Chemosh

“ The Mosaic law was especially severe upon this “abomination” of human sacrifices, the death penalty being ordered for every such offence. [87]
CHEMOSH. This sun-god was worshipped as the Supreme, and in his honor, his early worshippers sang praises, offered sacrifices and performed incantations. The success of Mesha, king of Moab, in his revolt against the king of Israel, was commemorated by the erection of the celebrated Moabite stone [88] whereon was recorded the inscription ascribing his victory to Chemosh, his favorite deity. ”

“ It stood three thousand feet above the level of the sea, and is defended by a network of steep valleys. Nevertheless, Israel would have subdued it, but for the act of horrible despair to which the King of Moab resorted in his extremity, by offering up his eldest son as a burnt-offering to Chemosh upon the wall of the [Pg 108] city. Horror-stricken by the catastrophe, and terrified with the dread that the vengeance of Chemosh could not but be aroused by so tremendous a sacrifice, the besieging host had retired. ”

“ Omri, King of Israel, had oppressed Moab many days, because Chemosh was wroth with his people. Ahaziah wished to oppress Moab as his father had done. But Chemosh enabled Mesha to recover Medeba, and afterwards Baal-Meon, Kirjatan, Ataroth, Nebo, and Jahaz, which he reoccupied and rebuilt. Perhaps they had been practically abandoned by all effective Israelite garrisons. In some of these towns he put the inhabitants under a ban, and sacrificed them to Moloch in a great slaughter. In Nebo alone he slew seven thousand men. ”

“ Jephthah, who was inspired of God, and who sacrificed to him his daughter, says to the chief of the Amorites, “Wilt not thou possess that which Chemosh thy god giveth thee to possess? so whomsoever the Lord our God shall drive from before us, them will we possess.”47 This declaration is express, and might be carried to a great length; however, it is at least an evident proof that God permitted the worship of Chemosh. ”

“ The word "wrath" all but invariably denotes divine wrath; but we cannot imagine (as some critics do) that any Israelite of the schools of the prophets would sanction the notion that the chosen people were allowed to suffer from the kindled wrath of Chemosh. Can we then suppose that the desperate act of King Mesha was a proof that Israel, who was no doubt the most interested and the most remorseless of the invaders, had pressed the Moabites too hard, and carried his vengeance much too far? ”

“ This political aspect of religion appears pronounced also in other early communities of the Semitic race; the high god or goddess is the head of the State; the people of Moab are the sons and daughters of Chemosh; the goddess of Askalon and Sidon wears the mural crown. And doubtless the early Semitic kingship was of the same sacred character elsewhere as in Mesopotamia. The King of Moab on the Mesha Stone calls himself the son of Chemosh ”

“ Persian civilization was to a great extent the product of Babylonian elements, and her mythology was born of that type of sensual idolatry too gross for description. But the Persians were a poetic people, and in their hands these ancient myths were refined and somewhat elevated. The hideous idols called sun-images, which were used in the worship of Chemosh, gave place to the adoration of the sun itself, as the great source of all physical light. It was by the hand of Persia that the sacred bull of Egypt was smitten down, and also the golden couch of Baal, with all its attendant horrors. ”

“ In Moab we have {86} the evidence of the Mesha stone, which mentions the divine pair Ashtor-Chemosh, and in Numbers86.1 the Moabites are called the people of Chemosh. But we have Phoenician inscriptions of the period of Persian supremacy in which the king of Byblos, Jachumelek, speaks of himself as raised to the kingdom by the Baalat, the queen-goddess of that state ”

“ What tolerance should there be for idols whose service was horrible infanticide and shameless lust? "What fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? and what concord hath Christ with an infidel? and what agreement hath the temple of God with idols?" How vile the worship of Chemosh was, Israel had already experienced in the wilderness where he was called [Pg 249] Peor. [418] What Moloch was they were to learn thereafter by many a horrible experience. ”

