Rizpah On the Rock
2Sa_21:10 : ’93And Rizpah the daughter of Aiah took sackcloth, and spread it for her upon the rock, from the beginning of harvest until water dropped upon them out of heaven, and suffered neither the birds of the air to rest on them by day, nor the beasts of the field by night.’94
Tragedy that beats anything Shakesperian or Victor Hugoian. After returning from the Holy Land I briefly touched upon it, but I must have a whole sermon for that scene. The explosion and flash of gunpowder have driven nearly all the beasts and birds of prey from these regions, and now the shriek of the locomotive whistle which is daily heard at Jerusalem will for many miles around clear Palestine of cruel claw and beak. But in the time of the text those regions were populous with multitudes of jackals and lions. Seven sons of Saul had been crucified on a hill. Rizpah was mother to two and relative to five of the boys. What had these boys done that they should be crucified? Nothing, except to have a bad father and grandfather. But now that the boys were dead why not take them down from the gibbets. No. They are sentenced to hang there. So Rizpah takes the sackcloth, a rough shawl with which in mourning for her dead she had wrapped herself, and spreads that sackcloth upon the rocks near the gibbets, and acts the part of a sentinel watching and defending the dead. Yet every other sentinel is relieved, and after being on guard for a few hours some one else takes his place. But Rizpah is on guard both day and night and for half a year. One hundred and eighty days and nights of obsequies. What nerves she must have had to stand that. Ah! do you know that a mother can stand anything.
Oh! if she might be allowed to hollow a place in the side of the hill and lay the bodies of her children to quiet rest! If in some cavern of the mountains she might find for them Christian sepulture. If she might take them from the gibbet of disgrace and carry them still farther away from the haunts of men, and then lie beside them in the last long sleep! Exhausted nature ever and anon falls into slumber, but in a moment she breaks the snare, and chides herself as though she had been cruel, and leaps up on the rock shouting at wild beast glaring from the thicket and at vulturous brood wheeling in the sky. The thrilling story of Rizpah reaches David and he comes forth to hide the indecency. The corpses had been chained to the trees. The chains are unlocked with horrid clank and the skeletons are let down. All the seven are buried. And the story ends.
But it hardly ends before you cry out: What a hard thing that those seven boys should suffer for the crimes of a father and grandfather! Yes. But it is always so. Let every one who does wrong know that he wars not only, as in this case, against two generations, children and grandchildren, but against all the generations of coming time. That is what makes dissipation and uncleanness so awful. It reverberates in other times. It may skip one generation, but it is apt to come up in the third generation, as is suggested in the Ten Commandments, which say: ’93Visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.’94 Mind you, it says nothing about the second generation, but mentions the third and the fourth. That accounts for what you sometimes see, very good parents with very bad children. Go far enough back in the ancestral line and you find the source of all the turpitude. ’93Visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.’94 If, when Saul died, the consequences of his iniquity could have died with him, it would not have been so sad. Alas, no! Look on that hill a few miles out from Jerusalem and see the ghastly burdens of those seven gibbets, and the wan and wasted Rizpah watching them. Go today through the wards and almshouses, and the reformatory institutions where unfortunate children are kept, and you will find that nine out of ten had drunken or vicious parents or grandparents. Yea, day by day on the streets of our cities you find men and women wrecked by evil parentage. They are moral corpses. Like the seven sons of Saul, though dead, unburied. Alas for Rizpah who, not for six months, but for years and years, has watched them. She cannot keep the vultures and the jackals away from them.
Furthermore, this strange incident in Bible story shows that attractiveness of person and elevation of position are no security against trouble. Who is this Rizpah sitting in desolation? One of Saul’92s favorites. Her personal attractions had won his heart. She had been caressed of fortune. With a mother’92s pride she looked on her princely children. But the scene changes. Behold her in banishment and bereavement. Rizpah on the rock.
Some of the worst distresses have come to scenes of royalty and wealth. What porter at the mansion’92s gate hath not let in champing and lathered steed bringing evil dispatch? On what tessellated hall hath there not stood the solemn bier? Under what exquisite fresco hath there not been enacted a tragedy of disaster? What curtained couch hath heard no cry of pain? What harp hath never thrilled with sorrow? What lordly nature hath never leaned against carved pillar and made utterance of woe? Gall is not less bitter when quaffed from a golden chalice than when taken from a pewter mug. Sorrow is often attended by running footmen, and laced lackeys mounted behind. Queen Anne Boleyn is desolate in the palace of Henry VIII. Adolphus wept in German castles over the hypocrisy of friends. Pedro I among the Brazilian diamonds shivered with fear of massacre. Stephen of England sat on a rocking throne. And every mast of pride has bent in the storm, and the highest mountains of honor and fame are covered with perpetual snow. Sickness will frost the rosiest cheek, wrinkle the smoothest brow and stiffen the sprightliest step. Rizpah quits the courtly circle and sits on the rock.
