Israel was sometimes designated as "the people of Iahvah," just as
Moab was known by the name of its god as "the people of Chemosh" (Num.
xxi. 29), is alleged as proof that the nation has an interest in the
compassion of Him whose name it bears; and it is implied that, since
the world knows Israel as Iahvah's people, it will not be for Iahvah's
honour that this people should be suffered to perish in their sins.
Israel had thus, from the outset of its history, been associated and
identified with Iahvah; however ill the true nature of the tie has been
understood, however unworthily the relation has been conceived by the
popular mind, however little the obligations involved in the call of
their fathers have been recognised and appreciated. God must be true,
though man be false. There is no weakness, no caprice, no vacillation
in God. In bygone "times of trouble" the "Hope of Israel" had saved
Israel over and over again; it was a truth admitted by all--even by the
prophet's enemies. Surely then He will save His people once again, and
vindicate His Name of Saviour. Surely He who has dwelt in their midst
so many changeful centuries, will not now behold their trouble with
the lukewarm feeling of an alien dwelling amongst them for a time, but
unconnected with them by ties of blood and kin and common country; or
with the indifference of the traveller who is but coldly affected by the
calamities of a place where he has only lodged one night. Surely the
entire past shews that it would be utterly inconsistent for Iahvah to
appear now as a man so buried in sleep that He cannot be roused to save
His friends from imminent destruction (cf. 1 Kings xviii. 27) (St. Mark
iv. 38). He who had borne Israel and carried him as a tender nurseling
all the days of old (Isa. lxiii. 9) could hardly without changing His
own unchangeable Name, His character and purposes, cast down His people
and forsake them at last.
Such is the drift of the prophet's first prayer. To this apparently
unanswerable argument his religious meditation upon the present
distress has brought him. But presently the thought returns with added
force, with a sense of utmost certitude, with a conviction that it is
Iahvah's Word, that the people have wrought out their own affliction,
that misery is the hire of sin.
"Thus hath Iahvah said of this people:
Even so have they loved to wander,
Their feet they have not refrained;
And as for Iahvah, He accepteth them not;
"He now remembereth their guilt,
And visiteth their trespasses.
And Iahvah said unto me,
Intercede thou not for this people for good!
If they fast, I will not hearken unto their cry;
And if they offer whole-offering and oblation,
I will not accept their persons;
But by the sword, the famine, and the plague, will I consume them.
"And I said, Ah, Lord Iahvah!
Behold the prophets say to them, Ye shall not see sword,
And famine shall not befall you;
For peace and permanence will I give you in this place.
"And Iahvah said unto me:
Falsehood it is that the prophets prophesy in My Name.
I sent them not, and I charged them not, and I spake not unto them.
A vision of falsehood and jugglery and nothingness, and the guile
of their own heart,
They, for their part, prophesy you.
"Therefore thus said Iahvah:
Concerning the prophets who prophesy in My Name, albeit I sent
them not,
And of themselves say, Sword and famine there shall not be in
this land;
By the sword and by the famine shall those prophets be fordone.
And the people to whom they prophesy shall lie thrown out in the
streets of Jerusalem,
Because of the famine and the sword,
With none to bury them,--
Themselves, their wives, and their sons and their daughters:
And I will pour upon them their own evil.
And thou shalt say unto them this word:
Let mine eyes run down with tears, night and day,
And let them not tire;
For with mighty breach is broken
The virgin daughter of my people--
With a very grievous blow.
If I go forth into the field,
Then behold! the slain of the sword;
And if I enter the city,
Then behold! the pinings of famine:
For both prophet and priest go trafficking about the land,
And understand not."[59]
It has been supposed that this whole section is misplaced, and that
it would properly follow the close of chap. xiii. The supposition is
due to a misapprehension of the force of the pregnant particle which
introduces the reply of Iahvah to the prophet's intercession. "_Even
so_ have they loved to wander;" _even so_, as is naturally implied by
the severity of the punishment of which thou complainest. The dearth
is prolonged; the distress is widespread and grievous. _So_ prolonged,
_so_ grievous, _so_ universal, has been their rebellion against Me.
The penalty corresponds to the offence. It is really "their own evil"
that is being poured out upon their guilty heads (ver. 16; cf. iv.
18). Iahvah cannot accept them in their sin; the long drought is a
token that their guilt is before His mind, unrepented, unatoned.
Neither the supplications of another, nor their own fasts and
sacrifices, avail to avert the visitation. So long as the disposition
of the heart remains unaltered; so long as man hates, not his darling
sins, but the penalties they entail, it is idle to seek to propitiate
Heaven by such means as these. And not only so. The droughts are but
a foretaste of worse evils to come; _by the sword, the famine, and
the plague will I consume them_. The condition is understood, If they
repent and amend not. This is implied by the prophet's seeking to
palliate the national guilt, as he proceeds to do, by the suggestion
that the people are more sinned against than sinning, deluded as they
are by false prophets; as also by the renewal of his intercession
(ver. 19). Had he been aware in his inmost heart that an irreversible
sentence had gone forth against his people, would he have been likely
to think either excuses or intercessions availing? Indeed, however
absolute the threats of the prophetic preachers may sound, they must,
as a rule, be qualified by this limitation, which, whether expressed
or not, is inseparable from the object of their discourses, which was
the moral amendment of those who heard them.
Of the "false," that is, the common run of prophets, who were in
league with the venal priesthood of the time, and no less worldly and
self-seeking than their allies, we note that, as usual, they foretell
what the people wishes to hear; "Peace (Prosperity), and Permanence,"
is the burden of their oracles. They knew that invectives against
prevailing vices, and denunciations of national follies, and forecasts
of approaching ruin, were unlikely means of winning popularity and
a substantial harvest of offerings. At the same time, like other
false teachers, they knew how to veil their errors under the mask of
truth; or rather, they were themselves deluded by their own greed, and
blinded by their covetousness to the plain teaching of events. They
might base their doctrine of "Peace and Permanence in this place!"
upon those utterances of the great Isaiah, which had been so signally
verified in the lifetime of the seer himself; but their keen pursuit
of selfish ends, their moral degradation, caused them to shut their
eyes to everything else in his teachings, and, like his contemporaries,
they "regarded not the work of Iahvah, nor the operation of His hand."
Jeremiah accuses them of "lying visions;" visions, as he explains,
which were the outcome of magical ceremonies, by aid of which, perhaps,
they partially deluded themselves, before deluding others, but which
were, none the less, "things of nought," devoid of all substance, and
mere fictions of a deceitful and self-deceiving mind (ver. 14). He
expressly declares that they have no mission; in other words, their
action is not due to the overpowering sense of a higher call, but is
inspired by purely ulterior considerations of worldly gain and policy.
They prophesy to order; to the order of man, not of God. If they visit
the country districts, it is with no spiritual end in view; priest and
prophet alike make a trade of their sacred profession, and, immersed in
their sordid pursuits, have no eye for truth, and no perception of the
dangers hovering over their country. Their misconduct and misdirection
of affairs are certain to bring destruction upon themselves and upon
those whom they mislead. War and its attendant famine will devour them
all.
But the day of grace being past, nothing is left for the prophet
himself but to bewail the ruin of his people (ver. 17). He will betake
himself to weeping, since praying and preaching are vain. The words
which announce this resolve may portray a sorrowful experience, or
they may depict the future as though it were already present (vv. 17,
18). The latter interpretation would suit ver. 17, but hardly the
following verse, with its references to "going forth into the field,"
and "entering into the city." The way in which these specific actions
are mentioned seems to imply some present or recent calamity; and there
is apparently no reason why we may not suppose that the passage was
written at the disastrous close of the reign of Josiah, in the troublous
interval of three months, when Jehoahaz was nominal king in Jerusalem,
but the Egyptian arms were probably ravaging the country, and striking
terror into the hearts of the people. In such a time of confusion and
bloodshed, tillage would be neglected, and famine would naturally
follow; and these evils would be greatly aggravated by drought. The only
other period which suits is the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim;[60]
but the former seems rather to be indicated by chap. xv. 6-9.
Heartbroken at the sight of the miseries of his country, the prophet
once more approaches the eternal throne. His despairing mood is not so
deep and dark as to drown his faith in God. He refuses to believe the
utter rejection of Judah, the revocation of the covenant. (The measure
is Pentameter).
"Hast Thou indeed cast off Judah?
Hath Thy soul revolted from Sion?
Why hast Thou smitten us, past healing?
Waiting for peace, and no good came,
For a time of healing, and behold terror!
"We know, Iahvah, our wickedness, our fathers' guilt;
For we have trespassed toward Thee.
Scorn Thou not, for Thy Name sake,
Disgrace not Thy glorious throne!
Remember, break not, Thy covenant with us!
"Are there, in sooth, among the Nothings of the nations senders of
rain?
And is it the heavens that bestow the showers?
Is it not Thou, Iahvah our God?
And we wait for Thee,
For Thou it was that madest the world."[61]
To all this the Divine answer is stern and decisive. _And Iahvah said
unto me: If Moses and Samuel were to stand_ (pleading) _before Me, My
mind would not be towards this people: send them away from before Me_
(dismiss them from My Presence), _that they may go forth_! After ages
remembered Jeremiah as a mighty intercessor, and the brave Maccabeus
could see him in his dream as a grey-haired man "exceeding glorious"
and "of a wonderful and excellent majesty," who "prayed much for the
people and for the holy city" (2 Macc. xv. 14). And the beauty of
the prayers which lie like scattered pearls of faith and love among
the prophet's soliloquies is evident at a glance. But here Jeremiah
himself is conscious that his prayers are unavailing; and that the
office to which God has called him is rather that of pronouncing
judgment than of interceding for mercy. Even a Moses or a Samuel,
the mighty intercessors of the old heroic times, whose pleadings had
been irresistible with God, would now plead in vain (Ex. xvii. 11
_sqq._, xxxii. 11 _sqq._; Num. xiv. 13 _sqq._ for Moses; 1 Sam. vii.
9 _sqq._, xii. 16 _sqq._; Ps. xcix. 6; Ecclus. xlvi. 16 _sqq._ for
Samuel). The day of grace has gone, and the day of doom is come. His
sad function is to "send them away" or "let them go" from Iahvah's
Presence; to pronounce the decree of their banishment from the holy
land where His temple is, and where they have been wont to "see His
face." The main part of his commission was "to root out, and to pull
down, and to destroy, and to overthrow" (i. 10). _And if they say unto
thee, Whither are we to go forth? Thou shalt say unto them, thus hath
Iahvah said: They that belong to the Death_ (_i.e._ the Plague; as
the Black Death was spoken of in medieval Europe) _to death; and they
that belong to_ _the Sword, to the sword; and they that belong to the
Famine, to famine; and they that belong to Captivity, to captivity!_
The people were to "go forth" out of their own land, which was, as it
were, the Presence-chamber of Iahvah, just as they had at the outset
of their history gone forth out of Egypt, to take possession of it.
The words convey a sentence of exile, though they do not indicate the
place of banishment. The menace of woe is as general in its terms as
that lurid passage of the Book of the Law upon which it appears to
be founded (Deut. xxviii. 21-26). The time for the accomplishment of
those terrible threatenings "is nigh, even at the doors." On the other
hand, Ezekiel's "four sore judgments" (Ezek. xiv. 21) were suggested
by this passage of Jeremiah.
The prophet avoids naming the actual destination of the captive
people, because captivity is only one element in their punishment. The
horrors of war--sieges and slaughters and pestilence and famine--must
come first. In what follows, the intensity of these horrors is
realized in a single touch. The slain are left unburied, a prey to
the birds and beasts. The elaborate care of the ancients in the
provision of honourable resting places for the dead is a measure of
the extremity thus indicated. In accordance with the feeling of his
age, the prophet ranks the dogs and vultures and hyenas that drag and
disfigure and devour the corpses of the slain, as three "kinds" of
evil equally appalling with the sword that slays. The same feeling led
our Spenser to write:
"To spoil the dead of weed
Is sacrilege, and doth all sins exceed."
And the destruction of Moab is decreed by the earlier prophet Amos,
"because he burned the bones of the king of Edom into lime," thus
violating a law universally recognised as binding upon the conscience
of nations (Amos ii. 1). Cf. also Gen. xxiii.
Thus death itself was not to be a sufficient expiation for the
inveterate guilt of the nation. Judgment was to pursue them even after
death. But the prophet's vision does not penetrate beyond this present
scene. With the visible world, so far as he is aware, the punishment
terminates. He gives no hint here, nor elsewhere, of any further
penalties awaiting individual sinners in the unseen world. The scope
of his prophecy indeed is almost purely national, and limited to the
present life. It is one of the recognised conditions of Old Testament
religious thought.
And the ruin of the people is the retribution reserved for what Manasseh
did in Jerusalem. To the prophet, as to the author of the book of
Kings, who wrote doubtless under the influence of his words, the guilt
contracted by Judah under that wicked king was unpardonable. But it
would convey a false impression if we left the matter here; for the
whole course of his after-preaching--his exhortations and promises,
as well as his threats--prove that Jeremiah did not suppose that the
nation could not be saved by genuine repentance and permanent amendment.
What he intends rather to affirm is that the sins of the fathers will
be visited upon children, who are partakers of their sins. It is the
doctrine of St. Matt. xxiii. 29 _sqq._; a doctrine which is not merely a
theological opinion, but a matter of historical observation.
_And I will set over them four kinds--It is an oracle of Iahvah--the
sword to slay, and the dogs to hale, and the fowls of the air, and the
beasts of the earth, to devour and to destroy. And I will make them
a sport_ _for all the realms of earth; on account of Manasseh ben
Hezekiah king of Judah, for what he did in Jerusalem._
Jerusalem!--the mention of that magical name touches another chord in
the prophet's soul; and the fierce tones of his oracle of doom change
into a dirge-like strain of pity without hope.
"For who will have compassion on Thee, O Jerusalem?
And who will yield thee comfort?
And who will turn aside to ask of thy welfare?
'Twas thou that rejectedst Me (it is Iahvah's word);
Backward wouldst thou wend:
So I stretched forth My hand against thee and destroyed thee;
I wearied of relenting.
And I winnowed them with a fan in the gates of the land;
I bereaved, I undid My people:
Yet they returned not from their own ways.
His widows outnumbered before Me the sand of seas:
I brought them against the Mother of Warriors a harrier at high
noon;
I threw upon her suddenly anguish and horrors.
She that had borne seven sons did pine away;
She breathèd out her soul.
Her sun did set, while it yet was day;
He blushed and paled.
But their remnant will I give to the sword
Before their foes: (It is Iahvah's word)."
The fate of Jerusalem would strike the nations dumb with horror; it
would not inspire pity, for man would recognise that it was absolutely
just. Or perhaps the thought rather is, In proving false to Me,
thou wert false to thine only friend: Me thou hast estranged by thy
faithlessness; and from the envious rivals, who beset thee on every
side, thou canst expect nothing but rejoicing at thy downfall (Ps.
cxxxvi.; Lam. ii. 15-17; Obad. 10 _sqq._). The peculiar solitariness
of Israel among the nations (Num. xxiii. 9) aggravated the anguish of
her overthrow.
In what follows, the dreadful past appears as a prophecy of the yet
more terrible future. The poet-seer's pathetic monody moralizes the
lost battle of Megiddo--that fatal day when the sun of Judah set in
what seemed the high day of her prosperity, and all the glory and the
promise of good king Josiah vanished like a dream in sudden darkness.
Men might think--doubtless Jeremiah thought, in the first moments of
despair, when the news of that overwhelming disaster was brought to
Jerusalem, with the corpse of the good king, the dead hope of the
nation--that this crushing blow was proof that Iahvah had rejected His
people, in the exercise of a sovereign caprice, and without reference
to their own attitude towards Him. But, says or chants the prophet, in
solemn rhythmic utterance,
"'Twas thou that rejectedst Me;
Backward wouldst thou wend:
So I stretched forth My hand against thee, and wrought thee hurt;
I wearied of relenting."
The cup of national iniquity was full, and its baleful contents
overflowed in a devastating flood. "In the gates of the land"--the
point on the north-west frontier where the armies met--Iahvah
"winnowed His people with a fan," separating those who were doomed to
fall from those who were to survive, as the winnowing fan separates
the chaff from the wheat in the threshing-floor. There He "bereaved"
the nation of their dearest hope, "the breath of their nostrils, the
Lord's Anointed" (Lam. iv. 20); there He multiplied their widows. And
after the lost battle He brought the victor in hot haste against
the "Mother" of the fallen warriors, the ill-fated city, Jerusalem,
to wreak vengeance upon her for her ill-timed opposition. But, for
all this bitter fruit of their evil doings, the people "turned not
back from their own ways"; and therefore the strophe of lamentation
closes with a threat of utter extermination: "Their remnant"--the poor
survival of these fierce storms--"Their remnant will I give to the
sword before their foes."[62]
If the thirteenth and fourteenth verses be not a mere interpolation
in this chapter (see xvii. 3, 4), their proper place would seem to be
here, as continuing and amplifying the sentence upon the residue of
the people. The text is unquestionably corrupt, and must be amended by
help of the other passage, where it is partially repeated. The twelfth
verse may be read thus:
"Thy wealth and thy treasures will I make a prey,
For the sin of thine high places in all thy borders."[63]
Then the fourteenth verse follows, naturally enough, with an
announcement of the Exile:
"And I will enthral thee to thy foes
In a land thou knowest not:
'For a fire is kindled in Mine anger,'
That shall burn for evermore!"[64]
The prophet has now fulfilled his function of judge by pronouncing
upon his people the extreme penalty of the law. His strong perception
of the national guilt and of the righteousness of God has left him
no choice in the matter. But how little this duty of condemnation
accorded with his own individual feeling as a man and a citizen is
clear from the passionate outbreak of the succeeding strophe.
"Woe's me, my mother," he exclaims, "that thou barest me,
A man of strife and a man of contention to all the country!
Neither lender nor borrower have I been;
Yet all of them do curse me."
A desperately bitter tone, evincing the anguish of a man wounded to
the heart by the sense of fruitless endeavour and unjust hatred. He
had done his utmost to save his country, and his reward was universal
detestation. His innocence and integrity were requited with the
odium of the pitiless creditor who enslaves his helpless victim, and
appropriates his all; or the fraudulent borrower who repays a too
ready confidence with ruin.[65]
The next two verses answer this burst of grief and despair:
"Said Iahvah, Thine oppression shall be for good;
I will make the foe thy suppliant in time of evil and in time of
distress.
Can one break iron,
Iron from the north, and brass?"
In other words, faith counsels patience, and assures the prophet
that all things work together for good to them that love God. The
wrongs and bitter treatment which he now endures will only enchance
his triumph, when the truth of his testimony is at last confirmed
by events, and they who now scoff at his message, come humbly to
beseech his prayers. The closing lines refer, with grave irony, to
that unflinching firmness, that inflexible resolution, which, as a
messenger of God, he was called upon to maintain. He is reminded of
what he had undertaken at the outset of his career, and of the Divine
Word which made him "a pillar of iron and walls of brass against all
the land" (i. 18). Is it possible that the pillar of iron can be
broken, and the walls of brass beaten down by the present assault?
There is a pause, and then the prophet vehemently pleads his own cause
with Iahvah. Smarting with the sense of personal wrong, he urges
that his suffering is for the Lord's own sake; that consciousness
of the Divine calling has dominated his entire life, ever since his
dedication to the prophetic office; and that the honour of Iahvah
requires his vindication upon his heartless and hardened adversaries.
"_Thou_ knowest, Iahvah!
Remember me, and visit me, and avenge me on my persecutors.
Take me not away in thy longsuffering;
Regard my bearing of reproach for Thee.
"Thy words were found, and I did eat them,
And it became to me a joy and mine heart's gladness;
For I was called by Thy Name, O Iahvah, God of Sabaoth!
"I sate not in the gathering of the mirthful, nor rejoiced;
Because of Thine hand I sate solitary,
For with indignation Thou didst fill me.
"Why hath my pain become perpetual,
And my stroke malignant, incurable?
Wilt Thou indeed become to me like a delusive stream,
Like waters which are not lasting?"
The pregnant expression, "_Thou_ knowest, Iahvah!" does not refer
specially to anything that has been already said; but rather lays the
whole case before God in a single word. The _Thou_ is emphatic; Thou,
Who knowest all things, knowest my heinous wrongs: Thou knowest and
seest it all, though the whole world beside be blind with passion and
self-regard and sin (Ps. x. 11-14). Thou knowest how pressing is my
need; therefore _Take me not away in Thy longsuffering_: sacrifice not
the life of Thy servant to the claims of forbearance with his enemies
and Thine. The petition shews how great was the peril in which the
prophet perceived himself to stand: he believes that if God delay to
strike down his adversaries, that longsuffering will be fatal to his
own life.