Stories of the Prophets Part 17

Thus it was given Isaiah to see the fruit of his labor in the peace and prosperity of Judah during the remainder of his life which he, undoubtedly, spent in peace with his family in his home in Jerusalem.

It is no wonder that he conceived the ideal of a time of universal peace, in which G.o.d shall be the G.o.d of all the nations, an era in which all peoples shall come to Him, and believe in Him, and follow in His law, and live such just and righteous lives that there would be an end to war in all the earth:

"It shall come to pa.s.s, in the end of days, That the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established at the top of the mountains, And it shall be exalted above the hills; And peoples shall flow unto it.

And many nations shall go and say, 'Come ye, and let us go up to the mountains of the Lord, And to the house of the G.o.d of Jacob; And he will teach us of His ways, And we will walk in His paths.'

For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, And the word of the Lord from Jerusalem, And He shall judge between the nations, And arbitrate for many peoples; And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, And their spears into pruning hooks; Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, Neither shall they learn war any more."

THE COMMONER

CHAPTER I.

_His Awakening._

Sloping down from the Judean hills toward the plain of Philistia and the Mediterranean Sea is the Shefelah, or Lowlands, a section of Palestine, far-famed for its stretches of rich farm lands, vineyards and olive groves.

These foothills were once the constant battlefield on which the Israelites from the hill country and the Philistines from the plain struggled for mastery; but, since the days of King Amaziah, who conquered Philistia soon after he came to the throne of Judah, in the year 798, the Shefelah, far away from the political turmoils in Samaria and Jerusalem, was one of the most peaceful and richest farm sections in Israel or Judah.

Up in Samaria, in the year 734, Hoshea, son of Elah, had played the traitor and had bent his head to Tiglath-Pileser, the a.s.syrian conqueror. Up in Jerusalem, Ahaz, son of Jotham, had acted the coward and had slipped his neck under the a.s.syrian yoke. But down in the Shefelah, on the lower highlands, politics and political intrigues played little part in the lives of the humble peasant folk.

Numerous towns and villages dotted the Shefelah, especially on the highway running northeast from Gaza, in Philistia, to Jerusalem, in Judah. These towns and villages were the centers where the neighboring farmers gathered at set times and where the many daily wage earners lived all the time.

Rich and fertile sections like the Shefelah were the backbone, the strength and the power of Israel and Judah. While the high and mighty princes and merchants lived in the capitals and squandered their wealth, the simple and hard-working farm folk and wage earners made up the bone and muscle of the population, raised the necessities of life and, in times of need, furnished the sinews of war.

Yet, notwithstanding the fertility of the Shefelah, its rich fields and olive groves, its plentiful and well-watered pasture lands, the farmers in the entire section, had to live from hand to mouth. Though they labored hard at their toil, they were, in fact, poor and unable to lay aside anything for a rainy day.

It was very difficult to become reconciled to such a condition of affairs. No one seemed interested enough to fathom the reason for it, except a certain young peasant, named Micah, who had a home in the town of Moresheth, and was the proud possessor of several well-paying olive groves and vineyards in the vicinity.

Micah's interest in the population was aroused, one day, when the widow of one of his neighbors came to him for advice. Her husband had owned a farm, adjoining one of Micah's pastures, on which there was a heavy mortgage. Now that the head of the family was gone, the merchant in Jerusalem, who held the mortgage, threatened to eject the widow and the children, because they could neither pay the amount borrowed nor the interest due thereon.

The st.u.r.dy young peasant, brought up in a home of severe simplicity, where gentleness and kindness were taught and practiced, pitied the woman and her children in their sad plight and loaned her the needed interest payment to stave off ejection from her home. Thereafter, he looked after her family until the oldest son was able to manage his own affairs.

Talking to some of his day-laborers he discovered a very amazing situation. He found that most of them had, at one time or another, owned their farms, but had lost possession of them through lawsuits, in which mortgage holders from Jerusalem had involved them, or through unjust treatment on the part of tax collectors and corrupt judges.

