had become men of the world. They fawned on the rich and powerful whose
favor they sought, and prophesied "smooth things" to them. They were the
optimists of a decaying nation and a godless, pleasure-seeking
generation. They were to Jerusalem what the Sophists were to Athens when
Demosthenes thundered his disregarded warnings. There were, indeed, a
few prophets left who labored for the truth; but their words fell on
listless ears. Nor could the priests arrest the ruin, for they were as
corrupt as the people. The most learned among them were zealous only for
the letter of the law, and fostered among the people a hypocritical
formalism. True religious life had departed; and the noble Jeremiah, the
only great statesman as well as prophet who remained, saw his influence
progressively declining, until at last he was utterly disregarded. Yet
he maintained his dignity, and fearlessly declared his message.
In the meantime the triumphant Necho, after the defeat and dispersion of
Josiah's army, pursued his way toward Damascus, which he at once
overpowered. From thence he invaded Assyria, and stripped Nineveh of
its most fertile provinces. The capital itself was besieged by
Nabopolassar and Cyaxares the Mede, and Necho was left for a time in
possession of his newly-acquired dominion.
Josiah was succeeded by his son Shallum, who assumed the crown under the
name of Jehoaz, which event it seems gave umbrage to the king of Egypt.
So he despatched an army to Jerusalem, which yielded at once, and King
Jehoaz was sent as a captive to the banks of the Nile. His elder brother
Eliakim was appointed king in his place, under the name of Jehoiakim,
who thus became the vassal of Necho. He was a young man of twenty-five,
self-indulgent, proud, despotic, and extravagant. There could be no more
impressive comment on the infatuation and folly of the times than the
embellishment of Jerusalem with palaces and public buildings, with the
view to imitate the glory of Solomon. In everything the king differed
from his father Josiah, especially in his treatment of Jeremiah, whom he
would have killed. He headed the movement to restore paganism; altars
were erected on every hill to heathen deities, so that there were more
gods in Judah than there were towns. Even the sacred animals of Egypt
were worshipped in the dark chambers beneath the Temple. In the most
sacred places of the Temple itself idolatrous priests worshipped the
rising sun, and the obscene rites of Phoenician idolatry were performed
in private houses. The decline in morals kept pace with the decline of
spiritual religion. There was no vice which was not rampant throughout
the land,--adultery, oppression of foreigners, venality in judges,
falsehood, dishonesty in trade, usury, cruelty to debtors, robbery and
murder, the loosing of the ties of kindred, general suspicion of
neighbors,--all the crimes enumerated by the Apostle Paul among the
Romans. Judah in reality had become an idolatrous nation like Tyre and
Syria and Egypt, with only here and there a witness to the truth, like
Jeremiah, the prophetess Huldah, and Baruch the scribe.
This relapse into heathenism filled the soul of Jeremiah with grief and
indignation, but gave to him a courage foreign to his timid and
shrinking nature. In the presence of the king, the princes, and priests
he was defiant, immovable, and fearless, uttering his solemn warnings
from day to day with noble fidelity. All classes turned against him; the
nobles were furious at his exposure of their license and robberies, the
priests hated him for his denunciation of hypocrisy, and the people for
his gloomy prophecies that the Temple should be destroyed, Jerusalem
reduced to ashes, and they themselves led into captivity.
Not only were crime and idolatry rampant, but the death of Josiah was
followed by droughts and famine. In vain were the prayers of Jeremiah to
avert calamity. Jehovah replied to him: "Pray not for this people!
Though they fast, I will not hear their cry; though they offer sacrifice
I have no pleasure in them, but will consume them by the sword, by
famine, and pestilence." Jeremiah piteously gives way to despairing
lamentations. "Hast thou, O Lord, utterly rejected Judah? Is thy soul
tired of Zion? Why hast thou smitten us so that there is no healing for
us?" Jehovah replies: "If Moses and Samuel stood pleading before me, my
soul could not be toward this people. I appoint four destroyers,--the
sword to slay, the dogs to tear and fight over the corpse, the birds of
the air, and the beasts of the field; for who will have pity on thee, O
Jerusalem? Thou hast rejected me. I am weary of relenting. I will
scatter them as with a broad winnowing-shovel, as men scatter the chaff
on the threshing-floor."
Such, amid general depravity and derision, were some of the utterances
of the prophet, during the reign of Jehoiakim. Among other evils which
he denounced was the neglect of the Sabbath, so faithfully observed in
earlier and better times. At the gates of the city he cried aloud
against the general profanation of the sacred day, which instead of
being a day of rest was the busiest day of the week, when the city was
like a great fair and holiday. On this day the people of the
neighboring villages brought for sale their figs and grapes and wine and
vegetables; on this day the wine-presses were trodden in the country,
and the harvest was carried to the threshing-floors. The preacher made
himself especially odious for his rebuke for the violation of the
Sabbath. "Come," said his enemies to the crowd, "let us lay a plot
against him; let us smite him with the tongue by reporting his words to
the king, and bearing false witness against him." On this renewed
persecution the prophet does not as usual give way to lamentation, but
hurls his maledictions. "O Jehovah! give thou their sons to hunger,
deliver them to the sword; let their wives be made childless and widows;
let their strong men be given over to death, and their young men be
smitten with the sword."
And to consummate, as it were, his threats of divine punishment so soon
to be visited on the degenerate city, Jeremiah is directed to buy an
earthenware bottle, such as was used by the peasants to hold their
drinking-water, and to summon the elders and priests of Jerusalem to the
southwestern corner of the city, and to throw before their feet the
bottle and shiver it in pieces, as a significant symbol of the
approaching fall of the city, to be destroyed as utterly as the
shattered jar. "And I will empty out in the dust, says Jehovah, the
counsels of Judah and Jerusalem, as this water is now poured from the
bottle. And I will cause them to fall by the sword before their enemies
and by the hands of those that seek their lives; and I will give their
corpses for meat to the birds of heaven and the beasts of the earth; and
I will make this city an astonishment and a scoffing. Every one that
passes by it will be astonished and hiss at its misfortunes. Even so
will I shatter this people and this city, as this bottle, which cannot
be made whole again, has been shattered." Nor was Jeremiah contented to
utter these fearful maledictions to the priests and elders; he made his
way to the Temple, and taking his stand among the people, he reiterated,
amid a storm of hisses, mockeries, and threats, what he had just
declared to a smaller audience in reference to Jerusalem.
Such an appalling announcement of calamities, and in such strong and
plain language, must have transported his hearers with fear or with
wrath. He was either the ambassador of Heaven, before whose voice the
people in the time of Elijah would have quaked with unutterable anguish,
or a madman who was no longer to be endured. We have no record of any
prophet or any preacher who ever used language so terrible or so daring.
Even Luther never hurled such maledictions on the church which he called
the "scarlet mother." Jeremiah uttered no vague generalities, but
brought the matter home with awful directness. Among his auditors was
Pashur, the chief governor of the Temple, and a priest by birth. He at
once ordered the Temple police to seize the bold and outspoken prophet,
who was forthwith punished for his plain speaking by the bastinado, and
then hurried bleeding to the stocks, into which his head and feet and
hands were rudely thrust, to spend the night amid the jeers of the crowd
and the cold dews of the season. In the morning he was set free, his
enemies thinking that he now would hold his tongue; but Jeremiah, so far
from keeping silence, renewed his threats of divine vengeance. "For thus
saith Jehovah, I will give all Judah into the hands of the king of
Babylon, and he shall carry them captive to Babylon, and slay them with
the sword." And then turning to Pashur, before the astonished
attendants, he exclaimed: "And thou, Pashur, and all that dwell in thy
house, will be dragged off into captivity; and thou wilt come to
Babylon, and thou wilt die and be buried there,--thou and all thy
partisans to whom thou hast prophesied lies."
We observe in these angry words of Jeremiah great directness and great
minuteness, so that his meaning could not be mistaken; also that the
instrument of punishment on the degenerate and godless city was to be
the king of Babylon, a new power from whom Judah as yet had received no
harm. The old enemies of the Hebrews were the Assyrians and Egyptians,
not the Babylonians and Medes.
Whatever may have been the malignant animosity of Pashur, he was
evidently afraid to molest the awful prophet and preacher any further,
for Jeremiah was no insignificant person at Jerusalem. He was not only
recognized as a prophet of Jehovah, but he had been the friend and
counsellor of King Josiah, and was the leading statesman of the day in
the ranks of the opposition. But distinguished as he was, his voice was
disregarded, and he was probably looked upon as an old croaker, whose
gloomy views had no reason to sustain them. Was not Jerusalem strong in
her defences, and impregnable in the eyes of the people; and was she not
regarded as under the special protection of the Deity? Suppose some
austere priest--say such a man as the Abbé Lacordaire--had risen from
the pulpit of Notre Dame or the Madeleine, a year before the battle of
Sedan, and announced to the fashionable congregation assembled to hear
his eloquence, and among them the ministers of Louis Napoleon, that in a
short time Paris would be surrounded by conquering armies, and would
endure all the horrors of a siege, and that the famine would be so great
that the city would surrender and be at the entire mercy of the
conquerors,--would he have been believed? Would not the people have
regarded him as a madman, great as was his eloquence, or as the most
gloomy of pessimists, for whom they would have felt contempt or bitter
wrath? And had he added to his predictions of ruin, utterly
inconceivable by the giddy, pleasure-seeking, atheistic people, the most
scathing denunciations of the prevailing sins of that godless city, all
the more powerful because they were true, addressed to all classes
alike, positive, direct, bold, without favor and without fear,--would
they not have been stirred to violence, and subjected him to any
chastisement in their power? If Socrates, by provoking questions and
fearless irony, drove the Athenians to such wrath that they took his
life, even when everybody knew that he was the greatest and best man at
Athens, how much more savage and malignant must have been the
narrow-minded Jews when Jeremiah laid bare to them their sins and the
impotency of their gods, and the certainty of retribution!
Yet vehement, or direct, or plain as were Jeremiah's denunciations to
the idol-worshippers of Jerusalem in the seventh century before it was
finally destroyed by Titus, he was no more severe than when Jesus
denounced the hypocrisy of the Scribes and Pharisees, no more mournful
than when he lamented over the approaching ruin of the Temple. Therefore
they sought to kill him, as the princes and priests of Judah would have
sacrificed the greatest prophet that had appeared since Elisha, the
greatest statesman since Samuel, the greatest poet since David, if
Isaiah alone be excepted. No wonder he was driven to a state of
despondency and grief that reminds us of Job upon his ash-heap. "Cursed
be the day," he exclaims, in his lonely chamber, "on which I was born!
Cursed be the man who brought tidings to my father, saying, A man-child
is born to thee, making him very glad! Why did I come forth from the
womb that my days might be spent in shame?" A great and good man may be
urged by the sense of duty to declare truths which he knows will lead to
martyrdom; but no martyr was ever insensible to suffering or shame. All
the glories of his future crown cannot sweeten the bitterness of the cup
he is compelled to drain; even the greatest of martyrs prayed in his
agony that the cup might pass from him. How could a man help being sad
and even bitter, if ever so exalted in soul, when he saw that his
warnings were utterly disregarded, and that no mortal influence or power
could avert the doom he was compelled to pronounce as an ambassador of
God? And when in addition to his grief as a patriot he was unjustly made
to suffer reproach, scourgings, imprisonment, and probable death, how
can we wonder that his patience was exhausted? He felt as if a burning
fire consumed his very bones, and he could refrain no longer. He cried
aloud in the intensity of his grief and pain, and Jehovah, in whom he
trusted, appeared to him as a mighty champion and an everlasting support.
