Mardochai

“ The word was not yet gone out of the king’s mouth, and immediately they covered his face.
9 And Harbona, one of the eunuchs that stood waiting on the king, said: Behold the gibbet which he hath prepared for Mardochai, who spoke for the king, standeth in Aman’s house, being fifty cubits high. And the king said to him: Hang him upon it.
10 So Aman was hanged on the gibbet, which he had prepared for Mardochai: and the king’s wrath ceased.
Chapter 8 1 On that day king Assuerus gave the house of Aman, the Jews’ enemy, to queen Esther, and Mardochai came in before the king. ”

“ At that time, therefore, when Mardochai abode at the king's gate, Bagathan and Thares, two of the king's eunuchs, who were porters, and presided in the first entry of the palace, were angry: and they designed to rise up against the king, and to kill him. ”

“ And the king and Haman sat down to drink; but the city of Shushan was perplexed.
Chapter 4 1 Now when Mordecai knew all that was done, Mordecai rent his clothes, and put on sackcloth with ashes, and went out into the midst of the city, and cried with a loud and a bitter cry;
2 and he came even before the king's gate: for none might enter within the king's gate clothed with sackcloth.
3 And in every province, whithersoever the king's commandment and his decree came, there was great mourning among the Jews, and fasting, and weeping, and wailing; and many lay in sackcloth and ashes. ”

“ The gods rejoice at the exhibition of Marduk's power. In chorus they exclaim, "Marduk is king." The insignia of royalty, throne, sceptre, and authority are conferred upon him.
Now go against Tiâmat, cut off her life,
Let the winds carry her blood to hidden regions. [724]
Marduk thereupon fashions his weapons for the fray. Myth and realism are strangely intertwined in the description of these [Pg 426] weapons. Bow and quiver, the lance and club are mentioned, together with the storm and the lightning flash. In addition to this he
Constructs a net wherewith to enclose the life of Tiâmat. ”

“ Marduk (Merodach) , thou art glorious among the great gods, thy will is second to none,* thy bidding is Anu.** From this day, that which thou orderest may not be changed, the power to raise or to abase shall be in thy hand, the word of thy mouth shall endure, and thy commandment shall not meet with opposition. None of the gods shall transgress thy law; but wheresoever a sanctuary of the gods is decorated, the place where they shall give their oracles shall be thy place.*** Marduk, it is thou who art our avenger! We bestow on thee the attributes of a king ”

“ George Marshall, too, good fellow that he is, says I think too much about the girl. Maybe I do; but I should like him to tell me how a fellow is to help it. That Jewess bewilders me! If old Mordecai was not rich, I should love her for her dreamy eyes. I'll swear, ever since she spoke to me so sweetly a week ago, and gave me a clasp of her white, slender hand, I haven't cared whether I was prompt at parade, studies, or anything else—so I could always be prompt at meeting her. She looks doleful sometimes. She cannot be very happy. ”

“ Pray," added he, with a peculiar look, "how did you leave my friend Mordecai?"
I laughed, and he followed my example. Tossing off a glass of wine and filling out a bumper for me—
"Well, then," said he, "suppose we drink the Jew's health. I gave you a rather strange character of him, I think. I called him the perfection of a rogue; true enough; but still I make a difference between a man who volunteers roguery; and a man on whom it is thrust by the world. Circumstances, you see, are my reason for every thing. Make a hard bargain with Mordecai, and ten to one but you are caught in his trap. ”

“ It is he who brings order and light into the world. He supplants the rôles originally belonging to other gods. Bel and Ea give way to him. Anu and the other great gods cheerfully acknowledge Marduk's power. The early traditions have all been colored by the endeavor to glorify Marduk; and since Marduk is one of the latest of the gods to come into prominence, we must descend some centuries below Hammurabi before reaching a period when Marduk's position was so generally recognized as to lead to a transformation of popular traditions at the hands of the theologians. ”

