SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE ISRAELITES FROM SAUL TO CHRIST.
By W. F. COLLIER, LL.D.
During this period the state of social life among the Jewish people underwent a very great change. An immense flow of wealth into the country took place. Through intercourse with other countries, many new habits and fashions were introduced. The people lost not a little of their early simplicity of character and life. A splendid court had been set up, and a splendid capital built. Commercial relations had been established with remote parts of the world. A great stride had been taken in the direction of luxury and refinement.
There was now a standing army, a large staff of civil officers, and a vast number of menial servants in the country. Besides the ass, the horse and the mule were now introduced as beasts of burden; chariots and splendid equipages were set up; and many persons assumed the style and bearing of princes. Private dwellings underwent a corresponding change, and all the luxuries of Egypt and Nineveh became familiar to the Hebrews.
But was all this for good? It appears as if the nation, or its leaders, now struck out a new path for themselves, in which God rather followed than preceded them, giving them, indeed, at first, a large measure of prosperity, but leaving them more to their own ways and to the fruits of these ways than before. This, at least, was plainly the case under Solomon. The vast wealth circulated in his time over the country did not bring any proportional addition, either to the material comfort, or to the moral beauty, or to the spiritual riches of the nation. There can be no doubt that “haste to be rich” brought all the evils and sins which always flow from it in an age of progress toward worldly show and magnificence.
It appears from the Proverbs that many new vices were introduced. Many of the counsels of that book would have been quite inapplicable to a simple, patriarchal, agricultural people; but they were eminently adapted to a people surrounded by the snares of wealth and the temptations of commerce, and very liable to forget or despise the good old ways and counsels of their fathers. The Proverbs will be read with far greater interest, if it be borne in mind that this change had just taken place among the Hebrews, and that, as Solomon had been instrumental in giving the nation its wealth, so, perhaps, he was led by the Spirit to write this book, and that of Ecclesiastes, to guard against the fatal abuse of his own gift.
The practice of soothsaying, or fortune-telling, was common among the Jews at the beginning of this period. The prevalence of such a practice indicates a low standard of intellectual attainment. It seems to have had its headquarters among the Philistines (Isa. ii:6); and very probably, when Saul drove all who practised it from the land, he did so more from enmity to the Philistines than from dislike to the practice itself. It continued, as Saul himself knew, to lurk in the country, even after all the royal efforts to exterminate it. (I Sam. xxviii:7.) Probably it never altogether died out. In New Testament times it was evidently a flourishing trade. (Acts viii:9; xiii:6.) All over the East it was practised to a large extent, and the Jewish sorcerers had the reputation of being the most skillful of any. It was the counterfeit of that wonderful privilege of knowing God’s mind and will, which the Jew enjoyed through the Urim and Thummim of the high-priest. Those who would not seek, or could not obtain, the genuine coin, resorted to the counterfeit.
In literary and scientific culture the nation made a great advance during this period. In a merely literary point of view, the Psalms of David and the writings of Solomon possess extraordinary merits; and we can not doubt that two literary kings, whose reigns embraced eighty years, or nearly three generations, would exercise a very great influence, and have their example very largely followed among their people. David’s talents as a musician, and the extraordinary pains he took to improve the musical services of the sanctuary, must have greatly stimulated the cultivation of that delightful art.
What David did for music, Solomon did for natural history. It need not surprise us that all the uninspired literary compositions of that period have perished. If Homer flourished (according to the account of Herodotus) 884 years before Christ, Solomon must have been a century in his tomb before the “Iliad” was written. And if it be considered what difficulty there was in preserving the “Iliad,” and how uncertain it is whether we have it as Homer wrote it, it can not be surprising that all the Hebrew poems and writings of this period have been lost, except such as were contained in the inspired canon of Scripture.
There were, also, great religious changes during this period of the history. Evidently, under Samuel, a great revival of true religion took place; and the schools of the prophets which he established seem to have been attended with a marked blessing from heaven. Under David the change was confirmed. In the first place, the coming Messiah was more clearly revealed. It was expressly announced to David, as has been already remarked, that the great Deliverer was to be a member of his race. David, too, as a type of Christ, conveyed a more full and clear idea of the person and character of Christ than any typical person that had gone before him.