with the title of Jehoiakim (2 Kings xxiii. 34). This prince also
is condemned in the narrative of Kings (ver. 37), as having done
"the evil thing in the eyes of Iahvah, according to all that his
forefathers had done;" an estimate which is thoroughly confirmed
by what Jeremiah has added to his lament for the deposed king his
brother. The pride, the grasping covetousness, the high-handed
violence and cruelty of Jehoiakim, and the doom that will overtake
him, in the righteousness of God, are thus declared: "Woe to him that
buildeth his house by injustice, and his chambers by iniquity! that
layeth on his neighbour work without wages, and giveth him not his
hire! That saith, I will build me a lofty house, with airy chambers;
and he cutteth him out the windows thereof, panelling it with cedar,
and painting it with vermilion. Shalt thou _reign_, that thou art
hotly intent upon cedar?" (Or, according to the LXX. Vat., thou viest
with Ahaz--LXX. Alex., with Ahab; perhaps a reference to "the ivory
house" mentioned in 1 Kings xxii. 39). "Thy father, did he not eat
and drink and do judgment and justice? Then it was well with him. He
judged the cause of the oppressed and the needy: then it was well.
Was not this to know Me? saith Iahvah. For thine eyes and thine heart
are set upon nought but thine own lucre [thy plunder], and upon the
blood of the innocent, to shed it, and upon extortion and oppression
to do it. Therefore, thus hath Iahvah said of Jehoiakim ben Josiah,
king of Judah: They shall not lament for him with Ah, my brother! or
Ah, sister! They shall not lament for him with Ah, lord! or Ah, his
majesty! With the burial of an ass shall he be buried; with dragging
and casting forth beyond the gates of Jerusalem!"
In the beginning of the reign of this worthless tyrant, the prophet
was impelled to address a very definite warning to the throng of
worshippers in the court of the temple (xxvi. 4 _sqq._). It was to
the effect that if they did not amend their ways, their temple should
become like Shiloh, and their city a curse to all the nations of the
earth. There could be no doubt of the meaning of this reference to the
ruined sanctuary, long since forsaken of God (Ps. lxxviii. 60). It so
wrought upon that fanatical audience, that priests and prophets and
people rose as one man against the daring speaker; and Jeremiah was
barely rescued from immediate death by the timely intervention of the
princes. The account closes with the relation of the cruel murder of
another prophet of the school of Jeremiah, by command of Jehoiakim the
king; and it is very evident from these narratives that, screened as
he was by powerful friends, Jeremiah narrowly escaped a similar fate.
We have reached the point in our prophet's career when, taking a broad
survey of the entire world of his time, he forecasts the character of
the future that awaits its various political divisions. He has left the
substance of his reflexions in the 25th chapter, and in those prophecies
concerning the foreign peoples, which the Hebrew text of his works
relegates to the very end of the book, as chapters xlvi.-li., but which
the Greek recension of the Septuagint inserts immediately after chap.
xxv. 13. In the decisive battle at Carchemish, which crippled the power
of Egypt, the only other existing state which could make any pretensions
to the supremacy of Western Asia, and contend with the trans-Euphratean
empires for the possession of Syria-Palestine, Jeremiah had recognised
a signal indication of the Divine Will, which he was not slow to
proclaim to all within reach of his inspired eloquence. In common with
all the great prophets who had preceded him, he entertained a profound
conviction that the race was not necessarily to the swift, nor the
battle to the strong; that the fortune of war was not determined simply
and solely by chariots and horsemen and big battalions; that behind all
material forces lay the spiritual, from whose absolute will they derived
their being and potency, and upon whose sovereign pleasure depended the
issues of victory and defeat, of life and death. As his successor, the
second Isaiah, saw in the polytheist Cyrus, king of Anzan, a chosen
servant of Iahvah, whose whole triumphant career was foreordained in
the counsels of heaven; so Jeremiah saw in the rise of the Babylonian
domination, and the rapid development of the new empire upon the ruins
of the old, a manifest token of the Divine purpose, a revelation of
a Divine secret. His point of view is strikingly illustrated by the
warning which he was directed to send a few years later to the kings
who were seeking to draw Judah into the common alliance against Babylon
(chap. xxvii. 1 _sqq._). "In the beginning of the reign of Zedekiah[14]
ben Josiah, king of Judah, fell this word to Jeremiah from Iahvah. Thus
said Iahvah unto me, Make thee thongs and poles, and put them upon thy
neck; and send them to the king of Edom, and to the king of Moab, and to
the king of the benê Ammon, and to the king of Tyre, and to the king of
Zidon, by the hand of the messengers that are come to Jerusalem, unto
Zedekiah the king of Judah. And give them a charge unto their masters,
saying, Thus said Iahvah Sabaoth, the God of Israel, Thus shall ye
say to your masters: I it was that made the earth, mankind, and the
cattle that are on the face of the earth, by My great strength, and
by Mine outstretched arm; and I give it to whom it seemeth good in My
sight. And now, I will verily give all these countries into the hand of
Nebuchadrezzar king of Babel, _My servant; and even the wild creatures
of the field will I give unto him to serve him_."
