IN THE HOLY
LAND
CHAPTER IX.
Mount
of Olives — Biblical recollections— The olive's tenacity of the
soil— David's flight over the mountain [2 Sam. xiv., xv.] — The
mosque — Clumsy tradition — Signal-point — Objects on which
Jesus looked— Solitudes for prayer— Wanderings— The damsel in
the almond-tree — Bethany — Its present appearance — The holy
sisters — The garden of Lazarits — Clamorous guides —
Incredulity — The Jericho road — Locality of Lazarus' grave—
House of Simon — Spot of the ascension [Luke xxiv. 50] — The
triumphal entry — Bethphage [Luke xix. 29-38] — The weeping Redeemer
[Luke xix. 41, 42] — The great prophecy [Matt, mm.}— Jerusalem as
Jesus saw it— Cursing of the fig-tree [Matt. xxi. 18-20]— Interesting
discovery— Explanations— Jerusalem the golden [Isa. ix. 14, 15],
WE made various excursions from Jerusalem to sacred spots
at a convenient distance; and one of the most memorable of these was to that
Bethany, about fifteen furlongs, or two miles distant, which supplied a calm
retreat and genial home to Jesus during his ministries in the guilty city. It
was not Bethany alone, however, but the Mount of Olives - over which we must
pass in going and returning - which stirred our interest to its highest pitch;
for of all the mountains in the world, this green Olivet, rising immediately to
the east of the city, more than two hundred feet above the highest point on
Mount Moriah, is the richest in hallowed associations. Every part of it is holy
ground. It has been described as "an everlasting altar, with its equally
everlasting memories both of words and deeds." Remembering that the scene of
our Redeemer's agony was on one part of it, and the place of his ascension on
another; that on this mount he held some of his most valuable conversations
with his disciples, and uttered his greatest prophecies; that it was the scene
of his meek triumphal entry, and of "the Redeemer's tears wept over lost souls"
that his morning and evening walks were along those very paths; and that its
ancient olive-groves and heaths witnessed his solitary wrestlings and midnight
prayers-for "in the evening he went out unto the Mount of Olives, and continued
all night in prayer to God;" - it was impossible, as we walked and wandered on
it aot to feel a kind of sabbatic solemnity corning over our spirit' and our
voice hushed as if we were treading the pavement of a temple: One cherished
friend, a professor from one of our Scottish universities, accompanied us on
our walk.
Passing on our right the thrice sacred Gethsemane, we ascended
almost straight up the face of the mountain, through little corn-fields, over
grassy plats and naked rocks, and past solitary olive-trees. We were struck
with the amazing tenacity with which this tree vindicates its right to its
paternal soil. We meet with distinct indications in more than one passage in
the Old Testament, of its growth on this mountain to which it has given its
name, eleven hundred years before Christ; and though every tree within many
miles around Jerusalem was hewn down by the soldiers of Titus, both for the
purposes of siege and of fuel, here is this hardy evergreen, self-sown, or
springing fresh from its old roots, living through all changes, and refusing to
yield to the common law of destruction. But in the days of Jerusalem's
greatness, an inhabitant looking across the narrow gorge to Olivet would have
seen mingling in the picture with the prevailing olive, the fragrant myrtle,
the feathery palm, and the white-blossoming almond.
We were now
ascending, it is likely, by the very road by which David went up when he fled,
weeping and barefooted from the conspiracy of that heartless Absalom, whom he
had ."loved not wisely but too well." It needed little effort of imagination to
conceive the various movements of the royal exile with his chivalrous band of
followers, so graphically described in 2 Samuel xiv., xv.; his act of solemn
worship, when he had reached the mountain summit, and his sorrowful look as he
turned the ridge and bade farewell to his beloved Jerusalem, it might be for
the last time; his interview, soon after he had begun to descend the further
side of the hill, with the attached and faithful Hushai; the seasonable yet
selfish presents brought by Mephibosheth's servant; the curses and insults of
the base Shimei; and all the long and wearisome flight through the hot and
sandy wilderness, until the deep and impetuous Jordan stretched between him
and, a people misguided and frenzied by the flatteries and false promises of
"him who was his own blood."
