Rogues of the Bible

Dedication

I dedicate this book to Sunny Australia, and especially to Melbourne and “Scots Church” in that noble city. I do this in gratitude for a very happy visit in 1928, and in memory of many charming friendships. Some of these studies were preached in “Scots Church’: and one was specially prepared at the request of a friend in Geelong.

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Contents

INTRODUCTION ix AN APOLOGY FOR CAIN ] AN ARGUMENT FOR ESAU 14 AN APPRECIATION OF KORAH 4] A DISCHARGE FOR BALAAM 59 AN APPEAL FOR SAUL 80 A STATEMENT FOR JEZEBEL 109 _A PLEA FOR GEHAZI 127 AN EXONERATION OF CHRIST'S GENERATION 144

IN DEFENCE OF THE ELDER BROTHER AND THE PHARISEES 163

A VINDICATION OF PONTIUS PILATE 184 IN PRAISE OF TWO SPLENDID COWARDS 2} it A RECONSIDERATION OF ANANIAS 228

Introduction

Tus book is a plea for a revaluation, long overdue, of some of the outstanding characters of the Bible who have been immemorially criticised or condemned. I threw out the suggestion of this series in my book, The Mystery of Preaching, in the hope that someone, better fitted than I am, might take it up. But as no one has “‘lifted”’ the idea, I have been bold enough to take the business in hand myself.

I hope that my readers may admit that I have tried to build my case for each person fully on the facts narrated in Biblical history. I have endeavoured, as honestly as possible, to avoid any suggestion of personal bias or special pleading. There must, of course, be some kind of “special pleading”’ where one is arguing a case for the defence; but I trust that the type of pleading in this book is justifiable, as I ask only for a fair consideration of the implications of the known facts.

I believe that many of our ideas of historical characters, especially Biblical characters, have come to us at second-hand. Indeed, not a few of our popular judgments have been accepted unthinkingly, as an heirloom from a more prejudiced and less historical age. What I ask in these essays is an open mind to re-examine “the case for the defence.”

In view of the obvious reprisal of some alarmed critic—that in certain instances I may seem to have acquitted a sinner by criticising a saint—let us remember that in a case where two or more persons

P| x ROGUES OF THE BIBLE clash, the worth of the evidence of all parties should be considered, apart from bias and presupposition. | It does not do to say that a man like Elisha, David, Peter, or Paul must always be right, and their opponents always wrong. I ask the unprejudiced reader to decide in his own mind whether I have treated any of these great men with historical unfairness.

In regard to the title of my book, I should like to say that I do not use the term rogue in our common sense of rascal or miscreant. Few of the people I discuss are rogues in that meaning of the term. I use the word rather as a modern gardener employs it to describe outré specimens among his flowers. With him, a “rogue” is a flower out of place and out of colour among his choice seedlings. Some of the rogues among my sweet peas, for instance, are excellent flowers in themselves; but if they are not true to the colour of my named groups, they are “rogues” nonetheless!

Lest comment should be made on the notable absence of Judas from my gallery, may I say that I have omitted him only because I have already published a study of his character in my last book, The Dilemmas of Jesus.

I wish to acknowledge the help of many friends in the preparation of these essays, but especially of my friend, Mrs Donald Jack, for her kindness in typing this book, as well as my previous books. When I think of her labours in deciphering my penmanship, which often defies my own conjectures, I am filled with gratitude and amazement.

EDINBURGH, 1929.

ROGUES OF THE BIBLE HUIEAUQUSUSUQU0HQENONUG000 0000000000000

Was Cain, as I read recently, “the corrupt father of all vice and murder?” Had he a vicious soul? Was he “criminally-minded?” In a word, was he a bad man?

I

His sin has made Cain the horror of all generations, as the prototype of crime itself. His name is now a byword for those brutal deeds of passion that curse our social life. It is the hall-mark of every stealthy thing that stabs in the dark, poisons for profit, or strangles from fear or venom. Every literature has its equivalent of the phrase, “the brand of Cain.”

I am not dealing with Cain’s sin but with Cain the man. I have no wish—indeed there is no need—to speak of the crime itself. What can one add more damning than that haunting verse of Scripture, “The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground’’?

If I do not speak of the deed, it is not because I am indifferent to it, or would excuse it, or condemn it less than others. But I cannot help thinking that there is a possible way of considering a man apart from his acts, although in our human limitation we are forced to judge him by them. It may be as true to say that a man is better than his acts. In any case, our life and character cannot be judged by one deed,

1 } however desperate. It is certainly not Divine justice, though it may be human, to estimate our whole life in the light of a single tragic fall. God did not judge David by his one moral crash, but by the volume of his life. Unfortunately, we never picture Cain except with blood on his hands!

