The Pulpit Commentary — 1 Kings — Section 483

none but temporal sanctions. A" judgment to com,e" formed no part of its system. It dealt with men as if there were no hereafter. It taught them to expect an exact and proportionate and immediate recompense ; an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. It preached an ever-present Deity, the true King of the country, visiting every transgression and disobedience with its just recompense of reward (Heh. ii. 2). And so long as that economy was practised in its integrity, so long, either through the immediate dispensations of God, or the mediate action of the authorities who represented Him, did vice and crime, extortion and oppression, infidelity and apostasy, receive their just deserts. But with the advent of our Lord, and His apocalypse of life and immortality, all this was changed. We no longer look for temporal judgments because we are taught to wait for the judgment-seat of Christ. It is only within very narrow limits that we expect to see vice punished or virtue rewarded. It causes us no surprise, consequently, to find even the tyrant and op- pressor escaping all the whips and stings of vengeance. We know that he will not always escape ; that though "the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind ex- ceeding small," and that he and all such as he will BUrely satisfy the inexorable claims of Justice hereafter. But there is apparently one exception-and this is the second consideration-to this general rule. If the individual is not judged here, the nation is. For nations, as such, have no existence apart from this life present. In the kingdom of the future, nationalities have no place (Col. iii. 11). "Mortals have many tongues, immortals have but one." If, then, men are ever to be dealt with in their corporate capacity, they must, and as a matter of fa.et they do, receive their reckoning here. It surely is not di.flicult to trace the finger of God in the history of Europe as well as of Israel, of modern as of ancient times. In our own generation have not both Austria and Prussia paid in blood for the spoliation of Denmark? Have not the United States suffered for their overweening pride and greed and reckless specula- tion? Has not France paid a heavy forfeit for the corruption, the profligacy, the secularity which marked the latter years of the Empire? Has not England, too, had to lament her intermeddling? have not her late reverses suggested to many minds the painful thought that the hand of the Lord is gone out ago.inst her? Is she not suffering at this moment for her past misgovernment of Ireland? Is not Turkey, by the agonies of dissolution, expiating the uncleanness and injustice of the last four centuries? Yes, it should be clear that whatever arraignment awaits the individual hereafter, the community, the nation, reoeives its requital and o.oquittance here. And if this be so, it is obvious that the king, the representative of the country, or the sovereign power, who is responsible primarily for the action of the community, will have a share, and by for the largest share, in whateVGr good or evil befalls it. On him primo.rily does the disgrace and blow of e. disaster fall. It is not always ~e tho,t "the kings make war and their subjects have to pay for it," for the king, in cnse of defeat, pays the heaviest toll of all. And though there is no one to call him to an o.ccount for internal misgovernment, yet even that does not go unrecom- pensed, as the history of Rome, of Russia, of Turkey, of Engla.nd shows. We are wa1Tanted in looking, consequently, for the punishment of aggressive nations a.nd tymnnicnl kings in this present a.ge. N?w this chapter describes two invasions of the territory of Israel, and two suc- cessive defeats of the invaders. In the invasions we see the punishment of Israel ~nd _of ~hnb ; in the defeats the punishment of Syria and Ben-ho.dad. Let us mq~e, m the first place, what each had done to provoke and deserve his respective ehast1sement. 1. TnE INVASIONS. That these were punishments hardly needs proof. For can e.ny land be overrun with a horde of barbo.rians such as the Syrians a.nd their oon- federates, the Hittite chieftains, were, without 'lridespreo.d and profound suffering? \Ve know what invasion means in modern times, when warfare is conducted with 1ome approach to humanity, but wha~it meant in the Old World and the Orient, we are quite unable to realize. It is idle to say that the Syrians were defeated in the end. Who shall pioture to ue what the thousands of Israel suffered lluring the 494 THE FIRST BOOK OF KINGS. [ CH, XX, 1-48,