The Hammer: A Story of the Maccabean Times

by Alfred John Church; Richmond Seeley

And yet, as we shall see, even for these evils there was a compensating good.

Micah, though he had affected to make light of the foreboding of evil which he had heard from his sister, had really been impressed by it—so much impressed, indeed, that he had left the city for a little country house at the northern end of the Lake of Galilee, that belonged to him. He had invited his relatives to accompany him, but they had declined. Their place, they said, was at home, among their poorer brethren, where they might do something to help and strengthen. All that Micah could do was to commend them to the protection of the Greek party in the city, with whom, in spite of his [pg 83]fast increasing disgust at their proceedings, he had not yet broken.

He had now returned, and he lost no time in finding his way to his sister’s house. The ravages made by fire and sword were only too plainly visible as he walked along. Houses that he had known from his childhood, in which he had often been a guest, were now but blackened walls; others were shapeless ruins. Again and again he saw on fragments of stone and plaster hideous blotches which he knew to be of blood; and as he saw these things he cursed aloud the hands which had wrought these horrors, not without the bitterest self-reproach that his own hand might have grasped them in friendship.

It was a great relief to find that his sister’s house had been spared any outrage. But when he demanded admittance in the usual way, by kicking the door, it became evident that there had been a reign of terror, and that the inmates of the dwelling were not sure that it was yet over. The door was not thrown open in the usual free fashion of Jewish hospitality, but he became aware by a slight movement of one of the closed lattices that he was being inspected from above. The inspection was apparently satisfactory, for in another minute there was a sound of undrawing bolts and unfastening chains, and the inhospitable door was at last open. Hannah, sadly aged in look her brother thought, met him in the hall, and greeted him with a silent [pg 84]embrace. After a pause, in which she seemed to be struggling with her tears, she said—

“Welcome, dear Micah; while you and my husband and my children are left to me I feel that I cannot be unhappy. And perhaps you,” she added, with a wistful look in his face, “will draw nearer to us now. But come and see my dear ones.”

She led the way to a room at the back of the house, looking out into a little garden shaded by a wide-branching fig-tree. Hannah noiselessly drew aside the curtain that served for a door, and the two stood by common consent and watched the scene that met their eyes. Azariah, the father of the family, was sitting with his back turned to them, holding on his knees a copy of the Law. On two stools at his feet sat his daughters, each holding in one hand a tablet covered with wax, and in the other a stylus or sharp-pointed iron pen. He was slowly dictating to them the words, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one Lord,” and the little creatures were laboriously forming, not without many pauses for thought, the scarcely familiar letters.

“Now read it, my children,” said Azariah, when the task was finished; and one after another the sweet, childish voices repeated the well-known words. Micah, as he listened, felt himself strangely touched. Presently he heard his sister murmur to herself, “In Thy Law will I meditate day and night,” and glancing at her face saw it illumined [pg 85]with a joy which he could scarcely have believed those wasted features capable of expressing.

“’Tis well, Miriam; ’tis well, Judith,” said Azariah to the little girls, and putting his hands upon their heads, as they stood before him, for they had risen to repeat the holy words, he repeated, “The God of Abraham and Sarah bless you.” And then, for they were mere children after all, and not above childish rewards, gave each a ripe fig from a basket which stood on a table by his side.

The lesson being over, Hannah advanced, and her brother followed. Azariah turned and greeted the new comer not unkindly, but with a certain reserve, for he could not forget that his visitor was a Menander as well as a Micah, and that he had been the friend of the traitorous Jason, and the yet more traitorous Menelaüs. The children, after their first feeling of alarm, for a strange face was seldom seen in that home, and when Miriam, the elder, had recognized her uncle, showed no reserve in their welcome. They clung about his neck, and kissed him. They insisted on his coming to see their pets—Miriam’s turtle-doves, and Judith’s dormice, and the little gazelle fawn which they owned in common. “They have not heard a word against me,” thought Micah to himself; and this affectionate loyalty touched him to the heart. From his sister he might, perhaps, have expected it, but that the stern Azariah, a narrow-minded bigot, without a kindly thought for [pg 86]any that did not walk in his way, as he had been accustomed to think of him—that Azariah himself should have dealt with him so mercifully, was a surprise as it was also a reproach.

He stopped with them for the rest of the day, and after the evening meal, when the little ones had gone to bed, after making their uncle promise that he would soon come and see them again, the three had much serious talk together.