Despair

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Trash (1988)

  Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Version_2 Table of Contents Title Page Copyright Page Introduction Deciding to Live - Preface to the First Edition River of Names Meanest Woman Ever Left Tennessee Mama Gospel Song I’m Working on My Charm Steal Away Monkeybites Don’t Tell Me You Don’t Know Demon Lover Her Thighs Muscles of the Mind Violence Against Women Begins at Home A Lesbian Appetite Lupus Compassion Deciding to Live Preface to the First Edition T here was a day in my life when I decided to live. After my childhood, after all that long terrible struggle to simply survive, to escape my stepfather, uncles, speeding Pontiacs, broken glass, and rotten floorboards, or that inevitable death by misadventure that claimed so many of my cousins; after watching so many die around me, I had not imagined that I would ever need to make such a choice. I had imagined the hunger for life in me insatiable, endless, and unshakable. I became an escape—one of the ones others talked about. I became the one who got away, who got glasses from the Lions Club, a job from Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, and finally went away to college on scholarship. There I met the people I always read about: girls whose fathers loved them—innocently; boys who drove cars they had not stolen; whole armies of the upper and middle classes I had not truly believed to be real; the children to whom I could not help but compare myself. I matched their innocence, their confidence, their capacity to trust, to love, to be generous against the bitterness, the rage, the pure and terrible hatred that consumed me. Like so many others who had gone before me, I began to dream longingly of my own death. I began to court it. Cowardly, traditionally—that is, in the tradition of all those others like me, through drugs and drinking and stubbornly putting myself in the way of other people’s violence. Even now, I cannot believe how it was that everything I survived became one more reason to want to die. But one morning, I limped into my mama’s kitchen and sat alone at her dining table. I was limping because I had pulled a muscle in my thigh and cracked two ribs in a fight with a woman I thought I loved. I remember that morning in all its details, the scratches on my wrists from my lover’s fingernails, the look on Mama’s face as she got ready to go to work—how she tried not to fuss over me, and the way I could not meet her eyes. It was in my mama’s face that I saw myself, in my mama’s silence, for she behaved as if I were only remotely the daughter she had loved and prayed for.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Under all her parade of gallantry he divined a great weariness of spirit, a great longing to be at peace with the world, to be able to face her fellow men with the comforting knowledge that she need not fear them, that their friendship would be hers for the asking, that their laws and their codes would be her protection. All this Martin perceived; but Stephen’s perceptions were even more accurate and far-reaching, for to her there had come the despairing knowledge that the woman she loved was deeply unhappy. At first she had blinded herself to this truth, sustained by the passionate stress of the battle, by her power to hold in despite of the man, by the eager response that she had awakened. Yet the day came when she was no longer blind, when nothing counted in all the world except this grievous unhappiness that was being silently borne by Mary. Martin, if he had wished for revenge, might have taken his fill of it now from Stephen. Little did he know how, one by one, Mary was weakening her defences; gradually undermining her will, her fierce determination to hold, the arrogance of the male that was in her. All this the man was never to know; it was Stephen’s secret, and she knew how to keep it. But one night she suddenly pushed Mary away, blindly, scarcely knowing what she was doing; conscious only that the weapon she thus laid aside had become a thing altogether unworthy, an outrage upon her love for this girl. And that night there followed the terrible thought that her love itself was a kind of outrage. And now she must pay very dearly indeed for that inherent respect of the normal which nothing had ever been able to destroy, not even the long years of persecution—an added burden it was, handed down by the silent but watchful founders of Morton. She must pay for the instinct which, in earliest childhood, had made her feel something akin to worship for the perfect thing which she had divined in the love that existed between her parents. Never before had she seen so clearly all that was lacking to Mary Llewellyn, all that would pass from her faltering grasp, perhaps never to return, with the passing of Martin—children, a home that the world would respect, ties of affection that the world would hold sacred, the blessèd security and the peace of being released from the world’s persecution. And suddenly Martin appeared to Stephen as a creature endowed with incalculable bounty, having in his hands all those priceless gifts which she, love’s mendicant, could never offer. Only one gift could she offer to love, to Mary, and that was the gift of Martin. In a kind of dream she perceived these things. In a dream she now moved and had her being; scarcely conscious of whither this dream would lead, the while her every perception was quickened.