Jeremiah at this time, during the early years of the reign of Jehoiakim,
the period of the most active part of his ministry, was about forty-five
years of age. Great events were then taking place. Nineveh was besieged
by one of its former generals,--Nabopolassar, now king of Babylon. The
siege lasted two years, and the city fell in the year 606 B.C., when
Jehoiakim had been about four years on the throne. The fall of this
great capital enabled the son of the king of Babylonia, Nebuchadnezzar,
to advance against Necho, the king of Egypt, who had taken Carchemish
about three years before. Near that ancient capital of the Hittites, on
the banks of the Euphrates, one of the most important battles of
antiquity was fought,--and Necho, whose armies a few years before had so
successfully invaded the Assyrian empire, was forced to retreat to
Egypt. The battle of Carchemish put an end to Egyptian conquests in the
East, and enabled the young sovereign of Babylonia to attain a power and
elevation such as no Oriental monarch had ever before enjoyed. Babylon
became the centre of a new empire, which embraced the countries that had
bowed down to the Assyrian yoke. Nebuchadnezzar in the pride of victory
now meditated the conquest of Egypt, and must needs pass through
Palestine. But Jehoiakim was a vassal of Egypt, and had probably
furnished troops for Necho at the fatal battle of Carchemish. Of course
the Babylonian monarch would invade Judah on his way to Egypt, and
punish its king, whom he could only look upon as an enemy.
It was then that Jeremiah, sad and desponding over the fate of
Jerusalem, which he knew was doomed, committed his precious utterances
to writing by the assistance of his friend and companion Baruch. He had
lately been living in retirement, feeling that his message was
delivered; possibly he feared that the king would put him to death as he
had the prophet Urijah. But he wished to make one more attempt to call
the people to repentance, as the only way to escape impending
calamities; and he prevailed upon his secretary to read the scroll,
containing all his verbal utterances, to the assembled people in the
Temple, who, in view of their political dangers, were celebrating a
solemn fast. The priests and people alike, clad in black hair-cloth
mantles, with ashes on their heads, lay prostrate on the ground, and by
numerous sacrifices hoped to propitiate the Deity. But not by sacrifices
and fasts were they to be saved from Nebuchadnezzar's army, as Jeremiah
had foretold years before. The recital by Baruch of the calamities he
had predicted made a profound impression on the crowd. A young man, awed
by what he had heard, hastened to the hall in which the princes were
assembled, and told them what had been read from the prophet's scroll.
They in their turn were alarmed, and commanded Baruch to read the
contents to them also. So intense was the excitement that the matter was
laid before the king, who ordered the roll to be read to him: he would
hear the words that Jeremiah had caused to be written down. But scarcely
had the reading of the roll begun before he flew into a violent rage,
and seizing the manuscript he cut it to pieces with the scribe's knife,
and burned it upon a brazier of coals. Orders were instantly given to
arrest both Jeremiah and Baruch; but they had been warned and fled, and
the place of their concealment could not be found.
Jehoiakim thus rejected the last offer of mercy with scorn and anger,
although many of his officers were filled with fear. His heart was
hardened, like that of Pharaoh before Moses. Jeremiah having learned the
fate of the roll, dictated its contents anew to his faithful secretary,
and a second roll was preserved, not, however, without contriving to
send to the king this awful message. "Thus saith Jehovah of thee
Jehoiakim: He shall have no son to sit on the throne of David, and his
dead body will be cast out to lie in the heat by day and the frost by
night; and no one shall raise a lament for him when he dies. He shall be
buried with the burial of an ass, drawn out of Jerusalem, and cast down
from its gates."
No wonder that we lose sight of Jeremiah during the remainder of the
reign of Jehoiakim; it was not safe for him to appear anywhere in
public. For a time his voice was not heard; yet his predictions had such
weight that the king dared not defy Nebuchadnezzar when he demanded the
submission of Jerusalem. He was forced to become the vassal of the king
of Babylonia, and furnish a contingent to his army. But this vassalage
bore heavily on the arrogant soul of Jehoiakim, and he seized the first
occasion to rebel, especially as Necho promised him protection. This
rebellion was suicidal and fatal, since Babylon was the stronger power.
Nebuchadnezzar, after the three years of forced submission, appeared
before the gates of Jerusalem with an irresistible army. There was no
resistance, as resistance was folly. Jehoiakim was put in chains, and
avoided being carried captive to Babylon only by the most abject
submission to the conqueror. All that was valuable in the Temple and the
palaces was seized as spoil. Jerusalem was spared for a while; and in
the mean time Jehoiakim died, and so intensely was he hated and despised
that no dirge was sung over his remains, while his dishonored body was
thrown outside the walls of his capital like that of a dead ass, as
Jeremiah had foretold.