Nebuchadrezzar was invincible, and the Jewish prophet clearly
perceived the fact. But it must not be imagined that the Jewish people
generally, or the neighbouring peoples, enjoyed a similar degree of
insight. Had that been so, the battle of Jeremiah's life would never
have been fought out under such cruel, such hopeless conditions. The
prophet saw the truth, and proclaimed it without ceasing in reluctant
ears, and was met with derision, and incredulity, and intrigue, and
slander, and pitiless persecution. By-and-by, when his word had
come to pass, and all the principalities of Canaan were crouching
abjectly at the feet of the conqueror, and Jerusalem was a heap
of ruins, the scattered communities of banished Israelites could
remember that Jeremiah had foreseen and foretold it all. In the light
of accomplished facts, the significance of his prevision began to
be realised; and when the first dreary hours of dumb and desperate
suffering were over, the exiles gradually learned to find consolation
in the few but precious promises that had accompanied the menaces
which were now so visibly fulfilled. While they were yet in their own
land, two things had been predicted by this prophet in the name of
their God. The first was now accomplished; no cavil could throw doubt
upon actual experience. Was there not here some warrant, at least for
reasonable men, some sufficient ground for trusting the prophet at
last, for believing in his Divine mission, for striving to follow his
counsels, and for looking forward with steadfast hope out of present
affliction, to the gladness of the future which the same seer had
foretold, even with the unwonted precision of naming a limit of time?
So the exiles were persuaded, and their belief was fully justified
by the event. Never had they realised the absolute sovereignty of
their God, the universality of Iahvah Sabaoth, the shadowy nature,
the blank nothingness of all supposed rivals of His dominion, as now
they did, when at length years of painful experience had brought
home to their minds the truth that Nebuchadrezzar had demolished the
temple and laid Jerusalem in the dust, not, as he himself believed,
by the favour of Bel-Merodach and Nebo, but by the sentence of the
God of Israel; and that the catastrophe, which had swept them out of
political existence, occurred not because Iahvah was weaker than the
gods of Babylon, but because He was irresistibly strong; stronger than
all powers of all worlds; stronger therefore than Israel, stronger
than Babylon; stronger than the pride and ambition of the earthly
conqueror, stronger than the self-will, and the stubbornness, and the
wayward rebellion, and the fanatical blindness, and the frivolous
unbelief, of his own people. The conception is an easy one for us, who
have inherited the treasures both of Jewish and of Gentile thought;
but the long struggle of the prophets, and the fierce antagonism of
their fellow-countrymen, and the political extinction of the Davidic
monarchy, and the agonies of the Babylonian exile, were necessary to
the genesis and germination of this master-conception in the heart of
Israel, and so of humanity.
To return from this hasty glance at the remoter consequences of the
prophet's ministry, it was in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, and the
first of Nebuchadrezzar (xxv. 1) that, in obedience to a Divine
intimation, he collected the various discourses which he had so far
delivered in the name of God. Some doubt has been raised as to the
precise meaning of the record of this matter (xxxvi.). On the one
hand, it is urged that "An historically accurate reproduction of the
prophecies would not have suited Jeremiah's object, which was not
historical but practical: he desired to give a salutary shock to the
people, by bringing before them the fatal consequences of their evil
deeds:" and that "the purport of the roll (ver. 29) which the king
burned was [only] that the king of Babylon should 'come and destroy
this land,' whereas it is clear that Jeremiah had uttered many other
important declarations in the course of his already long ministry."
