The Hammer: A Story of the Maccabean Times

by Alfred John Church

  CHAPTER XIII.

  GUERILLA WARFARE IN THE MOUNTAINS.

  Some weeks had necessarily to pass before the patriot army could assumethe offensive. Some kind of drill was necessary, though Judas, who had thechief direction of military affairs, did not attempt to teach his men anyelaborate manoeuvres. But practice in sword-play and in shooting with thebow was diligently attended to. A corps of slingers was also formed underthe command of one Sheba, a Benjamite, who possessed that skill with hisweapon which was characteristic of his tribe. The sling was admirablysuited to the kind of warfare which they would have to wage. As long asthere were stones there would not be wanting missiles for the slings,while the supply of arrows would be likely to fall short, and could noteasily be renewed. Meanwhile some rude anvils had been fitted up, andevery one who could work as a smith was pressed into the service ofrepairing old arms or making new ones. By degrees many of the fighting menobtained an equipment which, if not very handsome, was at least fairlyeffective. Some of the new arrivals, too, were old soldiers, and broughttheir arms with them. Jews who had enlisted in the armies of the variousAsiatic kings flocked to the standard of independence, when once it hadbeen set up. Even some of the well-paid mercenaries who formed thebodyguard of Antiochus were patriotic enough to prefer to their luxuriousexistence the privations of life among the mountains. It was a life which,at the least, they could lead without offence.

  It was winter when Mattathias and his sons reached the mountains; and withthe first beginnings of spring the force under his command, now increasedto a respectable strength, commenced active operations. These wereextended over a considerable range of country to all the villages that hadsubmitted to the edicts of the heathen rulers of the land. Even fortifiedtowns, in several instances, were surprised, not, it may be guessed,without the connivance of the patriotic party within the walls. The idolaltars which the King's commissioners had set up were thrown down withevery circumstance of indignity. All stores belonging to the usurpinggovernment were confiscated for the use of the national forces. Butprivate property was respected. Arms, indeed, if they were likely to beuseful, were taken, but always taken at a price.

  Severe as was the discipline, it met with a cheerful submission from themen, so commanding was the influence exercised by their leaders.Conspicuous among them were, of course, the sons of Mattathias. All werefavourites, but Judas and Simon took the lead. The strength, the skill,and the daring of the first were such that he was absolutely idolized byhis troops. There was no task, however perilous, which they would notattempt under his guidance, for there was nothing which he did not seemcapable of achieving. His physical strength was enormous; and hisfertility of resource unfailing. He had always some new device foroutwitting the enemy; and when the crisis of an undertaking arrived, if anattacking party were to be helped up some almost inaccessible height, agate to be broken open by main force, or a pass to be held againstoverwhelming odds, Judas was always ready and always, it seemed,successful. Scarcely less honoured, though in a different way, was theprudence and kindliness of Simon. If Judas never failed in an attempt itwas, in part at least, because Simon's advice was so uniformly sagacious,because he could measure so exactly the means at their command. And whenthe fighting was over, no one could be more unwearying in his attentionsto the wounded. The voice which rang so loud and clear through the din ofbattle was now soft and caressing, and the touch of his hand was as gentleand tender as if it had been a woman's.

  Such leaders could do anything with their troops, even when they had totask their obedience by the infliction of punishment. Even such men as theex-robber Benjamin felt what may be called the infection of discipline. Hehad accompanied one of the expeditions, in which a select force ofpatriots, after marching forty miles within twenty-four hours, surprised asquadron of Greek cavalry in one of the towns of Galilee. A short butsharp conflict took place in the square of the town, and Benjamin hadborne himself with conspicuous courage. The struggle over, the soldiershad received entertainment, not in every case very willingly given, fromthe inhabitants of the town. Benjamin happened to be quartered upon aparticularly churlish host, and resenting the coarse and scanty fare, sounsuited to the wealth apparent in all the fittings of the house, hadrevenged himself by abstracting a rich cloak belonging to his miserlyentertainer. The article was stowed away on his own person, but the keeneye of one of the Chasidim officers espied it; the thief was denouncedwhen the force had reached the encampment, and brought before the council,which was held under the presidency of Judas. The culprit pleaded in vainthe shabby treatment which he had received. It was not for him, he wastold, to take the law into his own hands. When he urged that the man was atraitor to his country he was asked whether he had himself taken the cloakfrom patriotic motives. "Did you purpose," said Judas, going to the pointwith characteristic directness, "to make this a common possession, or totake it for yourself?" Benjamin faltered under this searching question,and had no answer to give. Then Judas pronounced his sentence: "In oldtime he who had offended in this manner, as did Achan in the matter of thespoils of Jericho, died the death. These times are not equal to a justiceso strict. But what the law enjoins that you will suffer. Were such sin asyours to go unpunished we could expect no blessing on our arms. We shouldbecome, not what we would be, the armies of the Lord, but a horde ofrobbers. You will receive forty stripes save one; if you offend again, youdie."

