THE PROPHECIES
OF
JEREMIAH.
=With a Sketch of His Life and Times.=
BY THE REV.
C. J. BALL, M.A.,
_Chaplain of Lincoln's Inn_;
CONTRIBUTOR TO BISHOP ELLICOTT'S "COMMENTARY,"
"THE SPEAKER'S COMMENTARY," ETC.
=New York:=
A. C. ARMSTRONG & SON,
714 BROADWAY.
1890.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JEREMIAH 1
I.
THE CALL AND CONSECRATION 58
II.
THE TRUST IN THE SHADOW OF EGYPT 74
III.
ISRAEL AND JUDAH--A CONTRAST 114
IV.
THE SCYTHIANS AS THE SCOURGE OF GOD 134
V.
POPULAR AND TRUE RELIGION 149
VI.
THE IDOLS OF THE HEATHEN AND THE GOD OF ISRAEL 215
VII.
THE BROKEN COVENANT 248
VIII.
THE FALL OF PRIDE 280
IX.
THE DROUGHT AND ITS MORAL IMPLICATIONS 300
X.
THE SABBATH--A WARNING 364
XI.
THE DIVINE POTTER 377
XII.
THE BROKEN VESSEL--A SYMBOL OF JUDGMENT 398
XIII.
JEREMIAH UNDER PERSECUTION 411
PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF THE LIFE AND
TIMES OF JEREMIAH.
A priest by birth, Jeremiah became a prophet by the special call
of God. His priestly origin implies a good literary training, in
times when literature was largely in the hands of the priests. The
priesthood, indeed, constituted a principal section of the Israelitish
nobility, as appears both from the history of those times, and from
the references in our prophet's writings, where kings and princes and
priests are often named together as the aristocracy of the land (i.
18, ii. 26, iv. 9); and this fact would ensure for the young prophet a
share in all the best learning of his age. The name of Jeremiah, like
other prophetic proper names, seems to have special significance in
connexion with the most illustrious of the persons recorded to have
borne it. It means _Iahvah foundeth_, and, as a proper name, The Man
that Iahvah foundeth; a designation which finds vivid illustration in
the words of Jeremiah's call: "Before I moulded thee in the belly, I
knew thee; and before thou camest forth from the womb, I consecrated
thee: a spokesman to the nations did I make thee" (i. 5). The not
uncommon name of Jeremiah--six other persons of the name are numbered
in the Old Testament--must have appeared to the prophet as invested
with new force and meaning, in the light of this revelation. Even
before his birth he had been "founded"[1] and predestined by God for
the work of his life.
The Hilkiah named as his father was not the high priest of that
name,[2] so famous in connexion with the reformation of king Josiah.
Interesting as such a relationship would be if established, the
following facts seem decisive against it. The prophet himself has
omitted to mention it, and no hint of it is to be found elsewhere. The
priestly family to which Jeremiah belonged was settled at Anathoth
(i. 1, xi. 21, xxix. 27). But Anathoth in Benjamin (xxxvii. 12), the
present _`Anâtâ_, between two and three miles NNE. of Jerusalem,
belonged to the deposed line of Ithamar (1 Chron. xxiv. 3; comp.
with 1 Kings ii. 26, 35). After this it is needless to insist that
the prophet, and presumably his father, resided at Anathoth, whereas
Jerusalem was the usual residence of the high priest. Nor is the
identification of Jeremiah's family with that of the ruling high
priest helped by the observation that the father of the high priest
was named Shallum (1 Chron. v. 39), and that the prophet had an
uncle of this name (Jer. xxxii. 7). The names Hilkiah[3] and Shallum
are too common to justify any conclusions from such data. If the
prophet's father was head of one of the twenty-four classes or guilds
of the priests, that might explain the influence which Jeremiah
could exercise with some of the grandees of the court. But we are
not told more than that Jeremiah ben Hilkiah was a member of the
priestly community settled at Anathoth. It is, however, a gratuitous
disparagement of one of the greatest names in Israel's history, to
suggest that, had Jeremiah belonged to the highest ranks of his caste,
he would not have been equal to the self-renunciation involved in the
assumption of the unhonoured and thankless office of a prophet.[4]
Such a suggestion is certainly not warranted by the portraiture of the
man as delineated by himself, with all the distinctive marks of truth
and nature. From the moment that he became decisively convinced of his
mission, Jeremiah's career is marked by struggles and vicissitudes of
the most painful and perilous kind; his perseverance in his allotted
path was met by an ever increasing hardness on the part of the people;
opposition and ridicule became persecution, and the messenger of
Divine truth persisted in proclaiming his message at the risk of his
own life. That life may, in fact, be called a prolonged martyrdom;
and, if we may judge of the unknown by the known, the tradition that
the prophet was stoned to death by the Jewish refugees in Egypt is
only too probable an account of its final scene. If "the natural
shrinking of a somewhat feminine character" is traceable in his own
report of his conduct at particular junctures, does not the fact
shed an intenser glory upon the man, who overcame this instinctive
timidity, and persisted, in face of the most appalling dangers, in
the path of duty? Is not the victory of a constitutionally timid and
shrinking character a nobler moral triumph than that of the man who
never knew fear--who marches to the conflict with others, with a light
heart, simply because it is his nature to do so--because he has had
no experience of the agony of a previous conflict with self? It is
easy to sit in one's library and criticize the heroes of old; but
the modern censures of Jeremiah betray at once a want of historic
imagination, and a defect of sympathy with the sublime fortitude
of one who struggled on in a battle which he knew to be lost. In a
protracted contest such as that which Jeremiah was called upon to
maintain, what wonder if courage sometimes flags, and hopelessness
utters its forsaken cry? The moods of the saints are not always the
same; they vary, like those of common men, with the stress of the
hour. Even our Saviour could cry from the cross, "My God, My God, why
hast Thou forsaken Me?" It is not by passing expressions, wrung from
their torn hearts by the agony of the hour, that men are to be judged.
