_ZEDEKIAH, THE LAST KING OF JUDAH_
B.C. 597-586
2 KINGS xxiv. 18-xxv. 7
"Quand ce grand Dieu a choisi quelqu'un pour être l'instrument de
ses desseins rien n'arrête le cours, où il enchaine, où il
aveugle, où il dompte tout ce qui est capable de résistance."
BOSSUET, _Oraison funèbre de Henriette Marie_.
When Jehoiachin was carried captive to Babylon, never to return, his
uncle Mattaniah ("Jehovah's gift"), the third son of Josiah, was put
by Nebuchadrezzar in his place. In solemn ratification of the new
king's authority, the Babylonian conqueror sanctioned the change of
his name to Zedekiah ("Jehovah's righteousness").[813] He was
twenty-one at his accession, and he reigned eleven years.
"Behold," writes Ezekiel, "the King of Babylon came to Jerusalem, and
took the king thereof, and the princes thereof, and brought them to
him to Babylon; and he took of the seed royal" (_i.e._, Zedekiah),
"_and made a covenant with him; he also brought him under an oath: and
took away the mighty of the land, that the kingdom might be base, that
it might not lift itself up, but that by keeping of his covenant it
might stand_."[814]
Perhaps by this covenant Zechariah meant to emphasise the meaning of
his name, and to show that he would reign in righteousness.
The prophet at the beginning of the chapter describes Nebuchadrezzar
and Jehoiachin in "a riddle."
"A great eagle," he says, "with great wings and long pinions, full of
feathers, which had divers colours, came unto Lebanon, and took the
top of the cedar" (Jehoiachin): "he cropped off the topmost of the
young twigs thereof, and carried it into a land of traffic; he set it
in a city of merchants. He took also of the seed of the land"
(Zedekiah), "and planted it in a fruitful soil; he placed it beside
great waters, he set it as a willow tree. And it grew, and became a
spreading vine of low stature, whose branches turned towards him, and
the roots thereof were under him: so it became a vine, and brought
forth branches, and shot forth sprigs."[815]
The words refer to the first three years of Zedekiah's reign, and they
imply, consistently with the views of the prophets, that, if the weak
king had been content with the lowly eminence to which God had called
him, and if he had kept his oath and covenant with Babylon, all might
yet have been well with him and his land. At first it seemed likely to
be so; for Zedekiah wished to be faithful to Jehovah. He made a
covenant with all the people to set free their Hebrew slaves. Alas! it
was very shortlived. Self-sacrifice cost something, and the princes
soon took back the discarded bondservants.[816] What made this conduct
the more shocking was that their covenant to obey the law had been
made in the most solemn manner by "cutting a calf in twain, and
passing between the severed halves."[817] But the weak king was
perfectly powerless in the hands of his tyrannous aristocracy.[818]
The exiles in Babylon were now the best and most important section of
the nation. Jeremiah compares them to good figs; while the remnant at
Jerusalem were bad and withered. He and Ezekiel raised their voices,
as in strophe and antistrophe, for the teaching alike of the exiles
and of the remnant left at Jerusalem, for whom the exiles were bidden
to entreat God in prayer. Zedekiah himself made at least one journey
northward, either voluntarily or under summons, to renew his oath and
reassure Nebuchadrezzar of his fidelity.[819] He was accompanied by
Seraiah, the brother of Baruch, who was privately entrusted by
Jeremiah with a prophecy of the fall of Babylon, which he was to fling
into the midst of the Euphrates.[820]
The last King of Judah seems to have been weak rather than wicked. He
was a reed shaken by the wind. He yielded to the influence of the last
person who argued with him; and he seems to have dreaded above all
things the personal ridicule, danger, and opposition which it was his
duty to have defied. Yet we cannot withhold from him our deep
sympathy; for he was born in terrible times--to witness the
death-throes of his country's agony, and to share in them. It was no
longer a question of independence, but only of the choice of
servitudes. Judah was like a silly and trembling sheep between two
huge beasts of prey.[821]
Only thus can we account for the strange apostasies--"the abominations
of the heathen"--with which he permitted the Temple to be polluted;
and for the ill-treatment which he allowed to be inflicted on Jeremiah
and other prophets, to whom in his heart he felt inclined to listen.
