by inroads of foreign enemies, who took advantage of the existing
distress to rob and plunder at will. This serious aggravation of the
national troubles is recorded in chap. xii. 7-17. There it is said, in
the name of God, "I have left My house, I have cast off My heritage;
I have given the Darling of My soul into the hands of her enemies."
The reason is Judah's fierce hostility to her Divine Master: "Like a
lion in the forest she hath uttered a cry against Me." The result of
this unnatural rebellion is seen in the ravages of lawless invaders,
probably nomads of the desert, always watching their opportunity,
and greedy of the wealth, while disdainful of the pursuits of their
civilised neighbours. It is as if all the wild beasts, that roam at
large in the open country, had concerted a united attack upon the
devoted land; as if many shepherds with their innumerable flocks had
eaten bare and trodden down the vineyard of the Lord. "Over all the
bald crags in the wilderness freebooters (Obad. 5) are come; for a
sword of Iahweh's is devouring: from land's end to land's end no flesh
hath security" (ver. 12). The rapacious and heathenish hordes of the
desert, mere human wolves intent on ravage and slaughter, are a sword
of the Lord's, for the chastisement of His people; just as the king of
Babylon is His "servant" for the same purpose.
Only ten verses of the book of Kings are occupied with the reign of
Jehoiakim (2 Kings xxiii. 34-xxiv. 6); and when we compare that flying
sketch with the allusions in Jeremiah, we cannot but keenly regret the
loss of that "Book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah," to which
the compiler of Kings refers as his authority. Had that work survived,
many things in the prophets, which are now obscure and baffling,
would have been clear and obvious. As it is, we are often obliged to
be contented with surmises and probabilities, where certainty would
be right welcome. In the present instance, the facts alluded to by
the prophet appear to be included in the statement that the Lord sent
against Jehoiakim bands of Chaldeans, and bands of Arameans, and
bands of Moabites, and bands of benê Ammon. The Hebrew term implies
marauding or predatory bands, rather than regular armies, and it need
not be supposed that they all fell upon the country at the same time
or in accordance with any preconcerted scheme. In the midst of these
troubles, Jehoiakim died in the flower of his age, having reigned
no more than eleven years, and being only thirty-six years old (2
Kings xxiii. 36). The prophet thus alludes to his untimely end. "Like
the partridge that sitteth on eggs that she hath not laid, so is he
that maketh riches, and not by right: in the midst of his days they
leave him; and in his last end he proveth a fool" (xvii. 11). We have
already considered the detailed condemnation of this evil king in the
22nd chapter. The prophet Habakkuk, a contemporary of Jeremiah, seems
to have had Jehoiakim in his mind's eye, when denouncing (ii. 9) woe
to one that "getteth an evil gain for his house, that he may set his
nest on high, that he may escape from the hand of evil!" The allusion
is to the forced labour on his new palace, and on the defences of
Jerusalem, as well as to the fines and presents of money, which this
oppressive ruler shamelessly extorted from his unhappy subjects. "The
stone out of the wall," says the prophet, "crieth out; and the beam
out of the woodwork answereth it."
The premature death of the tyrant removed a serious obstacle from the
path of Jeremiah. No longer forced to exercise a wary vigilance in
avoiding the vengeance of a king whose passions determined his conduct,
the prophet could now devote himself heart and soul to the work of his
office. The public danger, imminent from the north, and the way to avert
it, is the subject of the discourses of this period of his ministry.
His unquenchable faith appears in the beautiful prayer appended to his
reflexions upon the death of Jehoiakim (xvii. 12 _sqq._). We cannot
mistake the tone of quiet exultation, with which he expresses his sense
of the absolute righteousness of the catastrophe. "A throne of glory,
a height higher than the first (?), (or, higher than any before) is
the place of our sanctuary." Never before in the prophet's experience
has the God of Israel so clearly vindicated that justice which is the
inalienable attribute of His dread tribunal.
For himself, the immediate result of this renewal of an activity that
had been more or less suspended, was persecution and even violence.
The earnestness with which he besought the people to honestly keep
the law of the Sabbath, an obligation which was recognised in theory
though disregarded in practice; and his striking illustration of the
true relations between Iahvah and Israel as parallel to those that hold
between the potter and the clay (chap. xvii. 19 _sqq._), only brought
down upon him the fierce hostility and organised opposition of the false
prophets, and the priests, and the credulous and self-willed populace,
as we read in chap. xviii. 18 _sqq._ "And they said, Come, and let us
contrive plots against Jeremiah.... Come, and let us smite him with the
tongue, and let us not listen to any of his words. Should evil be repaid
for good, that they have digged a pit for my life?" And after his solemn
testimony before the elders in the valley of Ben-Hinnom, and before the
people generally, in the court of the Lord's house (chap. xix.), the
prophet was seized by order of Pashchûr, the commandant of the temple,
who was himself a leading false prophet, and cruelly beaten, and set
in the stocks for a day and a night. That the spirit of the prophet
was not broken by this shameful treatment, is evident from the courage
with which he confronted his oppressor on the morrow, and foretold
his certain punishment. But the apparent failure of his mission, the
hopelessness of his life's labour, indicated by the deepening hostility
of the people, and the readiness to proceed to extremities against him
thus evinced by their leaders, wrung from Jeremiah that bitter cry of
despair, which has proved such a stumbling-block to some of his modern
apologists.
Soon the prophet's fears were realised, and the Divine counsel, of which
he alone had been cognisant, was fulfilled. Within three short months
of his accession to the throne, the boy-king Jeconiah (or Jehoiachin or
Coniah), with the queen-mother, the grandees of the court, and the pick
of the population of the capital, was carried captive to Babylon by
Nebuchadrezzar (2 Kings xxiv. 8 _sqq._; Jer. xxiv. 1).
Jeremiah has appended his forecast of the fate of Jeconiah, and a
brief notice of its fulfilment, to his denunciations of that king's
predecessors (xxii. 24 _sqq._). "As I live, saith Iahvah, verily,
though Coniah ben Jehoiakim king of Judah be a signet ring upon My own
right hand, verily thence will I pluck thee away! And I will give thee
into the hand of them that seek thy life, and into the hand of those
of whom thou art afraid; and into the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of
Babel, and into the hand of the Chaldeans. And I will cast thee forth,
and thy mother that bare thee, into the foreign land, wherein ye were
not born; and there ye shall die. But unto the land whither they
long to return, thither shall they not return. Is this man Coniah a
despised broken vase, or a vessel devoid of charm? Why were he and his
offspring cast forth, and hurled into the land that they knew not? O
land, land, land, hear thou the word of Iahvah. Thus hath Iahvah said,
Write ye down this man childless, a person that shall not prosper in
his days: for none of his offspring shall prosper, sitting on the
throne of David, and ruling again in Judah."
No better success attended the prophet's ministry under the new king
Zedekiah, whom Nebuchadrezzar had placed on the throne as his vassal
and tributary. So far as we can judge from the accounts left us,
Zedekiah was a wellmeaning but unstable character, whose weakness and
irresolution were too often played upon by unscrupulous and scheming
courtiers, to the fatal miscarriage of right and justice. Soon the
old intrigues began again, and in the fourth year of the new reign
(xxviii. 1) envoys from the neighbour-states arrived at the Jewish
court, with the object of drawing Judah into a coalition against
the common suzerain, the king of Babylon. This suicidal policy of
combination with heathenish and treacherous allies, most of whom
were the heirs of immemorial feuds with Judah, against a sovereign
who was at once the most powerful and the most enlightened of his
time, called forth the prophet's immediate and strenuous opposition.
Boldly affirming that Iahvah had conferred universal dominion upon
Nebuchadrezzar, and that consequently all resistance was futile, he
warned Zedekiah himself to bow his neck to the yoke, and dismiss all
thought of rebellion. It would seem that about this time (circ. 596
B.C.) the empire of Babylon was passing through a serious crisis,
which the subject peoples of the West hoped and expected would result
in its speedy dissolution. Nebuchadrezzar was, in fact, engaged in a
life-and-death struggle with the Medes; and the knowledge that the
Great King was thus fully occupied elsewhere, encouraged the petty
princes of Phenicia-Palestine in their projects of revolt. If chaps.