“ A populous land commanding the trade routes from Arabia to Damascus, rich in agricultural and pastoral wealth, Moab, as Mesha’s inscription proves, had already reached a high state of civilization by the 9th century B.C. Its language differed only dialectically from Hebrew; its ideas and religion were very closely akin to the Israelite, and it may be assumed that they shared in common many features of culture. [3] The relation of Chemosh, the national god, to his “children” (Num. xxi. 29) was that of Yahweh to Israel (see especially Judges xi. 24) . ”

“ And upon a wing of abominations he shall cause desolation, even until the consummation, and that which is determined be poured upon the desolate. The Prophets, in representing kingdoms by Beasts and Birds, put their wings stretcht out over any country for their armies sent out to invade and rule over that country. Hence a wing of abominations is an army of false Gods: for an abomination is often put in scripture for a false God; as where Chemosh is called [10] the abomination of Moab, and Molech the abomination of Ammon. ”

“ Page:05.BCOT.KD.PropheticalBooks.A.vol.5.GreaterProphets.djvu/1734 king of Israel, had taken possession of the district of Medeba, and that the Moabites were heavily oppressed by him and his successor for forty years, until King Mesha succeeded, through the help of his god Chemosh, in regaining the territory that had been seized by the Israelites. ”

“ The darkest holes, where the moles and the bats lodge, are the fittest places for idols, that have eyes, and see not; and God can force men to cast their own idols there, (ch. xxx. 22.) when they are ashamed of the oaks which they have desired, ch. i. 29. Moab shall be ashamed of Chemosh, as the house of Israel was ashamed of Beth-el, Jer. xlviii. 13. (4.) It is possible that sin may be both loathed and left, and yet not truly repented of ”

“ By making their founders, Asshur, and Aram, and Heber, etc., sons or descendants of one great head or progenitor, Shem, a son of Noah. It is a kind of parable which is extremely clear once one has the key to it, when nothing is easier than to translate it into our own sober, positive forms of speech. The above bit of genealogy would read thus: A large portion of humanity is distinguished by certain features more or less peculiar to itself; it is one of several great races, and has been called for more than a hundred years the Semitic, (better Shemitic) race, the race of Shem. ”

“ The sex of the sun-deity SHAMASH is equally confusing, for, although he was lord of heaven (p. 73) , and kings of Egypt and the Hittites identified themselves with him, the deity was female in old Arabia, among earlier Hittite groups, and probably once, also, in Palestine and Syria. [1] Place-names compounded with Shemesh attest the prevalence of the deity, and around the district of Gezer lie Beth-Shemesh and the stories of Samson (sun) wherein solar elements have been recognised. Among pastoral and agricultural peoples, however, the moon is more important. ”

“ Escaping from the mummified civilization of Egypt and the inflexible East, we strike more boldly into the high road of all improvement, and observe how rapidly power of every kind passes from Shem to the irresistible Japhet. The continuous stream of humanity moves clearly and with increased speed through a new and broader channel. As Shem was employed to introduce all religions on earth, so is he made to perform the most prominent part in the theological culture of mankind. ”

“ For what can we understand by the division of the earth, if not the diversity of languages? And, therefore, omitting the other sons of Shem, who are not concerned in this matter, Scripture gives the genealogy of those by whom the line runs on to Abraham, as before the flood those are given who carried on the line to Noah from Seth. Accordingly this series of generations begins thus: “These are the generations of Shem: Shem was an hundred years old, and begat Arphaxad two years after the flood. And Shem lived after he begat Arphaxad five hundred years, and begat sons and daughters.” ”

“ According to Genesis, the sons of Shem, the eldest son of Noah, were "Elam and Asshur, and Arphaxad, and Lud, and Aram." And the eldest son of Ham, Noah's second son, was Cush, and Cush begat Nimrod; the same "began to be a mighty one in the earth, and the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar." [328] From this we see not only the close relationship between the Hebrews and the population of Mesopotamia, but also the precedence in high antiquity allowed by the Hebrews to the tribes of the Tigris and Euphrates. ”

“ With these words, Schamyl signed to his Murids, who seized the venerable old Khaness, and bound her to one of the pillars of the mosque. At the fifth blow, she sank dead. Schamyl, with a wild outburst of grief, threw himself at her feet; but suddenly rising again, cried solemnly—“God is great, and Mohammed is his prophet! he hath heard my prayer, and I may take upon myself the remainder of my mother’s expiation!” With that, stripping off his upper garments, he commanded the Murids to inflict the remaining ninety-five blows upon his own back. ”