When a man is down, it is easy to kick him where he lies. Cain has been so much of a world’s abhorrence that there has been nothing too bitter or wounding to throw at his head. Without any question, the generations have been right in their loathing of his sin. As told in these narratives, it was the first act of passion, a passion that flared out into unleashed anger, and eventually found its outlet in his brother’s blood. Since then, that stain in the sand has been the mark of murder—“the brand of Cain”—the foul thing that slays, and must itself be slain.

It goes without saying, however, that in apologising for a man, one need not apologise for his crime. It is recognised in our modern theories that there may be extenuating circumstances in our life, which if they do not excuse, may at least explain. In my remarks, following the records of Genesis, I should like to see if there are any suggestions given in the story which may make Cain’s deed more understandable, less of the senseless, unprovoked piece of brutality it seems, and the man himself less of a blind enigma of iniquity.

II

The first point usually stressed in a modern court of justice is the question of motive or cause.

Fortunately for our guidance, the motive behind this deed of passion is fully known. The two brothers, Cain the elder and Abel the younger, brought offerings for Jehovah’s altar from their own appropriate line of work. Cain, being a tiller of the ground, brought the fruits of the field; Abel, being a keeper of sheep, brought the firstlings of his flock.

This difference in the substance or nature of the gifts counts for nothing. In the minds of later Jews, it did count, from theological reasons, because of the presence of spilled blood in Abel’s offering. But ideally, the offering of both men was perfect. Each gave of his best, the natural produce of his labour, which is always a man’s finest gift, to God or anyone else.

It is foolish of us to follow later Jewish thought in stressing the supposed difference in the quality of the gifts. To do so makes the choice between the two men only an intellectual riddle. The comments of a critic like Bishop Wordsworth, representative of so many more, seem only confusion confounded to me. “There is therefore,” he says, “good reason to suppose that in Abel’s case it was the nature of the offering itself, as well as the temper of the offerer, which commended him to God. Abel’s offering was a sin-offering, Cain’s was a thank-offering. But God in His Law puts sin-offerings first; and there is no acceptance of thank-offerings previous to sin-offerings. In the victim offered by Abel there was an express confession of sin, and there was an acknowledgment that sin required the shedding of blood for its remission; and so Abel’s offering was an act of repentance.”

This type of interpretation is quite unreliable, for it reads into the early narratives the mature ideas of later priestly thought. If the reason for Cain’s rejection is evident to the Bishop, it was certainly

A ROGUES OF THE BIBLE not evident to the man himself! In any case, how can we arrive at the groundless distinction that the one offering was a sin-offering, and the other a

thank-offering? This is exegetical fooling. Besides,

there was no “Law of God” in these dim days to “put sin-offerings first!”

The Epistle to the Hebrews, in its great argument for faith, quotes our case as follows: “By faith Abel offered a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain.” That sentence, it should be noted, reckons each offering as sacrifice, but considers one more acceptable than the other, the reason being faith, or the heart of the offerer. We may admit, therefore, that the inward state of Abel’s mind was more perfect (shall we say, more religious?) than Cain’s. On the other hand, Dr Dods certainly oversteps the line of fair comment in regarding Cain, already, as an evil man! “The reason of the rejection of his offering was his own evil condition of heart. If thow doest well, shalt not thow also be accepted?—implying that he was not accepted because he was not doing well. His offering was a mere form: he complied with the fashion of his family: but in spirit he was alienated from God, cherishing thoughts which the rejection of his offering brings to a head.”

This criticism, unfortunately, is based on a wrong exegesis of the text which Dr Dods quotes! By a true translation, the verse in Genesis reads thus: “Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shall not it (thy countenance) be lifted up? and if thou doest not well, sin croucheth at the door.’ While there is the suggestion that Abel’s faith is richer and more receptive, there is no implication in the passage that his brother was refused because he had not done well in the past, or because of “his own evil condition of heart.” If we say this, we put a damning positive where there is only an indefinite comparative. The Bible does not hint that Cain was evil, but that he was only less acceptable than Abel. To assert that his offering was ‘“‘a mere form,” that he only “complied with the fashion of the family,” and that “in spirit he was alienated from God” is the worst form of arguing— arguing a case.

In the story we read simply that the sacrifice of Abel the younger was accepted, while the offering of Cain was refused. For this apparent partiality, not even a dim hint of a reason is suggested in the narrative itself, although most people rightly agree with the “Epistle to the Hebrews” that it was the heart behind the gift that counted, the heart that God alone can try. His own subsequent conduct is perhaps the best proof that Cain’s heart at this time, while not evil, was not as it should be.