And on the other hand, it is suggested that the roll, of which the
prophet speaks in chap. xxxvi., contained no more than the prophecy
concerning the Babylonian invasion and its consequences, which is
preserved in chap. xxv., and dated from the fourth year of Jehoiakim.
Considering the unsatisfactory state of the text of Jeremiah, it is
perhaps admissible to suppose, for the sake of this hypothesis, that
the second verse of chap. xxv., which expressly declares that this
prophecy was spoken by its author "to all the people of Judah, and to
all the inhabitants of Jerusalem," is "a loose inaccurate statement
due to a later editor;" although this inconvenient statement is found
in the Greek of the LXX. as well as in the Massoretic Hebrew text. But
let us examine the alleged objections in the light of the positive
statements of chap. xxxvi. It is there written thus: "In the fourth
year of Jehoiakim ben Josiah king of Judah, this word fell to Jeremiah
from Iahvah. Take thee a book-roll, and write on it all the words
that I have spoken unto thee, concerning Israel and Judah and all
the nations, from the day when I (first) spake unto thee,--from the
days of Josiah,--unto this day." This certainly seems plain enough.
The only possible question is whether the command was to collect
within the compass of a single volume, a sort of author's edition, an
indefinite number of discourses preserved hitherto in separate MSS.
and perhaps to a great extent in the prophet's memory; or whether we
are to understand by "all the words" the _substance_ of the various
prophecies to which reference is made. If the object was merely to
impress the people on a particular occasion by placing before them
a sort of historical review of the prophet's warnings in the past,
it is evident that a formal edition of his utterances, so far as he
was able to prepare such a work, would not be the most natural or
ready method of attaining that purpose. Such a review for practical
purposes might well be comprised within the limits of a single
continuous composition, such as we find in chap. xxv., which opens
with a brief retrospect of the prophet's ministry during twenty-three
years (vers. 3-7), and then denounces the neglect with which his
warnings have been received, and declares the approaching subjugation
of all the states of Phenicia-Palestine by the king of Babylon. But
the narrative itself gives not a single hint that such was the sole
object in view. Much rather does it appear from the entire context
that, the crisis having at length arrived, which Jeremiah had so long
foreseen, he was now impelled to gather together, with a view to their
preservation, all those discourses by which he had laboured in vain to
overcome the indifference, the callousness, and the bitter antagonism
of his people. These utterances of the past, collected and revised in
the light of successive events, and illustrated by their substantial
agreement with what had actually taken place, and especially by
the new danger which seemed to threaten the whole West, the rising
power of Babylon, might certainly be expected to produce a powerful
impression by their coincidence with the national apprehensions; and
the prophet might even hope that warnings, hitherto disregarded, but
now visibly justified by events in course of development, would at
last bring "the house of Judah" to consider seriously the evil that,
in God's Providence, was evidently impending, and "return every man
from his evil way," that even so late the consequences of their guilt
might be turned aside. This doubtless was the immediate aim, but it
does not exclude others, such as the vindication of the prophet's own
claims, in startling contrast with those of the false prophets, who
had opposed him at every step, and misled his countrymen so grievously
and fatally. Against these and their delusive promises, the volume of
Jeremiah's past discourses would constitute an effective protest, and
a complete justification of his own endeavours. We must also remember
that, if the repentance and salvation of his own contemporaries was
naturally the first object of the prophet in all his undertakings, in
the Divine counsels prophecy has more than a temporary value, and that
the writings of this very prophet were destined to become instrumental
in the conversion of a succeeding generation.
Those twenty-three years of patient thought and earnest labour, of
high converse with God, and of agonised pleading with a reprobate
people, were not to be without their fruit, though the prophet himself
was not to see it. It is matter of history that the words of Jeremiah
wrought with such power upon the hearts of the exiles in Babylonia, as
to become, in the hands of God, a principal means in the regeneration
of Israel, and of that restoration which was its promised and its
actual consequence; and from that day to this, not one of all the
goodly fellowship of the prophets has enjoyed such credit in the
Jewish Church as he who in his lifetime had to encounter neglect and
ridicule, hatred and persecution, beyond what is recorded of any other.