More amazing still was the knowledge that, all through the Shefelah, the majority of vineyards and olive groves were not owned by those who cultivated them, at all, but that they formed the vast estates of the princes and wealthy men of Jerusalem.

The beautiful and fertile Shefelah, then, was not the habitation of happy and contented tillers of the soil, who sang at their tasks and prided themselves upon their independence! It was in the heavy grip of a _land trust_, controlled by the great interests in the capital!

This knowledge caused Micah to enter upon his investigations with greater interest and deeper feeling. He discovered that the n.o.bility and the rich were fattening upon the sweat and toil of the rural and working population. A farmer thrown into debt was sure to lose his acres, and a wage earner, having no possessions that could be taken from him, was sure to lose his liberty. Widows and orphans were quickly robbed of their inheritances by the greedy land-grabbers of the metropolis, aided by a corrupt judiciary.

All this was a severe shock to the young peasant. He, himself, born and raised on a farm, had inherited his father's estates free from debt. He lived simply, worked hard, saved a neat sum every year--and imagined that every one else was doing the same.

Awakened to the real condition of affairs, Micah now determined to leave his estates in the care of his trusted overseers and to go to the great and famed cities of his land, to study at first hand the causes that had made possible the terrible economic and social wrongs in his section of the country.

CHAPTER II.

_The Cause of the Common People._

Micah, the Moresht.i.te, came to Jerusalem when the capital was at comparative peace. The struggle between King Ahaz and the Prophet Isaiah had narrowed down to an armed neutrality, as it were--the king was paying his tributes to Tiglath-Pileser and the prophet was preparing his "Remnant" for the day when the crown prince, Hezekiah, would come to the throne.

The young peasant took no sides and embraced no causes in Jerusalem.

He stood aside, the better to study conditions as an onlooker. To his great dismay and sorrow, he found the situation even worse than he had imagined it. It was true of the rich and mighty of the capital that

"They covet fields and seize them, And houses, and take them away.

They oppress a man and his house, Even a man and his heritage."

This much was clear on the surface of things.

Rapacity on the part of the rich meant oppression of the poor; increase of power for the mighty meant decrease of opportunity for the humble tiller of the soil and for the wage earner.

Seeing all this and understanding it, Micah felt himself impelled to fight the cause of the common people.

Conditions and a sympathetic soul thus made Micah a Prophet.

One of the people, he spoke in their behalf with the feeling and pa.s.sion of a man who has been through the mill of bitter experience:

Woe is me! for I am as when they have gathered the summer fruits, As when they glean the grapes of the vintage: There is no cl.u.s.ter to eat, Nor first-ripe fig which my soul desireth.

The G.o.dly man has perished out of the earth, And the upright among men is no more: They all lie in wait for blood; They hunt every man his brother with a net.

Both hands are put forth for evil, To do it diligently.

The prince asketh and the judge is ready for reward, And the great man, he uttereth the evil of his soul; Thus they weave it together.

The best of them is as a brier; The most upright is worse than a thorn hedge.

A man's enemies are the men of his own house.

Where shall he look for help and guidance--he, a commoner, without power, without influence? To whom shall he go for instruction, for inspiration, to struggle against conditions in the face of which he was helpless?

Micah returned to Moresheth to think matters over at his leisure. It was not an easy or simple task that he had voluntarily a.s.sumed.

One source of strength he always had to rely upon. Close to the soil, seeing the Creator's handiwork in the fields at his feet by day and in the wonders of the starry firmament by night, he was full of the spirit of G.o.d.

At the very outset of his self-imposed mission he could exclaim, fervently:

"But as for me, I will look unto the Lord: I will wait for the G.o.d of my salvation: My G.o.d will hear me."

G.o.d's guiding hand often leads us to our destinations by winding and unexpected paths. It is strange to record that Micah's first opportunity, in the task he had set before himself, came to him by way of Egypt and an Ethiopian usurper. The ambitions of that wily Pharaoh led directly to the fall of Samaria and to the Commoner's first great prophetic utterance.

CHAPTER III.