On his death, B.C. 598, after a reign of eight years, his son
Jehoiachin, at the age of eighteen, ascended his nominal throne. He
also, like his father, followed the lead of the heathen party. The
bitterness of the Babylonian rule, united with the intrigues of Egypt,
led to a fresh revolt, and Jerusalem was invested by a powerful
Chaldean army.
Jeremiah now appears again upon the stage, but only to reaffirm the
calamities which impended over his nation,--all of which he traced to
the decay of religion and morality. The mission and the work of the Jews
were to keep alive the worship of the One God amid universal idolatry.
Outside of this, they were nothing as a nation. They numbered only four
or five millions of people, and lived in a country not much larger than
one of the northern counties of England and smaller than the state of
New Hampshire or Vermont; they gave no impulse to art or science. Yet as
the guardians of the central theme of the only true religion and of the
sacred literature of the Bible, their history is an important link in
the world's history. Take away the only thing which made them an object
of divine favor, and they were of no more account than Hittites, or
Moabites, or Philistines. The chosen people had become idolatrous like
the surrounding nations, hopelessly degenerate and wicked, and they
were to receive a dreadful chastisement as the only way by which they
would return to the One God, and thus act their appointed part in the
great drama of humanity. Jeremiah predicted this chastisement. The
chosen people were to suffer a seventy years' captivity, and then city
and Temple were to be destroyed. But Jeremiah, sad as he was over the
fate of his nation, and terribly severe as he was in his denunciations
of the national sins, knew that his people would repent by the river of
Babylon, and be finally restored to their old inheritance. Yet nothing
could avert their punishment.
In less than three months after Jehoiachin became king of Judah, its
capital was unconditionally surrendered to the Chaldean hosts, since
resistance was vain. No pity was shown to the rebels, though the king
and nobles had appeared before Nebuchadnezzar with every mark and emblem
of humiliation and submission. The king and his court and his wives, and
all the principal people of the nation, were sent to Babylon as captives
and slaves. The prompt capitulation saved the city for a time from
complete destruction; but its glory was turned to shame and grief. All
that was of any value in the Temple and city was carried to the banks of
the Euphrates, nearly one hundred and fifty years after Samaria had
fallen from a protracted siege, and its inhabitants finally dispersed
among the nations that were subject to Nineveh.
One would suppose that after so great a calamity the few remaining
people in Jerusalem and in the desolate villages of Judah would have
given no further molestation to their powerful and triumphant enemies.
The land was exhausted; the towns were stripped of their fighting
population, and only the shadow of a kingdom remained. Instead of
appointing a governor from his own court over the conquered province,
Nebuchadnezzar gave the government into the hands of Mattaniah, the
third son of Josiah, a youth of twenty, changing his name to Zedekiah.
He was for a time faithful to his allegiance, and took much pains to
quiet the mind of the powerful sovereign who ruled the Eastern world,
and even made a journey to Babylon to pay his homage. He was a weak
prince, however, alternately swayed by the different parties,--those
that counselled resistance to Babylon, and those, like Jeremiah, that
advised submission. This long-headed statesman saw clearly that
rebellion against Nebuchadnezzar, flushed with victory, and with the
whole Eastern world at his feet, was absurd; but that the time would
come when Babylon in turn should be humbled, and then the captive
Hebrews would probably return to their own land, made wiser by their
captivity of seventy years. The other party, leagued with Moabites,
Tyrians, Egyptians, and other nations, thought themselves strong enough
to break their allegiance to Nebuchadnezzar; and bitter were the
contentions of these parties. Jeremiah had great influence with the
king, who was weak rather than wicked, and had his counsels been
consistently followed, Jerusalem would probably have been spared, and
the Temple would, have remained. He preferred vassalage to utter ruin.
With Babylon pressing on one side and Egypt on the other,--both great
monarchies,--vassalage to one or the other of these powers was
inevitable. Indeed, vassalage had been the unhappy condition of Judah
since the death of Josiah. Of the two powers Jeremiah preferred the
Chaldean rule, and persistently advised submission to it, as the only
way to save Jerusalem from utter destruction.