034. The Sheik’s Daughter

The Sheik’92s Daughter

Exo_3:1 : ’93Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian.’94

In the southeastern part of Arabia a man is sitting by a well. It is an and country, and water is scarce, so that a well is of great value, and flocks and herds are driven vast distances to have their thirst slaked. Jethro, a Midianite sheik and priest, was so fortunate as to have seven daughters; and they are practical girls, and yonder they come driving the sheep and cattle and camels of their father to the watering. They lower the buckets and then pull them up, the water plashing on the stones and chilling their feet, and the troughs are filled. Who is that man out there sitting unconcerned and looking on? Why does he not come and help the women in this hard work of drawing water? But no sooner have the dry lips and panting nostrils of the flocks begun to cool a little in the brimming trough of the well, than some rough Bedouin shepherds break in upon the scene, and with clubs and shouts drive back the animals that were drinking, and affright these girls until they fly in retreat, and the flocks of these ill-mannered shepherds are driven to the troughs, taking the places of the other flocks. Now that man sitting by the well begins to color up, and his eye flashes with indignation, and all the gallantry of his nature is aroused. It is Moses, who naturally had a quick temper anyhow, as he demonstrated on one occasion when he saw an Egyptian oppressing an Israelite and gave the Egyptian a sudden clip and buried him in the sand, and as he showed afterward when he broke all the Ten Commandments at once by shattering the two granite slabs on which the law was written. But the injustice of this treatment of the seven girls sets him on fire with wrath, and he takes this shepherd by the throat, and pushes back another shepherd till he falls over the trough, and aims a stunning blow between the eyes of another, as he cries, ’93Begone, you villains!’94 and he hoots and roars at the sheep and cattle and camels of these invaders and drives them back; and having cleared the place of the desperadoes, he told the seven girls of this Midianite sheik to gather their flocks together and bring them again to the watering.

You ought to see a fight between the shepherds at a well in the Orient as I saw it in December, 1889. There were here a group of rough men who had driven the cattle many miles, and here another group who had driven their cattle as many miles. Who should have precedence? Such clashing of buckets! Such hooking of horns! Such kicking of hoofs! Such vehemence in a language I fortunately could not understand! Now the sheep with a peculiar mark across their woolly backs were at the trough, and now the sheep of another mark. It was one of the most exciting scenes I ever witnessed. An old book describes one of these contentions at an Eastern well when it says: ’93One day the poor men, the widows and the orphans met together and were driving their camels and their flocks to drink, and were all standing by the water-side. Daji came up and stopped them all, and took possession of the water for his master’92s cattle. Just then an old woman belonging to the tribe of Abs came up and accosted him in a suppliant manner, saying, ’91Be so good, Master Daji, as to let my cattle drink. They are all the property I possess and I live by their milk. Pity my flock, have compassion on me. Grant my request and let them drink.’92 Then came another old woman and addressed him: ’91O, Master Daji, I am a poor, weak old woman, as you see. Time has dealt hardly with me. It has aimed its arrows at me, and its daily and nightly calamities have destroyed all my men. I have lost my children and my husband, and since then I have been in great distress. These goats or cattle are all that I possess. Let them drink, for I live on the milk that they produce. Pity my forlorn state. I have no one to tend them. Therefore, grant my supplication and of thy kindness let them drink.’92 But in this case the brutal slave, so far from granting this humble request, smote the woman to the ground.’94

A like scrimmage has taken place at the well in the triangle of Arabia between the Bedouin shepherds and Moses championing the cause of the seven daughters who had driven their father’92s flocks to the watering. One of these girls, Zipporah, her name meaning ’93little bird,’94 was fascinated by this heroic behavior of Moses; for, however timid woman herself may be, she always admires courage in a man. Zipporah became the bride of Moses, one of the mightiest men of all the centuries. Zipporah little thought that that morning as she helped drive her father’92s flocks to the well, she was splendidly deciding her own destiny. Had she stayed in the tent or house while the other six daughters of the sheik tended to their herds, her life would probably have been a tame and uneventful life in the solitudes. But her industry, her fidelity to her father’92s interest, her spirit of helpfulness brought her into league with one of the grandest characters of all history. They met at that famous well, and while she admired the courage of Moses, he admired the filial behavior of Zipporah.