“ But the letter of Nâ'id-Marduk,925 which names Ummanigash as King of Elam, was certainly addressed to her. Nâ'id-Marduk was a son of Merodach Baladan, who, in the reign of Esarhaddon, when his brother Nabû-zêr-kînish-lîshir was killed by Ummanaldash II., threw himself on the mercy of Esarhaddon and was by him made ruler of his ancestral domain of Bît Jakin, as a vassal king. He speaks for himself:
To the mother of the king, my lord, thy servant Nâ'id-Marduk. Peace be to the mother of the king, my lord. May Ashur, Shamash, and Marduk give health to the king, my lord. ”

“ The “house of the gods” is the ninth celestial house, naturally the sign Sagittarius, and in the Quabalah the ninth heavenly sphere is the Primum Mobile, the star-decked Heaven. (See “Numbers, their Meaning and Magic.”) The name Merodach or Marduk is a corruption of Mardugga (the sacred son) , and because they saw the life-giving orb rising from the sea, the ancient Chaldean masters accounted Jupiter his first offshoot, hailing him as “Marduk:”—“Marduk, first born of the mighty deep, make us pure and prosperous.” ”

“ No one could withstand them, because the fear of them had fallen on all the people. 009:003 All the princes of the provinces, the satraps, the governors, and those who did the king's business helped the Jews, because the fear of Mordecai had fallen on them. 009:004 For Mordecai was great in the king's house, and his fame went out throughout all the provinces; for the man Mordecai grew greater and greater. 009:005 The Jews struck all their enemies with the stroke of the sword, and with slaughter and destruction, and did what they wanted to those who hated them. ”

“ Marduk, the sun rising up out of the ocean, becomes the offspring of Ea, and even the political supremacy of Marduk could not set aside the prerogatives of Ea in the popular mind. In the cosmological system, however, as developed in the schools, such an attempt was made. While recognizing the 'deep' as the domain of Ea, the theologians saved Marduk's honor by having him take a part in fixing Ea's dwelling and in determining its limitations. ”

“ I did not tell you the reason of my journey abroad, Mordecai, because—never mind—I went to learn my parentage. And you were right. I am a Jew."
The two men clasped hands with a movement that seemed part of the flash from Mordecai's eyes, and passed through Mirah like an electric shock. But Deronda went on without pause, speaking from Mordecai's mind as much as from his own—
"We have the same people. Our souls have the same vocation. We shall not be separated by life or by death." ”

“ Only by those who hold it a sign of weakness to be obliged for an idea, and prefer to hint that they have implicitly held in a more correct form whatever others have stated with a sadly short-coming explicitness. After all, what was there but vulgarity in taking the fact that Mordecai was a poor Jewish workman, and that he was to be met perhaps on a sanded floor in the parlour of the Hand and Banner, as a reason for determining beforehand that there was not some spiritual force within him that might have a determining effect on a white-handed gentleman? ”

“ Not merely humanity, but the gods also had to acknowledge, and acknowledge freely, the supremacy of Marduk.
The solar deity thus becomes a power at whose command the laws of the universe are established, the earth created and all that is on it. In thus making Marduk the single creator, the theologians were as much under the influence of Marduk's political supremacy, as they helped to confirm that supremacy by their system. ”

“ As, with trains of slaves and flatterers, he was hastening to the audience of the monarch, or returning loaded with marks of royal favour, he passed Mordecai the Jew, seated alone—unknown, unheeded, without rank or wealth—by the gate of the palace. "Yet Mordecai bowed not, neither did reverence to Haman." The two men seemed to represent to each other their respective nations; as if all the hate and malice of the race, and of long ages of national bitterness, were concentrated in an individual. ”

“ He is essentially a god of civilization, and it was natural that he was also looked upon as the creator of man, and of the world in general. Traces of this view appear in the Marduk epic celebrating the achievements of this god, and the close connexion between the Ea cult at Eridu and that of Marduk also follows from two considerations: (1) that the name of Marduk’s sanctuary at Babylon bears the same name, E-saggila, as that of Ea in Eridu, and (2) that Marduk is generally termed the son of Ea, who derives his powers from the voluntary abdication of the father in favour of his son. ”

