Oriental Women

by Edward B. Pollard

Diplomatic marriages were not uncommon in the ancient commonwealth of Israel. They were not provided for in the law of Moses. Indeed, they were distinctly prohibited both by the genius of that law and by its positive enactments. And yet, no less influential a name than that of Solomon might have been quoted as giving sanction to this method of assuring national peace.

Even modern governments might be cited--not only of the East, but of the countries of Europe--as pernicious examples of the very ancient custom of cementing political friendship by the interchange of daughters. The Tel El Marna tablets present a number of illustrations of diplomatic correspondence between Oriental kings concerning daughters who had been given as wives to brother monarchs as a seal of friendship. Now this well-nigh universal custom of diplomatic marriages, though discouraged by the law of the Hebrews, spoken against by their prophets, and forbidden by the very genius of their religion, was not uncommon in the land of Israel. Saul, the first king, can scarcely be said to have welded the tribes into a stable and recognized nationality. David, his successor, was a warrior, who depended for his successes more upon military prowess than upon the skill of diplomacy. The third King of Israel fell heir to a nation made by the master hand of his father. The Hebrews were now recognized by contemporary peoples as a great nation, and, being respected for their power, peace reigned in Palestine. Solomon, a man of peaceful temperament, resolved to sway the sceptre and enhance his influence by the arts of diplomacy rather than by the instruments of war. Among these arts was that of knowing how to be wisely and numerously wed. He it was who introduced the harem, in the modern meaning of the word, into Palestine.

The living wives--in number seven hundred--that are said to have been possessed by King Solomon shows that the prayer made by the people when first they sought a king "like all the nations" had been answered. Here was the beginning, as some of the prophets thought, of Israel's subsequent disaster and final undoing as a kingdom. To them Jehovah was the one unifying cause, the great power that was to preserve their national integrity, their very existence as a people. To admit foreign wives into the palace, bringing with them their gods, and becoming perchance the mothers of their future kings was to defile the religion of the realm at its heart, to undermine the worship of Jehovah in the house of him who should be its main defender. In the life and reign of King Solomon we have the strange contradiction which is not infrequently discovered between theoretical wisdom and practical folly, between private life and public conduct. No man of ancient days appears to have understood woman better than Solomon, nor said more wise things concerning them. His dealing with the rival claimants of a certain baby, his wisdom in answering the hard questions of the Queen of Sheba have made his name famous. And yet it was his lack of practical wisdom in arranging his own household that sowed the seed of discord and dissolution which were later to cause great distress and at last disruption.

IV

THE ERA OF POLITICAL DECLINE

Altogether the most glorious reign in all the history of the Hebrew commonwealth was that of Solomon. David his father's military prowess and his own skill in diplomacy had brought peace with foreign nations, and rapid internal development. But even now germs of decay were perceptible. The custom of diplomatic marriage with daughters of heathen kings, the incoming of luxury, which was destined to undermine the social, political, and religious hardihood which had previously characterized the people, were destined powerfully to influence the life and character of Hebrew women. For here, elements of weakness will often first show themselves. It was inevitable that with the harem should come immorality, luxury, effeminacy, and the encroachments of foreign influence, through the women of many lands bringing their forms of worship and also their deities with them. It was in anticipation of all these dangers that the law forbade the king to "multiply wives to himself." It will be remembered that it was the increased taxation necessary to keep up such an establishment as that which Solomon brought into being in Israel that led at his death to a disruption of the kingdom into two antagonistic parts. It was the violation of this law that later led the northern kingdom of Israel into one of the bitterest struggles, one of the most cruel wars of extermination, ever enacted among a people which has suffered many grievous national experiences. King Ahab married a Princess of Phoenicia, the daughter of Eth-baal, King of the Zidonians. With her came her worship of Baal, the very name of which divinity was imbedded in the name of her father, Eth-baal.

For force of character, Jezebel is probably unexcelled in the Scripture records. But that character was, unfortunately, villainous. Molière affirms that "It is more difficult to rule a wife than a kingdom." Ahab must have found it so, and surrendered both enterprises to Jezebel. When--like the famous miller of Potsdam who would not part with his mill even to the great Frederick--Naboth refused to sell the vineyard which was so coveted by the king, Jezebel says tauntingly to the disappointed, fretting husband: "Dost thou rule over the Kingdom of Israel?" This Lady Macbeth cries: "Give me the dagger." She prepares a great feast, invites Naboth as a guest of honor, accuses him falsely and has him killed. Triumphantly she now can present her husband with the much-coveted vineyard. Her horrible death in the revolution which the fast-driving Jehu led is held up by the prophets as a warning to subsequent generations, for, unburied and eaten by dogs, Jezebel's body was cast away, so that none could afterward honor her memory or say: "This is Jezebel." And in the same revolution, by a Nemesis so common in history, Jezebel's son Joram was slain in the field of Naboth. That her name made a deep impression upon the Hebrew mind, however, may be seen in the fact that in the book of Revelation, written nearly ten centuries afterward, an heretical and idolatrous influence is referred to as "that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess to teach my servants to commit fornification and to eat things sacrificed to idols."

In marked contrast with the motherly devotion which generally characterized the "daughters of Rachel" stands out the example of Athaliah the unnatural; since she was the daughter of Jezebel, the fact is not strange. To the truthfulness of the remark of La Bruyère that "Women are ever extreme, they are better or they are worse than men," history has often testified. The woman who is usually satisfied to sit behind the throne has occasionally had ambitions to sit upon it. So it was with Athaliah. The law of the Hebrews, while it made provision for inheritance of daughters along with the sons, does not contemplate the dominion of a queen. Only one woman ever sat upon the throne of the Hebrews.

When King Ahaziah, the reigning King of Judah, had been slain by Jehu in a revolution directed against Joram, King of Israel, and all the seed royal, Ahaziah's mother, seized with ambitions to be herself the sovereign, proceeded to put to death all the possible heirs to the throne. Fortunately for the Davidic dynasty, however, a sister of the dead king rescued one of his sons, an infant, from the bloody massacre, and hid him in one of the apartments of the temple. When the proper time came, the high priest Jehoiada brought forth the lad, now seven years of age, and with the aid of mighty men, proclaimed him king. Athaliah was surprised and overwhelmed and was slain; but she had given Judah six years of unrighteous government.