  Without a murmur the culprit bared his shoulders for the lash. When thewhip had once fallen Judas stayed the executioner's hand. "Benjamin," hesaid, "you have done ill, but you have also done well. You saved fromdeath our brother Seraiah as he lay wounded under the feet of thehorsemen. For this good deed the rest of the punishment is remitted. Go,and sin no more."

  Seraiah indeed had been so seriously wounded that he had to be carriedback to the camp on a litter rudely constructed of boards, and Ruth wasnow nursing him in the cave which had been originally set apart for theirdwelling, and which they still retained. It was a miserable abode, thoughit at least afforded shelter from the rain. Indeed the lot of the womenand children in the patriot encampment was full of suffering. The men hadthe constant excitement of their warfare to cheer them, but the women hadonly to toil and to endure. In the day the drought consumed them, and thefrost by night. They had none of the comforts of life. Their food wascoarse in the extreme, and often very scanty. But, perhaps, their greatesttrial was in the matter of clothes. The stock which they had brought withthem from their homes was, for the most part, worn out, and it was only onrare occasions, when some property of the heathen fell into the hands ofthe patriots, that any part of it could be replenished. Sheepskins andgoatskins dried in the sun were commonly used, what remained of theirwardrobes being reserved for special occasions.

  Some time after the incident described above a serious trouble came uponAzariah. Miriam, his elder daughter, when she returned one day from herusual task of gathering herbs to eke out the family meal, complained ofheadache. It was evident that she was suffering from sunstroke. As thespring advanced the heat in some of the narrow mountain valleys becameexceedingly oppressive, and the town-bred child felt it acutely. For somedays her life was in danger, all the greater because she had neithermedical attendance nor skilful nursing. Ruth did all she could for thelittle sufferer, but then Ruth had her own husband to attend to, for,though recovering from his wound, he needed much care, and her child wasstill too young to be left alone. One or two visits in the day was allthat she could give. For the most part the girl's father was her nurse,the little Judith giving such help as she could. Love gave a lightness andtenderness to his touch, and supplied the place of skill in thatmarvellous way which is so often possible to love. Day after day, as hesat by the bedside, and watched his charge, the girl's face, now pale andwasted, and aged as it was with suffering, reminded him more and more ofhis lost Hannah. He lived over the happy past that they had known beforethe evil days began, the time when their first acquaintance as youth
andmaiden had ripened into love, and the early years of their wedded life.Thus he began to live in a world of imagination, while the sordidcircumstances of the present seemed to make no impression upon him, thoughhe always retained a punctual recollection of the duties that belonged tohis attendance upon the sick.

  One day Ruth had come in to pay the daily visit for which, howeverengrossing her own occupations, she always contrived to find anopportunity. The patient was in a sound sleep, with the little Judith forher sole attendant, Azariah having received an urgent summons to attend acouncil of war, in which some subject with which he was especiallyacquainted was to be discussed.

  After a few minutes Azariah returned, but without any of the signs ofagitation or haste that might be expected from one hurrying back to theperformance of a duty that he had been compelled to neglect. His sisterwondered to see him so calm, and she was still more surprised when he wenton to say--

  "How like the child is growing to my dear Hannah!"

  Ruth had often thought the same, but had not ventured to say so, forAzariah had never mentioned his dead wife.

  "Yes," she answered, "I have often thought so."

  "I have had some happy times of late. Before I could not get out of mymind the dreadful sight of her face when I last saw it." He paused for amoment, overpowered by the recollection, but soon resumed in a cheerfulvoice: "But now in this dear child I seem to see her as she was in thosehappy Bethlehem days before our marriage, and again in the still happiertime we had together in Jerusalem."

  "But does it not trouble you to leave the child alone?"

  "Nay, sister, she is not alone. Nor do I speak of our dear little Judithhere." And he stroked the little girl's head, and bade her go and playoutside, but be careful not to go into the sun.

