THE OLD COVENANT

THE OLD COVENANT

Among all peoples the Jew was the happiest and the most unhappy. His story is a mystery which begins with the paradise in the Garden of Eden and ends with the tragedy of the hill of Golgotha. His first parents were molded by the luminous hands of God, were made masters of Paradise, the country of eternal, fertile summer, set in the midst of rivers, where the rich Oriental fruits hung down ready to their hand, heavy with pulp in the shade of the new young leaves. The new-created sky, not yet tarnished by clouds, not yet divided by lightning, or harassed by winds, watched over the first two with all its stars.

The first couple had as their duty to love God and to love each other. This was the First Covenant. Weariness un­known, grief unknown, unknown death and its terror! The first disobedience brought the first exile; the man was con­demned to work, the woman to bring forth her young in pain. Work is painful, but it brings the reward of harvests; to give birth means suffering, but it brings the support of children. And yet even these inferior and imperfect pleasures passed away like leaves devoured by worms. For the first time brother killed brother: human blood fallen on the earth be­came corrupt, gave forth an exhalation of sin: the daughters of men united themselves with demons and from them were born giants, fierce hunters and slayers of men, who turned the world into a bloody hell.

Then God sent His second punishment: to purify the world in an exterminating baptism He drowned in the waters of the flood all men and their crimes. One only, a righteous man, was saved and with him God signed the Second Covenant.

With Noah there began the happy days of antiquity, the epoch of the patriarchs, nomad shepherds, centenarians who wandered between Chaldea and Egypt searching for grazing lands, for wells, and for peace. They had no fixed country, no houses, and no cities. They brought along in caravans, numer­ous as armies, their fruitful wives, their loving sons, their docile daughters-in-law, their innumerable descendants, obedient man-servants and maid-servants, goring, bellowing bulls, cows with hanging udders, playful calves, rams and strong smelling he-goats, mild sheep laden with wool, great earth-colored camels, mares with round cruppers, she-goats holding their heads high and stamping impatiently; and hidden in the sad­dle-bags, vases of gold and silver, domestic idols of stone and metal.

Arrived at their destination, they spread their tents near a cistern, and the patriarch sat out under the shade of the oaks and sycamores contemplating the great camp from which rose up the smoke of the fires, the sound of the bustling steps of the women and herdsmen, the mooing’s, the braying’s, the bleating of the animals. And the patriarch's heart was filled with con­tent to see all this offspring issued from his seed, all these, his herds, the human increase and the animal increase multiplying year by year.

In the evening, he raised his eyes to greet the first punctual star which shone like white fire on the summit of the hill; and sometimes his curled white beard shone in the white light of the moon, which for more than a century he was accustomed to seeing in the sky at night.

Sometimes an angel of the Lord came to visit him, and be­fore giving the message with which he was charged, ate at his table. Or, in the heat of the day, the Lord Himself, in the garb of a pilgrim, came and sat down with the old man in the shadow of the tent where they talked with each other, face to face, like two old friends who come together to discuss their affairs. The head of the tribe, master of the servants, be­came a servant in his turn, listened to the commands and coun­sels and promises and prophecies of his divine master. And between Jehovah and Abraham was signed the Third Cove­nant, more solemn than the other two.

The son of a patriarch, sold by his brothers as a slave, rises to power in Egypt, and calls his race to him. The Jews think that they have found a fatherland and grow great in numbers and riches. But they allow themselves to be seduced by the gods of Egypt, and Jehovah prepares the third punish­ment. The envious Egyptians reduce them to abject slavery. That the punishment may be longer, Jehovah hardens the heart of Pharaoh, but finally raises up the second Savior, who leads them forth from their sufferings and from the mud of Egypt.

Their trials are not yet finished: for forty years they wander in the desert. A pillar of cloud guides them by day and a pillar of fire by night. God has assured them a Land of Promise, with rich grazing lands, well-watered, shaded by grape-vines and olives. But in the meantime they have neither water to drink nor bread to eat, and they yearn for the flesh-pots of Egypt. God brings water gushing from a rock; and manna and quails fall from heaven; but tired and uneasy, the Jews betray their God, make a calf of gold and worships it. Moses, saddened like all prophets, misunderstood like all saviors, fol­lowed unwillingly like all discoverers of new lands, falls back of the edgy and rebellious crowd and begs God to let him lie down forever. But at any cost, Jehovah desires to sign the Fourth Covenant with His people. Moses goes down from the smoke-capped thundering mountain, with the two tables of stone whereon the very finger of God has written the Ten Commandments.

Moses is not to see the Promised Land, the new Paradise to be reconquered in place of the lost Paradise. But the divine pledge is kept: Joshua and the other heroes cross the Jordan, enter into the land of Canaan, and conquer the people; the cities fall at the breath of their trumpets; Deborah can sing her song of triumph. The people carry with them the God of bat­tles, hidden behind the tents, on a cart drawn by oxen. But the enemies are numerous and have no mind to give way to the newcomers. The Jews wander here and there, shepherds and thieves, victorious when they maintain the covenants of the Law, defeated when they forget them.