Perhaps you look back upon scenes different from those in which now from day to day you mingle. You have exchanged the plenty and luxuriance of your father’92s house for privation and trials known to God and your own heart. The morning of life was flushed with promise. Troops of calamities since then have made desperate charge upon you. Darkness has come. Sorrows have swooped like carrion birds from the sky, and barked like jackals from the thicket. You stand amid your slain, anguished and woe-struck. Rizpah on the rock.
So it has been in all ages. Vashti must doff the spangled robes of the Persian court and go forth blasted from the palace gate. Hagar exchanges oriental comfort for the wilderness of Beersheba. Mary Queen of Scots must pass out from flattery and pomp to suffer ignominious death in the castle of Fotheringay. The wheel of fortune keeps turning, and mansions and huts exchange, and he who rode the chariot pushes the barrow, and instead of the glare of festal lights is the simmering of the peat-fire, and in place of Saul’92s palace is the rock, the cold rock, the desolate rock.
But that is the place to which God comes. Jacob with his head on a stone saw the shining ladder. Israel in the desert beheld the marshaling of the fiery baton. John on barren Patmos heard trumpeting and the clapping of wings and the stroke of seraphic fingers on golden harps, and nothing but heavenly strength nerved Rizpah for her appalling mission amid the scream of wild birds and the stealthy tread of hungry monsters. The grandest visions of glory, the most rapturous experiences of Christian love, the greatest triumphs of grace have come to the tried and hard-pressed and the betrayed and the crushed. God stooping down from heaven to comfort Rizpah on the rock.
Again, the tragedy of the text displays the courage of woman amid great emergencies. What mother or sister or daughter would dare to go out to fight the cormorant and jackal? Rizpah did it. And so would you if the emergency demanded. Woman is naturally timid and shrinks from exposure and depends on stronger arms for the achievement of great enterprises. And she is often troubled lest there might be occasions demanding fortitude when she would fail. Not so. Some of those who are afraid to look out of door after nightfall, and who quake in the darkness at the least uncertain sound, and who start at the slam of the door and turn pale in a thunder-storm, if the day of trial came would be heroic and invulnerable. God has arranged it so that woman needs the trumpet of some great contest of principle or affection to rouse up her slumbering courage. Then she will stand under the cross fire of opposing hosts at Chalons to give wine to the wounded. Then she will carry into prison and dark lane the message of salvation. Then she will brave the pestilence. Deborah goes out to sound terror into the heart of God’92s enemies. Abigail throws herself between a raiding party of infuriated men and her husband’92s vineyards. Rizpah fights back the vultures from the rock.
Among the Orkney Islands an eagle swooped and lifted a child to its eyrie far up on the mountains. With the spring of a panther the mother mounts hill above hill, crag above crag, height above height, the fire of her own eye outflashing the glare of the eagle’92s. And with unmailed hand, stronger than the iron beak and the terrible claw, she hurled the wild bird down the rocks. In the French Revolution, Cazotte was brought out to be executed, when his daughter threw herself on the body of her father, and said: ’93Strike! barbarians! You cannot reach my father but through my heart!’94 The crowd parted, and linking arms, father and daughter walked out free. During the siege of Saragossa, Augustina carried refreshments to the gates. Arriving at the battery of Portillo, she found that all the garrison had been killed. She snatched a match from the hand of a dead artilleryman and fired off a twenty-six pounder, then leaped on it and vowed she would not leave it alive. The soldiers looked in and saw her daring, and rushed up and opened another tremendous fire on the enemy. The life of James I of Scotland was threatened. Poets have sung those times, and able pens have lingered upon the story of manly endurance, but how few to tell the story of Catharine Douglas, one of the Queen’92s maids, who ran to bolt the door, but found the bar had been taken away so as to facilitate the entrance of the assassin. She thrust her arm into the staple. The murderers rushing against it, her arm was shattered. Yet how many have since lived and died who never heard the touching, self-sacrificing, heroic story of Catharine Douglas and her poor, shattered arm. You know how calmly Madame Roland went to execution, and how cheerfully Joanna of Naples walked to the castle of Muro, and how fearlessly Madame Grimaldi listened to her condemnation, and how Charlotte Corday smiled upon the frantic mob that pursued her to the guillotine. And there would be no end to the recital if I attempted to present all the historical incidents which show that woman’92s courage will rouse itself for great emergency.