It is the issue of the crisis that is all-important; not the cries of
pain, which indicate its overwhelming pressure.
"It is sad," says a well known writer, with reference to the noble
passage, xxxi. 31-34, which he justly characterizes as "one of those
which best deserve to be called the Gospel before Christ," "It is
sad that Jeremiah could not always keep his spirit under the calming
influence of these high thoughts. No book of the Old Testament, except
the book of Job and the Psalms, contains so much which is difficult
to reconcile with the character of a self-denying servant of Jehovah.
Such expressions as those in xi. 20, xv. 15, and especially xviii.
21-23, contrast powerfully with Luke xxiii. 34, and show that the
typical character of Jeremiah is not absolutely complete." Probably
not. The writer in question is honourably distinguished from a crowd
of French and German critics, whose attainments are not superior to
his own, by his deep sense of the inestimable value to mankind of
those beliefs which animated the prophet, and by the sincerity of
his manifest endeavours to judge fairly between Jeremiah and his
detractors. He has already remarked truly enough that "the baptism
of complicated suffering," which the prophet was called upon to pass
through in the reign of Jehoiakim, "has made him, in a very high
and true sense, a type of One greater than he." It is impossible to
avoid such an impression, if we study the records of his life with
any insight or sympathy. And the impression thus created is deepened,
when we turn to that prophetic page which may be called the most
_appealing_ in the entire range of the Old Testament. In the 53rd of
Isaiah the martyrdom of Jeremiah becomes the living image of that
other martyrdom, which in the fulness of time was to redeem the
world. After this, to say that "the typical character of Jeremiah is
not absolutely complete," is no more than the assertion of a truism;
for what Old Testament character, what character in the annals of
collective humanity, can be brought forward as a perfect type of the
Christ, the Man whom, in His sinlessness and His power, unbiassed
human reason and conscience instinctively suspect to have been also
God? To deplore the fact that this illustrious prophet "could not
always keep his spirit under the calming influence of his highest
thoughts," is simply to deplore the infirmity that besets all human
nature, to regret that natural imperfection which clings to a finite
and fallen creature, even when endowed with the most splendid gifts
of the spirit. For the rest, a certain degree of exaggeration is
noticeable in founding upon three brief passages of so large a work
as the collected prophecies of Jeremiah the serious charge that "no
book of the Old Testament, except the book of Job and the Psalms,
contains so much which is difficult to reconcile with the character
of a self-denying servant of Jehovah." The charge appears to me both
ill-grounded and misleading. But I reserve the further consideration
of these obnoxious passages for the time when I come to discuss their
context, as I wish now to complete my sketch of the prophet's life. He
has himself recorded the date of his call to the prophetic office. It
was in the thirteenth year of the good king Josiah, that the young[5]
priest was summoned to a higher vocation by an inward Voice whose
urgency he could not resist.[6] The year has been variously identified
with 629, 627, and 626 B.C. The place has been supposed to have been
Jerusalem, the capital, which was so near the prophet's home, and
which, as Hitzig observes, offered the amplest scope and numberless
occasions for the exercise of prophetic activity. But there appears
no good reason why Jeremiah should not have become known locally as
one whom God had specially chosen, before he abandoned his native
place for the wider sphere of the capital. This, in truth, seems to
be the likelier supposition, considering that his reluctance to take
the first decisive step in his career excused itself on the ground of
youthful inexperience: "Alas, my Lord Iahvah! behold, I know not (how)
to speak; for I am but a youth."[7] The Hebrew term may imply that
he was about eighteen or twenty: an age when it is hardly probable
that he would permanently leave his father's house. Moreover, he
has mentioned a conspiracy of his fellow-townsmen against himself,
in terms which have been taken to imply that he had exercised his
ministry among them, before his removal to Jerusalem. In chap. xi.
21, we read: "Therefore thus said Iahvah Sabaoth upon the men of
`Anathoth that were seeking thy life, saying, Prophesy not in the
name of Iahvah, that thou die not by our hand! Therefore thus said
Iahvah Sabaoth: Behold I am about to visit it upon them: the young
men shall die by the sword; their sons and their daughters shall die
by the famine. And a remnant they shall have none; for I will bring
evil unto the men of `Anathoth, (in) the year of their visitation."
It is natural to see in this wicked plot against his life the reason
for the prophet's departure from his native place (but cf. p. 265).
We are reminded of the violence done to our Lord by the men of "His
own country" (ἡ πάτρις αὐτοῦ), and of His final and, as it would seem,
compulsory departure from Nazareth to Capernaum (St. Luke iv. 16-29;
St. Matt. iv. 13). In this, as in other respects, Jeremiah was a true
type of the Messias.
