Greater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 358. Joash

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Greater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 358. Joash

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IV

Joash

1. Elisha lived to extreme old age, and his last thoughts were given to his country. It is clear that there is a long blank in the story of his life. For nearly sixty years he was the great religious force in the land, and on many occasions the guide of her policy at home and abroad. Yet for more than forty years we have no record at all (unless some of the miracles fall within this period) of how that time was spent, or how that influence told upon the history of his native country. It is sad to reflect that, in spite of all his labours, Israel had become feeble and dependent. During the reigns of the pusillanimous sons of Jehu, the Syrians had done to Israel according to their will, and the nation had more than once been brought to the verge of extinction.

2. But at last a brighter day began to dawn. Already in the time of Jehoahaz there was a promise of a great deliverer. In the days of Joash, Elisha himself foresaw the first turn of the fortune which he had so mournfully predicted. The last scene of his life showed how deeply the Syrian war coloured all his thoughts, as well as those of the king. When he was now struck with his mortal sickness, the young Joash came to visit the aged seer who had placed his grandfather on the throne, and wept over his face. No words could be more appropriate than those in which he addressed the prophet: “My father, my father, the chariots of Israel and the horsemen thereof!” Elisha had still the spirit of the master to whom he first applied these words. To impress on the young king's mind a sense of his duty, he used a fine piece of symbolism. He bade the king open the window and shoot an arrow eastward, calling it “the Lord's arrow of victory, even the arrow of victory over Syria.” He then directed the king to strike on the ground with the rest of the arrows. “And he smote thrice, and stayed.” The energy of the youth was not equal to the energy of the expiring prophet, who burst out in indignation on his dying bed-“Thou shouldest have smitten five or six times; then hadst thou smitten Syria till thou hadst consumed it; whereas now thou shalt smite Syria but thrice.” The prophet perhaps read the king's character by the indecisive way in which he performed what he must have known to be intended as a “sign” from Jehovah.

He was never very ready to talk about himself, but when asked what he regarded as his master secret, he always said, “Concentration.” Slackness of mind, vacuity of mind, the wheels of the mind revolving without biting the rails of the subject, were insupportable. Such habits were of the family of faintheartedness, which he abhorred. Steady practice of instant, fixed, effectual attention was the key alike to his rapidity of apprehension and to his powerful memory. By instinct, by nature, by constitution, he was a man of action in all the highest senses of a phrase too narrowly applied and too narrowly construed. The currents of daimonic energy seemed never to stop, the vivid susceptibility to impressions never to grow dull. He was an idealist, yet always applying ideals to their purposes in act. Toil was his native element. There was nobody like him when it came to difficult business for bending his whole strength to it, like a mighty archer stringing a stiff bow.^{1 [Note: Morley, Life of Gladstone, i. 186.]}