Plate 29
Compare size of men in the doorway of “El Deir”
We now enter into a consideration of one of the most tragic and humiliating spectacles in all antiquity. When the penitent and restored king saw the effects of his apostasy, he called the people back to the practice of their earlier faith and himself came daily to the house of the Lord for the exercise of prayer. But as the humbled monarch knelt in prayer, he could not keep his eyes off the vacant walls. Where the five hundred golden objects had once hung, testifying to the wealth of that house and the greatness of his father, there was nothing but the bare wall. It must be remembered that those golden ornaments had not belonged to him. They had been hung in their places to praise and glorify God by his greater ancestor. Therefore, when an enemy came and stole them away, it was a constant and mute reproach to him because of his own failure to live up to the standards and greatness of a preceding generation.
The troubled king gave orders that the targets and shields should be replaced with copies of what had been lost. There was, however, neither gold nor silver in the land, for Shishak had made a clean sweep of all that was valuable. Thus, having lost the reality of their treasure, the best they could do was to make a cheap similitude in brass.
Needless to say, brass is a pitiful substitute for the precious metal which we call gold. If it is kept in a shining condition, at first glance brass may have some resemblance to the nobler metal, but it quickly tarnishes and its glitter fades. For this reason, the targets and shields of brass were stored in the house of the guard. At the hour when the king came to the temple to pray, the guard polished these ridiculous substitutes and hung them in their places so that the king might delude himself by the glitter and shine, and thus have some balm for his troubled spirit. There is, of course, an element of humour in this tragic record!
The moral lessons are almost innumerable and would provide a minister with sermon material for days on end. We are faced with a somewhat similar situation in Christendom today. Upon the walls of the House of Faith, our believing fathers hung the golden shields that constitute the doctrines of Christianity. The brilliant glory of those foundational treasures was never threatened as long as the church was true to God. But we in our generation, alas, have allowed an enemy to come in and rob us of many of those golden shields.
We cannot over-emphasize the fact that it is always an enemy who seeks thus to despoil the House of our Faith. Though he may come in the guise of a friend, or even of a relative, as in the case of Shishak, the man who robs us of our golden shields is an enemy at heart and in purpose.
May we illustrate this suggestion by saying, for instance, that our fathers believed in the golden fact of the deity of Jesus Christ. They held as a basic fact of Christianity that in the person of our Saviour, Almighty God was incarnated to be the Redeemer of mankind. Satan, in the person of many of his charming and well-mannered cohorts, has stolen that shield from many a temple of prayer. Men speak now of the “divinity” of Jesus instead of the “deity.” Having established this premise, they then continue with the statement that we are all divine and have this same spark of divinity within our spirits, to a greater or lesser extent. When the golden shield of the deity of Christ disappeared from the walls of many churches that had once been Christian, the worshippers made a beautiful substitute with the brazen replica of Unitarianism. The tarnished brass of that un-Christian doctrine is a miserable substitute indeed for the blessed assurance that is resident in the fact of the deity of the Saviour.
Our fathers believed also in the virgin birth of the Son of God. They accepted literally the record that Almighty God himself had given of the incarnation of His Son. Our fathers believed that the body of Jesus was formed in the womb of a virgin woman because of the direct visitation of the Holy Ghost. Thus, the birth of Jesus Christ was a biological miracle, and He owed even His earth origin to His heavenly Father alone! This foundational fact of the Christian revelation has disappeared from the walls and the worship of many a once-Christian gathering. In the place of that golden fact there is the ghastly and brazen substitute of an illegitimate child, who was probably the fruit of a woman’s sin! And then men wonder that the old-time power and greatness of the Christian faith seem lacking in much of our land today!
In like manner, the golden shield of redemption through the shed blood of Calvary has been exchanged for the brazen substitute of a “Perfect Example.” The physical resurrection of Jesus Christ has been bartered for a misty idea of some sort of a spiritual resurrection that has no bearing upon the facts of the record that God has given to man. Shield by shield, and buckler by buckler, the things that were given to us for our defense, gleaming with the intrinsic value of a supernatural revelation, have been stolen away by the enemy. The humanistic substitutes that have replaced them have left us at the mercy of the enemy who would destroy our souls.