The prophetic discourses, with which the book of Jeremiah opens (ii.
1-iv. 2), have a general application to all Israel, as is evident not
only from the ideas expressed in them, but also from the explicit
address, ii. 4: "Hear ye the word of Iahvah, O house of Jacob, and
all the clans of the house of Israel!" It is clear enough, that
although Jeremiah belongs to the southern kingdom, his reflexions
here concern the northern tribes as well, who must be included in the
comprehensive phrases "house of Jacob," and "all the clans of the
house of Israel." The fact is accounted for by the circumstance that
these two discourses are summaries of the prophet's teaching on many
distinct occasions, and as such might have been composed anywhere.
There can be no doubt, however, that the principal contents of his
book have their scene in Jerusalem. In chap. ii. 1, 2, indeed, we
have what looks like the prophet's introduction to the scene of his
future activity. "And there fell a word of Iahvah unto me, saying, Go
and cry in the ears of Jerusalem." But the words are not found in the
LXX., which begins chap. ii. thus: "And he said, These things saith
the Lord, I remembered the lovingkindness (ἔλεος) of thy youth, and
the love of thine espousals (τελείωσις)." But whether these words
of the received Hebrew text be genuine or not, it is plain that if,
as the terms of the prophet's commission affirm, he was to be "an
embattled city, and a pillar of iron, and walls of bronze ... to the
kings of Judah, to her princes, to her priests," as well as "to the
country folk" (i. 18), Jerusalem, the residence of kings and princes
and chief priests, and the centre of the land, would be the natural
sphere of his operations. The same thing is implied in the Divine
statement: "A _nabî'_ to _the nations_ have I made thee" (i. 5). The
prophet of Judea could only reach the _gôyîm_--the surrounding foreign
peoples--through the government of his own country, and through his
influence upon Judean policy. The leaving of his native place, sooner
or later, seems to be involved in the words (i. 7, 8): "And Iahvah
said unto me, Say not, I am a youth: for upon whatsoever (journey)
I send thee, thou shalt go (Gen. xxiv. 42); and with whomsoever I
charge thee, thou shalt speak (Gen. xxiii. 8). Be not afraid of
them!" The Hebrew is to some extent ambiguous. We might also render:
"Unto whomsoever I send thee, thou shalt go; and whatsoever I charge
thee, thou shalt speak." But the difference will not affect my point,
which is that the words seem to imply the contingency of Jeremiah's
leaving Anathoth. And this implication is certainly strengthened by
the twice-given warning: "Be not afraid of them!" (i. 8), "Be not
dismayed at them, lest I dismay thee (indeed) before them!" (17). The
young prophet might dread the effect of an unpopular message upon his
brethren and his father's house. But his fear would reach a far higher
pitch of intensity, if he were called upon to confront with the same
message of unwelcome truth the king in his palace, or the high priest
in the courts of the sanctuary, or the fanatical and easily excited
populace of the capital. Accordingly, when after his general prologue
or exordium, the prophet plunges at once "into the agitated life of
the present,"[8] it is to "the men of Judah and Jerusalem" (iv. 3),
to "the great men" (v. 5), and to the throng of worshippers in the
temple (vii. 2), that he addresses his burning words. When, however
(v. 4), he exclaims: "And for me, I said, They are but poor folk; they
_do_ foolishly (Num. xii. 11), for they know not the way of Iahvah,
the rule (_i.e._, _religion_) of their God (Isa. xlii. 1): I will
get me unto the great men, and will speak with them; for _they_ know
the way of Iahvah, the rule of their God:" he again seems to suggest
a prior ministry, of however brief duration, upon the smaller stage
of Anathoth. At all events, there is nothing against the conjecture
that the prophet may have passed to and fro between his birthplace
and Jerusalem, making occasional sojourn in the capital, until at
last the machinations of his neighbours (xi. 19 _sqq._), and as
appears from xii. 6, his own kinsmen, drove him to quit Anathoth for
ever. If Hitzig be right in referring Psalms xxiii., xxvi.-xxviii.
to the prophet's pen, we may find in them evidence of the fact that
the temple became his favourite haunt, and indeed his usual abode.