But what concerns us at the moment is the simple fact of the rejection. I think we should observe what that rejection seemed to imply. According to Semitic ideas, it meant that God had passed Cain by in favour of the younger brother. He had thus been deprived of the special spiritual privileges that belonged naturally to the elder brother. With this loss went the choice of him and his line for succession in God’s purposes. Apparently, Cain was here dispossessed of what was specially prized in Semitic thought, his “spiritual birthright,” a leadership that carried with it certain definite privileges, political, judicial, and religious. He was not dispossessed by man, (the Hebrews would not have considered that possible), but by an inscrutable Divine election. If this is so, (it is the common Hebrew explanation of

Cain’s rejection), then we can understand the cause of his anger and passion. We often scourge Esau in our thoughts for so lightly regarding this same birthright, and being willing, seriously or in jest, to part with it for a mess of red pottage and to stay a casual hunger. ‘That is a charge at least that no one can level against Cain. He prized it too much.

Not for one moment does this consideration of Cain’s motive lessen the crime and horror of murder. It does allow us, however, to estimate what Semitic thought considered to be the “provocation” that soured his heart. It saves us from writing down his brutal act as only an irrational spasm of groundless jealousy. In his own puzzled eyes, he had suffered a definite wrong, a wrong, too, for which he could see no adequate cause.

His fault lay not in feeling the wrong, which anyone might have felt in his place, but in his method of righting the wrong. Nothing can ever excuse murder; but such feelings of amazed injury as must have lodged in Cain’s mind may at least make his anger understandable.

IIl

Passing from the motive of this grim story, I should like now to ask if we are given any indications of this man’s nature and qualities which may lead us to understand him better and regard him as less of a senseless puzzle.

In the first place, he is constantly portrayed to us as a man of amazing vitality and energy, one even with a touch of genius and directive originality, the type of person indeed who with great inherent powers may either touch heaven or sink to hell. I shall bring clear proof of this contention later in my essay. Meanwhile I ask you to notice that the record puts this fact in a dramatic phrase when it asserts that “sin was crouching at his door.” This is a wordparable that at once suggests temptation, like a wolf sitting on its haunches, watching its victim for a chance unwary moment. :

Quite obviously, this is a picture describing a man of vigorous passions and temptations, who must ever be alert against his own hot desires, and whose turbulent emotions are his worst enemy. This type of man, with his rough powers and passions, must guard himself carefully, for by the very wealth and surge of his own nature, sin is crouching at his door. Here, then, is the Bible’s picture of Cain—a big bundle of unruly emotions and tangled powers, with immense possibilities and equal dangers, a heaving voleano of force and fire with no protective crust of solid earth to prevent eruption.

It is easy for some people to control desire and walk straight. In their case, virtue is often a question of a placid temperament and a colourless nature. It is their gain that they are untempted and untorn as more vigorous people are. There. are many of us so bloodless and so lustreless that we have not even the longing to break bounds! I am not striving to score a dialectic point, but I am speaking glancingly on a big truth. Our good is to be judged not only by what we do or refrain from doing, but often by the unguessed forces that are resisted. No one would compare the morals of a sickly child and a rousing, stirring boy. That boy with his jumping thoughts will blunder more in one day than an anemic child will do in a year. It is worth noticing, therefore, for our judgment of conduct, that it is where there is a rush of rude vigour and vitality that sin “croucheth | at the door.” : Cain was such a man. His explosive power, like |

a bomb, was enormous. The problem for such men ~

is to use this explosive power when and where — needed, at the right time and for good ends. A bomb — is a magnificent thing among the entrenchments of |

the enemy: it is a disaster among one’s friends. 'The —

real difference between Cain and Abel was not a |

difference between placid goodness and vicious evil. It consisted rather in this—that Abel had no powder, and Cain had plenty, though he misused it ruinously. Along this line, so far as the records are concerned, lies any understanding of the problem of Cain—not as a man essentially evil and vicious, but as a big untutored soul of undefined power and — possibility, who might live greatly or sin deeply.

IV

From the records themselves, let me now adduce our proofs of his amazing vitality and originality.