A giant with unshorn hair kills, single-handed, thousands of Philistines and Amalekites, but a woman betrays him; enemies blind him and set him to turn a mill. Heroes alone are not enough. Kings are needed. A young man of the tribe of Benjamin, tall and well-grown, while looking for his father's strayed donkeys, is met by a Prophet who anoints him with the sacred oil, and makes him king of all the people. Saul becomes a powerful warrior, overcomes the Ammonites and Amalekites and founds a military kingdom, dreaded by neighboring tribes. But the same prophet who made him king, now aroused against him, raises up a rival. David, the shepherd, kills the king's giant foe, tempers with his harp the black rages of the king, is loved by the king's oldest son, marries the daughter of the king, and is among the king's captains. But Saul, suspicious and unbalanced, wishes to kill him. David hides himself in the caves of the mountains, becomes a robber chief. He goes into the service of the Philistines, and when they conquer and kill Saul on the hills of Gilboa, he becomes in his turn king of all Israel. The bold sheep-tender, great as poet and as king, yet cruel and lustful, founds his house in Jerusalem, and with the aid of his body-guard, overcomes and sub­jugates the surrounding kingdoms. For the first time, the Jew is feared: for centuries after this he was to long for the return of David, and to hope for a descendant of David to save him from his wretched defeat.

David is the King of the sword and of song. Solomon is the King of gold and of wisdom. Gold is brought to him as a tribute: he decks with gold the first sumptuous house of Je­hovah. He sends ships to faraway Ophir in search of gold; the Queen of Sheba lays down sacks of gold at his feet. But all the splendor of gold and the Wisdom of Solomon are not enough to save the king from impurity and his kingdom from ruin. He takes strange women as wives and worships strange gods. The Lord pardons his old age, in memory of his youth, but at his death the kingdom is divided and the dark and shameful centuries of the decadence begin. Plots in the palace, murders of kings, revolts of chiefs, wretched civil wars, periods of idol-worship followed by passing reforms, fill the period of the separation. Prophets appear and admonish, but the kings turn a deaf ear or drive them away. The enemies of Israel grow more powerful. The Phoenicians, the Egyptians, the As­syrians, the Babylonians, one after another, invade the two kingdoms, extort tribute and finally, about 600 years before the birth of Jesus, Jerusalem is destroyed, the temple of Je­hovah is demolished and the Jews are led as slaves to the rivers of Babylon. The cup of their infidelity and of their sins runs over and the same God who liberated them from the slavery of the Egyptians gives them over as slaves to the Babylonians. This is the fourth punishment and the most terrible of all be­cause it is to have no end. From that time on, the Jews were always to be dispersed among strangers and subject to for­eigners. Some of them were to return to reconstruct Jerusalem and its temple, but the country, invaded by the Scythian, tributary to the Persians, conquered by the Greeks, was after the last attempt of the Maccabeans finally given over to the bands of a dynasty of Arab barbarians, subject to the Romans.

This race, which for so many years lived rich and free in the desert, and for a day was master of kingdoms and believed itself, under the protection of its God, the first people of the earth, was now reduced in numbers, spurned and commanded by foreigners, was the laughing-stock of the nations, the Job among peoples. After the death of Jesus, its fate was to be harder yet: Jerusalem destroyed for the second time: in the devastated province only Greeks and Romans holding sway, and the last fragments of Israel scattered over the earth like dust of the street driven before the clouds of dust.

Never were people so loved nor so dreadfully chastised by their God. Chosen to be the first, they were the servants of the last. Aspiring to have a victorious country of their own, they were exiles and slaves in other men's lands.

Although more pastoral than warlike, they never were at peace either with themselves or with others. They fought with their neighbors, with their guests, with their leaders. They fought with their prophets and with their God Himself.

A breeding-ground of corruption, governed by men guilty of homicide, treachery, adultery, incest, robbery, simony and idolatry, yet their women gave birth to the most perfect saints of the Orient, upright, admonishing, solitary prophets; and finally from this race was born the Father of the new saints, He who had been awaited by all the Prophets.

This people which created no metaphysics nor science, nor music, nor sculpture, nor art, nor architecture of its own, wrote the grandest poetry of antiquity, glowing with sublimity in the Psalms and in the Prophets, inimitably tender in the stories of Joseph and Ruth, burning with voluptuous passion in the Song of Songs.

Grown up in the midst of the cults of local rustic gods, they conceived the love of God, the one universal Father. Rich in gold and lands, they could boast in their prophets of the first defenders of the poor, and they conceived of the negation of riches. The same people who had cut the throat of human victims on their altars, and massacred whole cities of guiltless people, gave disciples to Him who preached love for our ene­mies. This people, jealous of their jealous God, always be­trayed Him to run after other gods. Of their temple, three times built and three times destroyed, nothing remains but a piece of a wall, barely enough so that a line of mourners may lean their heads against it to hide their tears.

But this, perplexing and contradictory people, superhuman and wretched, the first and the last of all, the happiest and the most unhappy of all, although it serves other nations, still dom­inates other nations with its money and with its Bible. Al­though without a country of its own for centuries, it is among the owners of all countries. Although it crucified its greatest Son with His blood, it divided the history of the world into two parts: and the progeny of those god-killers has become the most infamous but the most sacred of all the peoples.