l., li., are genuine, it was at this juncture that Jeremiah foretold
the fall of Babylon; for, at the close of the prophecy in question
(li. 59), it is said that he gave a copy of it to one of the princes
who accompanied Zedekiah to Babylon _in the fourth year of his reign_,
_i.e._ in 596 B.C. But the style and thought of these two chapters,
and the general posture of things which they presuppose, are decisive
against the view that they belong to Jeremiah. At all events the
prophet gave the clearest evidence that he did not himself share in
the general delusion that the fall of Babylon was near at hand. He
declared that all the nations must be content to serve Nebuchadrezzar,
and his son, and his son's son (xxvii. 7); and as chap. xxix. shows,
he did his best to counteract the evil influence of those fanatical
visionaries, who were ever promising a speedy restoration to the
exiles who had been deported to Babylon with Jeconiah. At last,
however, in spite of all Jeremiah's warnings and entreaties, the
vacillating king Zedekiah, was persuaded to rebel; and the natural
consequence followed--the Chaldeans appeared before Jerusalem. King
and people had refused salvation, and were now no more to be saved.
During the siege, the prophet was more than once anxiously consulted
by the king as to the issue of the crisis. Although kept in ward
by Zedekiah's orders, lest he should weaken the defence by his
discouraging addresses, Jeremiah showed that he was far above the
feeling of private ill-will, by the answers he returned to his
sovereign's inquiries. It is true that he did not at all modify the
burden of his message; to the king as to the people he steadily
counselled surrender. But strongly as he denounced further resistance,
he did not predict the king's death; and the tone of his prophecy
concerning Zedekiah is in striking contrast with that concerning his
predecessor Jehoiakim. It was in the tenth year of Zedekiah and the
eighteenth of Nebuchadrezzar, that is to say, circ. 589 B.C., when
Jeremiah was imprisoned in the court of the royal guard, within the
precincts of the palace (xxxii. 1 _sqq._); when the siege of Jerusalem
was being pressed on with vigour, and when of all the strong cities of
Judah, only two, Lachish and Azekah, were still holding out against
the Chaldean blockade; that the prophet thus addressed the king
(xxxiv. 2 _sqq._): "Thus hath Iahvah said, Behold, I am about to give
this city into the hand of the king of Babel, and he shall burn it
with fire. And thou wilt not escape out of his hand; for thou wilt
certainly be taken, and into his hand thou wilt be given. And thine
eyes shall see the king of Babel's eyes, and his mouth shall speak
with thy mouth, and to Babel wilt thou come. But hear thou Iahvah's
word, O Zedekiah king of Judah! Thus hath Iahvah said upon thee,
Thou wilt not die by the sword. In peace wilt thou die; and with the
burnings of thy fathers, the former kings that were before thee, so
will men burn (spicery) for thee, and with Ah, Lord! will they wail
for thee; for a promise have _I_ given, saith Iahvah." Zedekiah was
to be exempted from the violent death, which then seemed so probable;
and was to enjoy the funeral honours of a king, unlike his less worthy
brother Jehoiakim, whose body was cast out to decay unburied like
that of a beast. The failure of Jeremiah's earnest and consistent
endeavours to bring about the submission of his people to what he
foresaw to be their inevitable destiny, is explained by the popular
confidence in the defences of Jerusalem, which were enormously strong
for the time, and were considered impregnable (xxi. 13); and by the
hopes entertained that Egypt, with whom negotiations had long been in
progress, would raise the siege ere it was too late. The low state
of public morals is vividly illustrated by an incident which the
prophet has recorded (chap. xxxiv. 7 _sqq._). In the terror inspired
by the approach of the Chaldeans, the panic-stricken populace of the
capital bethought them of that law of their God, which they had so
long set at nought; and the king and his princes and the entire people
bound themselves by a solemn covenant in the temple, to release all
slaves of Israelitish birth, who had served six years and upwards,
according to the law. The enfranchisement was accomplished with all
the sanctions of law and of religion; but no sooner had the Chaldeans
retired from before Jerusalem in order to meet the advancing army
of Egypt, than the solemn covenant was cynically and shamelessly
violated, and the unhappy freedmen were recalled to their bondage.
After this, further warning was evidently out of place; and nothing
was left for Jeremiah but to denounce the outrage upon the majesty of
heaven, and to declare the speedy return of the besiegers, and the
desolation of Jerusalem. His own liberty had not yet been restricted
(xxxvii. 4) when these events happened; but a pretext was soon found
for venting upon him the malice of his enemies. After assuring the
king that the respite was not to be permanent, but that Pharaoh's army
would return to Egypt without accomplishing any deliverance, and that
the Chaldeans would "come again, and fight against the city, and take
it, and burn it with fire" (xxxvii. 8), Jeremiah availed himself of
the temporary absence of the besieging forces, to attempt to leave his
City of Destruction; but he was arrested in the gate by which he was
going out, and brought before the princes on a charge of attempted
desertion to the enemy. Ridiculous as was this accusation, when thus
levelled against one whose whole life was conspicuous for sufferings
entailed by a lofty and unflinching patriotism and a devotion, at the
time almost unique, to the sacred cause of religion and morality; it
was at once received and acted upon. Jeremiah was beaten and thrown
into a dungeon, where he languished for a long time in subterranean
darkness and misery, until the king desired to consult him again. This
was the saving of the prophet's life; for after once more declaring
his unalterable message, תִּנָּתֵן בָּבֶל מֶלֶרּ בְּיַר, "Into the
king of Babel's hand thou wilt be given!" he made indignant protest
against his cruel wrongs, and obtained from Zedekiah some mitigation
of his sentence. He was not sent back to the loathsome den under the
house of Jonathan the scribe, in whose dark recesses he had well nigh
perished (xxxvii. 20), but was detained in the court of the guard,
receiving a daily dole of bread for his maintenance. Here he appears
to have still used such opportunity as he had, in dissuading the
people from continuing the defence. At all events, four of the princes
induced the king to deliver him into their power, on the ground that
he "weakened the hands of the men of war," and sought not the welfare
but the hurt of the nation (xxxviii. 4). Unwilling for some reason
or other, probably a superstitious one, to imbrue their hands in the
prophet's blood, they let him down with cords into a miry cistern
(בּוֹר) in the court of the guard, and left him there to die of cold
and hunger. Timely help sanctioned by the king rescued Jeremiah from
this horrible fate; but not before he had undergone sufferings of the
severest character, as may easily be understood from his own simple
narrative, and from the indelible impression wrought upon others by
the record of his sufferings, which led the poet of the Lamentations
to refer to this time of deadly peril, and torture both mental and
physical, in the following terms:
"They chased me sore like a bird,
They that were my foes without a cause.
They silenced my life in the pit,
And they cast a stone upon me.
Waters overflowed mine head;
Methought, I am cut off.
I called Thy name, Iahvah,
Out of the deepest pit.
My voice Thou heardest (saying),
'Hide not Thine ear at my breathing, at my cry.'
Thou drewest near when I called Thee;
Thou saidst, 'Fear not'!
Thou pleadedst, O Lord, my souls pleadings;
Thou ransomedst my life."
After this signal escape, Jeremiah's counsel was once more sought by
the king, in a secret interview, which was jealously concealed from
the princes. But neither entreaties, nor assurances of safety, could
persuade Zedekiah to surrender the city. Nothing was now left for the
prophet, but to await, in his milder captivity, the long foreseen
catastrophe. The form now taken by his solitary musings was not
anxious speculation upon the question whether any possible resources
were as yet unexhausted, whether by any yet untried means king and
people might be convinced, and the end averted. Taking that end for
granted, he looks forth beyond his own captivity, beyond the scenes
of famine and pestilence and bloodshed that surround him, beyond the
strife of factions within the city, and the lines of the besiegers
without it, to a fair prospect of happy restoration and smiling peace,
reserved for his ruined country in the far-off yet ever-approaching
future (xxxii., xxxiii.).
Strong in this inspired confidence, like the Roman who purchased at
its full market value the ground on which the army of Hannibal lay
encamped, he did not hesitate to buy, with all due formalities of
transfer, a field in his native place, at this supreme moment, when
the whole country was wasted with fire and sword, and the artillery
of the foe was thundering at the walls of Jerusalem. And the event
proved that he was right. He believed in the depth of his heart that
God had not finally cast off His people. He believed that nothing, not
even human error and revolt, could thwart and turn aside the Eternal
purposes. He was sure--it was demonstrated to him by the experience of
an eventful life--that, amid all the vicissitudes of men and things, one
thing stands immutable, and that is the will of God. He was sure that
Abraham's family had not become a nation, merely in order to be blotted
out of existence by a conqueror who knew not Iahvah; that the torch of a
true religion, a spiritual faith, had not been handed on from prophet to
prophet, burning in its onward course with an ever clearer and intenser
flame, merely to be swallowed up before its final glory was attained, in
utter and eternal darkness. The covenant with Israel would no more be
broken than the covenant of day and night (xxxiii. 20). The laws of the
natural world are not more stable and secure than those of the spiritual
realm; for both have their reason and their ground of prevalence in the
Will of the One Unchangeable Lord of all. And as the prophet had been
right in his forecast of the destruction of his country, so did he prove
to have been right in his joyful anticipation of the future renascence
of all the best elements in Israel's life. The coming time fulfilled his
word; a fact which must always remain unaccountable to all but those who
believe as Jeremiah believed.
After the fall of the city, special care was taken to ensure the safety
of Jeremiah, in accordance with the express orders of Nebuchadrezzar,
who had become cognisant of the prophet's consistent advocacy of
surrender, probably from the exiles previously deported to Babylonia,
with whom Jeremiah had maintained communications, advising them to
settle down peaceably, accepting Babylon as their country for the time
being, and praying for its welfare and that of its rulers. Nebuzaradan,
the commander-in-chief, further allowed the prophet his choice between
following him to Babylon, or remaining with the wreck of the population
in the ruined country. Patriotism, which in his case was identified
with a burning zeal for the moral and spiritual welfare of his
fellow-countrymen, prevailed over regard for his own worldly interests;
and Jeremiah chose to remain with the survivors--disastrously for
himself, as the event proved (xxxix. 2, xl. 1).
An old man, worn out with strife and struggle, and weighed down by
disappointment and the sense of failure, he might well have decided
to avail himself of the favour extended to him by the conqueror, and
to secure a peaceful end for a life of storm and conflict. But the
calamities of his country had not quenched his prophetic ardour; the
sacred fire still burnt within his aged spirit; and once more he
sacrificed himself to the work he felt called upon to do, only to
experience again the futility of offering wise counsel to headstrong,
proud, and fanatical natures. Against his earnest protestations, he
was forced to accompany the remnant of his people in their hasty
flight into Egypt (xlii.); and, in the last glimpse afforded us,
we see him there among his fellow-exiles making a final, and alas!
ineffectual protest against their stubborn idolatry (xliv.). A
tradition mentioned by Tertullian and St. Jerome which may be of
earlier and Jewish origin, states that these apostates in their wicked
rage against the prophet stoned him to death (cf. Heb. xi. 37).
The last chapter of his book brings the course of events down to about
561 B.C. The fact has naturally suggested a conjecture that the same
year witnessed the close of the prophet's life. In that case, Jeremiah
must have attained to an age of somewhere about ninety years; which,
taking all the circumstances into consideration, is hardly credible.
A celibate life is said to be unfavourable to longevity; but however
that may be, the other conditions in this instance make it extremely
unlikely. Jeremiah's career was a vexed and stormy one; it was his
fate to be divided from his kindred and his fellow-countrymen by the
widest and deepest differences of belief; like St. Athanasius, he was
called upon to maintain the cause of truth against an opposing world.
"Woe's me, my mother!" he cries, in one of his characteristic fits of
despondency, which were the natural fruit of a passionate and almost
feminine nature, after a period of noble effort ending in the shame of
utter defeat; "Woe's me, that thou gavest me birth, a man of strife,
and a man of contention to all the land! Neither lender nor borrower
have I been; yet all are cursing me" (xv. 10). The persecutions he
endured, the cruelties of his long imprisonment, the horrors of the
protracted siege, upon which he has not dwelt at length, but which
have stamped themselves indelibly upon his language (xviii. 21, 22,
xx. 16), would certainly not tend to prolong his life. In the 71st
Psalm, which seems to be from his pen, and which wants the usual
heading "A Psalm of David," he speaks of himself as conscious of
failing powers, and as having already reached the extreme limit of
age. Writing after his narrow escape from death in the miry cistern of
his prison, he prays
"Cast me not off in the time of old age;
Forsake me not, when my strength faileth."
And again,
"Yea, even when I am old and grey-headed,
O God forsake me not!"
And, referring to his signal deliverance,
"Thou that shewedst me many and sore troubles,
Thou makest me live again;
And out of the deeps of the earth again Thou bringest me up."