250 THE HATRED OF THE TRIBES. [Serm. his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice, from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this. THE separation of Israel from Judah reached its consummation in the time of Ahaz. The confederacy of the Samaritans with the Syrians against Judah was encountered by the confederacy of Judah with Assyria against Israel. It was no mere border war. Each sought the extermination of the other. These confederacies betokened the spirit which was at the root of all the crimes which Isaiah had deplored and denounced. The acknowledgment of a common king had bound the tribes together, so long as that implied the acknowledgment of a common God. Idolatry had broken the tie and had kept them asunder. But the present scheme of Samaria to extinguish its rival even at the cost of giving an ascendancy to the uncircumcised king of Damascus, showed clearly enough that the last link of brotherhood was broken, because the last feeling of the divine calling, which had made them a nation of brothers, was gone. The more plausible, really more insane, desire of Ahaz to secure the favour of an empire which was the common enemy of all nations, that he might get rid of the two which were tormenting him, showed that faith had departed from Judah also. The idols of silver and gold had driven God out of its heart, and made the worship of Him a mockery. It was at this time that Isaiah's child was born. He received it, we have seen, as a sign and wonder from the Lord of Hosts. It was a sign of the coming fall of Samaria XV.] THEIR COMMON MISERY. 251 and Damascus. Before the child had knowledge to cry 'My Father and Mother,' the spoils of both would be taken away before the king of Assyria. But that prospect, however cheering it might have been to Ahaz if he had believed Isaiah, would only have oppressed the prophet himself. The destruction of a part of the covenant people, even the destruction of any nation, was to him an awful event. Had this been all, the child would have been an omen of evil, not of good. But something was awakened in his mind by the sight of it and by all the affections and sympathies that accompanied it, which lifted him to a higher and securer ground of confidence for the land and for himself. Laws and principles were connected with that relation of child and father, which he could dimly discern, not measure or understand. Truths which did not stand aloof from him, which were associated with his own being, had their root and ground somewhere else. A ladder which was set upon earth reached to Heaven, and it was one upon which the angels of God might descend and ascend. The prophet had need of this new strength to bear the gloomy visions which pressed more and more heavily upon him, of a people hardly bested and hungry, who would fret themselves and curse their king and God and look upward; of a people who, in their despair of any divine help, would turn to wizards that peeped and muttered,-" of a people who would then look upon the earth, and behold trouble and darkness and dimness of anguish, and who should be driven into darkness." This prostration of all moral strength and hope, this utter dreariness of spirit, is just what was to be augured of men like the Israelites of the north, who had given themselves up to vanities and delusions, who had believed a lie and worshipped it. And 252 ZEBULUN AND NAPHTHALI. [Serm. why should the hypocritical Judah with her unbelieving king sink into a darkness less utter? "Nevertheless," says the prophet, "the dimness shall not be such as was in her vexation, when at the first he lightly afflicted the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, and afterwards did more grievously afflict her by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, in Galilee of the nations. The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined." It is clearly indicated here that a body of Israelites, who in other comparatively light visitations, had remained shut out from the privilege of their countrymen, a set of borderoutcasts, consigned to Heathenism, should now in this more troublous time, when the whole people seemed likely to share their fall and exclusion, receive a new and sudden illumination. The hour of utter dislocation and dissolution when, in the prophet's language, "they were eating every one the flesh of his own arm," when Manasseh was against Ephraim and Ephraim against Manasseh, and both together against Judah;-in that hour would there be some unlooked for testimony that they were all one people. Some light from Heaven penetrating the darkest corners of the land would shew that it was still a Holy Land. If you turn to the thirtieth chapter of the second Book of Chronicles, you will see that between the invasion of Tiglath Pileser and that of Shalmaneser, when a great body of the Israelites had been carried captive and the power of the Assyrian Empire had been fully realised, but while they were still dwelling in their old cities and allowed to claim Samaria as a capital,an event occurred which must have seemed utterly strange and wonderful to all the tribes, but especially to those Ze XV.] THE GREAT PASSOVER. 253 bulonites and Naphthalites in whom the idea of a covenant, the sense of kindred and race had so nearly perished. “And Hezekiah sent to all Israel and Judah, and wrote letters also to Ephraim and Manasseh, that they should come to the house of the Lord at Jerusalem, to keep the passover unto the Lord God of Israel. For the king had taken counsel, and his princes, and all the congregation in Jerusalem, to keep the passover in the second month. For they could not keep it at that time, because the priests had not sanctified themselves sufficiently, neither had the people gathered themselves together to Jerusalem. And the thing pleased the king and all the congregation. So they established a decree, to make proclamation throughout all Israel, from Beer-sheba even to Dan, that they should come to keep the passover unto the Lord God of Israel at Jerusalem; for they had not done it of a long time in such sort as it was written. So the posts went with the letters from the king and his princes throughout all Israel and Judah, and according to the commandment of the king, saying, Ye children of Israel, turn again unto the Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, and he will return to the remnant of you that are escaped out of the hand of the kings of Assyria. And be not ye like your fathers, and like your brethren, which trespassed against the Lord God of their fathers, who, therefore, gave them up to desolation, as ye see. Now be ye not stiff-necked, as your fathers were, but yield yourselves unto the Lord, and enter into His sanctuary, which He hath sanctified for ever; and serve the Lord your God, that the fierceness of His wrath may turn away from you. For if ye turn again unto the Lord, your brethren and your children shall find compassion before them that lead them captive, so that they shall come again 254 ALL THE PEOPLE SUMMONED. [Serm. into this land for the Lord your God is gracious and merciful, and will not turn away His face from you, if ye return unto him. So the posts passed from city to city, through the country of Ephraim and Manasseh, even unto Zebulun: but they laughed them to scorn and mocked them. Nevertheless divers of Asher and Manasseh and of Zebulun humbled themselves, and came to Jerusalem. Also in Judah, the hand of God was to give them one heart to do the commandment of the king and of the princes, by the word of the Lord. And there assembled at Jerusalem much people to keep the feast of unleavened bread in the second month, a very great congregation. And they arose, and took away the altars that were in Jerusalem, and all the altars for incense took they away, and cast them into the brook Kidron. Then they killed the passover on the fourteenth day of the second month: and the priests and the Levites were ashamed, and sanctified themselves, and brought in the burnt-offerings into the house of the Lord. And they stood in their place after their manner, according to the law of Moses the man of God: the priests sprinkled the blood which they received of the hand of the Levites: For there were many in the congregation that were not sanctified; therefore the Levites had the charge of the killing of the passovers for every one that was not clean, to sanctify them unto the Lord. For a multitude of the people, even many of Ephraim and Manasseh, Issachar and Zebulun, had not cleansed themselves, yet did they eat the passover otherwise than it was written: but Hezekiah prayed for them, saying, The good Lord pardon every one that prepareth his heart to seek God, the Lord God of his fathers, though he be not cleansed according to the purification of the sanctuary. And the Lord hearkened to Hezekiah, and |