  "Believe me," he went on, "that when I am not here, Miriam's angel is withher. Perhaps you will think me mad when I say that I have seen, and thatnot once or twice only, the flash of white garments vanishing in thedarkness as I came into the cave. And last night, as I sat here, dreaming,it may be, but certainly seeing everything in the cave as plainly as I seeit this moment, the angel came with the little babe--our little David thatmy Hannah took with her to Paradise--to kiss his sick sister. And whenMiriam awoke about an hour after dawn, the fever had left her."

  At this moment the girl opened her eyes. "Oh, father," she cried, "did youindeed see little brother last night?--for I saw him too; but I did not seethat an angel was carrying him. He seemed to be in the air somehow, withno one holding him up. And he had beautiful white clothes--not these nastysheepskins and goatskins that we have to wear--and he stretched out hishands to me, and kissed me, and I felt that moment as if that dreadfulburning had gone out of me. And oh! there was such a wonderful look uponhis face. It was just like the look on dear mother's face that eveningwhen the sun was just setting, and you took little brother up in yourarms, and said his name was David."

  Ruth could only listen to such talk with wonder and awe. But she went backto her husband and child with a lighter heart than she had borne for manydays.

  But a trouble was at hand which, though it had been for some timeforeseen, was great enough to make private sorrows and anxieties seeminconsiderable. It was reported through the encampment that Mattathias,the father of his people, was dying.

  The old man's health had been failing for some time. The hardships of hisnew life had told grievously upon it, all the more that he refused theexemption from labour which his age required. He had ceased to accompanythe expeditions because he found that his presence hampered the movementsof younger and stronger men, but the management of the multifariousaffairs of the encampment--the home administration, as it may be called, ofthe patriotic movement--he kept in his own hands. Early and late he busiedhimself in this work, and before many weeks were past his labours wore himout.

  He was well aware that the end had come, and that all that remained forhim to do was to appoint a successor who should accomplish, or at leastcarry on--for he did not deceive himself as to the difficulty of thework--the task which he had commenced. All the leaders were summoned to hispresence, the wounded Seraiah, for whose capacity and serene courage theold chief had a high regard, being carried thither on a litter. The oldman was propped in his bed on cushions, the difficulty of breathing makingit impossible for him to lie down. On either side stood his five sons,John, the eldest, being at his right hand, with Eleazar and Jonathan nearhim, while Simon and Judas were on the left. A physician, the solitaryprofessor of the healing art that the camp possessed, sat by the bed'sfoot, with a cup of some cordial in his hand.

  _The Last Charge of Mattathias._]

  The old man began by laying his hand on John's head. "My son," he said,"for your loyalty and faithful obedience I thank the Lord that gave me soexcellent a son for my first-born. You know what it is in my mind to dowith respect to the succession of my work, and I am assured that youapprove. But for the sake of those that stand by,"--and he pointed to theassembled chiefs--"I solemnly declare that for no defect of courage orhonesty I pass you by. And say if you are content to leave it according towhat seems best to my judgment."

  "Father," said the faithful John, "I am content."

  Simon beckoned to the physician, who handed the cup of cordial to thedying man. He swallowed a few drops, and then went on:

  "Hear, my friends and brethren. In the distribution of my worldly goods Ifollow custom and law. The inheritance of my fathers I give to my eldestborn, according to the custom of the birthright; and I direct that theyounger shall have such portions as are due to them. But I have that togive which has been entrusted to me of the Lord, and with which I mustdeal according to His pleasure, so far as it is given to me to know it.Simon, I will that thou be the father of the people. Care for them as forthy children. Do justice between man and man. Strive to the utmost thatthey keep the Law of the Lord their God. He has given thee prudence anddiscernment and knowledge of the customs of our fathers. See that thou usethese things for the glory of the Lord and the good of the people. Judas,I will that thou be captain of the host. Be stout and of a good courage,and the Lord shall fight on thy side, and give thee the victory. The endis not yet, and maybe thou wilt not see it with thine eyes; but, though ittarry, wait for it. 'For they that go on their way weeping, bearingprecious seed, shall doubtless come again with joy, and bring theirsheaves with them.'"

  He then addressed a few words to the two other sons, words of mingledencouragement and advice. This done he stretched out his hands, and, witha voice of surprising firmness in one so weak, blessed the whole assembly,repeated the usual profession of an Israelite's faith, and then drew hislast breath without a struggle.