prophet's words was exactly what had been anticipated (ver. 18; cf.
ver. 12). Jeremiah's preaching was a ministry of hardening, in a far
more complete sense than Isaiah's had been. On the present occasion,
the popular obduracy and unbelief evinced itself in a conspiracy
to destroy the prophet by false accusation. They would doubtless
find it not difficult to construe his words as blasphemy against
Iahvah, and treason against the state. And they said: _Come and let
us devise devices_--lay a plot--_against Jeremiah_. Dispassionate
wisdom, mere worldly prudence, would have said, Let us weigh well
the probability or even possibility of the truth of his message.
Moral earnestness, a sincere love of God and goodness, would have
recognised in the prophet's fearful earnest a proof of good faith,
a claim to consideration. Unbiassed common sense would have asked,
What has Jeremiah to gain by persistence in unpopular teaching?
What will be his reward, supposing his words come true? Is it to
be supposed that a man whose woeful tidings are uttered in a voice
broken with sobs, and interrupted by bursts of wild lamentation,
will look with glad eyes upon destruction when it comes, if it come
after all? But habitual sin blinds as well as pollutes the soul. And
when admonition is unacceptable, it breeds hatred. The heart that is
not touched by appeal becomes harder than it was before. The ice of
indifference becomes the adamant of malignant opposition. The populace
of Jerusalem, like that of more modern capitals, was enervated by
ease and luxury, altogether given over to the pursuit of wealth and
pleasure as the end of life. They hated the man who rebuked in the
gate, and abhorred him that spoke uprightly (Amos v. 10). They could
not abide one whose life and labours were a continual protest against
their own. And now he had done his best to rob them of their pleasant
confidence, to destroy the delusion of their fool's paradise. He had
burst into the heathenish sanctuary where they offered a worship
congenial to their hearts, and done his best to wreck their idols, and
dash their altars to the ground. He had affirmed that the accredited
oracles were all a lie, that the guides whom they blindly followed
were leading them to ruin. So the passive dislike of good blazes out
into murderous fury against the good man who dares to be good alone in
the face of a sinful multitude. That they are made thoroughly uneasy
by his message of judgment, that they are more than half convinced
that he is right, is plain from the frantic passion with which they
repeat and deny his words. _Law shall not perish from the priest, nor
counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophet_: these things
cannot, _shall not_ be. When people have pinned their faith to a false
system--a system which accords with their worldly prejudices, and
flatters their ungodly pride, and winks at or even sanctions their
vices; when they have anchored their entire confidence upon certain
men and certain teachings which are in perfect harmony with their own
aims in life and their own selfish predilections, they are not only
disturbed and distressed but often enraged by a demonstration that
they are lulled in a false security. And anger of this kind is apt to
be so irrational, that they may think to escape from the threatened
evil by silencing its prophet. _Come and let us smite him with the
tongue, and let us not hearken to any of his words!_ They will first
get rid of him, and then forget his words of warning. Their policy is
no better than that of the bird which buries its head in the sand,
when its pursuers have run it down; an infatuated Out of sight, out of
mind. And Jeremiah's recompense for his disinterested zeal is another
conspiracy against his life.
Once more he lays his cause before the one impartial Judge; the one
Being who is exalted above all passion, and therefore sees the truth
as it is.
"Hearken Thou, O Iahvah, unto me,
And hear Thou the voice of mine adversaries.
Should evil be recompensed for good?
For they have digged a pit for my life.
Remember my standing before Thee to speak good about them,
To turn back Thy wrath from them."
Hearken Thou, since _they_ refuse to hearken; hear both sides, and
pronounce for the right. Behold the glaring contrast between my
innocence of all hurtful intent, and their clamorous injustice,
between my truth and their falsehood, my prayers for their salvation
and their outcry for my blood.
As we read this prayer of Jeremiah's, we are reminded of the very
similar language of the thirty-fifth and hundred and ninth psalms,
of which he was himself perhaps the author (see especially Ps. xxxv.
1, 4, 5, 7, 11, 12; cix. 2, 5). We have already partially considered
the moral aspect of such petitions. It is necessary to bear in
mind that the prophet is speaking of persons who have persistently
rejected warning, and ridiculed reproof; and now, in return for his
intercessions on their behalf, are attempting his life, not in a
sudden outbreak of uncontrollable fury, but with craft and deliberate
malice, after seeking, apparently, like their spiritual successors in
a later age, to entrap him into admissions that might be construed as
treason or blasphemy (Ps. xxxv. 19-21).
"Therefore give their sons to the famine,
And pour them into the hands of the sword;
And let their wives be bereaved and widows,
And let their husbands be slain of Death;
Let their young men be stricken down of the sword in the battle!
"Let a cry be heard from their houses,
When Thou bringest a troop upon them suddenly!
For they digged a pit to catch me,
And snares they hid for my feet.
"But of Thyself, Iahvah, Thou knowest all their plan against me for
death;
Pardon Thou not their iniquity,
And blot not out their trespass from before Thee;
But let them be made to stumble before Thee,
In the time of Thine anger deal Thou with them!"
The passage is lyrical in form and expression, and something must be
allowed for the fact in estimating its precise significance. Jeremiah
had entreated God and man that all these things might not come to pass.
Now, when the attitude of the people towards his message and himself at
last leaves no doubt that their obduracy is invincible, in his despair
and distraction he cries, Be it so, then! They are bent on destruction;
let them have their will! Let the doom overtake them, that I have
laboured in vain to avert! With a weary sigh, and a profound sense of
the ripeness of his country for ruin, he gives up the struggle to save
it. The passage thus becomes a rhetorical or poetical expression of the
prophet's despairing recognition of the inevitable.
How vivid are the touches with which he brings out upon his canvas the
horrors of war! In language lurid with all the colours of destruction,
he sets before us the city taken by storm, he makes us hear the
cry of the victims, as house after house is visited by pillage and
slaughter. But stripped of its poetical form, all this is no more
than a concentrated repetition of the sentence which he has over and
over again pronounced against Jerusalem in the name of Iahvah. The
imprecatory manner of it may be considered to be simply a solemn
signification of the speaker's own assent and approval. He recalls the
sentence, and he affirms its perfect consonance with his own sense
of justice. Moreover all these terrible things actually happened in
the sequel. The prophet's imprecations received the Divine seal of
accomplishment. This fact alone seems to me to distinguish his prayer
from a merely human cry for vengeance. So far as his feelings as a
man and a patriot were concerned, we cannot doubt that he would have
averted the catastrophe, had that been possible, by the sacrifice of
his own life. That indeed was the object of his entire ministry. We
may call the passage an emotional prediction; and it was probably the
predictive character of it which led the prophet to put it on record.
While we admit that no Christian may ordinarily pray for the
annihilation of any but spiritual enemies, we must remember that no
Christian can possibly occupy the same peculiar position as a prophet
of the Old Covenant; and we may fairly ask whether any who may incline
to judge harshly of Jeremiah on the ground of passages like this, have
fully realized the appalling circumstances which wrung these prayers
from his cruelly tortured heart? _We_ find it hard to forgive small
personal slights, often less real than imaginary; how should we comport
ourselves to persons whose shameless ingratitude rewarded evil for good
to the extent of seeking our lives? Few would be content, as Jeremiah
was, with putting the cause in the hand of God, and abstaining from all
attempts at personal vindication of wrongs. It surely betrays a failure
of imaginative power to realize the terrible difficulties which beset
the path of one who, in a far truer sense than Elijah, was left alone
to uphold the cause of true religion in Israel, and not less, a very
inadequate knowledge of our own spiritual weakness, when we are bold to
censure or even to apologise for the utterances of Jeremiah.
The whole question assumes a different aspect, when it is noticed that
the brief "Thus said Iahvah!" of the next chapter (xix.) virtually
introduces the Divine reply to the prophet's prayer. He is now bidden
to foreshow the utter destruction of the Jewish polity by a symbolic
act which is even more unambiguous than the language of the prayer. He
is to take a common earthenware bottle (_baqbûq_, as if "pour-pour";
from _baqaq_, "to pour out"), and, accompanied by some of the leading
personages of the capital, heads of families and priests, to go out
of the city to the valley of ben Hinnom, and there, after a solemn
rehearsal of the crimes perpetrated on that very spot in the name of
religion, and after predicting the consequent retribution which will
shortly overtake the nation, he is to dash the vessel in pieces before
his companions' eyes, in token of the utter and irreparable ruin which
awaits their city and people.
Having enacted his part in this striking scene, Jeremiah returns to the
court of the temple, and there repeats the same terrible message in
briefer terms before all the people; adding expressly that it is the
reward of their stubborn obstinacy and deafness to the Divine voice.
The prophet's imprecations of evil thus appear to have been ratified
at the time of their conception by the Divine voice, which spoke in
the stillness of his after reflexion.
FOOTNOTE:
[80] Instead of שדי מצור "from the rock of the field," I have ventured
to read שדי מצוף (Lam. iii. 54; Deut. xi. 4; 2 Kings vi. 6). For ינתשו
"plucked up" "uprooted," which is inappropriate in connexion with
water, Schnurrer's ינתשו "dried up" (Isa. xix. 5; Jer. li. 30), is
probably right. In the second couplet, I read זבים for זרים, which is
meaningless, and transpose קרים with נוזלים.
XII.
_THE BROKEN VESSEL--A SYMBOL OF JUDGMENT._
JEREMIAH xix.
The result of his former address, founded upon the procedure of the
potter, had only been to bring out into clearer distinctness the
appalling extent of the national corruption. It was evident that Judah
was incorrigible, and the Potter's vessel must be broken in pieces by
its Maker.
_Thus said Iahvah: Go and buy a bottle_ (_baqbûq_, as if "a
pour-pour"; the meaning is alluded to in the first word of ver. 7:
_ubaqqothi_, "and I will pour out") _of a moulder of pottery_ (so
the accents; but perhaps the Vulgate is right: "lagunculam figuli
testeam," "a potter's earthen vessel," A.V.; lit. _a potter's bottle_,
viz., _earthenware_), _and_ (_take_: LXX. rightly adds) _some of the
elders of the people and of the elders of the priests, and go out
into the valley of ben Hinnom at the entry of the Pottery Gate_ (a
postern, where broken earthenware and rubbish were shot forth into the
valley: the term is connected with that for "pottery," ver. 1, which
is the same as that in Job ii. 8), _and cry there the words that I
shall speak unto thee_,--Jeremiah does not pause here, to relate how
he followed the Divine impulse, but goes on at once to communicate the
tenor of the Divine "words"; a circumstance which points to the fact
that this narrative was only written some time after the symbolical
action which it records;--_and say thou, Hear ye Iahvah's word, O
kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem! Thus said Iahvah Sabaoth,
the God of Israel: Lo, I am about to bring an evil upon this place,
such that, whoever heareth it, his ears shall tingle!_ If we suppose,
as seems likely, that this series of oracles (xviii.-xx.) belongs to
the reign of Jehoiachin, the expression "kings of Judah" may denote
that king and the queen-mother. Another view is that the kings of
Judah in general are addressed "as an indefinite class of persons,"
here and elsewhere (xvii. 20, xxii. 4), because the prophet did not
write the main portion of his book until after the siege of Jerusalem
(Ewald). The announcement of this verse is quoted by the compiler of
Kings in relation to the crimes of king Manasseh (2 Kings xxi. 12).
_Because that they forsook Me, and made this place strange_--alienated
it from Iahvah by consecrating it to "strange gods"; or as the Targum
and Syriac, "polluted" it--_and burnt incense therein to other gods,
whom neither they nor their fathers knew_ (xvi. 13); _and the kings
of Judah did fill this place with blood of innocents_ (so the LXX.
"Nor the kings of Judah" gives a poor sense; they are included in the
preceding phrase), _and built the bamoth Baal_ (High-places of Baal; a
proper name, Josh. xiii. 17), _to burn their sons in the fire_, [_as
burnt-offerings to the Baal_: LXX. omits, and it is wanting, vii. 31,
xxxii. 35. It may be a gloss, but is probably genuine, as there are
slight variations in each passage], _which I commanded not_, [_nor
spake_: LXX. omits], _neither came it into My mind: therefore, behold
days are coming, saith Iahvah, when this place will no more be called
the Tophet and valley of ben Hinnom but the Valley_ _of Slaughter!_
[_and in Tophet shall they bury, so that there be_--remain--_no room
to bury!_ This clause, preserved at the end of ver. 11, but omitted
there by the LXX., probably belongs here: see vii. 42]. _And I will
pour out_ (ver. 1; Isa. xix. 3) _the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem
in this place_--that is, I will _empty_ the land of all wisdom and
resourcefulness, as one empties a bottle of its water, so that the
heads of the state shall be powerless to devise any effectual scheme
of defence in the face of calamity (cf. xiii. 13)--_and I will cause
them to fall by the sword "before their enemies"_ (Deut. xxviii. 25),
_and by the hand of them that seek their life; and I will make "their
carcases food unto the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth"_
(Deut. xxviii. 26; chap. vii. 33, xvi. 4). _And I will set this city
"for an astonishment"_ (Deut. xxviii. 37) _and a hissing_ (xviii. 16);
_every one that passeth by her shall be astonished and hiss at all her
"strokes"_ (xlix. 17, l. 13) or "_plagues_" (Deut. xxviii. 59). _And
I will cause them to "eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of
their daughters," and each the flesh of his fellow shall they eat--"in
the stress and the straitness wherewith their enemies" and they that
seek their life "shall straiten them."_ It will be seen from the
references that the Deuteronomic colouring of these closing threats
(vv. 7-9) is very strong, the last verse being practically a quotation
(Deut. xxviii. 53). The effect of the whole oracle would thus be to
suggest that the terrible sanctions of the sacred Law would not remain
inoperative; but that the shameless violation of the solemn covenant
under Josiah, by which the nation undertook to observe the code of
Deuteronomy, would soon be visited with the retributive calamities so
vividly foreshadowed in that book.
_And break thou the bottle, to the eyes of the men that_ _go with
thee, and say unto them: Thus said Iahvah Sabaoth; So will I break
this people and this city, as one breaketh the potter's vessel so
that it cannot be mended again! Thus will I do to this place, saith
Iahvah, and to the inhabitants thereof and make_ (infin. constr. as
in xvii. 10, continuing the mood and person of the preceding verb;
which is properly a function of the infin. absol., as in ver. 13)
_this city like a Tophet_--make it one huge altar of human sacrifice,
a burning-place for thousands of human victims. _And the houses of
Jerusalem, and the houses of the kings of Judah_--the palace of David
and Solomon, in which king after king had reigned, and "done the
evil in Iahvah's eyes,"--_shall become like the place of the Tophet,
the defiled ones! even all the houses upon the roofs of which they
burnt incense unto all the host of heaven, and poured outpourings_
(libations of wine and honey) _unto other gods_. (So the Heb.
punctuation, which seems to give a very good sense. The principal
houses, those of the kings and grandees, are called "the defiled,"
because their roofs especially have been polluted with idolatrous
rites. The last clause of the verse explains the epithet, which might
have been referred to "the kings of Judah," had it preceded "like the
place of the Tophet." The houses were not to become "defiled"; they
were already so, past all cleansing; they were to be destroyed with
fire, and in their destruction to become the Tophet or sacrificial
pyre of their inhabitants. We need not, therefore, read _Tophteh_,
after Isa. xxx. 33, as I at first thought of doing, to find afterwards
that Ewald had already suggested it. The term rendered "even all," is
lit. "unto all," that is, "including all"; cf. Ezek. xliv. 9).[81]
The command _and break thou the bottle_ ... _and say unto them_ ...
compared with that of ver. 2, _and cry there the words that I shall
speak unto thee!_ seems to indicate the proper point of view from
which the whole piece is to be regarded. Jeremiah is recalling and
describing a particular episode in his past ministry; and he includes
the whole of it, with the attendant circumstances and all that he
said; first to the elders in the vale of ben Hinnom, and then to
the people assembled in the temple, under the comprehensive _Thus
said Iahvah!_ with which he begins his narrative. In other words, he
affirms that he was throughout the entire occurrence guided by the
impulses of the Spirit of God. It is very possible that the longer
first address (vv. 2-9) really gives the substance of what he said
to the people in the temple on his return from the valley, which is
merely summarized in verse 15.
_And Jeremiah came in_--into the temple--_from the Tophet, whither
Iahvah had sent him to prophesy, and took his stand in the court of
Iahvah's House, and said unto all the people: Thus said Iahvah Sabaoth
Israels God; Lo, I am about to bring upon_ (ver. 3) _this city and
upon all her cities_ [_and upon her villages_: LXX. adds] _all the
evil that I have spoken concerning her; because they stiffened their
neck_ (vii. 26), _not to hear My words!_ In this apparent epitome of
His discourse to the people in the temple, the prophet seems to sum
up all his past labours, in view of an impending crisis. "All the
evil" spoken hitherto concerning Jerusalem is upon the point of being
accomplished (cf. xxv. 3).
In reviewing the entire oracle, we may note as in former instances,
the care with which all the circumstances of the symbolical action
are chosen, in order to enhance the effect of it upon the minds
of the witnesses. The Oriental mind delights in everything that
partakes of the nature of an enigma; it loves to be called upon to
unravel the meaning of dark sentences, and to disentangle the wisdom
wrapped up in riddling words and significant actions. It would have
found eloquence in Tarquin's unspoken answer to his son's messenger.
"Rex velut deliberabundus in hortum ædium transit, sequente nuncio
filii: ibi inambulans tacitus summa papaverum capita dicitur baculo
decussisse" (Liv. i. 54). No doubt Jeremiah's companions would watch
his every step, and would not miss the fact that he carried his
earthenware vessel out of the city by the "Sherd Gate." Here was a
vessel yet whole, treated as though it were already a shattered heap
of fragments! They would be prepared for the oracle in the valley.
It is worth while, by the way, to notice who those companions were.
They were certain of "the elders of the people" and of the "the
elders of the priests." Jeremiah, it seems, was no wild revolutionary
dreamer and schemer, whose hand and voice were against all established
authority in Church and State. This was not the character of the
Hebrew prophets in general, though some writers have conceived thus of
them. There is no evidence that Jeremiah ever sought to divest himself
of the duties and privileges of his hereditary priesthood; or that
he looked upon the monarchy and the priestly guilds and the entire
social organisation of Israel, as other than institutions divinely
originated and divinely preserved through all the ages of the national
history. He did not believe that man created these institutions
though experience taught him that man might abuse and pervert them
from their lawful uses. His aim was always to reform, to restore, to
lead the people back to "the old paths" of primitive simplicity and
rectitude; not to abolish hereditary institutions, and substitute for
the order which had become an integral part of the national life, some
brand-new constitution which had never been tried, and would be no
more likely to fit the body corporate than the armour of Saul fitted
the free limbs of the young shepherd who was to slay Goliath.
The prophets never called for the abolition of those laws and customs,
civil and ecclesiastical, which were the very framework of the state,
and the pillars of the social edifice. They did not cry, "Down with
kings and priests!" but to both kings and priests they cried, "Hear ye
Iahvah's word!" And all experience proves that they were right. Paper
constitutions have never yet redeemed a nation from its vices, nor
delivered a community from the impotence and the decay which are the
inevitable fruits of moral corruption. Arbitrary legislative changes
will not alter the inward condition of a people; covetousness and
hypocrisy, pride and selfishness, intemperance and uncleanness and
cruelty, may be as rampant in a commonwealth as in a kingdom.
The contents of the oracle are much what we have had many times
already. The chief difference lies in a calm definiteness of
assurance, a tone of distinct certitude, as though the end were so
near at hand, as to leave no room for doubt or hesitation. And this
difference is fittingly and impressively suggested by the particular
symbol chosen--the shattering of an earthenware vessel, beyond the
possibility of repair. The direct mention of the king of Babylon and
the Babylonian captivity, in the sequel (chap. xx.), points to the
presence of a Babylonian invasion, probably that which ended with the
exile of Jeconiah and the chief citizens of Jerusalem.
The fatal sin, from which the oracle starts and to which it returns,
is forsaking Iahvah, and making the city of His choice "strange" to
Him, that is, hateful and unclean, by contact with foreign and bloody
superstitions, which were even falsely declared by their promoters to
be pleasing to Iahvah, the Avenger of innocent blood! (chap. vii. 31).
The punishment corresponds to the offence. The sacrifices of blood
will be requited with blood, shed in torrents on the very spot which
had been so foully polluted; they who had not scrupled to slay their
children for the sacrifice, were to slay them again for food under the
stress of siege and famine; the city and its houses, defiled with the
foreign worships, will become one vast Molech-fire (xxxii. 35), in
which all will perish together.
It may strike a modern reader that there is something repulsive and
cold-blooded in this detailed enumeration of appalling horrors.
But not only is it the case that Jeremiah is quoting from the Book
of the Law, at a time when, to an unprejudiced eye, there was
every likelihood that the course of events would verify his dark
forebodings; in the dreadful experience of those times such incidents
as those mentioned (ver. 9) were familiar occurrences in the obstinate
defence and protracted sufferings of beleaguered cities. The prophet,
therefore, simply affirms that obstinate persistence in following
their own counsels and rejecting the higher guidance will bring upon
the nation its irretrievable ruin. We know that in the last siege he
did his utmost to prevent the occurrence of these unnatural horrors by
urging surrender; but then, as always, the people "stiffened their
neck, not to hear Iahvah's words."