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The hopelessness of expecting any permanent reform from the papacy and the hierarchy was demonstrated in the last years of the period, 1460–1517, when ecclesiastical Rome offered a spectacle of moral corruption and spiritual fall which has been compared to the corrupt age of the Roman Empire. The religious unrest and the passion for a better state of affairs found expression in Wyclif, Huss, and other leaders who, by their clear apprehension of truth and readiness to stand by their public utterances, even unto death, stood far above their own age and have shone in all the ages since. While coarse ambition and nepotism, a total perversion of the ecclesiastical office and violation of the fundamental virtues of the Christian life held rule in the highest place of Christendom, a pure stream of piety was flowing in the Church of the North, and the mystics along the Rhine and in the Lowlands were unconsciously fertilizing the soil from which the Reformation was to spring forth. The Renaissance, or the revival of classical culture, unshackled the minds of men. The classical works of antiquity were once more, after the churchly disparagement of a thousand years, held forth to admiration. The confines of geography were extended by the discoveries of the continent in the West. The invention of the art of printing, about 1440, forms an epoch in human advancement, and made it possible for the products of human thought to be circulated widely among the people, and thus to train the different nations for the new age of religious enfranchisement about to come, and the sovereignty of the intellect. To this generation, which looks back over the last four centuries, the discovery of America and the pathways to the Indies was one of the remarkable events in history, a surprise and a prophecy. In 1453, Constantinople easily passed into the hands of the Turk, and the Christian empire of the East fell apart. In the far West the beginnings of a new empire were made, just as the Middle Ages were drawing to a close. At the same time, at the very close of the period, under the direction and protection of the Church, an institution was being prosecuted which has scarcely been equalled in the history of human cruelty, the Inquisition,—now papal, now Spanish,—which punished heretics unto death in Spain and witches in Germany. Thus European society was shaking itself clear of long-established customs and dogmas based upon the infallibility of the Church visible, and at the same time it held fast to some of the most noxious beliefs and practices the Church had allowed herself to accept and propagate. It had not the original genius or the conviction to produce a new system of theology. The great Schoolmen continued to rule doctrinal thought. It established no new ecclesiastical institution of an abiding character like the canon law.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  'Nastagio,' answered the knight, 'I was of one same city with thyself and thou wast yet a little child when I, who hight Messer Guido degli Anastagi, was yet more passionately enamoured of this woman than thou art presently of yonder one of the Traversari and my ill fortune for her hard-heartedness and barbarity came to such a pass that one day I slew myself in despair with this tuck thou seest in my hand and was doomed to eternal punishment. Nor was it long ere she, who was beyond measure rejoiced at my death, died also and for the sin of her cruelty and of the delight had of her in my torments (whereof she repented her not, as one who thought not to have sinned therein, but rather to have merited reward,) was and is on like wise condemned to the pains of hell. Wherein no sooner was she descended than it was decreed unto her and to me, for penance thereof,[284] that she should flee before me and that I, who once loved her so dear, should pursue her, not as a beloved mistress, but as a mortal enemy, and that, as often as I overtook her, I should slay her with this tuck, wherewith I slew myself, and ripping open her loins, tear from her body, as thou shalt presently see, that hard and cold heart, wherein nor love nor pity might ever avail to enter, together with the other entrails, and give them to the dogs to eat. Nor is it a great while after ere, as God's justice and puissance will it, she riseth up again, as she had not been dead, and beginneth anew her woeful flight, whilst the dogs and I again pursue her. And every Friday it betideth that I come up with her here at this hour and wreak on her the slaughter that thou shalt see; and think not that we rest the other days; nay, I overtake her in other places, wherein she thought and wrought cruelly against me. Thus, being as thou seest, from her lover grown her foe, it behoveth me pursue her on this wise as many years as she was cruel to me months. Wherefore leave me to carry the justice of God into effect and seek not to oppose that which thou mayst not avail to hinder.' [Footnote 284: _i.e._ of her sin.]

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  He became a pessimist, and expected the speedy collapse of the world. His friendship with Erasmus was continued with interruptions, and at last suffered shipwreck. He charged him once with plagiarism, and Erasmus ignored him in his testament.197 It was a misfortune for both that they could not understand the times, which had left them behind. The thirty works of Glarean (twenty-two of them written in Freiburg) are

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Each far away from home and hearth, And, like the birds of night That hide away in rocky clefts, We have our rocky hold, Yet near at hand, as for the birds, There waits the hunter bold." § 26. Persecution of the Anabaptists. We pass now to the measures taken against the separatists. At first Zwingli tried to persuade them in private conferences, but in vain. Then followed a public disputation, which took place by order of the magistracy in the council hall, Jan. 17, 1525. Grebel was opposed to it, but appeared, together with Manz and Reubli. They urged the usual arguments against infant baptism, that infants cannot understand the gospel, cannot repent and exercise faith. Zwingli answered them, and appealed chiefly to circumcision and 1 Cor. 7:14, where Paul speaks of the children of Christian parents as "holy." He afterwards published his views in a book, "On Baptism, Rebaptism, and Infant Baptism" (May 27, 1525). Bullinger, who was present at the disputation, reports that the Anabaptists were unable to refute Zwingli’s arguments and to maintain their ground. Another disputation was held in