What these abominations were we read with amazement in the eighth
chapter of Ezekiel. The prophet is carried in vision to Jerusalem, and
there he sees the Asherah--"the image which provoketh to
jealousy"--which had so often been erected and destroyed and re-erected.
Then through a secret door he sees creeping things, and abominable
beasts, and the idol-blocks of the House of Israel portrayed upon the
wall, while several elders of Israel stood before them and adored, with
censers in their hands--among whom he must specially have grieved to see
Jaazaneiah, the son of Shaphan,[822] flattering himself, as did his
followers, that in that dark chamber Jehovah saw them not. Next at the
northern gate he sees Zion's daughters weeping for Tammuz, or Adonis.
Once more, in the inner court of the Temple, between the porch and the
altar, he sees about twenty-five men with their backs to the altar, and
their faces to the east; and they worshipped the sun towards the east;
and, lo! they put the vine branch to their nose.[823] Were not these
crimes sufficient to evoke the wrath of Jehovah, and to alienate His ear
from prayers offered by such polluted worshippers? Egypt, Assyria,
Syria, Chaldæa, all contributed their idolatrous elements to the
detestable syncretism; and the king and the priests ignored, permitted,
or connived at it.[824] This must surely be answered for. How could it
have been otherwise? The king and the priests were the official
guardians of the Temple, and these aberrations could not have gone on
without their cognisance. There was another party of sheer formalists,
headed by men like the priest Pashur, who thought to make talismans of
rites and shibboleths, but had no sincerity of heart-religion.[825] To
these, too, Jeremiah was utterly opposed. In his opinion Josiah's
reformation had failed. Neither Ark, nor Temple, nor sacrifice were
anything in the world to him in comparison with true religion. All the
prophets with scarcely one exception are anti-ritualists; but none more
decidedly so than the prophet-priest. His name is associated in
tradition with the hiding of the Ark, and a belief in its ultimate
restoration; yet to Jeremiah, apart from the moral and spiritual truths
of which it was the material symbol, the Ark was no better than a wooden
chest. His message from Jehovah is, "I will give you pastors according
to My heart, ... and they shall say no more, 'The Ark of the Covenant of
the Lord': neither shall it come to mind; neither shall they remember
it; neither shall they miss it; neither shall it be made any more."[826]
Doom followed the guilt and folly of king, priests, and people. If
political wisdom were insufficient to show Zedekiah that the necessities
of the case were an indication of God's will, he had the warnings of the
prophets constantly ringing in his ears, and the assurance that he must
remain faithful to Nebuchadrezzar. But he was in fear of his own princes
and courtiers. A combined embassy reached him from the kings of Edom,
Ammon, Moab, Tyre and Sidon, urging him to join in a league against
Babylon.[827] This embassy was supported by a powerful party in
Jerusalem. Their solicitations were rendered more plausible by the
recent accession (B.C. 590) of the young and vigorous Pharaoh
Hophrah--the Apries of Herodotus[828]--to the throne of Egypt, and by
the recrudescence of that incurable disease of Hebrew politics, a
confidence in the idle promises of Egypt to supply the confederacy with
men and horses.[829] In vain did Jeremiah and Ezekiel uplift their
warning voices. The blind confidence of the king and of the nobles was
sustained by the flattering visions and promises of false prophets,
prominent among whom was a certain Hananiah, the son of Azur, of Gibeon,
"the prophet."[830] To indicate the futility of the contemplated
rebellion, Jeremiah had made "throngs and poles" with yokes, and had
sent them to the kings, whose embassy had reached Jerusalem, with a
message of the most emphatic distinctness, that Nebuchadrezzar was God's
appointed servant, and that they must serve him till God's own appointed
time. If they obeyed this intimation, they would be left undisturbed in
their own lands; if they disobeyed it, they would be scourged into
absolute submission by the sword, the famine, and the pestilence.