As a priest by birth, he would have a claim to live in some one of
the cells that surrounded the temple on three sides of it. The 23rd
Psalm, though written at a later period in the prophet's career--I
shall refer to it again by-and-by--closes with the words, "And I will
return unto (Ps. vii. 17; Hos. xii. 7) the house of Iahvah as long
as I live," or perhaps, "And I will return (and dwell) in" etc., as
though the temple were at once his sanctuary and his home. In like
manner, Ps. xxvi. speaks of one who "washed his hands, in innocency"
(_i.e._ in a state of innocency; the symbolical action corresponding
to the real state of his heart and conscience), and so "compassed
the altar of Iahvah"; "to proclaim with the sound of a psalm of
thanksgiving, and to rehearse all His wondrous works." The language
here seems even to imply (Ex. XXX. 19-21), that the prophet took
part, as a priest, in the ritual of the altar. He continues: "Iahvah,
I love the abode of thine house, And the place of the dwelling of
Thy glory!" and concludes, "My foot, it standeth on a plain; In the
congregations I bless Iahvah," speaking as one continually present at
the temple services. His prayers "Judge me," _i.e._, Do me justice,
"Iahvah!" and "Take not away my soul among sinners, Nor my life
among men of bloodshed!" may point either to the conspiracies of the
Anathothites, or to subsequent persecutions at Jerusalem. The former
seem to be intended both here, and in Ps. xxvii., which is certainly
most appropriate as an Ode of Thanksgiving for the prophet's escape
from the murderous attempts of the men of Anathoth. Nothing could be
more apposite than the allusions to "evil-doers drawing near against
him to eat up his flesh" (_i.e._, according to the common Aramaic
metaphor, to slander him, and destroy him with false accusations); to
the "lying witnesses, and the man (or men) breathing out (or panting
after) violence" (ver. 12); and to having been forsaken even by his
father and mother (ver. 10). With the former, we may compare the
prophet's words, chap. ix. 2 _sqq._, "O that I were in the wilderness,
in a lodge of wayfaring men; that I might forsake my people, and
depart from among them! For all of them are adulterous, an assembly
of traitors. And they have bent their tongue, (as it were) their bow
for lying; and it is not by sincerity that they have grown strong in
the land. Beware ye, every one of his friend, and have no confidence
in any brother: for every brother will assuredly supplant" (יעקב עקוב
a reference to Jacob and Esau), "and every friend will gad about
for slander. And each will deceive his friend, and the truth they
will not speak: they have taught their tongue to speak lies; with
perverseness they have wearied themselves. Thy dwelling is in the
midst of deceit.... A murderous arrow is their tongue; deceit hath
it spoken; with his mouth one speaketh peace with his neighbour, and
inwardly he layeth an ambush for him." Such language, whether in the
psalm or in the prophetic oration, could only be the fruit of bitter
personal experience. (Cf. also xi. 19 _sqq._, xx. 2 _sqq._, xxvi. 8,
xxxvi. 26, xxxvii. 15, xxxviii. 6). The allusion of the psalmist to
being forsaken by father and mother (Ps. xxvii. 10) may be illustrated
by the prophet's words, chap. xii. 6.
Jeremiah came prominently forward at a serious crisis in the history
of his people. The Scythian invasion of Asia, described by Herodotus
(i. 103-106), but not mentioned in the biblical histories of the
time, was threatening Palestine and Judea. According to the old Greek
writer, Cyaxares the Mede, while engaged in besieging Nineveh, was
attacked by a great horde of Scythians, under their king Madyes, who
had entered Asia in pushing their pursuit of the Cimmerians, whom
they had expelled from Europe.[9] The Medes lost the battle, and the
barbarous victors found themselves masters of Asia. Thereupon they
marched for Egypt, and had made their way past Ascalon, when they
were met by the envoys of Psammitichus I. the king of Egypt, whose
"gifts and prayers," induced them to return. On the way back, some
few of them lagged behind the main body, and plundered the famous
temple of Atergatis-Derceto, or as Herodotus calls the great Syrian
goddess, Ourania Afrodite, at Ascalon (the goddess avenged herself by
smiting them and their descendants with impotence--θήλειαν νοῦσον,
cf. 1 Sam. v. 6 _sqq._). For eight and twenty years the Scythians
remained the tyrants of Asia, and by their exactions and plundering
raids brought ruin everywhere, until at last Cyaxares and his Medes,
by help of treachery, recovered their former sway. After this, the
Medes took Nineveh, and reduced the Assyrians to complete subjection;
but Babylonia remained independent. Such is the story as related by
Herodotus, our sole authority in the matter. It has been supposed[10]
that the 59th Psalm was written by king Josiah, while the Scythians
were threatening Jerusalem. Their wild hordes, ravenous for plunder,
like the Gauls who at a later time struck Rome with panic, are at any
rate well described in the verse
"They return at eventide,
They howl like the dogs,
the famished pariah dogs of an eastern town--
And surround the city."
But the Old Testament furnishes other indications of the terror which
preceded the Scythian invasion, and of the merciless havoc which
accompanied it. The short prophecy of Zephaniah, who prophesied
"in the days of Josiah ben Amon king of Judah," and was therefore
a contemporary of Jeremiah, is best explained by reference to this
crisis in the affairs of Western Asia. Zephaniah's very first word
is a startling menace. "I will utterly away with everything from
off the face of the ground, saith Iahvah." "I will away with man
and beast, I will away with the birds of the air, and the fishes of
the sea, and the stumblingblocks along with the wicked (_i.e._ the
idols with their worshippers); and I will exterminate man from off
the face of the ground, saith Iahvah." The imminence of a sweeping
destruction is announced. Ruin is to overtake every existing thing;
not only the besotted people and their dumb idols, but beasts and
birds and even the fish of the sea are to perish in the universal
catastrophe. It is exactly what might be expected from the sudden
appearance of a horde of barbarians of unknown numbers, sweeping over
a civilised country from north to south, like some devastating flood;
slaying whatever crossed their path, burning towns and temples, and
devouring the flocks and herds. The reference to the fishes of the sea
is explained by the fact that the Scythians marched southward by the
road which ran along the coast through Philistia. "Gaza," cries the
prophet, "shall be forsaken,"--there is an inimitable paronomasia in
his words[11]--"And Ascalon a desolation: as for Ashdod, at noonday
they shall drive her into exile; and Ekron shall be rooted up. Alas
for the dwellers by the shore line, the race of the Cherethites! The
word of Iahvah is against you, O Canaan, land of the Philistines! And
I will destroy thee, that there shall be no inhabitant." It is true
that Herodotus relates that the Scythians, in their retreat, for the
most part marched past Ascalon without doing any harm, and that the
plunder of the temple was the work of a few stragglers. But neither is
this very probable in itself, nor does it harmonize with what he tells
us afterwards about the plunder and rapine that marked the period
of Scythian domination. We need not suppose that the information of
the old historian as to the doings of these barbarians was as exact
as that of a modern state paper. Nor, on the other hand, would it be
very judicious to press every detail in a highly wrought prophetic
discourse, which vividly sets forth the fears of the time, and gives
imaginative form to the feelings and anticipations of the hour; as
if it were intended by the writer, not for the moral and spiritual
good of his contemporaries, but to furnish posterity with a minutely
accurate record of the actual course of events in the distant past.