On the highest point of the mountain there
is a Turkish mosque, with its usual tall and lance-like minaret; and, quite at
hand, there is a little chapel marking the traditional spot of our Lord's
ascension to heaven. We did not enter, though we were tempted by the clumsy
promise of showing us, on a rock within, the last footprints of the Saviour
before he took his upward flight to the skies. We knew that the whole invention
was in direct contradiction to the express words of the evangelist Luke, who
tells us that Jesus "led out his disciples as far as to Bethany; and he lifted
up his hands, and blessed them. And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he
was parted from them, and carried up into heaven." Bethany was yet fully a mile
distant. Yet this top of Olivet had its own associations of special interest to
us, especially on two accounts. It was the point from which men in olden times
sent forth from the Temple, watched for the earliest appearance of the new
moon; and as soon as they caught the first glimpse of its thin, silvery
crescent, they signalled the fact to the priests in the Temple and to the
inhabitants of the city, probably either by the waving of torches or the
sounding of trumpets. And it was interesting to realize from this point the
objects that must often have met the gaze of Jesus, as he occasionally went
back from Jerusalem by this way to Bethany. Immediately beneath where he stood
and looked there were probably at that time gardens and orchards sending up
their fragrance from the valley in the evening breeze. Far beyond this there
rose, like a black-mailed giant, the famous Frank mountain, where was the
fortress and afterwards the tomb of the brilliant, wicked, cruel Herod. The
dark, brown hills of the Judean desert would be seen stretching away to the
line of the Jordan, whose course could be distinctly traced by a living strip
of green ; while, further south, his eye would fall on the sparkling waters of
the Dead Sea; beyond which there rose, like a lofty wall adorned by the most
exquisite purple tints, the mountains of Moab, among whose many peaks he would
recognize that of Pisgah, from which Moses obtained his first and last glimpse
of the Promised Land, type of that better Canaan, that kingdom of heaven, which
He was to open to all believers.
We found the further side of Olivet, to
which we had now come, almost without trees; but it was covered with a
beautiful shrub, which reminded us of the heather of our own native hills. How
silent and solitary was this part of the mountain! Was it in such spots as
these that our Redeemer found a quiet retreat for prayer, away from Jerusalem's
brow-beatings and blasphemies, looking up into that star-lit firmament, and
hearing no sounds but those of Nature, ever loyal to her God. But where was
Bethany? Looking around us, we could see neither village nor house, nor human
being of any kind. In our musings, we had gone somewhat out of our way; and it
turned out that the object of our search, on a little off-shoot of the
mountain, was now effectually concealed from us by a high intervening ridge.
Being without a guide, we were quite at a loss on which side to turn.
Listening, we at length heard the sound of a young female singing. We went in
the direction of the voice, and found that it came from a little damsel, who
was busy gathering nuts from a solitary almond-tree, and putting them in her
long white veil. Perhaps she might be our guide to Bethany. We held up a piece
of money to her, and called out again and again the modern name of the village,
" El-Lazarieh," - the town of Lazarus. She evidently supposed at first that we
wished to buy her nuts, and offered us the whole of her gatherings in exchange
for our small coin. But, taking a few of them and giving her the piece of
money, we continued repeating, " El-Lazarieh, El-Lazarieh." At last she caught
our meaning, as we saw by her brightening countenance; and tripping before us
up a steep ascent, and through the midst of gardens on either side of our path,
she soon had us standing in the centre of Bethany.
Were we to confine
our notice to the village itself, with its twenty or thirty gray stone houses,
many of them half in ruins, we should be able to say nothing in its praise. But
when we think of its situation in that quiet nook at the extremity of Olivet on
the one side, and almost touching the moor-like wilderness on the other, with
gardens stretching out in more than one direction, and a green mountain-crest
rising up behind; and when we consider how different it must have looked in the
days of its prosperity, we can scarcely imagine a more suitable retreat for
Jesus than this mountain hamlet, after the oppositions and controversies and
sorrows of a day in Jerusalem. There were specimens of ancient sculpture and
bas-reliefs in marble shown us as having belonged to the house of Lazarus.
Whatever there may have been in this, these specimens proved, at all events,
how very superior many of the houses of ancient Bethany must have been to
anything we now meet with in the poor modern village. There are various hints
in the evangelical narrative which make it certain that Lazarus and his two
sisters, Martha and Mary, were in good worldly circumstances. We could
therefore picture Lazarus in a garden, such as one of those which we had passed
on entering Bethany, busily engaged in binding up his vines, watching the
fig-tree sending forth its tender shoots, and pruning the branches of the
luscious pomegranate ; and then, when the sun had gone far down in the west,
going out on the Jerusalem road to meet that Friend whose presence brought
heaven with it into his home. The holy sisters were ready with their quiet
ministries and respectful attentions, and, above all, with their listening,
wondering delight in his heavenly lessons; and in that element of devout love,
gleams of sunshine began to fall on the grieved spirit of " the Man of
sorrows."