The fact that it took the seven daughters to drive the flocks to the well implies that they were immense flocks, and that her father was a man of wealth. What was the use of Zipporah’92s bemeaning herself with work when she might have reclined on the hillside near her father’92s tent, and plucked buttercups, and dreamed out romances, and sighed idly to the winds, and wept over imaginary songs to the brooks. No; she knew that work was honorable, and that every girl ought to have something to do, and so she starts with the bleating and lowing and bellowing and neighing droves to the well for the watering.

Around every home there are flocks and droves of cares and anxieties, and every daughter of the family, though there be seven, ought to be doing her part to take care of the flocks. In many households, not only is Zipporah, but all her sisters, without practical and useful employments. Many of them are waiting for fortunate and prosperous matrimonial alliance, but some lounger like themselves will come along, and after counting the large number of father Jethro’92s sheep and camels will make proposal that will be accepted; and neither of them having done anything more practical than to chew chocolate caramels, the two nothings will start on the road of life together, every step more and more a failure. That daughter of the Midianitish sheik will never find her Moses. Girls of America! imitate Zipporah. Do something practical. Do something helpful. Do something well. Many have fathers with great flocks of absorbing duties, and such a father needs help in home or office or field. Go out and help him with the flocks. The reason that so many men now condemn themselves to unaffianced and solitary life is because they cannot support the modern young woman, who rises at half-past ten in the morning and retires at midnight, one of the trashiest of novels in her hands most of the time between the late rising and the late retiring’97a thousand of them not worth one Zipporah.

There is a question that every father and mother ought to ask the daughter at breakfast or tea table, and that all the daughters of the wealthy sheik ought to ask each other: ’93What would you do if the family fortune should fail, if sickness should prostrate the breadwinner, if the flocks of Jethro should be destroyed by a sudden incursion of wolves and bears and hyenas from the mountain? What would you do for a living? Could you support yourself? Can you take care of an invalid mother or brother or sister as well as yourself?’94 Yea, bring it down to what any day might come to a prosperous family. ’93Can you cook a dinner if the servants should make a strike for higher wages and leave that morning?’94 Every minute of every hour of every day of every year there are families flung from prosperity into hardship, and alas! if in such exigency the seven daughters of Jethro can do nothing but sit around and cry and wait for some one to come and hunt them up a situation for which they have no qualification. Get at something useful; get at it right away!

My friend and Washingtonian townsman, W. W. Corcoran, did a magnificent thing when he built and endowed the ’93Louise Home’94 for the support of the unfortunate aristocracy of the South’97the people who once had everything but have come to nothing. We want another W. W. Corcoran to build a ’93Louise Home’94 for the unfortunate aristocracy of the North. But institutions like that in every city of the land could not take care of one-half of the unfortunate aristocracy of the North and South, whose large fortunes have failed, and who, through lack of acquaintance with any style of work, cannot now earn their own bread. There needs to be peaceful, yet radical revolution among most of the prosperous homes of America, by which the elegant do-nothings may be transformed into practical do-somethings. Let useless women go to work and gather the flocks. Come, Zipporah, let me introduce you to Moses!

But you do not mean that this man affianced to this country girl was the great Moses of history, do you? You do not mean that he was the man who afterward wrought such wonders? Surely, you do not mean the man whose staff dropped, wriggled into a serpent, and then, clutched, stiffened again into a staff? You do not mean the challenger of Egyptian thrones and palaces? You do not mean him who struck the rock so hard it wept in a stream for thirsty hosts? Surely, you do not mean the man who stood alone with God on the quaking Sinaitic ranges; not him to whom the Red Sea was surrendered? Yes, the same Moses who afterward rescued a nation, defending the seven daughters of the Midianitish sheik. Why, do you not know that this is the way men and women get prepared for special work. The wilderness of Arabia was the law school, the theological seminary, the university of rock and sand, from which he graduated for a mission that will balk seas, and drown armies, and lift the lantern of illumined cloud by night, and start the workmen with bleeding backs among Egyptian brick-kilns toward the pasture lands that flow with milk and the trees of Canaan dripping with honey. Gracious God, teach all the people this lesson. You must go into humiliation and retirement and hidden closets of prayer if you are to be fitted for special usefulness. How did John the Baptist get prepared to become a forerunner of Christ? Show me his wardrobe. It will be hung with silken socks and embroidered robes and attire of Tyrian purple? Show me his dining table. On it the tankards ablush with the richest wines of the vineyards of Engedi, and rarest birds that were ever caught in net, and sweetest venison that ever dropped antlers before the hunter? No; we are distinctly told ’93the same John had his raiment of camels’92 hair’94’97not the fine hair of the camel which we call camlet, but the long, coarse hair such as beggars in the East wear’97and his only meat was of insects, the green locust, about two inches long, roasted, a disgusting food. These insects were caught and the wings and legs torn off, and they were stuck on wooden spits and turned before the fire. The Bedouins pack them in salt and carry them in sacks. What a menu for John the Baptist! Through what deprivation he came to what exaltation!