"So Jeremiah called Baruch ben Neriah; and Baruch wrote, from the
mouth of Jeremiah, all the words of Iahvah, that He had spoken unto
him, upon a book-roll" (ver. 4). Nothing is said about time; and there
is nothing to indicate that what the scribe wrote at the prophet's
dictation was a single brief discourse. The work probably occupied
a not inconsiderable time, as may be inferred from the datum of
the ninth verse (_vid. infr._). Jeremiah would know that haste was
incompatible with literary finish; he would probably feel that it
was equally incompatible with the proper execution of what he had
recognised as a Divine command. The prophet hardly had all his past
utterances lying before him in the form of finished compositions.
"And Jeremiah commanded Baruch, saying: I am detained (or confined);
I cannot enter the house of Iahvah; so enter _thou_, and read in the
roll, that thou wrotest from my mouth, the words of Iahvah, in the
ears of the people, in the house of Iahvah, upon a day of fasting: and
also in the ears of all Judah (the Jews), that come in (to the temple)
from their (several) cities, thou shalt read them. Perchance their
supplication will fall before Iahvah, and they will return, every one
from his evil way; for great is the anger and the hot displeasure
that Iahvah hath spoken (threatened) unto this people. And Baruch
ben Neriah did according to all that Jeremiah the prophet commanded
him, reading in the book the words of Iahvah in Iahvah's house." This
last sentence might be regarded as a general statement, anticipative
of the detailed account that follows, as is often the case in Old
Testament narratives. But I doubt the application of this well-known
exegetical device in the present instance. The verse is more likely an
interpolation; unless we suppose that it refers to divers readings of
which no particulars are given, but which preceded the memorable one
described in the following verses. The injunction, "And also in the
ears of all Judah that come out of their cities thou shalt read them!"
might imply successive readings, as the people flocked into Jerusalem
from time to time. But the grand occasion, if not the only one, was
without doubt that which stands recorded in the text. "And it came to
pass in the _fifth_ year of Jehoiakim ben Josiah king of Judah, in the
_ninth_ month, they proclaimed a fast before Iahvah,--all the people
in Jerusalem and all the people that were come out of the cities
of Judah into Jerusalem. And Baruch read in the book the words of
Jeremiah, in the house of Iahvah, in the cell of Gemariah ben Shaphan
the scribe, in the upper (inner) court, at the entry of the new gate
of Iahvah's house, in the ears of all the people." The dates have an
important bearing upon the points we are considering. It was in the
fourth year of Jehoiakim that the prophet was bidden to commit his
oracles to writing. If, then, the task was not accomplished before
the _ninth_ month of the _fifth_ year, it is plain that it involved
a good deal more than penning such a discourse as the twenty-fifth
chapter. This datum, in fact, strongly favours the supposition that
it was a record of his principal utterances hitherto, that Jeremiah
thus undertook and accomplished. It is not at all necessary to assume
that on this or any other occasion Baruch read the entire contents
of the roll to his audience in the temple. We are told that he "read
_in_ the book the words of Jeremiah," that is, no doubt, some portion
of the whole. And so, in the famous scene before the king, it is not
said that the entire work was read, but the contrary is expressly
related (ver. 23): "And when Jehudi had read _three columns or four_,
he (the king) began to cut it with the scribe's knife, and to cast it
into the fire." Three or four columns of an ordinary roll might have
contained the whole of the twenty-fifth chapter; and it must have been
an unusually diminutive document, if the first three or four columns
of it contained no more than the seven verses of chap. xxv. (3-6),
which declare the sin of Judah, and announce the coming of the king
of Babylon. And, apart from these objections, there is no ground for
the presumption that "the purport of the roll which the king burnt
was [only] that the king of Babylon should 'come and destroy this
land.'" As the learned critic, from whom I have quoted these words,
further remarks, with perfect truth, "Jeremiah had uttered many other
important declarations in the course of his already long ministry."
That, I grant, is true; but then there is absolutely nothing to prove
that this roll did not contain them all. Chap. xxxvi. 29, cited by the
objector, is certainly not such proof. That verse simply gives the
angry exclamation with which the king interrupted the reading of the
roll, "Why hast thou written upon it, The king of Babylon shall surely
come and destroy this land, and cause to cease from it man and beast?"
