THE SECOND PERIOD OF

THE TIMES OF JUDAH AND ISRAEL:

FROM ELISHA TO ISAIAH.

No. XV.

WE hope that you will so study the Table of Kings and Prophets given you in our last chapter in its three separate portions, that the great messengers of God who lived and spoke in each era, will rise in your memory with each period of years.

The first period, you will remember, included ninety years after the division of the kingdom-that is, from 975 B.c. to 885 B.C. The names of the comparatively good kings of Judah are given in large capitals. Perhaps you referred to ASA, and remember God's protecting him against the mighty Ethiopian army under Zerah, or "Osarken" (named on Egypt's tablets), because Asa said, "O Lord God, in thy Name we go against this multitude." (See 2 Chron. xiv.)

Elijah's portrait occupied us last, and our present study must commence with Elisha, who stood to him somewhat in the light that Joshua did to Moses.

"He went after Elijah, and ministered to him." (1 Kings xix. 21.)

It is supposed that he did this for the space of eight years before Elijah's translation; Elisha's call to such ministry is said to have taken place about 906 B.C., and his death, after the discharge of his

prophetical office for nearly seventy years, occur about 838 B.C. When we hear of him first, her a young man, ploughing with twelve yoke of c in the rich pastures of the Jordan valley.

'Elijah passed by him, and cast his mantle (of rough shee skin) upon him."

This was in fulfilment of the word of the Lord:

'Elisha, the son of Shaphat, shalt thou anoint to be proph in thy room. And it shall come to pass, that him that escapeth sword of Hazael shall Jehu slay: and him that escapeth from ti sword of Jehu shall Elisha slay." (1 Kings xix. 16, 17.)

Hazael was king of Syria, who stepped to the throne by smothering his master. Elisha had fore seen "the evil he would do," as he read his with tears, on the previous day; while Ha amazed, enquired, "Is thy servant a dog, that should do this great thing?" God made that usurper the scourge of both Judah and Israel, whose kings united in self defence against him and the Syrians. Jehoram was king of Judah who had married Athaliah, the idolatrous daughter of Ahgb and Jezebel, Jezebel herself being the daughter of Ethbaal, the Canaanite king of Zidon. This accounts for all the Baal worship that arrayed itself against the commandments of God in both kingdoms, and to punish which God raised up Elijah, and prophesied as above, of the avenging Jehu.

But ere we mark the avenger Jehu, we must note the career of Elisha. His early life, it would seem, had been agricultural and domestic. He asks leave to take farewell of his friends, and then obeys the Divine summons, and attends his master to the close of his wondrous history. After seeing him parted from his side by a chariot of fire and horses of fire, and swept up into heaven by a whirlwind, Elisha received in that hour according to his earnest

enty year

rayer, a double portion of the Spirit that had noved his grand and awful friend. His native of him st haracter seems less powerful and more gentle than welve Elijah's, but he was equally used as an instrument

valley.

of the Holy One-of the Most High God-as Elijah mantle (had been, to deliver messages of judgment, whose truth was often proved by their instant fulfilment. of the l The spirit of Elijah doth rest on Elisha," said the anoint b sons of the prophets.

hat escap

xix. 16,1

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while

him that a To part the waters of Jordan, to increase the measure of the widow's oil,-to heal the bitter poisonous spring, to inflict and cure disease, to stepped warn and counsel kings, and to defy their rage,Elisha knowing himself surrounded and protected by unseen angelic guards,-to raise the dead to life, and even in his own dead bones to preserve the gift of dog healing. (2 Kings xiii. 21.) All this was in od Elisha's destiny. Elisha so different from Elijah, a and yet so one with him in soul! No wild and inst shaggy hairy man, but with smooth and well shorn dah locks, which the very children contrasted malicier ously with those of his forerunner,-using a walking staff like other citizens, glad of quiet repose in the friendly balcony, where bed, table, and chair, were prepared for him by the kindly lady of Shunem. He is not found in the desert of Horeb, or lonely on the top of Carmel, but in the crowded thoroughfares of Samaria, in the gardens of Damascus, and by the waters of Jordan. Still ever the Lord's mouthpiece, and instructing kings till his dying day, when Joash the monarch of Judah receives from him a promise of success against Syria, whose measure was to be the measure of his own perseverance and energy. "Thou shouldst have smitten

*This is implied in the term "baldhead."

F

five or six times," says the prophet, "then h thou smitten Syria till thou hadst consumed (The man of God was wroth, for the king smote three times, and stayed.) King Joash howe was privileged to repeat to Elisha at the time of death the very words which Elisha had uttered Elijah-"My father! my father! the chariots Israel, and the horsemen thereof." Were the r eyes unsealed as the servant's had been previous at Elisha's request, to see these glorious attends of the man of God's departure? (2 Kings vi. They had, we know, surrounded him in mortal p what so likely as that they bore his soul to mansion of its rest?

It is Elisha who sets apart Jehu to his office of avenger; but he does not do this personally.

"Elisha the prophet, called one of the children of the prophets," and bid him "gird up his loins and take a box of oil in his hand and go to Ramoth Gilead, and look out there Jehu, the son of Jehoshaphat, and pour it on his head, and say, Thus saith the Lord, I have anointed thee king over Israel.

It is needful to observe to some of our readers that this Jehu was not the son of Jehoshaphat king of Israel in the table; he is most often known as the son of Nimshi. There are also two Joram's in the table who were not the same, but brothers-in-law, by marriage of Joram, king of Judah, who was the son of king Jehoshaphat, with Athaliah (the daughter of Jezebel) who as a widow succeeded for seven years her son Ahaziah, whom Jehu slew.

What a scene of the retributive justice of God is depicted when Jehu, after his sudden anointing and

* Tradition says that Jonah was this prophet, also that he was the son of the widow of Zarephath, brought to life by Elijah, and destined afterwards to be the messenger to Nineveh.

he prophet asty enthronement by his captains on the top of the ou hadst stairs (see 2 Kings ix. 13) takes his own war chariot for the and drives according to his habit, "furiously" to King JJezreel, and meets the two kings Joram and Ahaziah lisha at funcle and nephew, in the field of Naboth the Jezreelite.

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"Is it peace, Jehu?" said King Joram.

And Jehu answers-"What peace? while the witchcrafts of thy mother Jezebel are so many "There is treachery," cries Joram to his nephew king, while Jehu draws a bow with his full strength, and Joram sinks dead in his chariot-Ahaziah by other hands sharing the same fate; and then Jehu remembers the day, when with his captain Bidkar, he had followed Ahab to this very plat of coveted ground acquired by murder, and heard the Lord's threatening by the mouth of Elijah, "I have seen the blood of Naboth, and I will requite thee in this plat, saith the Lord."

But Jehu is a man of blood; and not only one son of Ahab, but seventy must fall; "all that remained" of the idolatrous house; and then proclaiming "by subtilty" an assembly for Baal, as if he would be his servant, even more than Ahab had been, he gathers together all his prophets and his priests throughout the land; and when the house of Baal is full from one end to the other, by a sweeping massacre does this same Jehu remove by the united blows of fourscore men without, (his guard and his captains,) the whole heathen population at a stroke, from the kingdom of Israel.

Oh how striking it is, after studying this story, to behold in the galleries of the British Museum the war chariots, and driving such as Jehu's, gone