heathen tribe, and it was not for this that God called it out of Egypt and led it through the Red Sea.

      I was commanded to send Saul against the Amalekites. What Amalek did to us when we came out of Egypt had been written down, and the direction concerning him. He met us by the way, and smote the hindmost of us, even all that were feeble, when we were faint and weary; and it had been said to our fathers that when we had rest from our enemies round about us, we were to blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven—"Thou shalt not forget it" was the word delivered to us. I had the record of the battle in Rephidim when Joshua discomfited Amalek, not in his own strength, but in the strength of the uplifted arms of the aged Moses, the man of God. His arms, withered and feeble, defeated Amalek that day. Does not the altar still stand, Jehovah-nissi, to testify that we should war with Amalek from generation to generation? Furthermore, Amalek feared not God, but worshipped strange gods with abominable rites, after which the sons and daughters of Israel lusted. It was the Lord's desire that we should root up Amalek, as a man roots up a weed, and fears to leave a thread of it in the ground, lest it should again grow.

      Saul was willing to arm himself against the Amalekites, and to do his best to defeat them after the manner of a king, and to bring them into subjection; but he saw not with my eyes, and knew not what a Law of the Lord was. Therein have I stood apart from Saul and his friends and this nation. They also were not ignorant of the Law, but they thought it could be observed like the laws of men, not understanding that it is binding to the last jot and tittle, and that if a man fails at the last jot or tittle, he fails altogether.

      Saul smote the Amalekites, and everything that was vile and refuse he utterly destroyed with the edge of the sword, but he spared Agag and the best of the spoil; and when he came to meet me, he saluted me, and said he had performed the commandment of the Lord. His commandments are not thus to be performed, and I asked him what meant then the bleating of the sheep and the lowing of the oxen. He had reserved them, he said, as a sacrifice. I asked him whether the Lord had as great delight in burnt-offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord, I told him that to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams; and I denounced him there, and foretold that his kingdom should be given to a neighbour better than he. He was then greatly afraid, for although he feared not the Lord, and was brave before his enemies, he was at times much given to secret terror, and he besought me to stay with him and pardon him. But I would not, and when I had worshipped, I ordered Agag to be brought before me. He came trembling and asking for mercy, but I hewed him in pieces. Mercy? Mercy to whom? Would it have been mercy to Israel to let him live and become a leader of the Amalekites against us? Moreover, a clear command had been given me, and was set plainly before me, as a candle in front of me in darkness, to which I was to walk, swerving not a hair's breadth, that the Amalekite was to be destroyed utterly; and always when the Light was before me I strove to reach it, never looking this way nor that way. Before Saul also the Light was set, but he went aside, thinking he could come to it if he bent his path and compassed other things, not knowing that the track is very narrow, and that if we diverge therefrom and take our eyes off the Light we are lost. Who was Agag, that I should show any tenderness to him, a foul worshipper of false gods? I rejoiced when he lay bound for the knife in the agony of death, and his blood was a sacrifice with which God was well pleased.

      David now waits until Saul's death, for the king is still a strength in Israel. I fear that David will dishonour himself with grievous sin, for he is a lover of women, and a man of words and of song: treacherous is he also at times. But he belongs to us; he fears the Lord and His prophets and priests; he may go a-whoring, but it will not be after Baal; he will war against the heathen, and will not show mercy to them. Now I am about to die, and to descend into the darkness whither my fathers, and Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses have gone before me. I bless the Lord that I have lived, for I have preserved the knowledge of Him and His Law. My life ends, but the Lord liveth, all honour and glory to His sacred name.

SAUL.

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      Rizpah, the Horite, in her old age, talks of Saul to the wife of Armoni, her son.

      This is the day on which your husband's father fell on the mountains of Gilboa. Though I was no Israelite, but born in the desert, I was his beloved before he became king. I am eighty years old now, but the blood moves in me, and I grow warm as I think of him. There was not a goodlier person than he—from his shoulders and upwards he was higher than any of the people. Why did the Lord choose him? He never coveted that honour, and he suffered because there was laid on him that which he did not seek. Yet the Lord was right, for there was not one in all Israel so royal as he, and it was he who redeemed it and made it a nation. Samuel had grown old—he was always a priest rather than a captain—and his sons, whom he made judges, turned aside after lucre, took bribes, and perverted judgment. The people were weary of their oppression and the hand of the Amalekites and the Philistines were very heavy on the land. They therefore prayed for a king, and the thing displeased Samuel, and he tried to turn them from it. But they refused to listen to him, and when they came together at Mizpeh, Saul was the man upon whom the lot fell. Again, I say, he desired not to be king. He had hidden himself on that day, but he could not be hidden, and he was dragged forth to glory and to ruin. I was there: I heard the shouts as they cried God save the king. I saw him no more that day, for the tumult was great, and there was much for him to do. But that evening he came back to me at Gibeah; he, my Saul, came to me as anointed king. O that night! never to be forgotten, were I to live a thousand years, when I held the king in my arms! Never—no, not even on the night when I first became his—had I known such delight. I have seen more misery than has fallen to the lot of any woman in this land, and it has not passed over me senseless. I am not one of those who can go through misfortune untouched, as a drop of oil can rise through water. I have taken it all in, felt it all, to the last sting there was in it; and yet now, when I call to mind the night after he was crowned, and its rapture of an hour—the strength and the eagerness of his love: the strength, the eagerness, and the pride of mine—I say it is good that I have lived. The next morning I saw him with his valiant men—the men whose heart God had touched; how he set them in order, and how they followed him—him higher than any of them, from the shoulders upwards; and I said to myself, he is mine, the king is mine, that body of his is mine, and I am his.

      Tell you all about him? How can I? But I will tell you a little—what I have told you again and again before—so

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