Semejas

ON ST. SEMEIA THE PROPHET

About the year of the world 3080.

From various sources.

[1] The Greeks celebrate the holy Prophet Shemaiah the Elamite today in the Menaia. He is the same person who in the Vulgate edition is called Semeias, and by others Semaias. When ten tribes had revolted from the rule of Rehoboam, Shemaiah recalls Rehoboam from battle. and Rehoboam was planning to recover them by arms, having assembled a great army of 180,000, Shemaiah was sent by God to meet the king and the army, which was already approaching the town of Shechem where Jeroboam, the leader of the rebel tribes, had pitched camp, and he was commanded to publicly proclaim: "You shall not go up, nor shall you fight against your brothers the sons of Israel: let every man return to his house, for this thing has been done by me" — that is, God was permitting this defection of the people as punishment for the sins of Solomon. That fearless man obeyed the divine command, and divine power was added to his words: for they heard the word of the Lord, as is said in 3 Kings 12:24 and 2 Paralipomenon 11:4, and they returned from the journey just as the Lord had commanded them, and did not proceed against Jeroboam.

[2] Our Jacobus Salianus expounds these matters excellently in volume 4 of the Annals of the Old Testament, at the year of the world 3061, nos. 4 and 5. "Surely an outstanding and admirable example," he says, "of the obedience of the king, his princes, Obedience of the princes and the king. and the entire army. For if we consider the matter itself, it concerned the greatest of all things — that over which men are accustomed to contend most fiercely among themselves and to prefer above all else, believing that for the sake of ruling, as Julius Caesar said with Eteocles, every law may be violated, while in all other matters piety should be cultivated. How much more were their spirits inflamed for war, when to that common desire of princes was added the lust for vengeance and the disgrace of a lost kingdom — passions which, like swords, stoked that fire! If we consider the opportunity for waging war: a very great and powerful army had already been assembled, the battle lines stood under arms. If we ask the outcome: they were defending a just cause, about to punish an unjust revolt, so that they could rightly hope for victory. If we consider the person calling them back from war: one man alone was forbidding it, who professed to speak by God's command, who offered no reason on his own behalf, no cause, no miracle. Most people would have sent such a man away with contempt as a senile fool; indeed, they would have punished him cruelly as a traitor suborned by the enemy."

[3] The king's patience. "What of King Rehoboam himself — does he not display admirable patience and humility of spirit? He does not contradict the prophet with even a single word. He does not object that the war is just, that it is not a matter of unjust acquisition but of just recovery of a kingdom. He does not complain of the atrocity of the injury done to him — that the greater part of a mighty kingdom had been snatched away, the royal tax collector killed, he himself assailed with insults and driven to flight. He does not object that the army had already been gathered at great labor and expense; that if it were dismissed, the enemies would soon be under arms — or already were — to seize the remaining part of the kingdom."

[4] The spirits of the soldiers were divinely moved. "It was altogether necessary that God should divinely turn the entire army from its eagerness for battle, cast fear and terror and despair of victory into their hearts, and firmly persuade them that they were taking up arms against God himself, not against men. And to this Abijah, who succeeded his father Rehoboam in the kingdom, seems to allude when he confesses that Rehoboam was inexperienced and faint of heart, and therefore could not resist the Israelites. 2 Paralipomenon 13:7 There was added to this the well-known deed and prophecy of Ahijah the Shilonite, which was not unknown to Rehoboam and his princes. 3 Kings 11 Nor perhaps was some miracle lacking, although this very unexpected cessation from arms seems to have been no small prodigy. They heard, therefore, the word of the Lord and returned from the journey, just as the Lord had commanded them."

[5] When afterwards Rehoboam, together with his nobles, rushed headlong into every kind of wickedness, three years later, with God angered, the sacred writer says in 2 Paralipomenon chapter 12: "Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem (because they had sinned against the Lord) with twelve hundred chariots and sixty thousand horsemen; nor was there any counting the common soldiers who had come with him from Egypt — Libyans, Troglodytes, and Ethiopians. And he took the most fortified cities in Judah and came all the way to Jerusalem." But the prophet Shemaiah came to Rehoboam and the princes of Judah, who had gathered in Jerusalem fleeing from Shishak, and said to them: "You have abandoned me, and I have abandoned you into the hand of Shishak." Shemaiah fearlessly rebukes the impious. Terrified by the holy man's appearance and speech, the princes said together with the king: "The Lord is just." That submission and confession moved the most benign God to restrain for a time the fury of the Egyptian king, lest he rage more cruelly against the people, and instead, having imposed tribute on the city and plundered the temple and the royal palace, he departed for home. And this too was announced through Shemaiah, the interpreter of the divine judgments. "And when the Lord saw," says Scripture, "that they had humbled themselves, the word of the Lord came to Shemaiah, saying: Because they have humbled themselves, I will not destroy them, and I will give them a little help, and my fury shall not drip upon Jerusalem through the hand of Shishak. Nevertheless they shall serve him" (that is, by paying tribute) "so that they may know the difference between my service and the service of the kingdoms of the earth," etc.

[6] His writings. The remaining deeds of Shemaiah are obscure, except that it is established he wrote certain things, concerning which 2 Paralipomenon 12:15 says: "The deeds of Rehoboam, first and last, are written in the books of Shemaiah the Prophet and of Iddo the Seer, and diligently recorded." But these books too, reckoned among the sacred writings by our Jacobus Bonfrerius in his Prolegomena on Scripture, chapter 6, section 2, have perished.