The public danger, which stimulated the reflexion and lent force to the
invective of the lesser prophet, intensified the impression produced
by the earlier preaching of Jeremiah. The tide of invasion, indeed,
rolled past Judea, without working much permanent harm to the little
kingdom, with whose destinies were involved the highest interests of
mankind at large. But this respite from destruction would be understood
by the prophet's hearers as proof of the relentings of Iahvah towards
His penitent people; and may, for the time at least, have confirmed
the impression wrought upon the popular mind by Jeremiah's passionate
censures and entreaties. The time was otherwise favourable; for the
year of his call was the year immediately subsequent to that in which
the young king Josiah "began to purify Judah and Jerusalem from the
high places and the Asherim, and the carven images and the molten
images," which he did in the twelfth year of his reign, _i.e._ in the
twentieth year of his age, according to the testimony of the Chronicler
(2 Chron. xxxiv. 3), which there is no good reason for disallowing.
Jeremiah was probably about the same age as the king, as he calls
himself a mere youth (na`ar). After the Scythians had retired--if we
are right in fixing their invasion so early in the reign--the official
reformation of public worship was taken up again, and completed by the
eighteenth year of Josiah, when the prophet might be about twenty-five.
The finding of what is called "the book of the Law," and "the book of
the Covenant,"[12] by Hilkiah the high priest, while the temple was
being restored by the king's order, is represented by the histories as
having determined the further course of the royal reforms. What this
book of the Law was, it is not necessary now to discuss. It is clear
from the language of the book of Kings, and from the references of
Jeremiah, that the substance of it, at any rate, closely corresponded
with portions of Deuteronomy. It appears from his own words (chap. xi.
1-8) that at first, at all events, Jeremiah was an earnest preacher of
the positive precepts of this book of the Covenant. It is true that his
name does not occur in the narrative of Josiah's reformation, as related
in Kings. There the king and his counsellors inquire of Iahvah through
the prophetess Huldah (2 Kings xxii. 14). Supposing the account to be
both complete and correct, this only shows that five years after his
call, Jeremiah was still unknown or little considered at court. But he
was doubtless included among the "prophets," who, with "the king and
all the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem," "and the
priests ... and all the people, both small and great," after the words
of the newfound book of the Covenant had been read in their ears, bound
themselves by a solemn league and covenant, "to walk after Iahweh, and
to keep His commandments, and His laws, and His statutes, with all the
heart, and with all the soul" (2 Kings xxiii. 3). It is evident that
at first the young prophet hoped great things of this national league
and the associated reforms in the public worship. In his eleventh
chapter, he writes thus: "The word that fell to Jeremiah from Iahvah,
saying: Hear ye the words of this covenant"--presumably the words of
the newfound book of the Torah--"And speak ye to the men of Judah, and
to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And thou shalt say unto them"--the
change from the second plural "hear ye," "speak ye," is noticeable. In
the first instance, no doubt, the message contemplates the leaders of
the reforming movement generally; the prophet is specially addressed in
the words, "And _thou_ shalt say unto them, Thus said Iahvah, the God of
Israel, Cursed is the man that will not hear the words of this covenant,
which I commanded your fathers, in the day when I brought them forth
from the land of Egypt, from the iron furnace, saying, Hearken to My
voice, and do them, according to all that I command you; and ye shall
become to Me a people, and I--I will become to you Elohim: in order to
make good the oath that I sware to your fathers, to give them a land
flowing with milk and honey, as at this day.
"And I answered and said, So be it, Iahvah!
"And Iahvah said unto me, Proclaim all these words in the cities of
Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, saying, Hear ye the words of
this covenant, and do them. For I solemnly adjured your fathers, at the
time when I brought them up out of the land of Egypt, (and) unto this
day, with all earnestness [earnestly and incessantly], saying, Hearken
ye to My voice. And they hearkened not, nor inclined their ear, and
they walked individually in the stubbornness of their evil heart. So I
brought upon them all the words of this covenant"--_i.e._, the curses,
which constituted the sanction of it: see Deut. iv. 25 _sqq._, xxviii.
15 _sqq._--"(this covenant) which I commanded them to do, and they did
it not." [Or perhaps, "Because I bade them _do_, and they _did_ not;"
implying a general prescription of conduct, which was not observed. Or,
"I who had bidden them do, and they did not"--justifying, as it were,
God's assumption of the function of punishment. _His_ law had been set
at nought; the national reverses, therefore, were _His_ infliction,
and not another's.] This, then, was the first preaching of Jeremiah.
