to denunciation and despair (iv. 3 _sq._). _Thus hath Iahvah said
to the men of Judah and to Jerusalem, Break you up the fallows, and
sow not into thorns! Circumcise yourselves to Iahvah, and remove
the foreskins of your heart, ye men of Judah, and ye inhabitants of
Jerusalem! lest My fury come forth like fire, and burn with none to
quench it, because of the evil of your doings._ Clothed with the
Spirit, as Semitic speech might express it, his whole soul enveloped
in a garment of heavenly light--a magical garment whose virtues impart
new force as well as new light--the prophet sees straight to the heart
of things, and estimates with God-given certainty the real state of
his people, and the moral worth of their seeming repentance. The first
measures of Josiah's reforming zeal have been inaugurated; at least
within the limits of the capital, idolatry in its coarser and more
repellent forms has been suppressed; there is a shew of return to
the God of Israel. But the popular heart is still wedded to the old
sanctuaries, and the old sensuous rites of Canaan; and, worse than
this, the priests and prophets, whose centre of influence was the
one great sanctuary of the Book of the Law, the temple at Jerusalem,
have simply taken advantage of the religious reformation for their
own purposes of selfish aggrandisement. _From the youngest to the
oldest of them, they all ply the trade of greed; and from prophet to
priest, they all practice lying. And they have repaired the ruin of_
[_the daughter_] _of my people in light fashion, saying, It is well,
it is well! though it be not well_ (vi. 13, 14). The doctrine of the
one legitimate sanctuary, taught with disinterested earnestness by
the disciples of Isaiah, and enforced by that logic of events which
had demonstrated the feebleness of the local holy places before the
Assyrian destroyers, had now come to be recognised as a convenient
buttress of the private gains of the Jerusalem priesthood and the
venal prophets who supported their authority. The strong current of
national reform had been utilized for the driving of their private
machinery; and the sole outcome of the self-denying efforts and
sufferings of the past appeared to be the enrichment of these grasping
and unscrupulous worldlings who sat, like an incubus, upon the heart
of the national church. So long as money flowed steadily into their
coffers, they were eager enough to reassure the doubting, and to
dispel all misgivings by their deceitful oracle that all was well. So
long as the sacrifices, the principal source of the priestly revenue,
abounded, and the festivals ran their yearly round, they affirmed
that Iahweh was satisfied, and that no harm could befal the people
of His care. This trading in things Divine, to the utter neglect of
the higher obligations of the moral law, was simply appalling to the
sensitive conscience of the true prophet of that degenerate age. _A
strange and a startling thing it is, that is come to pass in the land.
The prophets, they have prophesied in the Lie, and the priests, they
tyrannise under their direction; and My people, they love it thus;
and what will ye do for the issue thereof?_ (v. 30, 31.) For such
facts must have an issue; and the present moral and spiritual ruin of
the nation points with certainty to impending ruin in the material
and political sphere. The two things go together; you cannot have a
decline of faith, a decay of true religion, and permanent outward
prosperity; _that_ issue is incompatible with the eternal laws which
regulate the life and progress of humanity. One sits in the heavens,
over all things from the beginning, to whom all stated worship is a
hideous offence when accompanied by hypocrisy and impurity and fraud
and violence in the ordinary relations of life. _What good to me is
incense that cometh from Sheba, and the choice calamus from a far
country? your burnt offerings_ (holocausts) _are not acceptable, and
your sacrifices are not sweet unto Me._ Instead of purchasing safety,
they will ensure perdition: _Therefore thus hath Iahvah said: Lo, I am
about to lay for this people stumblingblocks, and they shall stumble
upon them, fathers and sons together, a neighbour and his friend; and
they shall perish_ (vi. 20 _sq._).
