We will now glance at the encampment of the Hebrew warriors, upon a wild expanse of undulating ground, in view of the towers of Bethsura, a strong fortress rebuilt by the Edomite settlers on the site of that raised in former times by Rehoboam. Bethsura is now garrisoned by the Syrians, and its environs occupied by the countless tents of their mighty host.
On a small rising ground near the centre of the Hebrew camp stands, as on a rostrum, an old Jew clad in a camel-hair garment, with long gray unkempt hair hanging over his shoulders. His manner is excited, his gestures vehement, and the shrill accents of his voice are so raised as to be heard to a considerable distance. A gradually increasing circle of listeners gathers around him--stern, weather-beaten men, who have toiled and suffered much for their faith. What marvel if with some of these warriors religion have darkened into fanaticism, courage degenerated into savage fierceness? It is the tendency of war, especially if it be of a guerrilla character, to inflame the passions and harden the heart. Only terrible necessity can justify the unnatural strife which arms man against his brother man. Even the most noble struggle in which patriot can engage in defence of his country's freedom, draws along with it terrible evils, of which a vast amount of human suffering is not perhaps the greatest.
"Yea, I do charge you, Joab, I do charge you, O son of Ahijah, with having brought a spy, a traitor, into our camp!" almost shrieked the wild orator Jasher, as he pointed with his shrivelled finger at the sturdy muleteer, who stood in the innermost rank of the circle. "Was not this Greek, by your own showing, present at the martyrdom of the blessed saint Solomona?--was he not tried for his life at her grave, where he was discovered coiling like a serpent in the darkness?--is he not one of a race of idolaters, worshippers of images made by man's hand?"
"All that I can say," replied Joab, doggedly, "is, that whatever Lycidas may have been, he is not an idolater now."
"Who are you that you should judge, you Nabal, you son of folly?" exclaimed the excited orator. "Mark you, men of Judah, mark you the blindness that falls on some men--ay, even on a reputed saint like the Lady Hadassah! Joab has learned from her handmaiden the astounding fact that for months this Lycidas, this viper, was nurtured and tended in her home, as if he had been a son of Abraham! Doubtless it was this act of worse than folly on the part of Hadassah that drew down a judgment on her and her house. Mark what followed. The warmed viper escapes from her dwelling, and the next day--ay, the very next day--Syrian dogs beset the house of Salathiel as he celebrates the holy Feast! Who guided them thither?" The question was asked with passionate energy, and the feelings of the speaker were evidently beginning to communicate themselves to the audience. "Who then lay a bleeding corpse on the threshold, slain by the murderous Syrians?" continued Jasher, with yet fiercer action; "who but Abishai, the brave, the faithful, he who had denounced the viper, and had sought, but in vain, to crush it--it was he who fell at last a victim to its treacherous sting!" Jasher ended his peroration with a hissing sound from between his clinched teeth, and the caldron of human feelings around him began, as it were, to seethe and boil. Fanaticism stops not to weigh evidence, or to listen to reason. Joab could hardly make his voice heard amidst the roar of angry voices that was rising around him.
"Lycidas was present and helped at the burial of the Lady Hadassah; he has risked his life to protect her daughter," cried the honest defender of the Greek.
"Ha! ha! how much he risked we know not, but we can well guess what he would win!" exclaimed Jasher, with a look of withering scorn. "He has crept into the favour of a foolish girl, who forgets the traditions of her people, who cares not for the afflictions of Jacob, who prefers a goodly person"--the old man's features writhed with the fierceness of his satire--"to all that a child of Abraham should regard with reverence and honour! But what can we expect from the daughter of a perjured traitor, an apostate? Had she not Abner for a father, and can we expect otherwise than that she should disgrace her family, her tribe, her nation, by wedding an accursed Gentile, a detestable Greek?"
"Never! never!" yelled out a hundred fierce voices. And one of the crowd shouted aloud, "I would rather slay her with my own hand, were she my own daughter!"
"I cannot believe Lycidas false!" cried out Joab, at the risk of drawing the tempest of rage upon himself.
"You cannot believe him false, you son of the nether millstone!" screamed out the furious Jasher, stamping with passion; "as if you were a match for a wily Greek, born in that idolatrous, base, ungrateful Athens, that banished her only good citizen, and poisoned her only wise one!" The fierce prejudices of race were only too easily aroused in that assembly of Hebrew warriors, and if Jasher were blamed by some of his auditors, it was for allowing that any Athenian could be either wise or good.
"Yet hear me for a moment--I must be heard," cried Joab, straining his voice to its loudest pitch, yet scarcely able to make his words audible; "Lycidas has been admitted into the Covenant by our priests; he can give proofs--"
"Who talks of proofs?" exclaimed Jasher, stamping again on the earth. "Did you never hear of the proofs given by Zopyrus? Know you not how Babylon, the golden city, fell under the sword of Darius? Zopyrus, minion of that king, fled to the city which he was besieging, showed its defenders his ghastly hurts--nose, ears shorn off--and pointed to the bleeding wounds as proofs that Darius the tyrant, by inflicting such injuries upon him, had won a right to his deathless hatred.[1] The Babylonians believed the proofs, they received the impostor, and ye know the result. Babylon fell, not because the courage of her defenders quailed, or famine thinned their numbers; not because the enemy stormed at her wall, or pestilence raged within it; but because she had received, and believed, and trusted a traitor, who ha............