"Hear ye the words of this covenant!"--the covenant drawn out with
such precision and legal formality in the newfound book of the Torah.
Up and down the country, "in the cities of Judah" and "in the streets
of Jerusalem," everywhere within the bounds of the little kingdom that
acknowledged the house of David, he published this panacea for the
actual and imminent evils of the time, insisting, we may be sure, with
all the eloquence of a youthful patriot, upon the impressive warnings
embodied in the past history of Israel, as set forth in the book of the
Law. But his best efforts were fruitless. Eloquence and patriotism and
enlightened spiritual beliefs and lofty purity of purpose were wasted
upon a generation blinded by its own vices and reserved for a swiftly
approaching retribution. Perhaps the plots which drove the prophet
finally from his native place were due to the hostility evoked against
him by his preaching of the Law. At all events, the account of them
immediately follows, in this eleventh chapter (vers. 18 _sqq._). But
it must be borne in mind that the Law-book was not found until _five_
years after his call to the office of prophet. In any case, it is not
difficult to understand the popular irritation at what must have seemed
the unreasonable attitude of a prophet, who, in spite of the wholesale
destruction of the outward symbols of idolatry effected by the king's
orders, still declared that the claims of Iahweh were unsatisfied, and
that something more was needed than the purging of Judah and Jerusalem
from the high places and the Asherim, if the Divine favour were to be
conciliated, and the country restored to permanent prosperity. The
people probably supposed that they had sufficiently fulfilled the law
of their God, when they had not only demolished all sanctuaries but
His, but had done away with all those local holy places where Iahvah
was indeed worshipped, but with a deplorable admixture of heathenish
rites. The law of the one legal sanctuary, so much insisted upon in
Deuteronomy, was formally established by Josiah, and the national
worship was henceforth centralized in Jerusalem, which from this time
onward remained in the eyes of all faithful Israelites "the place where
men ought to worship." It is entirely in accordance with what we know
of human nature in general, and not merely of Jewish nature, that the
popular mind failed to rise to the level of the prophetic teaching,
and that the reforming zeal of the time should have exhausted itself
in efforts which effected no more than these external changes. The
truth is that the reforming movement began from above, not from below;
and however earnest the young king may have been, it is probable that
the mass of his subjects viewed the abolition of the high-places, and
the other sweeping measures, initiated in obedience to the precepts
of the book of the Covenant, either with apathy and indifference, or
with feelings of sullen hostility. The priesthood of Jerusalem were, of
course, benefited by the abolition of all sanctuaries, except the one
wherein they ministered and received their dues. The writings of our
prophet amply demonstrate that, whatever zeal for Iahvah, and whatever
degree of compunction for the past may have animated the prime movers
in the reformation of the eighteenth of Josiah, no radical improvement
was effected in the ordinary life of the nation. For some twelve years,
indeed, the well-meaning king continued to occupy the throne; years, it
may be presumed, of comparative peace and prosperity for Judah, although
neither the narrative of Kings and Chronicles nor that of Jeremiah
gives us any information about them. Doubtless it was generally supposed
that the nation was reaping the reward of its obedience to the law
of Iahvah. But at the end of that period, circ. B.C. 608, an event
occurred which must have shaken this faith to its foundations. In the
thirty-first year of his reign, Josiah fell in the battle of Megiddo,
while vainly opposing the small forces at his command to the hosts of
Egypt. Great indeed must have been the "searchings of heart" occasioned
by this unlooked-for and overwhelming stroke. Strange that it should
have fallen at a time when, as the people deemed, the God of Israel
was receiving His due at their hands; when the injunctions of the book
of the Covenant had been minutely carried out, the false and irregular
worships abolished, and Jerusalem made the centre of the cultus; a
time when it seemed as if the Lord had become reconciled to His people
Israel, when years of peace and plenty seemed to give demonstration of
the fact; and when, as may perhaps be inferred from Josiah's expedition
against Necho, the extension of the border, contemplated in the book of
the Law, was considered as likely to be realised in the near future. The
height to which the national aspirations had soared only made the fall
more disastrous, complete, ruinous.
The hopes of Judah rested upon a worldly foundation; and it was
necessary that a people whose blindness was only intensified by
prosperity, should be undeceived by the discipline of overthrow. No
hint is given in the meagre narrative of the reign as to whether the
prophets had lent their countenance or not to the fatal expedition.
Probably they did; probably they too had to learn by bitter
experience, that no man, not even a zealous and godfearing monarch, is
_necessary_ to the fulfilment of the Divine counsels. And the agony
of this irretrievable disaster, this sudden and complete extinction
of his country's fairest hopes, may have been the means by which
the Holy Spirit led Jeremiah to an intenser conviction that illicit
modes of worship and coarse idolatries were not the only things in
Judah offensive to Iahvah; that something more was needed to win
back His favour than formal obedience, however rigid and exacting,
to the letter of a written code of sacred law; that the covenant of
Iahvah with His people had an inward and eternal, not an outward and
transitory significance; and that not the letter but the spirit of the
law was the thing of essential moment. Thoughts like these must have
been present to the prophet's mind when he wrote (xxxi. 31 _sqq._):
"Behold, a time is coming, saith Iahvah, when I will conclude with the
house of Israel and with the house of Judah a fresh treaty, unlike the
treaty that I concluded with their forefathers, at the time when I
took hold of their hand, to bring them out of the land of Egypt; when
they, on their part, disannulled my treaty, and I--I disdained[13]
them, saith Iahvah. For this is the treaty that I will conclude with
the house of Israel after those days [_i.e._ in due time], saith
Iahvah: I will put my Torah within them and upon their heart will I
grave it; and I will become to them a God, and they--they shall become
to me a people."
