[3]—page 16.] It is difficult to conceive of the magnificence and the extent of the Temple, as rebuilt by Herod, one of the greatest royal builders that ever lived. Edersheim calls it “a palace, a fortress, a sanctuary of shining marble and glittering gold.” Of it the Jewish tradition ran: “He that has not seen the Temple of Herod, has never known what beauty is.” As the pilgrim ascended the Mount, crested by that symmetrically proportioned building, which could hold within its gigantic girdle not fewer than 210,000 persons, his wonder might well increase at every step. The Mount itself seemed like an island, abruptly rising from out deep valleys, surrounded by a sea of walls, palaces, streets, and houses, and crowned by a mass of snowy marble and glittering gold, rising terrace upon terrace. Altogether it measured a square of about one thousand feet.
[4]—page 16.] The High Priest was Caiaphas, before whom Jesus had just been on trial. The beginning of the public ministry of Jesus was contemporaneous with the accession of Pontius Pilate to the procuratorship and the appointment of Caiaphas by Pilate to the high priesthood. Under the administration of Pilate, Roman rule reached the deepest depths in “venality, violence, robbery, persecutions, wanton, malicious insults, judicial murders without even the formality of a legal process, and cruelty.” History records of Caiaphas that he was appointed High Priest, not because of his piety—the Talmud describes in terrible language the “gross self-indulgence, violence, luxury, and even public indecency” of the high priests of that day—but because in him was found “a sufficiently submissive instrument of Roman tyranny.” The irreverence here displayed is the natural expression of an utterly godless nature, and the supernatural events that centered in that crucifixion hour could not have failed to call forth such manifest feelings of horror.
[5]—page 18.] The supernatural events mentioned in the narrative are recorded by the evangelists, and confirmed by tradition and contemporaneous history, as having occurred in connection with the Crucifixion—deep darkness enveloped the earth from the sixth hour to the ninth hour of the day; the veil of the Temple that shut in the Holy of Holies was rent from top to bottom; and a mighty earthquake terrified the multitudes. Lange has well said: “The moment when Christ, the creative Prince, the principle of life to humanity, and the word, expires, convulses the whole physical world.” Dr. Philip Schaff has said: “The darkness was designed to exhibit the amazement of nature, and of the God of nature, at the wickedness of the Crucifixion of Him who is the light of the world and the sun of righteousness.” The horror from such dense darkness is brought out powerfully by Lord Byron in his dream of “Darkness.” The extent and character of the Temple-Veil will account for the fact that it produced so profound an impression when it was seen rent from top to bottom and hanging in two parts from its fastenings above and at the side. The Veils before the most Holy Place were sixty feet long, and thirty wide, of the thickness of the palm of the hand, and wrought in seventy-two squares joined together. They were so heavy that it was said that three hundred priests were needed to manipulate them. The rending was seen to be the work of God’s own hand.
[6]—page 23.] The description of the priests and their residences would indicate an ideal condition. When the Israelites settled in Canaan, Joshua assigned to the priestly families thirteen cities of residence, with “suburbs” or pasture-grounds for their flocks (Josh. xxi. 13-19). The Levites were scattered over all the country, but the cities of the priests were all near Jerusalem and embraced within the bounds of Judah, Simeon, and Benjamin. When the priests were divided into twenty-four courses, each course officiated a week at a time. The interval of twenty-three weeks, between the successive times of service of a course, was a time for home life and high-priestly pursuits. The opportunities for leisurely culture were undoubtedly very great. In addition to the large number residing at this time in these priestly cities, who took their turn in the courses, there were no less than 24,000 stationed permanently at Jerusalem, and 12,000 at Jericho; so that it was a tradition among the Jews “that it had never fallen to the lot of any priest to offer incense twice.” Their proportion to the number of the people must, therefore, have been much greater than that of the clergy has ever been in any Christian nation. Their leisure and opportunities for culture, especially in the Sacred Books, must have been exceptional. The number of the priestly class was doubtless increased through intermarriage with the other tribes. Salathiel was a priest, and hence a Levite; but he was also connected with the tribe of Naphtali, through marriage of a daughter of that tribe; so that when consciousness returned he found himself being borne, not by his priestly associates to the cities of the priests about Jerusalem, but by his tribal kinsmen to the domain of Naphtali under the shadows of Lebanon.
[7]—page 26.] Before the Roman conquest, the hatred of the Samaritan for the Jew made Samaria largely a land of brigands, through which a Jew could not safely travel. To Herod the Great belongs the credit of breaking up this brigandage, so far as it was an organized system. Josephus relates that Herod, after taking Sepphoris, the metropolis of Galilee, “hasted away to the robbers that were in the caves, who overran a great part of the country, and did as great mischief to its inhabitants as war itself could have done.” He defeated them with a great slaughter, and drove them out of the land.
[8]—page 28.] The region through which the caravan was passing not only brought them in view of the scenes of many of the greatest events in Jewish history, individual and national—Mounts Carmel and Gilboa and Tabor and Hermon, and the theater of patriarchal and prophetic activity—but across what has been the battle-field for the armies of the world-empires of three continents as they have crossed and recrossed, from the days of Abraham down through the Crusades. It is aptly designated “a living history of Providence.”
[9]—page 33.] The “Haphtorah” (Isa. liii.) contains the most graphic Old-Testament picture of Jesus as the rejected, suffering atoning Messiah. It was this that the Ethiopian eunuch of Queen Candace was reading when Philip went up to him in his chariot (Acts viii. 29), and by the explanation of which he was converted to the Christian faith. Through its wonderful picture Eleazar seems already to have been led to look upon Jesus as the Messiah; but his hopes, roused by Salathiel’s renunciation of the priesthood, were dashed in finding that the veil was still over the face of the latter, as it was over the many of Israel.
[10]—page 43.] Jubal is a typical Israelitish mountaineer, hunter, and warrior in one, combining with a sense of wild freedom a touch of the ancient Jewish enthusiasm. The incident here narrated gives a glimpse of his deeper nature, and his outburst of patriotic exultation at sight of the grave of the hosts of Sisera was one in which every true Israelite could join.
[11]—page 47.] The life of a whole generation is passed in inactivity after the home is made in Naphtali—an inactivity that served to deepen the shadow of his doom and the remorse for his unspeakable crime. In this period the preparation is being made for the final conflict of Jew with Roman authority, and at the end of it Salathiel is thrust, by a malevolent power, into the leadership in that desperate first struggle, described by Josephus, that promised to sweep the Romans from Judea. His fate, however, pursues him, and he languishes for years in a dungeon—leaving the Jews, now without competent leadership, again under Roman control and oppression.