March, and a third in November, but with no better result. The magistracy decided against them, and issued an order that infants should be baptized as heretofore, and that parents who refuse to have their children baptized should leave the city and canton with their families and goods. The Anabaptists refused to obey, and ventured on bold demonstrations. They arranged processions, and passed as preachers of repentance, in sackcloth and girdled, through the streets of Zurich, singing, praying, exhorting, abusing the old dragon (Zwingli) and his horns, and exclaiming, "Woe, woe unto Zurich!"141 The leaders were arrested and shut up in a room in the Augustinian convent. A commission of ministers and magistrates were sent to them to convert them. Twenty-four professed conversion, and were set free. Fourteen men and seven women were retained and shut up in the Witch Tower, but they made their escape April 5. Grebel, Manz, and Blaurock were rearrested, and charged with communistic and revolutionary teaching. After some other excesses, the magistracy proceeded to threaten those who stubbornly persisted in their error, with death by drowning. He who dips, shall be dipped,—a cruel irony. It is not known whether Zwingli really consented to the death sentence, but he certainly did not openly oppose it.142 Six executions in all took place in Zurich between 1527 and 1532. Manz was the first victim. He was bound, carried to a boat, and thrown into the river Limmat near the lake, Jan. 5, 1527. He praised God that he was about to die for the truth, and prayed with a loud voice, "Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit!" Bullinger describes his heroic death. Grebel had escaped the same fate by previous death in 1526. The last executions took place March 23, 1532, when Heinrich Karpfis and Hans Herzog were drowned.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Egli: Die Schlacht von Cappel, 1531. Zürich, 1873. Comp. the Lit. quoted § 42. The political situation of Switzerland grew more and more critical. The treaty of peace was differently understood. The Forest Cantons did not mean to tolerate Protestantism in their own territory, and insulted the Reformed preachers; nor would they concede to the local communities in the bailiwicks (St. Gall, Toggenburg, Thurgau, the Rheinthal) the right to introduce the Reformation by a majority vote; while the Zürichers insisted upon both, and yet they probibited the celebration of the mass in their own city and district. The Roman Catholic Cantons made new disloyal approaches to Austria, and sent a deputation to Charles V. at Augsburg which was very honorably received. The fugitive abbot of St. Gall also appeared with an appeal for aid to his restoration. The Zürichers were no less to blame for seeking the foreign aid of Hesse, Venice, and France. Bitter charges and counter-charges were made at the meetings of the Swiss Diet.280 The crisis was aggravated by an international difficulty. Graubünden sent deputies to the Diet with an appeal for aid against the Chatelan of Musso and the invasion of the Valtellina by Spanish troops. The Reformed Cantons favored co-operation, the Roman Catholic Cantons refused it. The expedition succeeded, the castle of Musso was demolished, and the Grisons took possession of the Valtellina (1530–32). Zwingli saw no solution of the problem except in an honest, open war, or a division of the bailiwicks among the Cantons according to population, claiming two-thirds for Zürich and Bern. These bailiwicks were, as already remarked, the chief bone of contention. But Bern advocated, instead of war, a blockade of the Forest Cantons. This was apparently a milder though actually a more cruel course. The Waldstätters in their mountain homes were to be cut off from all supplies of grain, wine, salt, iron, and steel, for which they depended on their richer Protestant neighbors.281 Zwingli protested. "If you have a right," he said in the pulpit, "to starve the Five Cantons to death, you have a right to attack them in open war. They will now attack you with the courage of desperation." He foresaw the disastrous result. But his protest was in vain. Zürich yielded to the counsel of Bern, which was adopted by the Protestant deputies, May 15, 1531. The decision of the blockade was communicated to the Forest Cantons, and vigorously executed, Zürich taking the lead. All supplies of provision from Zürich and Bern and even from the bailiwicks of St. Gall, Toggenburg, Sargans, and the Rheinthal were withheld. The previous year had been a year of famine and of a wasting epidemic (the sweating sickness). This year was to become one of actual starvation. Old men, innocent women and children were to suffer with the guilty. The cattle was deprived of salt. The Waldstätters were driven to desperation. Their own confederates refused them the daily bread,

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  1, 1541, and which is diplomatic rather than theological,235 he urged a General Council as a means to restore the unity and peace of the Church on the traditional basis. His conversion was gradually brought about by a combination of several causes,—the reading of Protestant books which he undertook with the purpose to refute them, his personal intercourse with Lutheran divines and princes in Germany, the intolerance of his Roman opponents, and the fearful death of Spiera. He acquired an experimental knowledge of the evangelical doctrine of justification by faith, which at that time commended itself even to some Roman divines of high standing, as Cardinal Contarini and Reginald Pole, and which was advocated by Paleario of Siena, and by a pupil of Valdés in an anonymous Italian tract on "The Benefit of Christ’s Death."236 He began to preach evangelical doctrines and to reform abuses. His brother, bishop of Pola, fully sympathized with him. He roused the suspicion of the Curia and the Inquisition. He went to Trent in February, 1546, to justify himself before the Council, but was refused admittance, and forbidden to return to his diocese. He retired