Of course, there were clamorous guides on the spot, ready to
show us in a tall ruined tower in the centre of the village, " the Castle of
Lazarus;" and also to take us, with lantern in hand, more than twenty slimy
steps down to his supposed tomb. The house of Simon the leper was also pointed
out; and we were even assured that they had waiting for our inspection - price
so many piastres, if we would only go and see it - the barren fig-tree which
our Lord had cursed! But as we showed a decided resistance to this kind of
penance, and would rather pay a moderate bucksheesh without it, they became
weary at length of their importunity. How thankful we often were that the
Empress Helena, and the credulous or lying monks that followed her, had not
been able to obliterate the rocks, and valleys, and everlasting
hills.
But we were rewarded a hundredfold for our walk to Bethany.
First, we were able to trace with absolute certainty, for a distance at least
of half a mile, the road from Jericho, along which the people must have
recognized our Lord as coming with his apostolic band, after the death and
burial of his friend Lazarus; so that they had time to go and apprize Martha of
his approach, while he was yet in the precincts of the village. Then, though it
will never be possible to identify the actual locality of Lazarus' grave, yet
surely it was enough to be certain that somewhere within the little circle on
which we were now looking, our Lord had performed his greatest miracle, in
raising Lazarus from the dead, when his humanity and his Godhead had shone out
from the same fact in unsurpassed effulgence. Oh, those blessed tears of Jesus,
wept before that rocky tomb, consecrating sorrow for the dead, sanctifying
sympathy with the living! Oh, the divine power of that voice, compelling Death
to yield up its prey, giving pledge to the Church of the great general
awakening, and helping faith to hear every day at the mouth of his people's
open graves, "I am the Resurrection and the Life." The guests of the grateful
Simon must have looked out from some dwelling in this upland village on those
grassy knolls where a few lambs were now playing, on that memorable afternoon,
when Jesus and the Bethany family were present at his feast; and when Mary's
deep and silent love found expression in anointing her Saviour's feet with that
precious spikenard, whose fragrance, like his own gospel, was to fill the world
and to spread through all time. ' Then was that great principle of Christ's
kingdom made immortal, that -
"Love delights to bring her best;
And
where love is, that offering evermore is blest."
Then, with our New
Testament open in our hands, we were quite certain that the scene of our Lord's
ascension must have been somewhere very near to Bethany; and we had ventured to
whisper our impression that a round lofty eminence near the entrance to the
village may have been the selected spot from which that triumphal flight took
place up to the heavenly temple. And we were gratified to find that this was
the conjecture of Dr. Barclay and of many others who had long been resident in
Jerusalem, and were familiar with every place in its neighbourhood. It is a
beautiful eminence, green at its summit "almond and apricot trees in rich
blossom, spreading like the skirt of a beautiful robe in a half-circle round
its base." Was this then the meeting-place between earth and heaven - the scene
of the last benediction of Jesus as his blessed feet ceased to touch the
green-sward, - the centre point in the old world, where his disciples and his
Church received their great commission : " Go ye into all the world, and preach
the gospel to every creature " ?
We returned by the road which winds
along the southern side of the Mount of Olives, and which is generally believed
to have been the path of our Lord's triumphal entry into Jerusalem. With that
memorable event fully before our mind, it was pleasing to remark how perfectly
the scenery and the recorded incidents fitted in to each other. The narrative
of John leads us to suppose that a considerable number of Jews who had come out
to Bethany to see Jesus on account of the report of the great miracle of the
resurrection of Lazarus, accompanied him and his disciples back to the city on
the morning of that eventful day. Jesus had already purposed that on that
occasion he should approach and enter Jerusalem with the ensigns of a meek
royalty; but as yet no animal had been provided on which he could ride in
kingly state; and we learn from the Gospel that, at an early part of his
journey, he pointed two of his disciples to a little village which was visible
from the road ; told them that, on going to it, they should find an ass bound
with her colt; and that, on obtaining the ready consent of their owner - who
was probably a secret disciple - they were to loose them and bring them to him.
Now, it is a curious circumstance that for a time the path, soon after leaving
Bethany, skirts along a ravine, on the opposite side of which, not far up the
mountain, there are the ruins of a village; and supposing this to have been the
place to which Jesus directed the two disciples, they would be able to cross
the ravine by a short route, to carry out their Master's instructions, and be
ready to meet him and his company by the time that they had wound their way to
the same point by the regular path. It further appears that our Lord rode on
the colt, which was mature and strong enough for the purpose, conforming in
this arrangement to the custom of kings to ride in procession on animals on
which never man before had sat, and also to the very letter of that beautiful
ancient prophecy, "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of
Jerusalem; behold, thy King cometh unto thee : he is just, and having
salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass."