But great as are the moral lessons involved in this record, its apologetical value is incalculably greater. It has been the custom in our day to question the historical accuracy of much of the record of the Scripture. So it is with considerable interest that we turn back to ancient Egypt to see what can be learned from the external sources of pure archeology concerning these sections of the Old Testament.
The visitor to the British Museum may come away well acquainted with this man Shishak. In the fourth Egyptian Room, in Table Case “O”, there is a pair of gold bracelets, the exhibits being numbered 134 and 135. These beautiful ornaments are overlaid with lapis lazuli, and a blue substance which is similar to faience. The inside of each is inscribed with a text written in hieroglyphics stating that the bracelets were “Made for the Princess,” the daughter of the chief of all the bowmen, Nemareth, whose mother was the daughter of the Prince of the land of Reshnes. This Nemareth was the descendant in the fifth generation of Buiu-auau, a Libyan prince who was the father of Shishak the First.
In this same case, exhibit number 217 is a heavy gold ring set with a scarab carved from soapstone, which is inscribed with a clearly cut cartouche containing both the prenomen and nomen of Shishak the First.
Looking further in this case, exhibit number 392 is a silver ring inscribed with the titles of an official who held many important positions under two monarchs. He was president of the granaries, also a prophet of the fourth order, served as a scribe and at one time was libationer in the reigns of Psammetichus and Shishak.
The most important of all the records of Shishak, of course, is the voluminous account that he caused to be engraved at the Temple of Karnak. A detail is added in Shishak’s record that is not contained in the Scriptures. According to the conqueror, to strengthen the ties of vassalage, he gave Jeroboam one of his daughters in marriage. This complete record of Shishak’s we photographed, studied carefully, and found eminently satisfactory, with the single exception that the king of Judah is not named by name in Shishak’s account of this conquest. But he does tell of the capture of Judah, the rape of Jerusalem, and gives a categorical list of cities and villages overthrown. He specifically mentions the bucklers and shields of gold that he took from the temple.
In a word, this science of archeology, upon the authority of men long dead, but who have since been raised to testify, stamps an emphatic O. K. upon this section of the Sacred Record.[1]
The next king who parades these pages under the designation of his proper name is the Pharaoh Zera, who has also been identified with Osarkon. Shishak’s first-born son, named both Usarkon and Osarkon the First, succeeded his father to the throne as the last of the Tanite kings of the twenty-first dynasty. This son, in turn, was called Shishak and became the high priest of Amon. Osarkon the First was succeeded by Takeloth the First, who, in turn, was followed by Osarkon the Second. Since both of these Osarkons figure in the Scriptural account, we briefly cover their record as it occurs in antiquity.
Being emperor of Ethiopia, as well as of Egypt, the first Osarkon, or Zera, had a vast horde of Ethiopian allies who fought with him in his important conquests. This entire line was of Libyan extraction. A portion of Africa that is now temporarily possessed by the crown of Italy seems to have given rise to this family of conquering rulers. Undoubtedly the designation “Ethiopian” was suggested by this African ancestry.
The Scriptural account of this man’s ill-starred military expedition is given in the fourteenth chapter of II Chronicles. When King Abijah died, his son Asa succeeded to the throne. The ascension of Asa was followed by ten years of such peace and prosperity as was almost unprecedented in those troublous times. The reason given is that Asa was a godly man and found favour in the sight of the Lord. He shattered the images erected to unclean idols, cut down the groves where Ashtoreth was worshipped, demolished the altars and the high places, and purged the land of its apostasy. He compelled the people of Judah to return to the true faith and to obey the Lord and His commandments. He strengthened the fortified centers and in a masterly fashion built up his reserves.
The ten years of prosperity and industry found the land of Judah in an enviable condition that left it well worth robbing! Since the opportunity to steal and loot was the only incentive required by the grim pragmatists of antiquity, Zera, or Osarkon, gathered together an army of a million foot soldiers, reinforced with three hundred chariots, and journeyed toward Palestine to loot the land. The vicinity of Mareshah was chosen as the site of the battle and Asa came out with his pitiful little company to defend his possessions. The drama of this record begins in the eleventh verse of the fourteenth chapter of II Chronicles in the great prayer of Asa: