described the resolute obstinacy of the national character. How
were the headstrong self-will, the inveterate sensuality, the blind
tenacity of fanatical and non-moral conceptions which characterized
this people, to be purified and made serviceable in the interests
of true religion, except by means of the fiery ordeal which all the
prophets foresaw and foretold? As we have seen, polytheism exercised
upon the popular mind a spell which we can hardly comprehend from
our modern point of view; a polytheism foul and murderous, which
violated the tenderest affections of our nature by demanding of the
father the sacrifice of his child, and violated the very instinct of
natural purity by the shameless indulgence of its worship. It was a
consecration of lust and cruelty,--that worship of Molech, those rites
of the Baals and Asheras. Meagre and monotonous as the sacred records
may on these heads appear to be, their witness is supplemented by
other sources, by the monuments of Babylon and Phenicia.
It is hard to see how the religious instinct of men in this peculiar
stage of belief and practice was to be enlightened and purified in
any other way than the actual course of Providence. What arguments
can be imagined that would have appealed to minds which found a fatal
fascination, nay, we must suppose an intense satisfaction, in rites so
hideous that one durst not even describe them; minds to which the lofty
monotheism of Amos, the splendid eloquence of an Isaiah, the plaintive
lyrical strain of a Jeremiah, appealed in vain? Appeals to the order of
the world, to the wonders of organic life, were lost upon minds which
made gods of the most obvious subjects of that order, the sun, moon, and
stars; which even personified and adored the physical principle whereby
the succession of life after life is perpetuated.
Nothing short of the perception _that the word of the prophets had
come to pass_, the recognition, therefore, that the prophetic idea of
God was the true idea, could have succeeded in keeping the remnant of
Judah safe from the contagion of surrounding heathenism in the land of
their exile, and in radically transforming once for all the religious
tendencies of the Jewish race.
In Jeremiah's view, the heinousness of Judah's idolatry is heightened by
the consideration that the gods of their choice are gods "whom neither
they nor their fathers knew" (ver. 4). The kings Ahaz, Manasseh, Amon,
had introduced novel rites, and departed from "the old paths" more
decidedly than any of their predecessors. In this connexion, we may
remember that, while modern Romish controversialists do not scruple
to accuse the Church of this country of having unlawfully innovated
at the Reformation, the Anglican appeal has always been to Scripture
and primitive antiquity. Such, too, was the appeal of the prophets
(Hos. vi. 1, 7, xi. 1; Jer. ii. 2, vi. 16, xi. 3). It is the glory of
our Church, a glory of which neither the lies of Jesuits nor the envy
of the sectaries can rob her, that she returned to "the old paths,"
boldly overleaping the dark ages of medieval ignorance, imposture, and
corruption, and planting her foot firmly upon the rock of apostolic
practice and the consent of the undivided Church.
Disunion among Christians is a sore evil, but union in the maintenance
and propaganda of falsehood is a worse; and the guilt of disunion lies
at the door of that system which abused its authority to crush out
legitimate freedom of thought, to retard the advancement of learning,
and to establish those monstrous innovations in doctrine and worship,
which subtle dialecticians may prove to their own satisfaction to be
innocent and non-idolatrous in essence and intention, though all the
world can see that in practice they are grossly idolatrous. God preserve
England from that toleration of serious error, which is so easy to
sceptical indifference! God preserve her from lending an ear to the
siren voices that would seduce her to yield her hard-won independence,
her noble freedom, her manly rational piety, to the unhistorical and
unscriptural claims of the Papacy!
If we reverence those Scriptures of the Old Testament to which our Lord
and His Apostles made their constant appeal, we shall keep steadily
before our minds the fact that, in the estimation of a prophet like
Jeremiah, the sin of sins, the sin that involved the ruin of Israel and
Judah, was the sin of associating other objects of worship with the
One Only God. The temptation is peculiarly strong to some natures. The
continual relapse of ancient Israel is not so great a wonder to those
of us who have any knowledge of mankind, and who can observe what is
passing around them at the present day. It is the severe demand of God's
holy law, which makes men cast about for some plausible compromise--it
is that demand which also makes them yearn after some intermediary
power, whose compassion will be less subject to considerations of
justice, whom prayers and entreaties and presents may overcome, and
induce to wink at unrepented sin. In an age of unsettlement, the more
daring spirits will be prone to silence their inconvenient scruples by
rushing into atheism, while the more timid may take refuge in Popery.
"For to disown a Moral Governour, or to admit that any observances of
superstition can release men from the duty of obeying Him, equally
serves the purpose of those, who resolve to be as wicked as they dare,
or as little virtuous as they can" (Bp. Hurd).
Then, too, there is the glory of the saints and angels of God. How
can frail man refuse to bow before the vision of their power and
splendour, as they stand, the royal children of the King of kings,
around the heavenly throne, deathless, radiant with love and joy and
purity, exalted far above all human weakness and human sorrows? If the
holy angels are "ministering spirits," why not the entire community
of the Blessed? And what is to hinder us from casting ourselves at
the feet of saint or angel, one's own appointed guardian, or chosen
helper? Let good George Herbert answer for us all.
"Oh glorious spirits, who after all your bands
See the smooth face of God, without a frown,
Or strict commands;
Where every one is king, and hath his crown,
If not upon his head, yet in his hands:
"Not out of envy or maliciousness
Do I forbear to crave your special aid.
I would address
My vows to thee most gladly, blessed Maid,
And Mother of my God, in my distress:
* * * * *
"But now, (alas!) I dare not; for our King,
Whom we do all jointly adore and praise,
Bids no such thing:
And where His pleasure no injunction lays,
('Tis your own case) ye never move a wing.
"All worship is prerogative, and a flower
Of His rich crown, from whom lies no appeal
At the last hour:
Therefore we dare not from His garland steal,
To make a posy for inferior power."
In this sense also, as in many others, the warning of St. John applies:
LITTLE CHILDREN, KEEP YOURSELVES FROM IDOLS!
FOOTNOTE:
[81] LXX. ἀπὸ τῶν ἀκαθαρσιῶν αὐτῶν makes it possible that they read
מטמאים which would represent מְטֻמֶּאִים "defiled."
XIII.
_JEREMIAH UNDER PERSECUTION._
JEREMIAH xx.
The prophet has now to endure something more than a scornful rejection
of his message. _And Pashchur ben Immer the priest_ (_he was chief
officer in the house of Iahvah_) _heard Jeremiah prophesying these
words. And Pashchur smote Jeremiah the prophet and put him in the
stocks, which were in the upper gate of Benjamin in the house of
Iahvah._ Like the priest of Bethel, who abruptly put an end to
the preaching of Amos in the royal sanctuary, Pashchur suddenly
interferes, apparently before Jeremiah has finished his address
to the people; and enraged at the tenour of his words, he causes
him--"Jeremiah _the prophet_," as it is significantly added, to
indicate the sacrilege of the act--to be beaten in the cruel Eastern
manner on the soles of the feet, inflicting probably the full number
of forty blows permitted by the Law (Deut.), and then leaving him,
in his agony of mind and body, fast bound in "the stocks." For the
remainder of that day and all night long the prophet sat there in the
gate, at first exposed to the taunts and jeers of his adversaries and
the rabble of their followers, and as the weary hours slowly crept on,
becoming painfully cramped in his limbs by the barbarous machine which
held his hands and feet near together, and bent his body double. This
cruel punishment seems to have been the customary mode of dealing
with such as were accounted false prophets by the authorities. It was
the treatment which Hanani endured in return for his warning to king
Asa (2 Chron. xvi. 10), some three centuries earlier than Jeremiah's
time; and a few years later in our prophet's history, an attempt was
made to enforce it again in his case (Jer. xxix. 26). Thus, like the
holy apostles of our Lord, was Jeremiah "counted worthy to suffer
shame" for the Name in which he spoke (Acts v. 40, 41); and like Paul
and Silas at Philippi, after enduring "many stripes" his feet were
"made fast in the stocks" (Acts xvi. 23, 24). The message of Jeremiah
was a message of judgment, that of the apostles was a message of
forgiveness; and both met with the same response from a world whose
heart was estranged from God. The heart that loves its own way, is
only at ease when it can forget God. Any reminder of His Presence, of
His perpetual activity in mercy and judgment, is unwelcome, and makes
its authors odious. From the outset, transgressors of the Divine law
have sought to hide _among the trees of the garden_--in the engrossing
pursuits and pleasures of life--from the Presence of God.
Pashchur's object was not to destroy Jeremiah, but to break his spirit,
and discredit him with the multitude, and so silence him for ever. But
in this expectation he was as signally disappointed as his successor
was in the case of St. Peter (Acts v. 24, 29). Now as then, God's
messenger could not be turned from his conviction that _we ought to obey
God rather than men_. And as he sat alone in his intolerable anguish,
brooding over his shameful wrongs, and despairing of redress, a Divine
Word came in the stillness of night to this victim of human tyranny.
For it _came to pass on the morrow that Pashchur brought Jeremiah forth
out of the stocks; and Jeremiah said unto him, Not Pashchur_[82]--as
if "Glad and free"--_but Magor-missabib_--"Fear on every side"--_hath
Iahvah called thy name_! Sharpened with misery, the seer's eye pierces
through the shows of life, and discerns the grim contrast of truth
and appearance. Before him stands this great man, clothed with all
the dignity of high office, and able to destroy him with a word; but
Iahvah's prophet does not quail before abused authority. He sees the
sword suspended by a hair over the head of this haughty and supercilious
official; and he realizes the solemn irony of circumstance, which has
connected a name suggestive of gladness and freedom with a man destined
to become the thrall of perpetual terrors. _For thus hath Iahvah said:
Lo, I am about to make thee a Fear to thyself and to all thy lovers;
and they will fall by the sword of their foes, while thine eyes look
on!_ This "glad and free" persecutor, wantoning in the abuse of power,
blindly fearless of the future, is not doomed to be slain out of hand;
a heavier fate is in store for him, a fate prefigured and foreshadowed
by his present sins. His proud confidence is to give place to a haunting
sense of danger and insecurity; he is to see his followers perish one
after another, and evermore to be expecting the same end for himself:
while the freedom which he has enjoyed and abused so long, is to be
exchanged for a lifelong captivity in a foreign land. _And all Judah
will I give into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he will transport
them to Babylon, and smite them with the sword. And I will give all the
store of this city_--the hoarded wealth of all sorts, which constitutes
its strength and reserve force--_and all the gain thereof_--the produce
of labour--_and all the value thereof_--things rare and precious of
every kind, works of the carver's and the goldsmith's and the potter's
and the weaver's art;--_and all the treasures of the kings of Judah will
I give into the hand of their foes, that they may spoil them and take
them and bring them to Babylon_.
_And for thyself, Pashchur, and all that dwell in thine house, ye
shall depart among the captives; and to Babylon thou shall come, and
there thou shalt die, and there be buried, thyself and all thy lovers,
to whom thou hast prophesied with untruth_, or rather _by the Lie_,
i.e., _by the Baal_ (ii. 8, xxiii. 13, cf. xii. 16).
The play on the name of Pashchur is like that on Perath (ch. xiii.), and
the change to Magor-missabib is like the change of Tophet into "Valley
of Slaughter" (ch. xix.). Like Amos (vii. 16), Jeremiah repeats his
obnoxious prophecy, with a special application to his cruel persecutor,
and with the added detail that all the wealth of Jerusalem will be
carried as spoil to Babylon; a detail in which there may lie an oblique
reference to the covetous worldliness and the interested opposition of
such men as Pashchur. Riches and ease and popularity were the things
for which he and those like him had bargained away their integrity,
prophesying with conscious falsehood to the deluded people. His "lovers"
are his partisans, who eagerly welcomed his presages of peace and
prosperity, and doubtless actively opposed Jeremiah with ridicule and
threats. The last detail is remarkable, for we do not otherwise know
that Pashchur affected to prophesy. If it be not meant simply that
Pashchur accepted and lent the weight of his official sanction to the
false prophets, and especially those who uttered their divinations in
the name of "the Baal," that is to say, either Molech, or the popular
and delusive conception of the God of Israel, we see in this man one
who combined a steady professional opposition to Jeremiah with power
to enforce his hostility by legalized acts of violence. The conduct
of Hananiah on a later occasion (xxviii. 10), clearly proves that,
where the power was present, the will for such acts was not wanting in
Jeremiah's professional adversaries.
It is generally taken for granted that the name of "Pashchur" has
been substituted for that of "Malchijah" in the list of the priestly
families which returned with Zerubbabel from the Babylonian captivity
(Ezra ii. 38; Neh. vii. 41; cf. 1 Chron. xxiv. 9); but it seems quite
possible that "the sons of Pashchur" were a subdivision of the family
of Immer, which had increased largely during the Exile. In that case,
the list affords evidence of the fulfilment of Jeremiah's prediction
to Pashchur. The prophet elsewhere mentions another Pashchur, who was
also a priest, of the course or guild of Malchijah (xxi. 1, xxxviii.
1), which was the designation of the fifth class of the priests, as
"Immer" was that of the sixteenth (1 Chron. xxiv. 9, 14). The prince
Gedaliah, who was hostile to Jeremiah, was apparently a son of the
present Pashchur (Jer. xxxviii. 1).
It is not easy to determine the relation of the lyrical section which
immediately follows the doom of Pashchur, to the preceding account
(vv. 7-8). If the seventh verse be in its original place, it would
seem that the prophet's word had failed of accomplishment, with
the result of intensifying the unbelief and the ridicule which his
teachings encountered. There is also something very strange in the
sequence of the thirteenth and fourteenth verses, where, as the text
now stands, the prophet passes at once, in the most abrupt fashion
imaginable, from a fervid ascription of praise, a heartfelt cry of
thanksgiving for deliverance either actual or contemplated as such,
to utterances of unrelieved despair. I do not think that this is in
the manner of Jeremiah; nor do I see how the violent contrast of the
two sections (7-13 and 14-18) can fairly be accounted for, except by
supposing either that we have here two unconnected fragments, placed
in juxtaposition with each other because they belong to the same
general period of the prophet's ministry; or that the two passages
have by some accident of transcription been transposed, which is by
no means an uncommon occurrence in the MSS. of the Biblical writers.
Assuming this latter as the more probable alternative, we see in the
entire passage a powerful representation of the mental conflict into
which Jeremiah was thrown by Pashchur's high-handed violence and the
seeming triumph of his enemies. Smarting with the sense of utter
injustice, humiliated in his inmost soul by shameful indignities,
crushed to the earth with the bitter consciousness of defeat and
failure, the prophet like Job opens his mouth and curses his day.
1. "Cursed be the day wherein I was born!
The day that my mother bare me,
Let it not be blest!
2. Cursed be the man who told the glad tidings to my father,
'There is born to thee a male child;'
Who made him rejoice greatly.
3. And let that man become like the cities that Iahweh overthrew,
without relenting,
And let him hear a cry in the morning,
And an alarm at the hour of noon!
4. For that he slew me not in the womb,
That my mother might have become my grave,
And her womb have been laden evermore!
5. O why from the womb came I forth
To see labour and sorrow,
And my days fordone with shame?"
These five triplets afford a glimpse of the lively grief, the
passionate despair, which agitated the prophet's heart as the first
effect of the shame and the torture to which he had been so wickedly
and wantonly subjected. The elegy, of which they constitute the proem,
or opening strophe, is not introduced by any formula ascribing it to
Divine inspiration; it is simply written down as a faithful record
of Jeremiah's own feelings and reflexions and self-communings, at
this painful crisis in his career. The poet of the book of Job has
apparently taken the hint supplied by these opening verses, and has
elaborated the idea of cursing the day of birth through seven highly
wrought and imaginative stanzas. The higher finish and somewhat
artificial expansion of that passage leave little doubt that it was
modelled upon the one before us. But the point to remember here is
that both are lyrical effusions, expressed in language conditioned by
Oriental rather than European standards of taste and usage. As the
prophets were not inspired to express their thoughts and feelings in
a modern English dress, it is superfluous to inquire whether Jeremiah
was morally justified in using these poetic formulas of imprecation.
To insist on applying the doctrine of verbal inspiration to such a
passage is to evince an utter want of literary tact and insight, as
well as adhesion to an exploded and pernicious relic of sectarian
theology. The prophet's curses are simply a highly effective form of
poetical rhetoric, and are in perfect harmony with the immemorial
modes of Oriental expression; and the underlying thought, so
equivocally expressed, according to our ways of looking at things, is
simply that his life has been a failure, and therefore it would have
been better not to have been born. Who that is at all earnest for
God's truth, nay, for far lower objects of human interest and pursuit,
has not in moments of despondency and discouragement been overwhelmed
for a time by the like feeling? Can we blame Jeremiah for allowing us
to see in this faithful transcript of his inner life how intensely
human, how entirely natural the spiritual experience of the prophets
really was? Besides, the revelation does not end with this initial
outburst of instinctive astonishment, indignation and despair. The
proem is succeeded by a psalm in seven stanzas of regular poetical
form--six quatrains rounded off with a final couplet--in which the
prophet's thought rises above the level of nature, and finds in an
overruling Providence both the source and the justification of the
enigma of his life.
1. "Thou enticedst me, Iahvah, and I was enticed,
Thou urgedst[83] me, and didst prevail!
I am become a derision all the day long.
Every one mocketh at me.
2. "For as oft as I speak, I cry alarm,
Violence and havoc do I proclaim;
For Iahvah's word is become to me a reproach,
And a scoff all the day long.
3. "And if I say, I will not mind it,
Nor speak any more in His Name;
Then it becometh in my heart like a burning fire prisoned in my
bones.
And I weary of holding it in[84] and am not able.
4. "For I have heard the defaming of many, the terror on every
side;[85]
All the men of my friendship are watching for my fall;
'Perchance he will be enticed, and we shall prevail over him,
And take our revenge of him.'
5. "Yet Iahvah is with me as a dread warrior,
Therefore my pursuers shall stumble and not prevail;
They shall be greatly ashamed, for that they have not prospered,
With eternal dishonour that shall not be forgotten.
6. "And Iahvah Sabaoth trieth the righteous,
Seeth the reins and the heart;
I shall see Thy revenge of them,
For unto Thee have I committed my quarrel.
7. Sing ye to Iahvah, acclaim ye Iahvah!
For He hath snatched the poor man's life out of the hand of
evildoers."
The cause was of God. _Thou didst lure me, Iahvah, and I let myself
be lured; Thou urgedst me and wert victorious._ He had not rashly
and presumptuously taken upon himself this office of prophet; he had
been called, and had resisted the call, until his scruples and his
pleadings were overcome, as was only natural, by a Will more powerful
than his own (chap. i. 6). In speaking of the inward persuasions which
determined the course of his life, he uses the very terms which are
used by the author of Kings in connexion with the spirit that misled
the prophets of Arab before the fatal expedition to Ramoth Gilead.
_And he said, Thou shalt entice, and also be victorious_ (1 Kings
xxii. 22). Iahvah, therefore, has treated him as an enemy rather
than a friend, for He has lured him to his own destruction. Half in
irony, half in bitter complaint, the prophet declares that Iahvah has
succeeded only too well in His malign purpose: _I am become a derision
all the day long; Every one mocketh at me_.
In the second stanza, the thought appears to be continued thus:
_Thou overcamest me; for as often as I speak_, I am a prophet of
evil, _I cry alarm_ (_`ez'aq_; cf. _zĕ`aqah_, vers. 16); I proclaim
the imminence of invasion, the _violence and havoc_ of a ruthless
conqueror. _Thou overcamest me_ also, in Thy purpose of making me a
laughing-stock to my adversaries; _for Iahvah's word is become to me a
reproach, and a scoff all the day long_ (the relation between the two
halves of the stanza is that of coordination; each gives the reason of
the corresponding couplet in the first stanza). His continual threats
of a judgment that was still delayed, brought upon him the merciless
ridicule of his opponents.
Or the prophet may mean to complain that the monotony of his message,
his ever-recurring denunciation of prevalent injustice, is made a
reproach against him. _For as often as I speak I make an outcry_ of
indignation at foul wrongdoing (Gen. iv. 10, xviii. 21, xix. 13); _wrong
and robbery do I proclaim_ (Hab. i. 2, 3)--the oppression of the poor
by the covetous and luxurious ruling classes. A third view is that
Jeremiah complains of the frequent attacks upon himself: _For_ _as
often as I speak I have to exclaim; Of assault and violence do I cry_;
but the first suggestion appears to suit best, as giving a reason for
the ridicule which the prophet finds so intolerable (cf. xvii. 15).