In the early days of reform, indeed, Jeremiah himself appears to have
shared in the sanguine views associated with a revival of suspended
orthodoxy. The tidings of imminent danger were a surprise to him, as
to the zealous worshippers who thronged the courts of the temple. So
then, after all, "the burning anger of Iahvah was not turned away"
by the outward tokens of penitence, by the lavish gifts of devotion;
this unexpected and terrifying rumour was a call for the resumption
of the garb of mourning and for the renewal of those public fasts
which had marked the initial stages of reformation (iv. 8). The
astonishment and the disappointment of the man assert themselves
against the inspiration of the prophet, when, contemplating the
helpless bewilderment of kings and princes, and the stupefaction of
priests and prophets in face of the national calamities, he breaks out
into remonstrance with God. _And I said, Alas, O Lord Iahvah! of a
truth, Thou hast utterly beguiled this people and Jerusalem, saying,
It shall be well with you; whereas the sword will reach to the life._
The allusion is to the promises contained in the Book of the Law,
the reading of which had so powerfully conduced to the movement for
reform. That book had been the text of the prophet-preachers, who were
most active in that work; and the influence of its ideas and language
upon Jeremiah himself is apparent in all his early discourses.
The prophet's faith, however, was too deeply rooted to be more than
momentarily shaken; and it soon told him that the evil tidings were
evidence not of unfaithfulness or caprice in Iahvah, but of the
hypocrisy and corruption of Israel. With this conviction upon him, he
implores the populace of the capital to substitute an inward and real
for an outward and delusive purification. _Break up the fallows!_ Do
not dream that any adequate reformation can be superinduced upon the
mere surface of life: _Sow not among thorns!_ Do not for one moment
believe that the word of God can take root and bear fruit in the hard
soil of a heart that desires only to be secured in the possession of
present enjoyments, in immunity for self-indulgence, covetousness, and
oppression of the poor. _Wash thine heart from wickedness, O Jerusalem!
that thou mayst be saved. How long shall the schemings of thy folly
lodge within thee? For hark! one declareth from Dan, and proclaimeth
folly from the hills of Ephraim_ (iv. 14 _sq._). The "folly" (_'awen_)
is the foolish hankering after the gods which are nothing in the world
but a reflexion of the diseased fancy of their worshippers; for it is
always true that man makes his god in his own image, when he _does_ make
him, and does not receive the knowledge of him by revelation. It was
a folly inveterate and, as it would seem, hereditary in Israel, going
back to the times of the Judges, and recalling the story of Micah the
Ephraimite and the Danites who stole his images. That ancient sin still
cried to heaven for vengeance; for the apostatizing tendency, which it
exemplified, was still active in the heart of Israel.[26] The nation had
"rebelled against" the Lord, for it was foolish and had never really
known Him; the people were silly children, and lacked insight; skilled
only in doing wrong, and ignorant of the way to do right (iv. 22). Like
the things they worshipped, they had eyes, but saw not; they had ears,
but heard not. Enslaved to the empty terrors of their own imaginations,
they, who cowered before dumb idols, stood untrembling in the awful
presence of Him whose laws restrained the ocean within due limits, and
upon whose sovereign will the fall of the rain and increase of the field
depended (v. 21-24). The popular blindness to the claims of the true
religion, to the inalienable rights of the God of Israel, involved a
corresponding and ever-increasing blindness to the claims of universal
morality, to the rights of man. Competent observers have often called
attention to the remarkable influence exercised by the lower forms of
heathenism in blunting the moral sense; and this influence was fully
illustrated in the case of Jeremiah's contemporaries. So complete,
so universal was the national decline that it seemed impossible to
find one good man within the bounds of the capital. Every aim in life
found illustration in those gay, crowded streets, in the bazaars, in
the palaces, in the places by the gate where law was administered,
except the aim of just and righteous and merciful dealing with one's
neighbour. God was ignored or misconceived of, and therefore man was
wronged and oppressed. Perjury, even in the Name of the God of Israel,
whose eyes regard faithfulness and sincerity, and whose favour is not
to be won by professions and presents; a self-hardening against both
Divine chastisement and prophetic admonition; a fatal inclination to
the seductions of Canaanite worship and the violations of the moral
law, which that worship permitted and even encouraged as pleasing to
the gods; these vices characterized the entire population of Jerusalem
in that dark period. _Run ye to and fro in the streets of Jerusalem,
and see now, and know, and seek ye in the broad places thereof, if ye
can find a man, if indeed there be one that doeth justice, that seeketh
sincerity; that I may pardon her. And if they say, By the life of
Iahvah! even so they swear falsely. Iahvah, are not thine eyes toward
sincerity? Thou smotest them, and they trembled not; Thou consumedst
them, they refused to receive instruction; they made their faces harder
than a rock, they refused to repent. And for me, I said_ (methought),
_These are but poor folk; they behave foolishly, because they know not
the way of Iahvah, the justice_ (ver. 1) _of their God: let me betake
myself to the great, and speak with them; for they at least know the
way of Iahvah, the justice of their God: but these with one consent had
broken the yoke, had burst the bonds in sunder_ (v. 1-5).
Then, as now, the debasement of the standard of life among the
ruling classes was a far more threatening symptom of danger to the
commonwealth than laxity of principle among the masses, who had never
enjoyed the higher knowledge and more thorough training which wealth
and rank, as a matter of course, confer. If the crew turn drunken and
mutinous, the ship is in unquestionable peril; but if they who have
the guidance of the vessel in their hands, follow the vices of those
whom they should command and control, wreck and ruin are assured.
The profligacy allowed by heathenism, against which the prophets cried
in vain, is forcibly depicted in the words: _Why should I pardon
thee? Thy sons have forsaken Me, and have sworn by them that are no
gods: though I had bound them_ (to Me) _by oath,[27] they committed_
(spiritual) _adultery, and into the house of the Fornicatress_ (the
idol's temple, where the harlot priestess sat for hire) _they would
flock. Stallions roaming at large were they; neighing each to his
neighbour's wife. Shall I not punish such offences, saith Iahvah;
and shall not My soul avenge herself on such a nation as this?_ The
cynical contempt of justice, the fraud and violence of those who were
in haste to become rich, are set forth in the following: _Among My
people are found godless men; one watcheth, as birdcatchers lurk; they
have set the trap, they catch men. Like a cage filled with birds, so
are their houses filled with fraud: therefore they are become great,
and have amassed wealth. They are become fat, they are sleek; also
they pass over_ (Isa. xl. 27) _cases_ (Ex. xxii. 9, xxiv. 14; cf. also
1 Sam. x. 2) _of wickedness--neglect to judge heinous crimes; the
cause they judge not, the cause of the fatherless, to make it succeed;
and the right of the needy they vindicate not_ (v. 26-28).
_She is the city doomed to be punished! she is all oppression
within. As a spring poureth forth its waters, so she poureth forth
her wickedness; violence and oppression resound in her; before Me
continually is_ _sickness and wounds_ (vi. 6, 7). There would seem
to be no hope for such a people and such a city. The prophet, indeed,
cannot forget the claims of kindred, the thousand ties of blood and
feeling that bind him to this perverse and sinful nation. Thrice,
even in this dark forecast of destruction, he mitigates severity with
the promise, _yet will I not make a full end_. The door is still left
open, on the chance that some at least may be won to penitence. But
the chance was small. The difficulty was, and the prophet's yearning
tenderness towards his people could not blind him to the fact, that
all the lessons of God's providence were lost upon this reprobate
race: _They have belied the Lord, and said, it is not He; neither
shall evil come upon us; neither shall we see sword and famine._ The
prophets, they insisted, were wrong both in the significance which
they attributed to occasional calamities, and in the disasters, which
they announced as imminent: _The prophets will become wind, and the
Word of God is not in them; so will it turn out with them_. It was,
therefore, wholly futile to appeal to their better judgment against
themselves: _Thus said Iahvah, Stop on the ways, and consider, and ask
after the eternal paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and
find rest for your soul: and they said, We will not walk therein. And
I will set over you watchmen_ (the prophets); _hearken ye to the call
of the trumpet!_ (the warning note of prophecy) _and they said We will
not hearken._ From such wilful hardness and impenitence, disdaining
correction and despising reproof, God appeals to the heathen
themselves, and to the dumb earth, to attest the justice of His
sentence of destruction against this people: _Therefore, hear, O ye
nations, and know, and testify what is among_ _them! Hear, O earth!
Lo, I am about to bring evil upon this people, the fruit of their own
devisings; for unto My words they have not hearkened, and as for Mine
instruction, they have rejected it._ Their doom was inevitable, for it
was the natural and necessary consequence of their own doings: _Thine
own way and thine Own deeds have brought about these evils for thee;
this is thine own evil; verily, it is bitter, verily, it reacheth unto
thine heart_. The discourse ends with a despairing glance at the moral
reprobation of Israel. _An assayer did I make thee among My people,
a refiner_ (reading _mec̰ārēf_, Mal. iii. 2, 3), _that thou mightest
know and assay their kind_ (lit. _way_). Jeremiah's call had been to
"sit as a refiner and purifier of silver" in the name of his God: in
other words, to separate the good elements from the bad in Israel,
and to gather around himself the nucleus of a people "prepared for
Iahvah." But his work had been vain. In vain had the prophetic fire
burnt within him; in vain had the vehemency of the spirit fanned the
flame; the Divine word--that solvent of hearts--had been expended
in vain; no good metal could come of an ore so utterly base. _They
are all the worst_ (1 Ki. xx. 43) _of rebels_ (or, _deserters to the
rebels_), _going about with slander; they are brass and iron; they all
deal corruptly.[28] The bellows blow; the lead_ (used for fining the
ore) _is consumed by the fire; in vain do they go on refining_ (or,
_does the refiner refine_[29]); _and the wicked are not separated.
Refuse silver are they called, for Iahvah hath refused them._
FOOTNOTES:
[25] The modern singer has well caught the echo of this ancient strain.
"Wilt thou cover thine hair with gold, and with silver thy feet?
Hast thou taken the purple to fold thee, and made thy mouth sweet?
Behold, when thy face is made bare, he that loved thee shall hate:
Thy face shall be no more fair at the fall of thy fate."
_Atalanta in Calydon._
[26] The second _'awen_, however, probably means "trouble," "calamity,"
as in Hab. iii. 7. The Sept. renders πόνος, and this agrees with the
mention of Dan in viii. 16. As Ewald puts it, "from the north of
Palestine the misery that is coming from the further north is already
being proclaimed to all the nations in the south (vi. 18)."
[27] With a different point: "When I had fed them to the full" (cf.
Hos. xiii. 6).
[28] This term--_mashchîthîm_--is certainly not the plur. of the
_mashchîth_, "pitfall" or "trap," of v. 26. The meaning is the same as
in Isa. i. 4. The original force of the root _shachath_ is seen in the
Assyrian _shachâtu_, "to fall down."
[29] The form--_c̰ārōf_--is like _bāchōn_, "assayer," in ver. 27.
V.
_POPULAR AND TRUE RELIGION._
JEREMIAH vii.-x., xxvi.
In the four chapters which we are now to consider we have what is
plainly a finished whole. The only possible exception (x. 1-16)
shall be considered in its place. The historical occasion of the
introductory prophecy (vii. 1-15), and the immediate effect of its
delivery, are recorded at length in the twenty-sixth chapter of
the book, so that in this instance we are happily not left to the
uncertainties of conjecture. We are there told that it was _in the
beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim son of Josiah, king of Judah_,
that Jeremiah received the command to stand in the fore-court of
Iahvah's house, and to declare _to all the cities of Judah that were
come to worship_ there, that unless they repented and gave ear to
Iahvah's servants the prophets, He would make the temple like Shiloh,
and Jerusalem itself a curse to all the nations of the earth. The
substance of the oracle is there given in briefer form than here, as
was natural, where the writer's object was principally to relate the
issue of it as it affected himself. In neither case is it probable
that we have a verbatim report of what was actually said, though the
leading thoughts of his address are, no doubt, faithfully recorded by
the prophet in the more elaborate composition (chap. vii.). Trifling
variations between the two accounts must not, therefore, be pressed.
Internal evidence suggests that this oracle was delivered at a time
of grave public anxiety, such as marked the troubled period after
the death of Josiah, and the early years of Jehoiakim. _All Judah,
or all the cities of Judah_ (xxvi. 2), that is to say, the people of
the country towns as well as the citizens of Jerusalem, were crowding
into the temple to supplicate their God (vii. 2). This indicates an
extraordinary occasion, a national emergency affecting all alike.
Probably a public fast and humiliation had been ordered by the
authorities, on the reception of some threatening news of invasion. "The
opening paragraphs of the address are marked by a tone of controlled
earnestness, by an unadorned plainness of statement, without passion,
without exclamation, apostrophe, or rhetorical device of any kind;
which betokens the presence of a danger which spoke too audibly to the
general ear to require artificial heightening in the statement of it.
The position of affairs spoke for itself" (Hitzig). The very words
with which the prophet opens his message, _Thus said Iahvah Sabaoth,
the God of Israel, Make good your ways and your doings, that I may
cause you to dwell_ (_permanently_) _in this place!_ (ver. 3, cf. ver.
7) prove that the anxiety which agitated the popular heart and drove
it to seek consolation in religious observances, was an anxiety about
their political stability, about the permanence of their possession of
the fair land of promise. The use of the expression _Iahvah Sabaoth_
"Iahvah (the God) of Hosts" is also significant, as indicating that
war was what the nation feared; while the prophet reminds them thus
that all earthly powers, even the armies of heathen invaders, are
controlled and directed by the God of Israel for His own sovereign
purposes. A particular crisis is further suggested by the warning:
_Trust ye not to the lying words, 'The Temple of Iahvah, the Temple of
Iahvah, the Temple of Iahvah, is this!'_ The fanatical confidence in the
inviolability of the temple, which Jeremiah thus deprecates, implies
a time of public danger. A hundred years before this time the temple
and the city had really come through a period of the gravest peril,
justifying in the most palpable and unexpected manner the assurances of
the prophet Isaiah. This was remembered now, when another crisis seemed
imminent, another trial of strength between the God of Israel and the
gods of the heathen. Only part of the prophetic teachings of Isaiah
had rooted itself in the popular mind--the part most agreeable to it.
The sacrosanct inviolability of the temple, and of Jerusalem for its
sake, was an idea readily appropriated and eagerly cherished. It was
forgotten that all depended on the will and purposes of Iahvah himself;
that the heathen might be the instruments with which He executed his
designs, and that an invasion of Judah might mean, not an approaching
trial of strength between His omnipotence and the impotency of the false
gods, but the judicial outpouring of His righteous wrath upon His own
rebellious people.
Jeremiah, therefore, affirms that the popular confidence is
ill-founded; that his countrymen are lulled in a false security; and
he enforces his point, by a plain exposure of the flagrant offences,
which render their worship a mockery of God.
Again, it may be supposed that the startling word, _Add your
burnt-offerings to your_ (ordinary) _offerings, and eat the flesh_ (_of
them_) (vii. 21), implies a time of unusual activity in the matter of
honouring the God of Israel with the more costly offerings of which
the worshippers did not partake, but which were wholly consumed on the
altar; which fact also might point to a season of special danger.
And, lastly, the references to taking refuge behind the walls of
'defenced cities' (viii. 14; x. 17), as we know that the Rechabites and
doubtless most of the rural populace took refuge in Jerusalem on the
approach of the third and last Chaldean expedition, seem to prove that
the occasion of the prophecy was the first Chaldean invasion, which
ended in the submission of Jehoiakim to the yoke of Babylon (2 Kings
xxiv. 1). Already the northern frontier had experienced the destructive
onslaught of the invaders, and rumour announced that they might soon be
expected to arrive before the walls of Jerusalem (viii. 16, 17).
The only other historical occasion which can be suggested with any
plausibility is the Scythian invasion of Syria-Palestine, to which
the previous discourse was assigned. This would fix the date of the
prophecy at some point between the thirteenth and the eighteenth
years of Josiah (B.C. 629-624). But the arguments for this view do
not seem to be very strong in themselves, and they certainly do not
explain the essential identity of the oracle summarized in chap.
xxvi. 1-6, with that of vii. 1-15. The "undisguised references to the
prevalence of idolatry in Jerusalem itself (vii. 17; cf. 30, 31), and
the unwillingness of the people to listen to the prophet's teaching,
(vii. 27)," are quite as well accounted for by supposing a religious
or rather an irreligious reaction under Jehoiakim--which is every way
probable considering the bad character of that king (2 Kings xxiii.
37; Jer. xxii. 13 _sqq._), and the serious blow inflicted upon the
reforming party by the death of Josiah; as by assuming that the
prophecy belongs to the years before the extirpation of idolatry in
the eighteenth year of the latter sovereign.