Jeremiah delivered the same oracle to his own king.[831]
The warning was rendered unavailing by the conduct of Hananiah. He
prophesied that within two full years God would break the yoke of the
King of Babylon; and that the captive Jeconiah, and the nobles, and
the vessels of the House of the Lord would be brought back. Jeremiah,
by way of an acted parable, had worn round his neck one of his own
yokes. Hananiah, in the Temple, snatched it off, broke it to pieces,
and said, "So will I break the yoke of Nebuchadrezzar from the neck of
all nations within the space of two full years."[832]
We can imagine the delight, the applause, the enthusiasm with which
the assembled people listened to these bold predictions. Hananiah
argued with them, to speak, in shorthand, for he appealed to their
desires and to their prejudices. It is always the tendency of nations
to say to their prophets, "Say not unto us hard things: speak smooth
things; prophesy deceits."
Against Hananiah personally there seems to have been no charge, except
that in listening to the lying spirit of his own desires he could not
hear the true message of God. But he did not stand alone.[833] Among
the children of the captivity, his promises were echoed by two
downright false prophets, Ahab and Zedekiah, the son of Maaseiah, who
prophesied lies in God's name. They were men of evil life, and a
fearful fate overtook them. Their words against Babylon came to the
ears of Nebuchadrezzar, and they were "roasted in the fire," so that
the horror of their end passed into a proverb and a curse.[834] Truly
God fed these false prophets with wormwood, and gave them poisonous
water to drink.[835]
After the action of Hananiah, Jeremiah went home stricken and ashamed:
apparently he never again uttered a public discourse in the Temple. It
took him by surprise; and he was for the moment, perhaps, daunted by
the plausive echo of the multitude to the lying prophet. But when he
got home the answer of Jehovah came: "Go and tell Hananiah, Thou hast
broken the yokes of wood; but thou hast made for them yokes of iron. I
have put a yoke of iron on the necks of all these nations, that they
may serve Nebuchadrezzar. Hear now, Hananiah, The Lord hath not sent
thee: thou makest this people to trust in a lie. Behold, this year
thou shalt die, because thou hast spoken revolt against the Lord. What
hath the chaff to do with the wheat? saith the Lord."[836]
Two months after Hananiah lay dead, and men's minds were filled with
fear. They saw that God's word was indeed as a fire to burn, and as a
hammer to dash in pieces.[837] But meanwhile Zedekiah had been
over-persuaded to take the course which the true prophets had
forbidden. Misled by the false prophets and mincing prophetesses whom
Ezekiel denounced,[838] who daubed men's walls with whitened plaster,
he had sent an embassy to Pharaoh Hophrah, asking for an army of
infantry and cavalry to support his rebellion from Assyria.[839] In
the eyes of Jeremiah and Ezekiel the crime did not only consist in
defying the exhortations of those whom Zedekiah knew to be Jehovah's
accredited messengers. In mitigation of this offence he might have
pleaded the extreme difficulty of discriminating the truth amid the
ceaseless babble of false pretenders.[840] But, on the other hand, he
had broken the solemn oath which he had taken to Nebuchadrezzar in the
name of God, and the sacred covenant which he seems to have twice
ratified with him.[841] This it was which raised the indignation of
the faithful, and led Ezekiel to prophesy:--
"Shall he prosper?
Shall he escape that doeth such things?
Or shall he break the covenant and be believed?
'As I live,' saith the Lord God, 'surely in the place where the king
dwelleth that made him king,
Whose oath he despised and whose covenant he broke,
Even with him in the midst of Babylon, shall he die.'"[842]
Sad close for a dynasty which had now lasted for nearly five centuries!
As for Pharaoh, he too was an eagle, as Nebuchadrezzar was--a great
eagle with great wings and many feathers, but not so great. The
trailing vine of Judah bent her roots towards him, but it should
wither in the furrows when the east wind touched it.[843]
The result of Zedekiah's alliance with Egypt was the intermission of
his yearly tribute to Assyria; and at last, in the ninth year of
Zedekiah, Nebuchadrezzar was aroused to put down this Palestinian
revolt, supported as it was by the vague magnificence of Egypt.
Jeremiah had said, "Pharaoh, the King of Egypt, is but a noise [or
desolation]: he hath passed the time appointed."[844]
This was about the year 589. In 598 Nebuchadrezzar had carried
Jehoachin into captivity, and ever since then some of his forces had
been engaged in the vain effort to capture Tyre, which still, after a
ten years' siege, drew its supplies from the sea, and remained
impregnable on her island rock. He did not choose to raise this
long-continued siege by diverting the troops to beleaguer so strong a
fortress as Jerusalem, and therefore he came in person from Babylon.
In Ezek. xxi. 20-24 we have a singular and vivid glimpse of his march.
On his way he came to a spot where two roads branched off before him.
One led to Rabbath, the capital of Ammon, on the east of Jordan; the
other to Jerusalem, on the west. Which road should he take? Personally,
it was a matter of indifference; so he threw the burden of
responsibility upon his gods by leaving the decision to the result of
belomancy.[845] Taking in his hand a sheaf of brightened arrows, he held
them upright, and decided to take the route indicated by the fall of the
greater number of arrows. He confirmed his uncertainty by consulting
teraphim, and by hepatoscopy--_i.e._, by examining the liver of slain
victims. Rabbath and the Ammonites were not to be spared, but it was
upon the covenant-breaking king and city that the first vengeance was to
fall.[846] And this is what the prophet has to say to Zedekiah:--
"And thou, O deadly-wounded wicked one, the prince of Israel, whose
day is come in the time of the iniquity of the end; thus saith the
Lord God, 'Remove the mitre, and take off the crown. This shall be not
thus. Exalt the low, and abase that which is high. An overthrow,
overthrow, overthrow, will I make it: this also shall be no more,
until He come whose right it is: and I will give it Him."[847]
So (B.C. 587) Jerusalem was delivered over to siege, even as Ezekiel
had sketched upon a tile.[848] It was to be assailed in the old
Assyrian manner--as we see it represented in the British Museum
bas-relief, where Sennacherib is portrayed in the act of besieging
Lachish--with forts, mounds, and battering-rams; and Ezekiel had also
been bidden to put up an iron plate between him and his pictured city,
to represent the mantelet from behind which the archers shot.
In this dread crisis Zedekiah sent Zephaniah, the son of Maaseiah, the
priest, and Jehucal, to Jeremiah, entreating his prayers for the
city,[849] for he had not yet been put in prison. Doubtless he prayed,
and at first it looked as if deliverance would come. Pharaoh Hophrah
put in motion the Egyptian army with its Carian mercenaries and
Soudanese negroes, and Nebuchadrezzar was sufficiently alarmed to
raise the siege and go to meet the Egyptians. The hopes of the people
probably rose high, though multitudes seized the opportunity to fly to
the mountains.[850] The circumstances closely resembled those under
which Sennacherib had raised the siege of Jerusalem to go to meet
Tirhakah the Ethiopian; and perhaps there were some, and the king
among them, who looked that such a wonder might be vouchsafed to him
through the prayers of Jeremiah as had been vouchsafed to Hezekiah
through the prayers of Isaiah. Not for a moment did Jeremiah encourage
these vain hopes. To Zephaniah, as to an earlier deputation from the
king, when he sent Pashur with him to inquire of the prophet, Jeremiah
returned a remorseless answer. It is too late. Pharaoh shall be
defeated; even if the Chaldæan army were smitten, its wounded soldiers
would suffice to besiege and burn Jerusalem, and take into captivity
the miserable inhabitants after they had suffered the worst horrors of
a besieged city.[851]
FOOTNOTES:
[813] Comp. Jer. xxiii. 6: Jehovah-Tsidkenu.