to Riva on the Lago di Garda, not far from Trent. In 1548 he paid a visit to Padua to take some of his nephews to college. He found the city excited by the fearful tragedy of Francesco Spiera, a lawyer and convert from Romanism, who had abjured the evangelical faith from fear of the Inquisition, and fell into a hell of tortures of conscience under the conviction that he had committed the unpardonable sin by rejecting the truth. He was for several weeks a daily witness, with many others, of the agonies of this most unfortunate of apostates, and tried in vain to comfort him. He thought that we must not despair of any sinner, though he had committed the crimes of Cain and Judas. He prepared himself for his visits by prayer and the study of the comforting promises of the Scriptures. But Spiera had lost all faith, all hope, all comfort; he insisted that he had committed the sin against the Holy Spirit which cannot be forgiven in this world nor in the world to come; he was tormented by the remembrance of the sins of his youth, the guilt of apostasy, the prospect of eternal punishment which he felt already, and died in utter despair with a heart full of hatred and blasphemy. His death was regarded as a signal judgment of God, a warning example, and an argument for the truth of the evangelical doctrines.237 Vergerio was overwhelmed by this experience, and brought to a final decision. He wrote an apology in which he gives an account of the sad story, and renounces his connection with Rome at the risk of persecution, torture, and death. He sent it to the suffragan bishop of Padua, Dec. 13, 1548. He was deposed and excommunicated by the pope, July 3, 1549, and fled over Bergamo to the Grisons.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  deserved all possible punishment, I should have been rejoiced to see them passing their lives in peace and respectability: which might have been the case, had they not wholly rejected every kind of prudent admonition." At one time he almost despaired of success. He wrote to Farel, Dec. 14, 1547: "Affairs are in such a state of confusion that I despair of being able longer to retain the Church, at least by my own endeavors. May the Lord hear your incessant prayers in our behalf." And to Viret he wrote, on Dec. 17, 1547: "Wickedness has now reached such a pitch here that I hardly hope that the Church can be upheld much longer, at least by means of my ministry. Believe me, my power is broken, unless God stretch forth his hand."728 The adversaries of Calvin were, with a few exceptions, the same who had driven him away in 1538. They never cordially consented to his recall. They yielded for a time to the pressure of public opinion and political necessity; but when he carried out the scheme of discipline much more rigorously than they had expected, they showed their old hostility, and took advantage of every censurable act of the Consistory or Council. They hated him worse than the pope.729 They abhorred the very word "discipline." They resorted to personal indignities and every device of intimidation; they nicknamed him "Cain," and gave his name to the dogs of the street; they insulted him on his way to the lecture-room; they fired one night fifty shots before his bed-chamber; they threatened him in the pulpit; they approached the communion table to wrest the sacred elements from his hands, but he refused to profane the sacrament and overawed them. On another occasion he walked into the midst of an excited crowd and offered his breast to their daggers. As late as October 15, 1554, he wrote to an old friend: "Dogs bark at me on all sides. Everywhere I am saluted with the name of ’heretic,’ and all the calumnies that can possibly be invented are heaped upon me; in a word, the enemies among my own flock attack me with greater bitterness than my declared enemies among the papists."730 And yet in the midst of these troubles be continued to discharge all his duties, and found time to write some of his most important works. It seems incredible that a man of feeble constitution and physical timidity should have been able to triumph over such determined and ferocious opposition. The explanation is in the justice of his cause, and the moral purity and "majesty of his character, which so strongly impressed the Genevese. We must distinguish two parties among Calvin’s enemies—the Patriots, who opposed him on political grounds, and the Libertines, who hated his religion. It would be unjust to charge all the Patriots with the irreligious sentiments of the Libertines. But they made common cause for the overthrow of Calvin and his detested system of discipline.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Being obliged to leave Nürnberg, he turned his weary steps to Poland, and was allowed to preach to his countrymen at Cracow. But Cardinal Hosius and the papal nuncio denounced him as an atheist, and induced the king to issue an edict by which all non-Catholic foreigners were expelled from Poland (Aug. 6, 1564). Ochino entered upon his last weary journey. At Pinczow he was seized by the pestilence and lost three of his children; nothing is known of the fourth. He himself survived, but a few weeks afterwards he took sick again and ended his lonely life at the end of December, 1564, at Schlackau in Moravia: a victim of his sceptical speculations and the intolerance of his age. A veil is thrown over his last days: no monument, no inscription marks his grave. What a sad contrast between the bright morning and noon-day, and the gloomy evening, of his public life! A false rumor was spread that before his journey to Poland he met at Schaffhausen the cardinal of Lorraine on his return from the Council of Trent, and offered to prove twenty-four errors against the Reformed Church. The offer was declined with the remark: "Four errors are enough." The rumor was investigated, but could not be verified. He himself denied it, and one of his last known utterances was: "I wish to be neither a Bullingerite, nor a Calvinist, nor a Papist, but simply a Christian."950 His sceptical views on the person of Christ and the atonement disturbed and nearly broke up the Italian congregation in Zürich. No new pastor was elected; the members coalesced with the German population, and the antitrinitarian influences disappeared. § 130. Caelius Secundus Curio. 