It is but a dull eye which cannot see beyond the metaphor of the
covenant or treaty between Iahvah and Israel; and it is a strangely
dark understanding that fails to perceive here and elsewhere a
translucent figure of the eternal relations subsisting between God
and man. The error is precisely that against which the prophets, at
the high watermark of their inspiration, are always protesting--the
universal and inveterate error of narrowing down the requirements of
the Infinitely Holy, Just and Good, to the scrupulous observance of
some accepted body of canons, enshrined in a book and duly interpreted
by the laborious application of recognised legal authorities. It is
so comfortable to be sure of possessing an infallible guide in so
small a compass; to be spared all further consideration, so long
as we have paid the priestly dues, and kept the annual feasts, and
carefully observed the laws of ceremonial purity! From the first, the
attention of priests and people, including the official prophets,
would be attracted by the ritual and ceremonial precepts, rather
than by the earnest moral teaching of Deuteronomy. As soon as first
impressions had had time to subside, the moral and spiritual element
in that noble book would begin to be ignored, or confounded with the
purely external and mundane prescriptions affecting public worship
and social propriety; and the interests of true religion would
hardly be subserved by the formal acceptance of this code as the
law of the state. The unregenerate heart of man would fancy that it
had at last gotten that for which it is always craving--something
final--something to which it could triumphantly point, when urged by
the religious enthusiast, as tangible evidence that it was fulfilling
the Divine law, that it was at one with Iahvah, and therefore had a
right to expect the continuance of His favour and blessing. Spiritual
development would be arrested; men would become satisfied with
having effected certain definite changes bringing them into external
conformity with the written law, and would incline to rest in things
as they were. Meanwhile, the truth held good that to make a fetish of
a code, a system, a holy book, is not necessarily identical with the
service of God. It is, in fact, the surest way to forget God; for it
is to invest something that is not He, but, at best, a far-off echo of
His voice, with His sole attributes of finality and sufficiency.
The effect of the downfall of the good king was electrical. The nation
discovered that the displeasure of Iahvah had not passed away like
a morning cloud. Out of the shock and the dismay of that terrible
disillusion sprang the conviction that the past was not atoned for,
that the evil of it was irreparable. The idea is reflected in the
words of Jeremiah (xv. 1): "And Iahvah said unto me, If Moses were to
stand before Me (as an intercessor), and Samuel, I should not incline
towards this people: dismiss them from My presence, and let them go
forth! And when they say unto thee, Whither are we to go forth? thou
shalt say unto them, Thus said Iahvah, They that are Death's to death;
and they that are the Sword's to the sword; and they that are Famine's
to famine; and they that are Captivity's to captivity. And I will set
over them four families, saith Iahvah; the sword to slay, and the dogs
to draw (2 Sam. xvii. 13), and the birds of the air, and the beasts of
the earth, to devour and to destroy. And I will give them for worry
(Deut. xxviii. 25) to all the realms of earth; _because of_ (Deut.
xv. 10, xviii. 12; בנלל) _Manasseh ben Hezekiah king of Judah; for
what he did in Jerusalem_." In the next verses we have what seems to
be a reference to the death of Josiah (ver. 7). "I fanned them with
a fan"--the fan by which the husbandman separates wheat from chaff
in the threshing floor--"I fanned them with a fan, in the gates of
the land"--at Megiddo, the point where an enemy marching along the
maritime route might enter the land of Israel; "I bereaved, I ruined
my people (ver. 9). She that had borne seven, pined away; she breathed
out her soul; _her sun went down while it was yet day_." The national
mourning over this dire event became proverbial, as we see from Zech.
xii. 11: "In that day, great shall be the mourning in Jerusalem; like
the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddo."
The political relations of the period are certainly obscure, if we
confine our attention to the biblical data. Happily, we are now able
to supplement these, by comparison with the newly recovered monuments
of Assyria. Under Manasseh, the kingdom of Judah became tributary to
Esarhaddon; and this relation of dependence, we may be sure, was not
interrupted during the vigorous reign of the mighty Ashurbanipal,
B.C. 668-626. But the first symptoms of declining power on the side
of their oppressors would undoubtedly be the signal for conspiracy
and rebellion in the distant parts of the loosely amalgamated empire.
Until the death of Ashurbanipal, the last great sovereign who reigned
at Nineveh, it may be assumed that Josiah stood true to his fealty.