[814] Ezek. xvii. 12-14.
[815] Ezek. xvii. 1-6.
[816] Jer. xxxiv. 8-11.
[817] Jer. xxxiv. 19. Comp. Gen. xv. 17.
[818] This is strikingly shown by his piteous remark to them in Jer.
xxxviii. 5.
[819] He first sent two of Jeremiah's friends, Elasah and Gemariah,
the son of Shaphan.
[820] Some critics have doubted the authenticity of Jer. li., lii.
[821] 2 Chron. xxxvi. 14-21; Stanley, ii. 528; Milman, i. 394.
[822] Shaphan's other sons, Gemariah, Ahikam, Elasah, and his grandson
Gedaliah, were friends of Jeremiah.
[823] Ezek. viii. 17. The allusion seems to be to a custom like that
of the Parsees, who hold a branch of tamarisk or pomegranate twigs
(called _barsom_) before their mouths when they adore the sacred fire.
Strabo, xv. 732; Spiegel, _Zendavesta_, ii., p. lxviii; _Eran.
Alterthumsk._, iii. 571 (Orelli, _ad loc._). Lightfoot explains it,
"add fuel to their wrath."
[824] Ezek. xvi. 15-34.
[825] Jer. vii. 4, 21-28, viii. 8, xxiii. 31-33, xxxi. 33, 34.
[826] Jer. iii. 15, 16.
[827] Jer. xxvii. 3.
[828] Herod., ii. 161.
[829] Psammis, the son of Necho, only reigned six years; Hophrah (B.C.
594) was his son.
[830] The LXX. calls him "the false prophet."
[831] Jer. xxvii. 1-8, 12-18. On vv. 16-22 see the LXX.
[832] Here (Jer. xxviii. 11, and in xxxiv. 1, xxxix. 5) the name is
written "Nebuchadnezzar"; everywhere else in Jeremiah it is
"Nebuchadrezzar."
[833] Part of his dispute with Jeremiah turned on the recovery or
non-recovery of the Temple vessels. Zedekiah is said to have given a
set of silver vessels to replace the old ones (Baruch i. 8).
[834] Jer. xxix. 21-23.
[835] Jer. xxiii. 9-32.
[836] Jer. xxviii. 13-16, xxiii. 28.
[837] Jer. xxiii. 29.
[838] Ezek. xiii. 1-23.
[839] Ezek. xvii. 25.
[840] Josephus rightly attributes the unfortunate career of Zedekiah
to the weakness with which he listened to evil counsellors, and to the
insolent multitude.
[841] 2 Chron. xxxvi. 13; Jer. lii. 3.
[842] Ezek. xvii. 15, 16, 18, 19.
[843] Ezek. xvii. 7-10.
[844] Jer. xlvi. 17.
[845] Another form of belomancy is still commonly practised among the
Arabs. Three arrows are placed in a vessel: on one of them is written,
"My God permits me"; on another, "My God forbids me"; the third is
blank. They are then shaken, and the decision is guided by the one
which falls out first. Comp. Homer, _Iliad_, iii. 316; _Speaker's
Commentary_, _ad loc._
[846] Ezek. xxi. 28-32.
[847] An allusion to the restoration of Jeconiah or his descendants,
and to the far-off Messiah, meek and lowly.
[848] Ezek. iv. 1-3.
[849] Jer. xxxvii. 3.
[850] Ezek. vii. 16.
[851] Jer. xxi. 1-10, xxxvii. 1-17. Josephus says that Pharaoh was
defeated (_Antt._, X. vii. 3). Jeremiah merely says that he and his
army returned to their own land.