1503–1569. Curio’s works and correspondence.—Trechsel, I. 215 sqq., and Wagemann in Herzog,2 III. 396–400 (where the literature is given). Celio Secundo Curione or Curio was the youngest of twenty-three children of a Piedmontese nobleman, studied history and law at Turin, became acquainted with the writings of Luther, Zwingli, and Melanchthon through an Augustinian monk, and labored zealously for the spread of Protestant doctrines in Pavia, Padua, Venice, Ferrara, and Lucca. He barely escaped death at the stake, and fled to Switzerland with letters of recommendation by the Duchess Renata, the friend of Calvin. He received an appointment as professor of eloquence in Lausanne (1543–1547) and afterwards in Basel. He was the father-in-law of Zanchius. He attracted students from abroad, declined several calls, kept up a lively correspondence with his countrymen and with the Reformers, and wrote a number of theological and literary works. He sided with the latitudinarians, and thereby lost the confidence of Calvin and Bullinger; but he maintained his ground in Basel, and became the ancestor of several famous theological families of that city (Buxtorf, Zwinger, Werenfels, Frey). Curio sympathized with Zwingli’s favorable judgment of the noble heathen, and thought that they were as acceptable to God as the pious Israelites.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Whatever be the meaning of "water," Christ cannot here refer to infants, nor to such adults as are beyond the reach of the baptismal ordinance. He said of children, as a class, without any reference to baptism or circumcision: "Of such is the kingdom of God." A word of unspeakable comfort to bereaved parents. And to make it still stronger, he said: "It is not the will of your Father, who is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish" (Matt. 18:14). These declarations of our Saviour, which must decide the whole question, seem to justify the inference that all children who die before having committed any actual transgression, are included in the decree of election. They are born into an economy of salvation, and their early death may be considered as a sign of gracious election. But Calvin did not go so far. On the contrary, he intimates very clearly that there are reprobate or non-elect children as well as reprobate adults. He says that "some infants," having been previously regenerated by the Holy Spirit, "are certainly saved," but he nowhere says that all infants are saved.837 In his comments on Rom. 5:17, he confines salvation to the infants of pious (elect) parents, but leaves the fate of the rest more than doubtful.838 Arguing with Catholic advocates of free-will, who yet admitted the damnation of unbaptized infants, he asks them to explain in any other way but by the mysterious will of God, the terrible fact "that the fall of Adam, independent of any remedy, should involve so many nations with their infant children in eternal death. Their tongues so loquacious on every other point must here be struck dumb."839 And in this connection he adds the significant words:, It is an awful (horrible) decree, I confess, but no one can deny that God foreknew the future, final fate of man before he created him, and that he did foreknow it, because it was appointed by his own decree."840 Our best feelings, which God himself has planted in our hearts, instinctively revolt against the thought that a God of infinite love and justice should create millions of immortal beings in his own image—probably more than half of the human race—in order to hurry them from the womb to the tomb, and from the tomb to everlasting doom! And this not for any actual sin of their own, but simply for the transgression of Adam of which they never heard, and which God himself not only permitted, but somehow foreordained. This, if true, would indeed be a "decretum horribile." Calvin, by using this expression, virtually condemned his own doctrine. The expression so often repeated against him, does great credit to his head and heart, and this has not been sufficiently appreciated in the estimate of his character. He ventured thus to utter his humane sentiments far more strongly than St. Augustin dared to do.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  He could not find the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven, so often spoken of in the Gospels (while Christ speaks only twice of the "Church"), in any visible church organization of his day. The true Church flourished in the first three centuries, but then fled into the wilderness, pursued by the dragon; there she has a place prepared by God, and will remain "a thousand two hundred and threescore prophetic days" or years (Rev. 12:6)—that is, from 325 till 1585. The reign of Antichrist, with its corruptions and abominations, began with three contemporaneous events: the first Oecumenical Council of Nicaea (325), which split the one Godhead into three idols; the union of Church and State under Constantine, when the king became a monk; and the establishment of the papacy under Sylvester, when the bishop became a king.1143 From the same period he dates the general practice of infant baptism with its destructive consequences. Since that time the true Christians were everywhere persecuted and not allowed to assemble. They were scattered as sheep in the wilderness. Servetus fully agreed with the Reformers in opposition to the papacy as an antichristian power, but went much further, and had no better opinion of the Protestant churches. He called the Roman Church "the most beastly of beasts and the most impudent of harlots."1144 He finds no less than sixty signs or marks of the reign of Antichrist in the eschatological discourses of Christ, in Daniel 7 and 12), in Paul (2 Thess. 