And you will have to go down before you go up. From the pit into which his brothers threw him, and the prison in which his enemies incarcerated him, Joseph rose to be Egyptian prime minister. Elijah, who was to be the greatest of all the ancient prophets, Elijah, who made King Ahab’92s knees knock together with the prophecy that the dogs would be his only undertakers; Elijah, whose one prayer brought more than three years of drought, and whose other prayer brought drenching showers; the man who wrapped up his cape of sheepskin into a roll and with it cut a path through raging Jordan for just two to pass over; the man who with wheel of fire rode over death and escaped into the skies without mortuary disintegration; the man who, hundreds of years after, was called out of the eternities to stand beside Jesus Christ on Mount Tabor when it was ablaze with the splendors of transfiguration’97this man could look back to the time when voracious and filthy ravens were his only caterers.

You see John Knox preaching the coronation sermon of James VI, and arraigning Queen Mary and Lord Darnley in a public discourse at Edinburgh, and telling the French ambassador to go home and call his king a murderer; John Knox making all Christendom feel his moral power, and at his burial the Earl of Morton saying, ’93Here lieth a man who in his life never feared the face of man.’94 Where did John Knox get much of his schooling for such resounding and everlasting achievement? He got it while in chains pulling at the boat’92s oar in French captivity. Michael Faraday, one of the greatest masters in the scientific world, did not begin by lecturing in the university. He began by washing bottles in the laboratory of Humphrey Davy. So the privations and hardships of your life may on a smaller scale be the preface and introduction to usefulness and victory.

See also in this call of Moses that God has a great memory. Four hundred years before he had promised the deliverance of the oppressed Israelites of Egypt, The clock of time has struck the hour, and now Moses is called to the work of rescue. Four hundred years is a very long time, but you see God can remember a promise four hundred years as well as you can remember four hundred minutes. Four hundred years includes all your ancestry that you know anything about and all the promises made to them, and we may expect fulfillment in our heart and life of all the blessings predicted to our Christian ancestry centuries ago. You have a dim remembrance, if any remembrance at all, of your great-grandfather, but God sees those who were on their knees in 1598 as well as those on their knees in 1898, and the blessings he promised the former and their descendants have arrived, or will arrive. While piety is not hereditary, it is a grand thing to have had a pious ancestry. So God in this chapter calls up the pedigree of the people whom Moses was to deliver, and Moses is ordered to say to them, ’93The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob hath sent me unto you.’94 If that thought be divinely accurate, let me ask, What are we doing by prayer and by a holy life for the redemption of the next four hundred years? Our work is not only with the people of the latter part of the nineteenth century, but with those in the closing of the twentieth century and the closing of the twenty-first century and the closing of the twenty-second century and the closing of the twenty-third century. For four hundred years, if the world continues to swing until that time, or if it drops, then notwithstanding the influence will go on in other latitudes and longitudes of God’92s universe.

No one realizes how great he is for good or for evil. There are branchings out and rebounds and reverberations and elaborations of influence that cannot be estimated. The fifty or one hundred years of our earthly stay are only a small part of our sphere. The flap of the wing of the destroying angel that smote the Egyptian oppressors, the wash of the Red Sea over the heads of the drowned Egyptians, were all fulfillments of promises four centuries old. And things occur in your life and in mine that we cannot account for. They may be the echoes of what was promised in the sixteenth or seventeenth century. Oh, the prolongation of the divine memory!