“ Slaying the inhabitants of Shechem— all the males, Hamor and Shechem particularly, with whom they had been treating in a friendly manner but the other day, yet with a design upon their lives. Some think that all Jacob's sons, when they wheedled the Shechemites to be circumcised, designed to take advantage of their soreness, and to rescue Dinah from among them; but that Simeon and Levi, not content with that, would themselves avenge the injury—and they did it with a witness. ”

“ The ancient Shechem is one of the most prosperous towns in the Holy Land, being still the metropolis of a rich and extensive country, and abounding in agricultural wealth. Nor is there any thing finer than its appearance when viewed from the heights by which it is surrounded. It strikes the eye of the traveller who advances from the north, as being imbosomed in the most delightful and fragrant bowers, half-concealed by rich gardens and stately trees, collected into groves all round the beautiful valley in which it stands. ”

“ Shem begat his first-born in his hundredth year, Arphaxad in the thirty-fifth, Salah in the thirtieth, and so on to Terah, who had no children till his seventieth year; consequently the human race, notwithstanding the shortening of life, increased with sufficient rapidity to people the earth very soon after their dispersion. ”

“ No race has been more literary but less monumental than the Shemite. The most destructive criticism must allow a great antiquity to Hebrew literature. The Arabs must have cultivated poetry for ages before they wrote out their intricately measured odes. If the Shepherds in Egypt had this true Shemite faculty, the problem before us receives its solution. ”

“ Samhar, inhabited by the Shiho from Hamhammou to Taranta, is called Hadassa; it belongs to the Hazorta.
This nation, though not so numerous as the Shiho, are yet their neighbours, live in constant defiance of the Naybe, and are of a colour much resembling new copper; but are inferior to the Shiho in size, though very agile. All their substance is in cattle; yet they kill none of them, but live entirely upon milk. They, too, want also an original word for bread in their language, for the same reason, I suppose, as the Shiho. ”

“ If we may trust the Book of Jasher, the affair of Shechem, the son of Hamor, was as follows:—The men of the city were not all circumcised, only some of them, so as to blind the eyes of the sons of Jacob, and throw them off their guard; and Shechem and Hamor had privately concerted to fall upon Jacob and his sons and butcher them; but Simeon and Levi were warned of their intention by a servant of Dinah, and took the initiative.395 But this is a clumsy attempt to throw the blame off the shoulders of the ancestors of the Jewish nation upon those of their Gentile enemies. ”

“ The Shammar tribe is the most powerful of Northern Nejd, and the towns of Haïl, Kefar, Bekaa, and the rest, put themselves under the protection of Abdallah ibn Rashid, who had succeeded in gaining the Shammar Sheykhat for himself. He seems to have been a man of great ability, and to him is due the policy of rule which his descendants have ever since pursued. He took up his residence in Haïl, and built the castle there, and caused himself to be recognized as Emir, first in vassalage to the Ibn Saouds, who had reappeared in Aared, but later on his own account. ”

“ SHEM (Hebrew for “ name, renown, posterity ”) , in the Bible, the eldest of the three sons of Noah, whose superiority over Canaan is reflected in the tradition that Noah pronounced a curse upon the latter (Gen. ix. 20–27) . In the genealogies (x. 2X sqq.) , Shem numbers among his descendants Assyrian, Arabian, Aramaean and Hebrew populations, whence the ethnic Semitic (strictly speaking, Shemitic) has been coined as a convenient term for these peoples. ”

“ Whatever you hear from them, or read in their works, especially in reference to the names which they form by combination, is utterly senseless; they call these combinations shemot (names) and believe that their pronunciation demands sanctification and purification, and that by using them they are enabled to work miracles. Rational persons ought not to listen to such men, nor in any way believe their assertions. No other name is called shem ha-meforash except this Tetragrammaton, which is written, but is not pronounced according to its letters. ”