2:3, 4; 1 Tim. 4:1), and especially in the Apocalypse (Rev. 13–18). But this reign is now drawing to a close. The battle of Michael with Antichrist has already begun in heaven and on earth, and the author of the "Restitution" has sounded the trumpet of war, which will end in the victory of Christ and the true Church. Servetus might have lived to see the millennium (in 1585), but he expected to fall in the battle, and to share in the first resurrection. He concludes his eschatological chapter on the reign of Antichrist with these words: "Whosoever truly believes that the pope is Antichrist, will also truly believe that the papistical trinity, paedobaptism, and the other sacraments of popery are doctrines of the daemons. O Christ Jesus, thou Son of God, most merciful deliverer, who so often didst deliver thy people from distresses, deliver us poor sinners from this Babylonian captivity of Antichrist, from his hypocrisy, his tyranny, and his idolatry. Amen."1145

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  Finally, David is called on to join the Philistines in battle against Israel. He declares his willingness, and the king of Gath does not doubt his loyalty. Other Philistine commanders, however, are distrustful, and so David is sent back. Thus he is saved from the dilemma of either fighting against his own people or being disloyal to his current master. Here again the story serves as an apology to defend David of complicity in the death of Saul. The apology justifies his actions only in part. There is no indication that he was unwilling to fight against Saul, in the circumstances. The biblical author evidently shares the judgment of the king of Gath that David is as blameless as an angel of God (29:9), but a more skeptical interpretation of his actions is also possible. First Samuel ends with the death of Saul and Jonathan. Saul’s career has deteriorated long before this point. The pathos of his situation is shown in chapter 28 when he disguises himself to consult the witch of Endor, although he had supposedly banished all such wizards and mediums in good Deuteronomic fashion. The episode provides a fascinating glimpse of unofficial religious practice in ancient Israel. The woman calls up the spirit of Samuel, but he provides no consolation to Saul. Instead, he reiterates the judgment of the Deuteronomists that Saul was rejected for his disobedience. The death of Saul has a certain aura of heroism. He falls on his sword rather than be captured by the Philistines. Suicide has generally been condemned in Jewish and Christian tradition, but some cases have always been admired—most notably the mass suicide of the Zealots at Masada at the end of the Jewish revolt against Rome in the first century C.E. There is no hint of disapproval of the suicide of Saul. For all his faults, he is recognized as a champion of Israel in its struggle with the Philistines and other neighboring peoples. FOR FURTHER READING Commentaries

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  why the snake sheds its skin. Again, there is a misconception involved, insofar as the story implies that the snake becomes young again. Siduri the Alewife’s Advice to Gilgamesh “You will not find the eternal life you seek. When the gods created mankind they appointed death for mankind, kept eternal life in their own hands.” —(trans. Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia , 150) The curse pronounced on the snake provides an etiology of the way the snake was thought to live. God’s words to the woman likewise reflect the author’s view of the female condition. There is pain in childbearing, and subordination to a husband who “will rule over you.” It is often pointed out that this condition is not the original design of creation. It is a punishment, imposed after Adam and Eve ate from the forbidden tree. It is a mistake to read this passage as if it were the normative expression of God’s will for women (as seems to be implied in the New Testament in 1 Tim 2:13-14, which says that woman will be saved through childbearing). In that case, one would also have to conclude that it is God’s will that snakes eat dust and that men earn their bread by the sweat of their brow. God’s words to the woman simply reflect the common experience of women in ancient Israel and throughout the ancient Near East. The passage is explanatory in nature. It is not prescriptive or normative. If God’s words to the woman paint a grim picture of life, his words to the man are no less severe. The final verdict recalls the words of the alewife Siduri in the Epic of Gilgamesh, when she tells Gilgamesh, “You will not find the eternal life you seek. When the gods created mankind they appointed death for mankind, kept eternal life in their own hands” (trans. Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia , 150). Genesis suggests that this may not have been the original design of the Creator, but nonetheless it is now the inescapable human condition. There is no hint here of any possibility of meaningful life after death. (The common assumption in the Hebrew Bible, as we shall see later, was that after death all people, good and bad, went to the shadowy underworld, Sheol, the counterpart of the Greek Hades.) Where the Babylonian epic, however, simply presents this