Notice, also, that Moses was eighty years of age when he got this call to become the Israelitish deliverer. Forty years he had lived in palaces as a prince; another forty years he had lived in the wilderness of Arabia. I should not wonder if he had said: ’93Take a younger man for this work. Eighty winters have exposed my health; eighty summers have poured their heats upon my head. There are the forty years that I spent among the enervating luxuries of a palace, and then followed the forty years of wilderness hardship. I am too old. Let me off. Better call a man in the forties or fifties, and not one who has entered upon the eighties.’94 Nevertheless, he undertook the work, and if we want to know whether he succeeded, ask the abandoned brick-kilns of Egyptian taskmasters, and the splintered chariot wheels strewn on the beach of the Red Sea, and the timbrels which Miriam clapped for the Israelites passed over and the Egyptians gone under. Do not retire too early. Like Moses, you may have your chief work to do after eighty. It may not be in the high places of the field; it may not be where a strong arm and an athletic foot and a clear vision are required, but there is something for you yet to do. Perhaps it may be to round off the work you have already done; to demonstrate the patience you have been recommending all your lifetime; perhaps to stand a lighthouse at the mouth of the bay to light others into harbor; perhaps to show how glorious a sunset may come after a stormy day. If aged men do not feel strong enough for anything else, let them sit around in our churches and pray, and perhaps in that way they may accomplish more good than they ever did in the meridian of their life. It makes us feel strong to see aged men and women all up and down the pews, their faces showing they have been on mountains of transfiguration. We want in all our churches more men like Moses, men who have been through the deeps and climbed up the shelled beach on the other side. We want aged Jacobs, who have seen ladders which let down heaven into their dreams. We want aged Peters, who have been at Pentecosts, and aged Pauls, who have made Felix tremble. There are here and there those who feel like the woman of ninety years who said to Fontenelle, who was eighty-five years of age, ’93Death appears to have forgotten us.’94 ’93Hush,’94 said Fontenelle, the wit, putting his finger to his lip. No, my friend you have not been forgotten. You will be called at the right time. Meantime, be holily occupied. Let the aged remember that by increased longevity of the race men are not as old at sixty as they used to be at fifty, not as old at seventy as they used to be at sixty, not as old at eighty as they used to be at seventy. Sanitary precaution better understood; medical science further advanced; laws of health more thoroughly adopted; dentistry continuing for longer time successful mastication; homes and churches and court-rooms and places of business better ventilated’97all these have prolonged life, and men and women in the close of this century ought not to retire until at least fifteen years later than in the opening of the century. Do not put the harness off until you have fought a few more battles. Think of Moses starting out for his chief work an octogenarian; forty years of wilderness life after forty years of palace life, yet just beginning.

There died, at Hawarden, England, one of the most wonderful men that ever lived since the ages of time began their roll. He was the chief citizen of the whole world. Three times had he practically been king of Great Britain. Again and again coming from the House of Commons, which he had thrilled and overawed in his eloquence, on Saturday, on Sunday morning reading prayers for the people with illumined countenance and brimming eyes and resounding voice, saying, ’93I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.’94 The world has no other such man to lose as Gladstone; the Church had no other such champion to mourn over. I shall never cease to thank God that on Mr. Gladstone’92s invitation I visited him at Hawarden, and heard from his own lips his belief in the authenticity of the Holy Scriptures, the divinity of Jesus Christ, and the grandeurs of the world to come. At his table and in the walk through his grounds I was impressed as I was never before, and probably will never be again, with the majesty of a nature all consecrated to God and the world’92s betterment. In the presence of such a man, what have those to say who profess to think that our religion is a pusillanimous and weak and cowardly and unreasonable affair? Matchless William E. Gladstone!

Still further, watch this spectacle of genuine courage. No wonder when Moses scattered the rude shepherds, he won Zipporah’92s heart. What mattered it to Moses whether the cattle of the seven daughters of Jethro were driven from the troughs by the rude herdsmen? Sense of justice fired his courage; and the world wants more of the spirit that will dare almost anything to see others righted. All the time at wells of comfort, at wells of joy, at wells of religion, and at wells of literature there are outrages practised, the wrong herds getting the first water. Those who have the previous right come in last, if they come in at all. Thank God, we have here and there a strong man to set things right! I am so glad that when God has an especial work to do, he has some one ready to accomplish it. Is there a Bible to translate, there is a Wickliffe to translate it; if there is a literature to be energized, there is a Shakespeare to energize it; if there is an error to smite, there is a Luther to smite it; if there is to be a nation freed, there is a Moses to free it. But courage is needed in religion, in literature, in statesmanship, in all spheres; heroics to defend Jethro’92s seven daughters and their flocks and put to flight the insolent invaders. And those who do the brave work will win somewhere high reward. The loudest cheer of heaven is to be given ’93to him that overcometh.’94