This may have been no more than Jehoiakim's very natural inference
from some one of the many allusions to the enemy "from the north,"
which occur in the earlier part of the book of Jeremiah. At all
events, it is evident that, whether the king of Babylon was directly
mentioned or not in the portion of the roll read in his presence, the
verse in question assigns, not the sole import of the entire work,
but only the particular point in it, which, at the existing crisis,
especially roused the indignation of Jehoiakim. The 25th chapter may
of course have been contained in the roll read before the king.
And this may suffice to show how precarious are the assertions of the
learned critic in the _Encyclop. Brit._ upon the subject of Jeremiah's
roll. The plain truth seems to be that, perceiving the imminence of
the peril that threatened his country, the prophet was impressed with
the conviction that now was the time to commit his past utterances to
writing; and that towards the end of the year, after he had formed and
carried out this project, he found occasion to have his discourses
read in the temple, to the crowds of rural folk who sought refuge
in Jerusalem, before the advance of Nebuchadrezzar. So Josephus
understood the matter (_Ant._, x. 6, 2).
On the approach of the Babylonians, Jehoiakim made his submission;
but only to rebel again, after three years of tribute and vassalage
(2 Kings xxiv. 1). Drought and failure of the crops aggravated the
political troubles of the country; evils in which Jeremiah was not
slow to discern the hand of an offended and alienated God. "How long,"
he asks (xii. 4), "shall the country mourn, and the herbage of the
whole field wither? From the wickedness of them that dwell therein
the beasts and the birds perish." And in chap. xiv. we have a highly
poetical description of the sufferings of the time.
"Judah mourneth, and her gates languish;
They sit in black on the ground;
And the outcry of Jerusalem hath gone up.
And their nobles, they sent their menial folk for water;
They came to the pits, they found no water;
They returned with their vessels empty;
They were ashamed and confounded and covered their head.
On account of ye ground that is chapt,
For rain hath not fallen in the land,
The plowmen are ashamed--they cover their head.
For even the hind in the field--
She calveth and forsaketh her young;
For there is no grass.
And the wild asses, they stand on the scaurs;
They snuff the wind[15] like jackals;
Their eyes fail, for there is no herbage."
And then, after this graphic and almost dramatic portrayal of the
sufferings of man and beast, in the blinding glare of the towns, and
in the hot waterless plains, and on the bare hills, under that burning
sky, whose cloudless splendours seemed to mock their misery, the
prophet prays to the God of Israel.
"If our misdeeds answer against us,
O Iahvah, work for Thy name sake!
Verily, our fallings away are many;
Towards thee we are in fault.
Hope of Israel, that savest him in time of trouble!
Why shouldst thou be as a sojourner in the land,
And as a traveller, that turneth aside to pass the night?
Why shouldst thou be as a man stricken dumb,
As a champion that cannot save?
Yet Thou art in our midst, O Iahvah,
And Thy name is called over us:
Leave us not!"
And again, at the end of the chapter,
"Hast Thou wholly rejected Judah?
Hath Thy soul loathed Zion?
Why hast Thou smitten us,
That there is no healing for us?
We looked for welfare, but bootlessly,
For a time of healing, and behold terror!
We know, Iahvah, our wickedness, the guilt of our fathers:
Verily, we are in fault toward Thee!
Be not scornful, for Thy name's sake!
Dishonour not Thy glorious throne! [_i.e._ Jerusalem.]
Remember, break not Thy covenant with us!
Among the Vanities of the nations are there indeed raingivers?
Or the heavens, can they yield showers?
Art not Thou He (that doeth this), Iahvah our God?
And we wait for Thee,
For 'tis Thou that madest all this world."
In these and the like pathetic outpourings, which meet us in the later
portions of the Old Testament, we may observe the gradual development
of the dialect of stated prayer; the beginnings and the growth of
that beautiful and appropriate liturgical language in which both the
synagogue and the church afterwards found so perfect an instrument for
the expression of all the harmonies of worship. Prayer, both public and
private, was destined to assume an increasing importance, and, after the
destruction of temple and altar, and the forcible removal of the people
to a heathen land, to become the principal means of communion with God.