But I need not go so far. You have known some one who was considered a mere butterfly in society. Her hand had known no toil. Her eye had wept no tear over misfortune. She moved among obsequious admirers as careless as an insect in a field of blossoming buckwheat. But financial tempest struck the husband’92s estate. Before he had time to reef sail and make things snug the ship capsized and went down. Enemies cheered at the misfortune and wondered what would become of the butterfly. Good men pitied and said she would die of a broken heart. ’93She will not work,’94 say they, ’93and she is too proud to beg.’94 But the prophecies have failed. Disaster transformed the shining sluggard into a practical worker. Happy as a princess, though compelled to hush her own child to sleep and spread her own table and answer the ringing of her own doorbell. Her arm had been nerved for the conflict against misfortune. Hunger and poverty and want and all the other jackals Rizpah scares from the rock.
I saw one in a desolate home. Her merciless companion had pawned even the children’92s shoes for rum. From honorable ancestry she had come down to this. The cruise of oil was empty and the last candle gone out. Her faded frock was patched with fragments of antique silk that she had worn on the bright marriage day. Confident in God, she had a strong heart to which her children ran when they trembled at the staggering step and quailed under a father’92s curse. Though the heavens were filled with fierce wings and the thickets gnashed with rage, Rizpah watched faithfully day after day and year after year, and wolf and cormorant by her God-strengthened arm were hurled down the rock.
You pass day by day along streets where there are heroines greater than Joan of Arc. Upon that cellar floor there are conflicts as fierce as Sedan, and heaven and hell mingle in the fight. Lifted in that garret there are tribunals where more fortitude is demanded than was exhibited by Lady Jane Grey or Mary Queen of Scots. Now I ask if mere natural courage can do so much, what may we not expect of women who have gazed on the great sacrifice, and who are urged forward by all the voices of grace that sound from the Bible, and all the notes of victory that speak from the sky. Many years ago the Forfarshire steamer started from Hull bound for Dundee. After the vessel had been out a little while, the winds began to rave and billows to rise until a tempest was upon them. The vessel leaked and the fires went out, and though the sails were hoisted fore and aft, she went speeding toward the breakers. She struck with her bows foremost on the rock. The vessel parted. Amid the whirlwind and the darkness all were lost but nine. These clung to the wreck on the beach. Sleeping that night in Longstone Lighthouse was a girl of gentle spirit and comely countenance. As the morning dawns, I see that girl standing amid the spray and tumult of contending elements looking through a glass upon the wreck and the nine wretched sufferers. She proposes to her father to take boat and put out across the wild sea to rescue them. The father says, ’93It cannot be done! Just look at the tumbling surf!’94 But she persisted and with her father bounds into the boat. Though never accustomed to plying the oar she takes one and her father the other. Steady now! Pull away! Pull away! The sea tossed up the boat as though it were a bubble, but amid the foam and the wrath of the sea the wreck was reached, the exhausted people picked up and saved. Humane societies tendered their thanks. Wealth poured into the lap of the poor girl. Visitors from all lands came to look on her sweet face; and when soon after she launched forth on a darker sea and death was the oarsman, dukes and duchesses and mighty men sat down in tears in Alnwick Castle, to think they never again might see the face of Grace Darling. No such deeds of daring will probably be asked of you, but hear you not the howl of that awful storm of trouble and sin that hath tossed ten thousand shivered hulks into the breakers? Know you not that the whole earth is strewn with the shipwrecked; that there are wounds to be healed and broken hearts to be bound up, and drowning souls to be rescued? Some have gone down and you come too late, but others are clinging to the wreck, are shivering with the cold, are struggling in the wave, are crying to you for deliverance. Will you not, oar in hand, put out from the lighthouse. When the last ship’92s timber shall have been rent, and the last Longstone beacon shall have been thundered down in the hurricane, and the last tempest shall have folded its wings, and the sea itself shall have been licked up by the tongue of all-consuming fire, the crowns of eternal reward shall be kindling into brighter glory on the brow of the faithful. And Christ, pointing to the inebriate that you reformed, and the dying sinner whom you taught to pray, and the outcast whom you pointed to God for shelter, will say: ’93You did it to them! You did it to me!’94