“ Whereas Shamash is viewed as the 'judge of mankind,' Marduk becomes the god who restores the dead to life, though he shares this power with Shamash, Gula, Nebo, and Nergal. But after all, even in the religious texts, his more prominent rôle is that of a ruler,—a magnified king. He protects the weak, releases the imprisoned, and makes great the small. He controls by his powerful hand the mountains and rivers and fountains. He is the counsellor who guides the decrees, even of the great gods, Anu and Bel. ”

“ That the conception of Marduk as a solar deity constitutes a factor in the myth is not, of course, to be denied, precisely as in the Tiâmat myth, the solar character of Marduk plays an important part. The sun triumphs over the storms. Rain and wind are obliged at last to yield their authority to the former. But for the theologians of Babylon, the position of Marduk as the head of the pantheon was a much more important factor. The myth served to show how Marduk came to supplant the rôle of the old Bel of Nippur. ”

“ Vashti was divorced--and to provide for the emergency, his courtiers
suggested that he should collect in his harem all the beautiful virgins
of the land, and choose him a wife. Among these was Hadassah, the
adopted daughter of Mordecai. He urged her to enter her name among the
rivals for kingly favor. It was not ambition merely that moved Mordecai.
He had been meditating upon the unfolding providence of God toward his
scattered nation, and felt that there was deeper meaning in passing
events than the pleasures and anger of his sovereign. ”

“ In the beginning, there were other beings in Mardi besides Mardians; winged beings, of purer minds, and cast in gentler molds, who would fain have dwelt forever with mankind. But the hearts of the Mardians were bitter against them, because of their superior goodness. Yet those beings returned love for malice, and long entreated to virtue and charity. But in the end, all Mardi rose up against them, and hunted them from isle to isle ”

“ Hence, in such cases, to the ignorant, disbelief would seem more natural than faith; though they too often reject the testimony of their own senses, for what to them, is a mere hypothesis. And thus, my lord, is it, that the mass of Mardians do not believe because they know, but because they know not. And they are as ready to receive one thing as another, if it comes from a canonical source. My lord, Mardi is as an ostrich, which will swallow augh you offer, even a bar of iron, if placed endwise. ”

“ Mirah mused a little.
"Still," she said, "it would be a trial to your love for him if that other part of his life were like a crowd in which he had got entangled, so that he was carried away from you—I mean in his thoughts, and not merely carried out of sight as he is now—and not merely for a little while, but continually. How should you bear that? Our religion commands us to bear. But how should you bear it?"
"Not well, my sister—not well; but it will never happen," said Mordecai, looking at her with a tender smile. He thought that her heart needed comfort on his account. ”

“ Mordecai answered, saying "O ye fools without understanding! Hear ye my words and make meet reply thereunto. Who is man that he should act proudly and arrogantly man born of woman and few in days? At his birth there is weeping and travailing, in his youth pain and groans, all his days are 'full of trouble,' and in the end he returns unto dust. Before such an one I should prostrate myself? I bend the knee before God alone, the only living One in heaven, He who is the fire consuming all other fires; who holds the earth in His arms; who stretches out the heavens in His might ”

“ Yankel himself put his hand very often to his mouth as though suffering from a cold.
“Oh, dearest lord!” said Yankel: “it is quite impossible now! by heaven, impossible! Such vile people that they deserve to be spit upon! Mardokhai here says the same. Mardokhai has done what no man in the world ever did, but God did not will that it should be so. Three thousand soldiers are in garrison here, and to-morrow the prisoners are all to be executed.”
Taras looked the Jew straight in the face, but no longer with impatience or anger. ”

“ Florian, really interested at last, asked questions. It developed that this shadowy watcher was called Marduk. He had once been rather widely esteemed, by he had no notion how many millions of men, as the over-lord of heaven and all living creatures, in whose hands were the decrees of fate, and as the bright helper and healer from whom were hid no secrets. Apsu yonder had in those fine days conducted his blasphemies, Marduk repeated, with considerably more splendor and display. ”