_THE FALL OF JERUSALEM_
B.C. 586
2 KINGS xxv. 1-21
"In that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all
nations."--ZECH. xii. 3.
"An end is come, the end is come; it awaketh against thee: behold
the end is come."--EZEK. vii. 6.
"Behold yon sterile spot
Where now the wandering Arab's tent
Flaps in the desert blast;
There once old Salem's haughty fane
Reared high to heaven its thousand golden domes,
And in the blushing face of day
Exposed its shameful glory."
SHELLEY.
After the siege had lasted for a year and a half, all but one day, at
midnight the besiegers made a breach in the northern city wall.[867]
It was a day of terrible remembrance, and throughout the exile it was
observed as a solemn fast.[868]
Nebuchadrezzar was no longer in person before the walls. He had other
war-like operations and other sieges on hand--the sieges of Tyre,
Asekah, and Lachish--as well as Jerusalem. He had therefore
established his headquarters at Lachish, and did not superintend the
final operations against the city.[869] But now that all had become
practically hopeless, and the capture of the rest of Jerusalem was
only a matter of a few days more, Zedekiah and his few best surviving
princes and soldiers fled by night through the opposite quarter of the
city. There was a little unwatched postern between two walls near the
king's garden, and through this he and his escort fled, hoping to
reach the Arabah, and make good his escape, perhaps to the
Wady-el-Arish, which he could reach in five hours, through the wilds
beyond the Jordan.[870] The heads of the king and his followers were
muffled, and they carried on their shoulders their choicest
possessions.[871] But he was betrayed by some of the mean
deserters,[872] and pursued by the Chaldæans. His movements were
doubtless impeded by the presence of his harem and his children. His
little band of warriors could offer no resistance, and fled in all
directions. Zedekiah, his family, and attendants were taken prisoners,
and carried to Riblah to appear before the mighty conqueror.[873]
Nebuchadrezzar showed no pity towards one whom he had elevated to the
throne, and who had violated his most solemn assurances by intriguing
with his enemies. He brought him to trial, and doomed him to witness
with his own eyes the massacre of his two sons and of his attendants.
After he had endured this anguish, worse than death, his eyes were put
out, and, bound in double fetters,[874] he was sent to Babylon, where
he ended his miserable days. To blind a king deprived him of all hope
of recovering the throne, and was therefore in ancient days a common
punishment.[875] The LXX. adds that he was sent by the Babylonians to
grind a mill--εἰς οἰκίον μυλῶνος. This is probably a reminiscence of
the blinded Samson. But thus were fulfilled with startling literalness
two prophecies which might well have seemed to be contradictory.[876]
For Jeremiah had said (xxxiv. 3),--
"Thine eyes shall behold the eyes of the King of Babylon, and he shall
speak with thee mouth to mouth, and thou shalt go to Babylon."
Whereas Ezekiel had said (xii. 13),--
"I will bring him to Babylon, the land of the Chaldæans; yet shall he
not see it, though he shall die there."
Henceforth Zedekiah was forgotten, and his place knew him no more. We
can only hope that in his blindness and solitude he was happier than
he had been on the throne of Judah, and that before death came to end
his miseries he found peace with God.
The conqueror did not come to spoil the city. He left that task to three
great officers,--Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard, or chief
executioner;[877] Nebushasban, the Rabsaris, or chief of the eunuchs;
and Nergalshareser, the Rabmag, or chief of the magicians. They took
their station by the Middle Gate, and first gave up the city to pillage
and massacre. No horror was spared.[878] The sepulchres were rifled for
treasure; the young Levites were slain in the house of their Sanctuary;
women were violated; maidens and hoary-headed men were slain. "Princes
were hanged up by the hand, and the faces of elders were dishonoured;
priest and prophet were slain in the Sanctuary of the Lord,"[879] till
the blood flowed like red wine from the winepress over the desecrated
floor.[880] The guilty city drank at the hand of God the dregs of the
cup of His fury.[881] It was the final vengeance. "The punishment of
thine iniquity is accomplished, O daughter of Zion. He will no more
carry thee away into captivity."[882] And, meanwhile, the little Bedouin
principalities were full of savage exultation at the fate of their
hereditary foe.[883] This was felt by the Jews as a culmination of their
misery, that they became a derision to their enemies. The callous
insults hurled at them by the neighbouring tribes in their hour of shame
awoke that implacable wrath against Gebal and Ammon and Amalek which
finds its echo in the Prophets and in the Psalms.[884]
After this the devoted capital was given up to destruction. The Temple
was plundered. All that remained of its often-rifled splendours was
carried away, such as the ancient pillars Jachin and Boaz, the
masterpieces of Hiram's art, the caldron, the brazen sea, and all the
vessels of gold, of silver, and of brass. Then the walls of the city
were dismantled and broken down. The Temple, and the palace, and all the
houses of the princes were committed to the flames. As for the principal
remaining inhabitants, Seraiah the chief priest, perhaps the grandson of
Hilkiah and the grandfather of Ezra, Zephaniah the second priest, the
three Levitic doorkeepers, the secretary of war, five of the greatest
nobles who "saw the king's face,"[885] and sixty of the common people
who had been marked out for special punishment, were taken to Riblah,
and there massacred by order of Nebuchadrezzar.[886] With these
Nebuchadrezzar took away as his prisoners a multitude of the wealthier
inhabitants, leaving behind him but the humblest artisans. As the
craftsmen and smiths had been deported,[887] these poor people busied
themselves in agriculture, as vine-dressers and husbandmen. The existing
estates were divided among them; and being few in number, they found the
amplest sustenance in treasures of wheat and barley, and oil and honey,
and summer fruits, which they kept concealed for safety, as the
fellaheen of Palestine do to this day.[888]
According to the historic chapters added to the prophecies of
Jeremiah, the whole number of captives carried away from Jerusalem by
Nebuchadrezzar in the seventh, the eighteenth, and the twenty-third
years of his reign were 4,600.[889] The completeness of the desolation
might well have caused the heart-rending outcry of Psalm lxxix.: "O
God, the heathen are come into Thine inheritance; Thy holy Temple have
they defiled; they have made Jerusalem a heap of stones. The dead
bodies of Thy servants have they given to be meat unto the fowls of
heaven, and the flesh of Thy saints unto the beasts of the land. Their
blood have they shed like water round about Jerusalem; and there was
no man to bury them."
Among the remnant of the people was Jeremiah. Nebuzaradan had received
from his king the strictest injunctions to treat him honourably; for he
had heard from the deserters that he had always opposed the rebellion,
and had prophesied the issue of the siege. He was indeed sent in
manacles to Ramah;[890] but there Nebuchadrezzar gave him free choice to
do exactly as he liked--either to accompany him to Babylon, where he
should be well treated and cared for, or to return to Jerusalem, and
live where he liked. This was his desire. Nebuchadrezzar therefore
dismissed him with food and a present;[891] and he returned. The LXX.
and Vulgate represent him as sitting weeping over the ruins of
Jerusalem, and tradition says that he sought for his lamentations a cave
still existing near the Damascus Gate. Of this Scripture knows nothing.
But the melancholy prophet was only reserved for further tragedies. He
had lived one of the most afflicted of human lives. A man of tender
heart and shrinking disposition, he had been called to set his face like
a flint against kings, and nobles, and mobs. Worse than this, being
himself a prophet and priest, naturally led to sympathise with both, he
was the doomed antagonist of both--victim of "one of the strongest of
human passions, the hatred of priests against a priest who attacks his
own order, the hatred of prophets against a prophet who ventures to have
a voice and a will of his own." Even his own family had plotted against
his life at humble Anathoth;[892] and when he retreated to Jerusalem, he
found himself at the centre of the storm. Now perhaps he hoped for a
gleam of sunset peace. But his hopes were disappointed. He had to tread
the path of anguish and hatred to the bitter end, as he had trodden it
for nearly fifty years of the troubled life which had followed his call
in early boyhood.
"But, in the case of Jerusalem," says Dean Stanley, "both its first
and second destruction have the peculiar interest of involving the
dissolution of a religious dispensation, combined with the agony of an
expiring nation, such as no other people has survived, and, by
surviving, carried on the living recollection, first of one, and then
of the other, for centuries after the first shock was over."[893]
FOOTNOTES:
[867] Jos., _Antt._, X. viii. 2; 2 Chron. xxxii. 5, xxxiii. 14. First
and last, the siege seems to have lasted one year, five months, and
twenty-seven days.