First of all, we are told that he was a tiller of the ground, and Abel a keeper of sheep. It is a remarkable fact in history that the evolution and refinement of civilisation have come from the tillers of the soil. The pastoral peoples of the world have made little progress. They live to-day much as they lived in Abraham’s time, static: for the conditions of their life are unchangingly meagre and simple. Cain was a tiller of the soil, because, like all agriculturists, he had the energy and vision to foresee and plan results. He found an outlet for that energy in constructive work. From this work, his offering to God was the “fruits of the field.” Thus in its own way, the Bible represents the great science of agriculture, round which so much of the world’s progress gathers, as beginning in such a man’s first rude scratching of the ground. By his very occupation, therefore, Cain had greater possibilities than Abel.

Further, (how beautifully impartial the Bible is), we read that this despised murderer was the first man to “build a city.” No doubt, this meant little more than a few rough huts, with a wattle hedge around them, to scare off intruders and prowling beasts. But in simple expedients like these lie the origins of all social growth and government. There | could be no local or general culture without that first rude stockade and the huddle of palm-leaf huts cowering behind it. Here by Cain’s genius, according to the Genesis story, lies the origin of communal life, and all future social institutions. The Bible attributes this inventive possibility to our father of murder. The natural inference is obvious—that both his good and his evil, in their outgoings, sprang from his aggressive personality of boundless energy and restless genius! If Cain sinned, it was from this surging power of his, unbalanced and vehement. “He built a city.”

Further, the records, (once more startlingly impartial), assert that this fund of power passed as a direct and cleansed inheritance to his descendants. Cain’s line of heredity is definitely represented as leading to a string of people of genius and fertile invention! Jabal, one of his descendants, is said to be the “father of such as dwell in tents,”” people who could trek with their cattle and engage in commerce, the barterers of the world, who might migrate and find new lands. In them, the discerning eye can readily discover the founders of our own modern interlinked life, where the communications of busi- — ness mean everything; and in such humble origins we _ can see the germ of commercial progress—the adventurous, migrating, and bartering spirit. Jubal, another descendant, is claimed to be the inventor of the harp and the pipe, a man of music and the arts, in whom we see the dawn of artistic things. T'wbal- Cain, still another of this noted line, 1s reputed to be the first artificer in brass and iron, a craftsman of skill, in whom the latent seed of Cain’s genius once more blossomed in new productive ways.

On any understanding of the Genesis story, this is a remarkable tribute to Cain’s vigorous and inventive inheritance! If we believe in anything to-day, we believe in breed. We have proved that breed and race transmit vigour and quality. We see it both in disease and health, in animal and man. Hence the moral of this story of Cain’s magnificent legacy — to his own line is simple. It undoubtedly suggests the secret of his fall—abounding vitality, misused and misdirected, massive powers whose strength he himself did not know until too late, not great vice or unparalleled wickedness, but simply a big arrogant nature, rich and explosive, thrown off its balance by passion.

V

I have yet one thing to state in his favour. Some years after his crime, when his first child was born, he named him Enoch. That name, as Dr Driver points out, denotes “dedication,” “a new start,” “a fresh beginning.” What a lovely and suggestive name for the child of a sinner like this! I know it is usual to deny Cain any true and effective repentance—on

AN APOLOGY FOR CAIN via the principle, I suppose, that if we give a dog a bad name, we may as well drown him. People seem to argue that a man like Cain must have been by nature different from themselves, a species of wild beast, a kind of moral leper, to whom repentance was impossible. But is there not more than a suggestion in the name of his child that Cain came to himself in deeper ways than we imagine? May we not see in this name a dim recognition of God’s wonderful mercy in shielding him from the consequences of his sin and giving him a new land and a new start? In time, he might find the best proof of that mercy even in his shameful brand: for while that brand was the emblem of his sin, it was also his protection from the consequences of his crime. He might come to realise, as many of us do with our own scars, that God’s brand may prove His deepest mercy.

I like to think, therefore, that Cain who was like any one of us, was, like any one of us, capable of a cleansing and drenching sorrow. He called his little lad E’'noch, because the father himself found in the son a new start. Life blossomed out afresh from the desert of sin in that little baby’s life.

This is Cain as I see him in the records. Some people may retort that I have only whitewashed a black man! But the facts are not mine: they are from the records of Genesis. I only claim a place for my interpretation of the facts. I claim that they may reveal to us a man not separated from any of us as a prince of devils, or one who is beyond all ordinary moral computation, but one who stands on our own level, not at all an “enigma of iniquity” or one who was “criminally-minded,” but simply a human being with an overdose of restless energy who allowed his turbulent passion to master him and was brought to his brother’s blood by such common things as envy, jealousy, and anger, fanned in a high wind of passion. |

If my reading is right, the moral of the story is plain. It is possible for any man to sin as he did, if he too has his untamed powers! A big nature, generously endowed but uncontrolled, will do it any time. The line between us and Cain is not too broad.