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  Keep listening, but do not comprehend; keep looking, but do not understand. Make the mind of this people dull, and stop their ears, and shut their eyes, so that they may not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and comprehend with their minds, and turn and be healed. –Isaiah 6:9-10 In fact, Isaiah’s mission to Ahaz failed, in the sense that Ahaz did not accept his advice. But according to chapter 6, the mission was supposed to fail. Failure was part of the commission, before Ahaz came on the scene at all. There is an obvious analogy here with the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart in the book of Exodus. Judah is being set up for punishment. The mission of the prophet only increases the guilt, as now there is no excuse. There is certainly a measure of self-justification in this account of the prophet’s commission. It was not through any fault of the prophet that his message had no effect. But Isaiah claimed that the lack of response to his preaching was itself part of a divine plan. As Amos might have said, if something bad happens, this too is the work of the Lord. The prophet asks how long he must carry out this frustrating mission. The answer implies that he must continue until Judah is utterly destroyed and “the L ORD sends everyone far away”—a reference to the Assyrian policy of deportation. Even if a remnant survives, it will be burned again. We shall meet the motif of the remnant again in Isaiah. Here it should be noted that the prospect of being reduced to a “stump” was not an inviting one. The final statement, that “the holy seed is its stump,” is an obvious gloss. Judah was in fact reduced to a small remnant by the Babylonians, a little more than a century after Isaiah’s time. On that occasion, however, the remnant provided the “holy seed” for the restoration of Judah after the exile. From the perspective of the postexilic editor, then, the destruction was not absolute. The image of the stump left room for a new beginning. We shall find a similar image in Isaiah 11. The Encounter with Ahaz

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  Job does not dispute this point; he complains that he does not need to be told this: “What you know, I also know; I am not inferior to you” (13:2). He goes on to draw a sharp contrast between himself and his friends. Job wants to get to the heart of the issue, to argue his case with God. The friends, he claims, are trying “to whitewash with lies” (13:4). They “speak falsely for God, and speak deceitfully for him” (13:7). Job recognizes that they are trying to speak “for God,” to defend God’s good name, as religious people typically do. If evidence is thought to be damaging to God’s good name, it must be explained away, and pious dogma must be maintained. Not only does Job reject that approach, but he claims that God does too: “Will it be well with you when he searches you out? Or can you deceive him, as one person deceives another? He will surely rebuke you if in secret you show partiality” (13:9-10). This claim too will be tested when God finally appears on stage at the end of the book. In the conclusion of this speech, Job dwells again on the wretched state of humanity and on how God should not need to afflict such creatures. He insists especially on the finality of death. There is hope for a tree that is cut down (14:7), but when mortals expire they are laid low. While this denial of resurrection, or of meaningful afterlife, was the standard view of ancient Israel, it must be noted here, as it is crucial to the problem of Job. The Hellenistic Testament of Job has Job rewarded in heaven for his sufferings on earth. No such easy solution is available to the author of the Hebrew book. The second and third cycles of dialogue add rhetorical weight to the dispute between Job and his friends, but they add little by way of new argument. Here it will suffice to highlight two passages: 19:23-26 and 26:7-14. Job 19:23-26 was made famous by its rendition in Handel’s Messiah: “I know that my redeemer liveth.” For traditional Christianity, the redeemer is Christ, but messianic prophecy has no place in the worldview of Job. The relevant passage is translated as follows in the NRSV: O that my words were written down! O that they were inscribed in a book! O that with an iron pen and with lead they were engraved on a rock forever! For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  commandment of the Lord. By implication, the will of God was now to surrender to the Babylonians. A similar narrative is found in Jer 37:3-10, on the occasion of hopes raised by the advance of an Egyptian army. The message attributed to Jeremiah in these passages goes against the grain not only of national pride but of the human instinct for self-assertion. Nonetheless, it must be admitted that submission was the only way to self-preservation for Judah in face of the Babylonian army. Naturally, the officials in Jerusalem took exception to Jeremiah’s prophecies of doom on the grounds that he was discouraging the soldiers who were left in the city. According to a narrative in chapter 38, they lowered him into an empty but muddy cistern to await a slow death. He was rescued, however, by a eunuch in the royal court who prevailed on the king to allow his release. Zedekiah appears in these narratives as a pathetic figure. He vacillates over the liberation of slaves in the seventh year as commanded by Deuteronomy (Jer 34:8-22). He is eager to consult Jeremiah but afraid of his own officials and also afraid that if he surrenders he will be handed over to the Judeans who had deserted. Jeremiah assures him that if he surrenders he will be allowed to live (38:17; cf. 34:4-5). In the end, however, Zedekiah suffered a cruel fate. His sons were executed before his eyes, and then he was blinded and taken prisoner to Babylon (52:10-11). There is little doubt that Jeremiah consistently preached the inevitability of the Babylonian conquest. Jerusalem had no alternative to submission. But there is equally little doubt that these narratives were edited by members of the exilic community who claimed the authority of Jeremiah for their policy of submission. The Babylonians are said to have treated the prophet with respect after the conquest and offered to take him to Babylon. He declined, but he also resisted those who advocated flight to Egypt after the governor Gedaliah was murdered (chaps. 42–43). There are echoes here of the Deuteronomic principle that Israel should not return to Egypt, from which it had once been liberated. Nonetheless, he was finally forced to flee. He continued to be critical of the community in Egypt because of alleged idolatry (chap. 44). The discussion of the worship of the queen of heaven in this context gives an interesting insight into Judean popular religion, even after the fall of Jerusalem.