Again, the scene of my text impresses upon us the strength of maternal attachment. Not many men would have had courage or endurance for the awful mission of Rizpah. To dare the rage of wild beasts and sit from May to October unsheltered, and to watch the corpses of unburied children, was a work that nothing but the maternal heart could have accomplished. It needed more strength than to stand before opened batteries or to walk in calmness the deck of a foundering steamer. There is no emotion so completely unselfish as maternal affection. Conjugal love expects the return of many kindnesses and attentions. Filial love expects parental care, or is helped by the memory of past watchfulness. But the strength of a mother’92s love is entirely independent of the past and the future, and is, of all emotions, the purest. The child has done nothing in the past to earn kindness, and in the future it may grow up to maltreat its parent; but still from the mother’92s heart there goes forth inconsumable affection. Abuse cannot offend it; neglect cannot chill it; time cannot efface it; death cannot destroy it. For harsh words it has gentle chiding; for the blow it has beneficent ministry; for neglect it has increasing watchfulness. It weeps at the prison door over the incarcerated prodigal, and pleads for pardon at the Governor’92s feet, and is forced away by compassionate friends from witnessing the struggles of the gallows. Other lights go out, but this burns on without extinguishment, as in a gloom-struck night you may see a single star, one of God’92s pickets, with gleaming bayonet of light guarding the outposts of heaven. The Marchioness of Spadara, when the earthquake at Messina occurred, was carried out insensible from the falling houses. On coming to her senses she found that her infant had not been rescued. She went back and perished in the ruins’97illustration of ten thousand mothers who in as many different ways have sacrificed themselves for their children. Oh, despise not a mother’92s love. If heretofore you have been negligent of such an one, and you have still opportunity for reparation, make haste. If you could only just look in for an hour’92s visit to her you would rouse up in the aged one a whole world of blissful memories. What if she does sit without talking much: she watched you for many months when you knew not how to talk at all. What if she has many ailments to tell about. During fifteen years you ran to her with every little scratch and bruise, and she doctored your little finger as carefully as a surgeon would bind the worst fracture. You say she is childish now: I wonder if she ever saw you when you were childish. You have no patience to walk with her on the street; she moves so slowly. I wonder if she remembers the time when you were glad enough to go slowly. You complain at the expense of providing for her now. I wonder what your financial income was from one year to ten years of age. Do not begrudge what you do for the old folks. I care not how much you did for them, they have done more for you.
But from this weird text comes rushing in upon my soul a thought that overpowers me. This watching by Rizpah was an after-death watching. I wonder if now there is an after-death watching. I think there is. There are Rizpahs who have passed death, and who are still watching. They look down from their supernal and glorified state upon us, and is not that an after-death watching? I cannot believe that those who before their death were interested in us, have since their death become indifferent as to what happens to us. Not one hour of the six months during which Rizpah watched seated upon the rocks was she more alert or diligent or armed for her sons than our mother, if glorified, is alert and diligent and armed for us. It is not now Rizpah on a rock, but Rizpah on a throne. How long has your mother been dead? Do you think she has been dead long enough to forget you? My mother has been dead twenty-nine years. I believe she knows more about me now then she did when I stood in her presence, and I am no spiritualist either. The Bible says: ’93Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister to them that shall be heirs of salvation.’94 Young man! Better look out what you do and where you go, for your glorified mother is looking at you. You sometimes say to yourself: ’93What would mother say if she knew this?’94 She does know. You might cheat her once, but you cannot cheat her now. Does it embarrass us to think she knows all about us now? If she had to put up with so much when she was here, surely she will not be the less patient or excusatory now.
Oh, this after-death watching! What an uplifting consideration. And what a comforting thought. Young mother, you who have just lost your babe, and who feel the need of a nearer solace than that which comes from ordinary sympathy, your mother knows all about it. You cannot run in and talk it all over with her as you would if she were still a terrestrial resident, but it will comfort you some, I think, yea it will comfort you a good deal, to know that she understands it all. You see that the velocities of the heavenly conditions are so great that it would not take her a half second to come to your bereft heart.
Oh, these watchful mothers in heaven! They can do more for us now than before they went away. The bridge between this world and the next is not broken down. They approach the bridge from both ways, departing spirits, and coming spirits, disimprisoned spirits, and sympathizing spirits. And so let us walk as to be worthy of the supernal companionships, and if to any of us life on earth is a hard grind, let us understand that if we serve faithfully and trust fully our blessed Lord, there will be a corresponding reward in the Land of Peace, and that Rizpah who once wept on a rock now reigns on a throne.
Autor: T. De Witt Talmage