134 JACOB AND THE PHANTOM. cause of bringing on the race called after him that repute for extortion, affixed to them in such figures as Shylock, which they have found it so hard to live down. In becoming the great barterers of the East, their obstacle was the plunderer sallying forth from the mountain fastnesses or careering over the desert. These were the traditional descendants of Esau, who gradually included the Ishmaelites as well as the Edomites, afterwards merged in the Idumeans. But as the tribal distinctions became lost, the ancient hostility survived in the abstract form of this satan of Strife-Samaël. He came to mean the spirit that stirs up antagonism between those who should be brethren. He finally became, and among the more superstitious Jews still is, instigator of the cruel persecutions which have so long pursued their race, and the prejudices against them which survive even in countries to whose wealth, learning, and arts they have largely contributed. In Jewish countries Edom has long been a name for the power of Rome and Romanism, somewhat in the same way as the same are called 'Babylon' by some christians. Jacob, when passing into the wilderness of Edom, wrestled with the invisible power of Esau, or Samaël, and had not been able to prevail except with a lame thigh,-a part which, in every animal, Israel thereafter held sacred to the Opposing Power and abstained from eating. A rabbinical legend represents Jacob as having been bitten by a serpent while he was lingering about the boundary of Edom, and before his gift of goats and other cattle had been offered to his brother. The fiery serpents which afflicted Israel were universally attributed to Samaël, and the raising of the Brazen Serpent for the homage of the people was an instance of the uniform deference to Esau's power in his own domain which was long inculcated. THE PLANET MARS. 135 As I write, fiery Mars, near enough for the astronomer to detect its moons, is a wondrous phenomenon in the sky. Beneath it fearful famine is desolating three vast countries, war is raging between two powerful nations, and civil strife is smiting another ere it has fairly recovered from the wounds of a foreign struggle. The dismal conditions seem to have so little root in political necessity that one might almost be pardoned even now for dreaming that some subtle influence has come among men from the red planet that has approached the earth. How easy then must it have been in a similar conjunction of earthly and celestial phenomena to have imagined Samaël, the planetary Spectre, to be at work with his fatal fires! Whatever may have been the occasion, the red light of Mars at an early period fixed upon that planet the odium of all the burning, blighting, desertproducing powers of which it was thought necessary to relieve the adorable Sun. It was believed that all 'born under' that planet were quarrelsome. And it was part of the popular Jewish belief in the ultimate triumph of good over evil that under Mars the Messias was to be born. We may regard Esau-Samaël then as the Devil of Strife. His traditional son Cain was like himself a 'murderer from the beginning;" but in that early period the conflict was between the nomad and the huntsman on one side, on the other the agriculturist and the cattle-breeder, who was never regarded as a noble figure among the Semitic tribes. In the course of time some Semitic tribes became agriculturists, and among them, in defiance of his archæological character, Samaël was saddled with the evils that beset them. As an ox he 1 Buslaef has a beautiful medieval picture of a devil inciting Cain to hurl stones on his prostrate brother's form. 136 TRADESMAN AND HUNTSMAN. brought rinderpest. But his visible appearance was still more generally that of the raven, the wild ass, the hog which brought scurvy; while in shape of a dog he was so generally believed to bring deadly disease, that it would seem as if 'hydrophobia' was specially attributed to him. In process of time benignant Peace dwelt more and more with the agriculturists, but still among the Israelites the tradesman was the 'coming man,' and to him peace was essential. The huntsman, of the Esau clan, figures in many legends, of which the following is translated from the Arabic by Lane:-There was a huntsman who from a mountain cave brought some honey in his water-skin, which he offered to an oilman; when the oilman opened the skin a drop of honey fell which a bird ate; the oilman's cat sprang on the bird and killed it; the huntsman's hound killed the cat; the oilman killed the dog; the huntsman killed the oilman; and as the two men belonged to different villages, their inhabitants rose against each other in battle, 'and there died of them a great multitude, the number of whom. none knoweth but God, whose name be exalted !' 1 Esau's character as a wild huntsman is referred to in another chapter. It is as the genius of strife and nomadic war that he more directly stands in contrast with his supplanter.' From the wild elemental demons of storm and tempest of the most primitive age to this Devil of Strife, the human mind has associated evil with unrest. 'The wicked are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest.' Such is the burthen of the Japanese Oni throned in the heart of the hurricane, of the wild huntsman issuing forth at the first note of war, of Edom hating the victories 1 Forty-one Eastern Tales. THE LAKE OF STILLNESS. 137 of peace, living by the sword. The prophecy that the Prince of Peace should be born under the planet Mars is a strange and mystical suggestion. In a powerful poem by Thomas Aird, 'The Devil's Dream,' the last fearful doom of Satan's vision is imprisonment beneath a lake for ever still, the Spirit of Unrest condemned for ever to the realm of absolute stillness! There all is solemn idleness: no music here, no jars, Where Silence guards the coast, e'er thrill her everlasting bars. No sun here shines on wanton isles; but o'er the burning sheet A rim of restless halo shakes, which marks the internal heat; As, in the days of beauteous earth, we see with dazzled sight The red and setting sun o'erflow with rings of welling light. Oh! here in dread abeyance lurks of uncreated things The last Lake of God's Wrath, where He His first great Enemy brings. Deep in the bosom of the gulf the Fiend was made to stay, Till, as it seemed, ten thousand years had o'er him rolled away; Oh! for a blast of tenfold ire to rouse the giant surge, Would bear him through, the clinging pains would strip from off his head. The vision of this Last Stern Lake, oh! how it plagued his soul, ( 138 ) CHAPTER XIII. BARBARIC ARISTOCRACY. Jacob, the 'Impostor'-The Barterer- Esau, the 'Warrior'-Barbarian Dukes-Trade and War-Reconciliation of Jacob and Esau Their Ghosts - Legend of Iblis - Pagan Warriors of Europe-Russian Hierarchy of Hell. IN the preceding chapter it was noted that there were two myths wrapped up in the story of Jacob and Esau,— the one theological, the other human. The former was there treated, the latter may be considered here. Rabbinical theology has made the Jewish race adopt as their founder that tricky patriarch whom Shylock adopted as his model; but any censure on them for that comes with little grace from christians who believe that they are still enjoying a covenant which Jacob's extortions and treacheries were the divinely-adopted means of confirming. It is high time that the Jewish people should repudiate Jacob's proceedings, and if they do not give him his first name (Impostor') back again, at least withdraw from him the name Israel. But it is still more important for mankind to study the phases of their civilisation, and not attribute to any particular race the spirit of a legend which represents an epoch of social development throughout the world. When Rebekah asked Jehovah why her unborn babes struggled in her womb, he answered, 'Two nations are. in thy womb. One people shall be stronger than the |