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  MICAH Roughly contemporary with Isaiah was Micah of Moresheth, a small town about twenty-three miles southwest of Jerusalem. According to the superscription of the book, he prophesied in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, and his oracles concerned both Samaria and Jerusalem. In contrast to Isaiah, Micah was a rural prophet and not so closely engaged with the Davidic dynasty. As in the case of all the prophetic books, however, we must reckon with a process of edition and supplementation that may have gone on for centuries. A clear example of this is found in Mic 4:10, where Zion is told to writhe like a woman in labor, “for now you shall go forth from the city and camp in the open country; you shall go to Babylon. There you shall be rescued, there the L ORD will redeem you from the hands of your enemies.” The initial prophecy that the city would be undone, and that its inhabitants would have to camp in the open country, may well have been uttered by Micah. It is quite compatible with the critique of the ruling powers by the rural prophet. The extension of the prophecy to include the Babylonian exile and the subsequent restoration must have been added by a postexilic scribe, who felt impelled to update the oracle in the light of subsequent history. The actual extent of the supplementation of the oracles of Micah is a matter of controversy. One scholarly tradition, developed in Germany in the late nineteenth century and still widely influential, attributes only material in chapters 1–3 to the eighth-century prophet, and that with minor exceptions, most notably the prophecy of restoration in 2:12-13. These chapters consist primarily of judgment oracles. The more hopeful oracles in chapters 4–5 are usually dated to the early postexilic period. Chapters 6–7 are also regarded as later additions. At least the conclusion in 7:8-20 was added to adapt the collection to liturgical use. This kind of analysis may go too far in denying the prophet any hope for the future. At least a few passages in chapters 4–7 are likely to come from the eighth century. In contrast to this approach, some recent commentaries have tried to defend the essential unity of the book (Hillers, Andersen and Freedman). There

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  the all-powerful Creator? Or can it be measured by standards that humanity can recognize? Job does not waver in protesting his innocence, but he shows little hope of winning satisfaction: “Though I am innocent, my own mouth would condemn me; though I am blameless; he would prove me perverse” (9:20). This prediction must be borne in mind when we come to the eventual encounter between God and Job at the end of the book. For the present, despair leads to candor: “It is all one; therefore I say, he destroys both the blameless and the wicked. When disaster brings sudden death, he mocks at the calamity of the innocent. The earth is given into the hand of the wicked; he covers the eyes of its judges—if it is not he, who then is it?” (9:24). Job, no less than Bildad, has biblical precedent on his side. The prophets had argued consistently that the one God YHWH was responsible for everything that happened, good and bad. “Does disaster befall a city,” asked Amos, “unless the L ORD has done it?” (Amos 3:6). In the words of Second Isaiah: “I am the L ORD , and there is no other. I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe; I the L ORD do all these things” (Isa 45:6- 7). Job draws the logical conclusion. YHWH must also be responsible for the injustice that is rampant on earth. The remainder of Job’s response to Bildad raises two further important issues. In 9:26 Job complains that “there is no umpire between us.” Here he touches again on the problem of getting a fair trial before God. The second issue is an appeal to God’s mercy. God must know that Job is not guilty (as indeed he does, in the narrative of the book). God should transcend the limitations of human beings (“Do you see as humans see?” 10:4). Why then should God destroy the work of his own hands? We may compare Hos 11:9, where God resolves not to destroy Ephraim again, “for I am God and no mortal.” In the end, of course, God will not destroy Job, but he has already destroyed Job’s children and servants. Why should an all-powerful God need to inflict such suffering on mere mortals? The last friend to speak, Zophar, is quite brief. As between God and Job, there can be no contest. “Can you find out the deep things of God? Can you find out the limit of the Almighty?” (11:7). Like Eliphaz, Zophar counsels submission. His argument rests on the unfathomable superiority of the Deity.

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  prototype. In each case, including that of ancient Israel, the long-term results have included much that is good. History is always ambiguous. But the ambiguities of history should not blind us to the fact that the unprovoked conquest of one people by another is an act of injustice and that injustice is often cloaked with legitimacy by claims of divine authorization. At the very least, we should be wary of any attempt to invoke the story of the conquest of Canaan as legitimation for anything in the modern world. The final redaction of the Deuteronomistic History, including the book of Joshua, was done in the Babylonian exile or later. In that situation, the Judeans were not the invincible conquerors, but the hapless victims, a situation in which the Jewish people would unfortunately find themselves more than once in the course of history. Perhaps the fantasy of Joshua’s conquests brought some consolation to the Judeans in Babylon, or to those who struggled in the impoverished land of Judah. But it is surely one of the ironies of the biblical story that the people of Israel and Judah suffered the kind of violent conquest that they supposedly had inflicted on the Canaanites, and that the historicity of their own destruction is in no doubt whatsoever. There is one small note of relief in the story of the capture of Jericho. One household is spared, that of the prostitute Rahab. She is spared because she had assisted the Israelite spies (and thereby betrayed her own people). But it is typical of the Deuteronomistic History that the person who is spared is a person of ill repute. One of the themes of this history is articulated in the Song of Hannah in 1 Samuel 2: the Lord lifts up the poor from the dust and brings low the mighty. This pattern in history applies to Israel as well as to other nations, and it applies when Israel is mighty as well as when it is low. The privilege apparently given to Israel in its early history will be erased when it becomes the domain of kings. The Story of Ai The story of the attack on Ai is most probably also a fiction designed to give a clear illustration of the Deuteronomist’s theology. When the initial attack fails, it