It appears from certain notices in Kings and Chronicles (2 Kings
xxiii. 19; 2 Chron. xxxiv. 6) that he was able to exercise authority
even in the territories of the ruined kingdom of Israel. This may
have been due to the fact that he was allowed to do pretty much as
he liked, so long as he proved an obedient vassal; or, as is more
likely, the attention of the Assyrians was diverted from the West by
troubles nearer home in connection with the Scythians or the Medes and
Babylonians. At all events, it is not to be supposed that when Josiah
went out to oppose the Pharaoh at Megiddo, he was facing the forces
of Egypt alone. The thing is intrinsically improbable. The king of
Judah must have headed a coalition of the petty Syrian states against
the common enemy. It is not necessary to suppose that the Palestinian
principalities resisted Necho's advance, in the interests of their
nominal suzerain Assyria. From all we can gather, that empire was
now tottering to its irretrievable fall, under the feeble successors
of Ashurbanipal. The ambition of Egypt was doubtless a terror to
the combined peoples. The further results of Necho's campaign are
unknown. For the moment, Judah experienced a change of masters; but
the Egyptian tyranny was not destined to last. Some four years after
the battle of Megiddo, Pharaoh Necho made a second expedition to the
North, this time against the Babylonians, who had succeeded to the
empire of Assyria. The Egyptians were utterly defeated in the battle
of Carchemish, circ. B.C. 606-5, which left Nebuchadrezzar in virtual
possession of the countries west of the Euphrates (Jer. xlvi. 2).
It was the fourth year of Jehoiakim, son of Josiah, king of Judah,
when this crisis arose in the affairs of the Eastern world. The
prophet Jeremiah did not miss the meaning of events. From the first
he recognised in Nebuchadrezzar, or Nabucodrossor, an instrument in
the Divine hand for the chastisement of the peoples; from the first,
he predicted a judgment of God, not only upon the Jews, but upon all
nations, far and near. The substance of his oracles is preserved to us
in chapters xxv. and xlvi.-xlix. of his book. In the former passage,
which is expressly dated from the fourth year of Jehoiakim, and the
first of Nebuchadrezzar, the prophet gives a kind of retrospect of
his ministry of three-and-twenty years, affirms that it has failed
of its end, and that Divine retribution is therefore certain. The
"tribes of the north" will come and desolate the whole country (ver.
9), and "these nations"--the peoples of Palestine--"shall serve the
king of Babel seventy years" (ver. 11). The judgment on the nations
is depicted by an impressive symbolism (ver. 15). "Thus said Iahvah,
the God of Israel, unto me, Take this cup of wine, the (Divine) wrath,
from My hand, and cause all the nations, unto whom I send thee, to
drink it. And let them drink, and reel, and show themselves frenzied,
because of the sword that I am sending amongst them!" The strange
metaphor recalls our own proverb: _Quem Deus vult perdere, prius
dementat_. "So I took the cup from the hand of Iahvah, and made all
the nations drink, unto whom Iahvah had sent me." Then, as in some
list of the proscribed, the prophet writes down, one after another,
the names of the doomed cities and peoples. The judgment was set for
that age, and the eternal books were opened, and the names found in
them were these (ver. 18): "Jerusalem, and the cities of Judah, and
her kings, and her princes. Pharaoh king of Egypt, and his servants,
and his princes, and all his people. And all the hired soldiery, and
all the kings of the land of Uz, and all the kings of the land of
the Philistines, and Ashkelon, and Gaza, and Ekron, and the remnant
of Ashdod. Edom, and Moab, and the benê Ammon. And all the kings of
Tyre, and all the kings of Sidon, and the kings of the island (_i.e._
Cyprus) that is beyond the sea. Dedan and Tema and Buz and all the
tonsured folk. And all the kings of Arabia, and all the kings of the
hired soldiery, that dwell in the wilderness. And all the kings of
Zimri, and all the kings of Elam, and all the kings of Media. And all
the kings of the north, the near and the far, one with another; and
all the kingdoms of the earth that are upon the surface of the ground."
* * * * *
When the mourning for Josiah was ended (2 Chron. xxxv. 24 _sqq._),
the people put Jehoahaz on his father's throne. But this arrangement
was not suffered to continue, for Necho, having defeated and slain
Josiah, naturally asserted his right to dispose of the crown of Judah
as he thought fit. Accordingly, he put Jehoahaz in bonds at Riblah
in the land of Hamath, whither he had probably summoned him to swear
allegiance to Egypt, or whither, perhaps, Jehoahaz had dared to
go with an armed force to resist the Egyptian pretensions, which,
however, is an unlikely supposition, as the battle in which Josiah
had fallen must have been a severe blow to the military resources of
Judah. Necho carried the unfortunate but also unworthy king (2 Kings
xxiii. 32) a prisoner to Egypt, where he died (_ibid._ 34). These
events are thus alluded to by Jeremiah (xxii. 10-12): "Weep ye not for
one dead (_i.e._ Josiah), nor make your moan for him: weep ever for
him that is going away; for he will not come back again, and see his
native land! For thus hath Iahvah said of Shallum (_i.e._ Jehoahaz, 1
Chron. iii. 15) ben Josiah, king of Judah, that reigned in the place
of Josiah his father, who is gone forth out of this place (_i.e._
Jerusalem, or the palace, ver. 1), He will not come back thither
again. For in the place whither they have led him into exile, there
he will die; and this land he will not see again." The pathos of this
lament for one whose dream of greatness was broken for ever within
three short months, does not conceal the prophet's condemnation of
Necho's prisoner. Jeremiah does not condole with the captive king
as the victim of mere misfortune. In this, as in all the gathering
calamities of his country, he sees a retributive meaning. The nine
preceding verses of the chapter demonstrate the fact.