It was a striking coincidence that on our walk along this hill-side path - the
identical path on which those prophetic words were verified - we met a man
riding on a beautiful colt, the mother-ass coming up immediately behind him
with a well-filled pannier on either side.
We were rewarded by another
Biblical illustration, to which we attached some value, on this day's return
from Bethany. Though, as we have seen, the olive is the prevailing tree on
every part of the mountain that is wooded, yet on the sides of this road we met
with an occasional hawthorn, promising soon to scent the air with its delicate
perfume, and also here and there with a fig-tree. It was impossible not to be
reminded of the barren fig-tree on this same roadside, on which our Lord, on
another day in that last week of his humiliation-life, pronounced the withering
curse, which immediately leaped forth into effect; for "how soon," exclaimed
the awe-struck apostle, "is the fig-tree withered away." But it was not the
mere spectacle of the fig-tree growing, as of old, on the margin of this
particular road, that so much impressed us. We were ruminating on the
difficulty which has been occasioned by the explanation of the evangelist, "For
the time of figs was not yet" - an explanation which, instead of accounting for
our Lord's action, seems most of all to need to be explained; for if it was not
yet the time of figs, why did our Lord come up to the tree as if he had every
reason to expect that he should find figs on it? We had met with no solution of
the difficulty which seemed to us so entirely satisfactory as that suggested by
the present Archbishop of Dublin in his "Notes on Miracles;" while his
interpretation has the additional merit of greatly intensifying the lesson of
the incident, which was designed to be a kind of enacted parable. While
adverting to the well-known fact in the natural history of the fig-tree, that
its fruit appears before its foliage, and therefore that when such a tree was
seen covered with leaves, it was reasonable to look for fruit underneath them;
and then to the statement of the evangelist, which seems so far at variance
with this, that the time of the year for gathering the fig crop had not yet
arrived, - he ingeniously suggests that while this was no doubt commonly the
case at the season of the Passover when the miracle was performed, yet,
perchance, on some nook on a mountain-side where a fig-tree was protected from
violent winds, had a favourable exposure to the sun's rays, and enjoyed all the
selectest influences of Nature, it might sometimes be a month in advance of the
other fig-trees all around it - green and bushy with foliage, while those in
less genial positions were only beginning to send forth their first tender
buds; and that in the case of such a tree, with so much pretence and promise, a
hungry wayfarer would certainly come up to it expecting to gather fruit in
abundance. Such a tree, our Lord intended to indicate, had been the Jewish
Church, with its distinguishing religious privileges, its temple, its
priesthood, its typical observances, its separation from the surrounding
heathenism, its special covenant, its written oracles of God. It was natural to
come expecting much holy fruit from a Church so favoured, so pretentious, with
so much of the foliage of profession about it. But it was all foliage and no
fruit - barren as the shores of yonder Dead Sea. And now it was about to be
given over to destruction, abandoned to perpetual unfruitfulness, withered up
by the roots.
Such is the solution which has been given of the
acknowledged difficulty, and it is remarkable that in walking along this same
Bethany road we came upon just such a precocious fig-tree. It was, in all
likelihood, the very road on which our Lord had travelled; it was the same week
in the year, for it was the Passover week when we were on Olivet; and while in
general the few fig-trees that we saw were showing little more than the first
signs of life, there was one more favourably placed, which was several weeks in
advance of all the others, all green with foliage, and with ripe fruit
underneath it. We plucked a branch and brought it home with us to Scotland. The
large leaves had shrivelled, but the fruit was still sweet, even to the smell,
when we opened our package two months afterwards.
Our thoughts, as we
journeyed slowly onward, soon returned to Christ's triumphal entry. At a
particular point in the ascending path, Jerusalem bursts upon you in a moment,
as if it had sprung like a vision from the earth, - Mount Zion, the ancient
city of David, being the loftiest part of the picture. So it must have been on
that memorable morning. The sight stimulates the pent-up enthusiasm of the
disciples, which is at once caught up by the multitude, and Olivet begins to
ring with their responsive shouts, "Hosanna to the Son of David: Blessed is he
that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest." Meanwhile a
larger multitude is coming up the mountain from Jerusalem, each bearing a
palm-branch in his hand, to meet the King of Zion, and to swell his triumph. As
the two streams meet, the joy is deepened and the hosannas are multiplied. In
their holy transport, the people unloose their garments and spread them in his
path; green boughs torn from the neighbouring trees bestrew his way as he rides
on in his meek benignant majesty. And still they cleave the welkin with their
jubilant notes, as they now descend towards the city, a mighty stream of joyful
life. Jesus has freely yielded himself up to the joy of the moment; but as he
draws nearer to Jerusalem and beholds it, the current of his thoughts is
changed, and gladness gives place to profoundest compassion. He has looked into
its not far distant future, and his gait is. slackened, and over that doomed
murderess-city he sheds divine tears. "If thou hadst known, even thou, at least
in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! But now they are hid
from thine eyes."