Still further, see in this call of Moses that if God has any especial work for you to do he will find you. There were Egypt and Arabia and Palestine with their crowded population, but the man the Lord wanted was at the southern point of the triangle of Arabia, and he picks him right out, the shepherd who kept the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest and sheik. So God will not find it hard to take you out from the sixteen hundred million of the human race if he wants you for anything especial. There was only just one man qualified. Other men had courage like Moses; other men had some of the talents of Moses; other men had romance in their history, as had Moses; other men were impetuous, like Moses; but no other man had these different qualities in the exact proportion as had Moses; and God, who makes no mistake, found the right man for the right place. Do not fear you will be overlooked, or that when you are wanted God cannot find you. He knows your name, your features, your temperament, and your characteristics, and in what land or city or ward or neighborhood or house you live. He will not have to send out scouts or explorers to find your residence or place of stopping, and when he wants you he will make it as plain that he means you as he made it plain that he needed Moses. He called his name twice, as afterward when he called the great apostle of the Gentiles he called twice, saying ’93Saul, Saul,’94 and when he called the troubled housekeeper he called her twice, saying ’93Martha, Martha,’94 and when he called the prophet to his mission he called him twice, saying, ’93Samuel, Samuel,’94 and now he wants a deliverer he calls twice, saying ’93Moses, Moses.’94 Yes, if God has anything for us to do he will call us twice by name. At the first announcement of our name we may think it possible that we misunderstood the sound, but after he calls us twice by name we know he means us as certainly as when he twice spoke the names of Saul or Martha or Samuel or Moses.

You see, religion is a tremendous personality. We all have the general call to salvation. We hear it in songs, in sermons, in prayers; we hear it year after year. But after a while, through our own sudden and alarming illness, or the death of a playmate or a schoolmate or a college-mate, or the decease of a business partner, or the demise of a next-door neighbor, we get the especial call to repentance and a new life and eternal happiness, and we know that God means us. Oh, have you noticed this way in which God calls us twice? Two failures of investments; two sicknesses; two persecutions; two bereavements; two disappointments; two disasters. Moses! Moses!

Still further notice that the call of Moses was written in letters of fire. On the Sinaitic peninsula there is a thorn bush called the acacia, dry and brittle, and it easily goes down at the touch of the flame. It crackles and turns to ashes very quickly. Moses seeing one of these bushes on fire, goes to look at it. At first, no doubt, it seemed to be a botanical curiosity, burning, yet crumpling no leaf, parting no stem, scattering no ashes. It was a supernatural fire that did no damage to the vegetation. That burning bush was the call. Your call will probably come in letters of fire. Ministers get their call to preach in letters on paper or parchment or typewritten, but it does not amount to much, unless they have already had a call in letters of fire. You will not amount to much in usefulness until somewhere near you find a burning bush. It may be found burning in the hectic flush of your child’92s cheek; it may be found burning in business misfortune; it may be found burning in the fire of the world’92s scorn or hate or misrepresentation. But hearken to the crackle of the burning bush!

What a fascinating and inspiring character, this Moses! How tame all other stories compared with the biography of Moses! From the lattice of her bathing-house on the Nile, Thermutis, daughter of Pharaoh, sees him in the floating cradle of papyrus leaves made water-tight by bitumen; his infantile cry is heard among the marble palaces and princesses hush him with their lullabies; workmen by the roadside drop their work to look on him when as a boy he passed, so beautiful was he; two bowls put before his infant eyes for choice to demonstrate his wisdom, the one bowl containing rubies and the other coals of fire. Sufficiently wise was he to take the gems, but, divinely directed, he took the coals and put them to his mouth, and his tongue was burnt, and he was left a stammerer all his days, so that he declared, in Exo_4:10, ’93I am slow of speech and of slow tongue;’94 on and on until he set firm foot among the crumbling basalt, and his ear was not deafened by the thunderous ’93Thou shalt not’94 of Mount Sinai, the man who went to the relief of the Israelites who were scourged because with chopped straw they were required to make firm bricks, the story of their oppression found chiseled on the tomb of Roschere at Thebes; and when the armies were impeded by venomous serpents, sent crates of ibises, the snake-destroying birds, to clear the way so that his host could march straight ahead, thus surprising the enemy, who thought they must take another route to avoid the reptiles; the whole sky an aviary, to drop quails for him and the hosts following: the only man in all ages whom Christ likens to himself; the man of whom it is written, ’93Jehovah spoke unto Moses face to face as a man speaketh to his friend;’94 the man who had the most wondrous funeral of all time, the Lord coming down out of heaven to bury him. No human lips to read the service. No choir to chant a psalm. No organ to roll a requiem. No angel alighting upon the scene; but God laying him out for the last sleep; God upturning the earth to receive the saint; God smoothing or banking the dust above the sacred form; God, with farewell and benediction, closing the sublime obsequies of lawgiver, poet and warrior. ’93And no man knoweth of his sepulcher unto this day.’94

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage