"Yet they were not afraid."--_Jer. 36:24._
YOU heard what a bad, cruel king Jehoiakim was. Still there was a hope
that he and his people would take warning, when he heard that God would
punish his sin; so Jeremiah the Prophet had all his prophecies written
out on a roll of parchment, and his friend Baruch went to the Temple,
and read to the people that if they would not worship God and serve Him
faithfully, He would cause them all to be taken away prisoners to a
strange land.
Baruch stood reading the parchment; and the people listened to him, and
some of them began to grow afraid. But then came some of the king's
great people, and when they heard it they thought it would make the
king angry. They forgot that God's anger signified much more than the
king's anger. They did not want Jeremiah or Baruch to be punished, but
they were afraid to let the reading go on. So they told Baruch to go
away and hide himself and Jeremiah carefully, and then they took the
prophecies to shew them to the king.
The king was sitting by the fire warming himself, for it was in the
winter. He listened for a little while; but when he found that the
parchment was about his sins and God's anger, he took out a knife and
cut the whole into bits, and burnt it in the fire. Was he so foolish
as to think that burning the prophecy would prevent it from coming to
pass? If so, he made a great mistake; for God desired Jeremiah to have
it all written over again, and more too; for the punishment was to be
worse now than it would have been before--much worse than if Jehoiakim
had listened, and left off his bad ways, and prayed to God.
[Illustration: TWO PAGES OF AN ANCIENT SCROLL OF SCRIPTURES.]
In a very short time the enemy all came round Jerusalem, and everyone
was shut up in the city, and could not get out, and food was very
scarce; and Jehoiakim was taken and put in chains; and thus he died,
and nobody grieved for him. His young son, Jehoiachin, was called king
for a little while, but only for a very little while; for the king of
Babylon broke into the city, and made him prisoner, and took him away
to be shut up far from home. And as to the dead body of Jehoiakim
himself, nobody had time to give him a burial; so it was thrown out at
the gates as if he had been a dead ass instead of a king of Judah.
So you see God's words through Jeremiah all came true, though Jehoiakim
would not heed them. He only made it worse by not listening.