As we stood far up on the mountain-side, the path by
which that rejoicing throng wound their way was all before us. We could imagine
them skirting round Gethsemane, passing over the Kidron brook, moving up the
steep ascent on the other side, entering by the beautiful Golden-gate into the
city, many of the pilgrims with their palm-branches dispersing themselves over
the crowded streets; while Jesus, with his disciples and others of the
multitude, passes into the Temple, and is welcomed by the hosannas of the
children, which drown the querulous complaints of the Pharisees and the envious
murmurings of the priests, while they accomplish ancient prophecy, and forecast
in miniature his ultimate kingly triumphs, when "every knee shall bow to him,"
and " the whole earth shall be filled with his glory."
We still lingered
on the Mount of Olives; and leaving the road and passing nearer to the centre
of the mountain, sat down, over against the city, on a ledge of limestone-rock
that protruded from the soil and formed a natural seat for us. It must have
been on such a spot that Jesus sat with his four selected disciples - Peter,
and James, and John, and Andrew - when he told them of the signs of Jerusalem's
coming destruction, and gave them such wise directions for the conduct of the
Christians when those signs of the terrible catastrophe showed themselves, as
effected their universal deliverance. Our friend read aloud our Lord's great
prophecy, along with the prophetic words of his lament spoken on the previous
day; and the impression of his, words - read, perhaps, on the very spot on
which He had spoken them - was singularly solemn. The city was distinctly
mapped out before us in that clear, dry atmosphere ; it almost seemed to lie at
our feet. We could distinguish each house, and dome, and minaret; we could
almost. I have counted the stones in its walls. We have somewhere seen its
present appearance from Olivet described as like that of "a penitent standing
clothed in sackcloth and ashes - so gray, so depressed, so insignificant its
appearance." But when Jesus looked forth upon it from this mountain-side, it
must still have retained very much of its olden magnificence. Its beautiful
Temple, white and glittering in the sunlight; the Castle of Antonia; the
palaces of Herod and Pilate; its many public buildings and monuments; its line
of triple walls, with their frowning fortresses; and, on that occasion, its
million of inhabitants seeri on the roofs of its houses and crowding its
streets; - how difficult it was to associate with such a spectacle the picture
of an early destruction such as the world had never before seen, or would again
see! But even as the natural eye of Jesus looked across the narrow chasm of
Kidron upon the splendid city, so did his prophetic eye then look across the
chasm of forty years and see it a heap of ruins, black with fire or red with
carnage, while he described the whole with a minuteness of detail and a graphic
distinctness surpassing every other prediction in the Word of God. That Mount
Scopus was full in view by which Titus was to approach the city, and where the
Roman eagles, the symbols alike of destruction and idolatry, "the abomination
which maketh desolate," would first be seen by the infatuated Jew looking forth
from his walls. And still the refrain of his awful prophecy was, "Jerusalem
shall be trodden down of the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles be
fulfilled." How heavily has the curse fallen! Jerusalem is at this hour a
Jewish poorhouse or prison, of which the Mohammedan holds the
key.
Trodden down By all in turn -
Pagan and Frank and Tartar;
So runs the dread anathema: trodden down
Beneath the oppressor;
darkness shrouding thee
From every blessed influence of Heaven; -
Thus
hast thou lain for ages, iron-bound
As with a curse.
Thus art thou
doomed to lie,
Yet not for ever."
No; there is a limit to this
burden, even in the very bosom of the prophecy. It has been truly said that not
Rome, but Jerusalem, is to be the Eternal City. Christianity shall yet come
back to her birth-place, and she shall bring every other blessing in her hand
when she brings herself, the first and best of all-good government,
agriculture, commerce, science, art, order, wealth, peace. The dew shall yet
descend on Hermon. Carmel shall yet laugh with abundance. The cedars of Lebanon
shall yet clap their hands. Zion shall yet ring again with the psalms of her
own king and bard, and Jerusalem shall become the praise of the whole earth.
"The sons of them that afflicted thee shall come bending unto thee; and all
they that despised thee shall bow themselves down at the soles of thy feet; and
they shall call thee, The city of the Lord, The Zion of the Holy'One of Israel
Whereas thou hast been forsaken and hated, so that no man went through thee, I
will make thee an eternal excellency, a joy of many generations. I, the Lord,
will hasten it in its time."
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Ten
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