[868] Zech. viii. 19.
[869] The inscriptions of Nebuchadrezzar which have been as yet
deciphered speak of his sumptuous buildings and of his worship of the
gods rather than of his conquests. See _Records of the Past_, vii.
69-78.
[870] Robinson, _Bibl. Res._, ii. 536. Some suppose that "the king's
garden" was near the mouth of the Tyropœon Valley.
[871] Ezek. xii. 12. Perhaps the gate alluded to is the fountain gate
of Neh. iii. 15. Ezekiel seems to speak of "digging through the wall."
Robinson says that a trace of the outermost wall still exists in the
rude pathway which crosses the mouth of the Tyropœon on a mound hard
by the old mulberry tree which marks the traditional site of Isaiah's
martyrdom.
[872] Jos., _Antt._, X. viii. 2.
[873] Traces of his presence are found in inscriptions in the Wady of
the Dog near Beyrout, and in Wady Brissa. See Sayce, _Proceedings of
the Bibl. Arch. Soc._, November 1881.
[874] 2 Kings xxv. 7. See Layard, _Nineveh_, ii. 376.
[875] The blinding was sometimes done by passing a red-hot rod of
silver or brass over the open eyes; sometimes by plucking out the eyes
(Jer. lii. 11, Vulg. _oculos eruit_; 2 Kings xxv. 7, _effodit_). See a
hideous illustration of a yet more brutal process in Botta (_Monum. de
Ninève_, Pl. cxviii.), where Sargon with his own hand is thrusting a
lance into the eyes of a captive prince, whose head is kept steady by
a bridle fastened to a hook through his lips. See also Judg. xvi. 21;
Xen., _Anab._, i. 9, § 13; Procopius, _Bel. Pers._, i. 1; Ammianus,
xxvii. 12; Rawlinson, _Ancient Monarchies_, i. 307.
[876] Jos., _Antt._, X. viii. 2, 3.
[877] Nebur-zir-iddina, "Nebo bestowed seed." Jer. xxxix. 9, 13, is in
some way corrupt. Ezekiel (ix. 2), however, and Josephus (_Antt._, X.
viii. 2) mention _six_ officers. Nebuzaradan was "chief of the
executioners" (Gen. xxxvii. 36; 1 Kings ii. 25, 35, 46).
[878] Psalm lxxix. 2, 3.
[879] 2 Chron. xxxvi. 17; Lam. ii. 21, v. 11, 12.
[880] To the reminiscences of these scenes are partly due the Talmudic
legend about the blood of Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada, bubbling up
to demand vengeance. Nebudchadrezzar slew a holocaust of human victims
to appease the shade of the wrathful prophet, until the king himself
was terrified, and asked if he wished his whole people to be
slaughtered. Then the blood ceased to bubble.
[881] See Rawlinson, _Kings of Israel and Judah_, p. 236.
[882] Lam. iv. 22.
[883] Psalm lxxix, 1.
[884] Obad. 14-16; Psalm cxxxvii. 7; 1 Esdras iv. 45.
[885] Comp. Esther i. 14.
[886] On these personages see 1 Chron. vi. 13, 14; 2 Kings xxii. 4;
Ezra vii. 1; Jer. xxi. 1, xxxvii. 3, etc.
[887] Nebuchadrezzar had no doubt needed them for his great buildings
at Babylon, and their deportation would render more difficult any
attempt to refortify Jerusalem.
[888] Jer. xli. 8, xl. 12.
[889] Jer. lii. 28-30. In his seventh year, 3,023; in his eighteenth,
832 in his thirty-third, 745 = 4,600.
[890] Ramah was but five miles from Jerusalem, and at first Jeremiah
may not have been identified (Jer. xl. 1-6).
[891] The present, if accepted, could only be regarded, under the
circumstances, as part of the necessity of life. It does not fall
under the head of the presents often offered to prophets (1 Sam. ix.
7; 2 Kings iv. 42; Mic. iii. 5, 11; Amos vii. 12).
[892] Jer. xi. 19-21, xii. 6.
[893] Stanley, _Lectures_, ii. 515.