_A TRIAL FOR HERESY_
xxvi.: cf. vii.-x.
"When Jeremiah had made an end of speaking all that Jehovah had
commanded him to speak unto all the people, the priests and the
prophets and all the people laid hold on him, saying, Thou shalt
surely die."--JER. xxvi. 8.
The date of this incident is given, somewhat vaguely, as the beginning
of the reign of Jehoiakim. It was, therefore, earlier than B.C. 605,
the point reached in the previous chapter. Jeremiah could offer no
political resistance to Jehoiakim and his Egyptian suzerain; yet it
was impossible for him to allow Josiah's policy to be reversed without
a protest. Moreover, something, perhaps much, might yet be saved for
Jehovah. The king, with his court and prophets and priests, was not
everything. Jeremiah was only concerned with sanctuaries, ritual, and
priesthoods as means to an end. For him the most important result of
the work he had shared with Josiah was a pure and holy life for the
nation and individuals. Renan--in some passages, for he is not always
consistent--is inclined to minimise the significance of the change
from Josiah to Jehoiakim; in fact, he writes very much as a cavalier
might have done of the change from Cromwell to Charles II. Both the
Jewish kings worshipped Jehovah, each in his own fashion: Josiah was
inclined to a narrow puritan severity of a life; Jehoiakim was a
liberal, practical man of the world. Probably this is a fair modern
equivalent of the current estimate of the kings and their policy,
especially on the part of Jehoiakim's friends; but then, as unhappily
still in some quarters, "narrow puritan severity" was a convenient
designation for a decent and honourable life, for a scrupulous and
self-denying care for the welfare of others. Jeremiah dreaded a
relapse into the old half-heathen ideas that Jehovah would be pleased
with homage and service that satisfied Baal, Moloch, and Chemosh. Such
a relapse would lower the ethical standard, and corrupt or even
destroy any beginnings of spiritual life. Our English Restoration is
an object-lesson as to the immoral effects of political and
ecclesiastical reaction; if such things were done in sober England,
what must have been possible to hot Eastern blood! In protesting
against the attitude of Jehoiakim, Jeremiah would also seek to save
the people from the evil effects of the king's policy. He knew from
his own experience that a subject might trust and serve God with his
whole heart, even when the king was false to Jehovah. What was
possible for him was possible for others. He understood his countrymen
too well to expect that the nation would continue to advance in paths
of righteousness which its leaders and teachers had forsaken; but,
scattered here and there through the mass of the people, was Isaiah's
remnant, the seed of the New Israel, men and women to whom the
Revelation of Jehovah had been the beginning of a higher life. He
would not leave them without a word of counsel and encouragement.
At the command of Jehovah, Jeremiah appeared before the concourse of
Jews, assembled at the Temple for some great fast or festival. No
feast is expressly mentioned, but he is charged to address "all the
cities of Judah"[10]; _all_ the outlying population would only meet at
the Temple on some specially holy day. Such an occasion would
naturally be chosen by Jeremiah for his deliverance, just as Christ
availed Himself of the opportunities offered by the Passover and the
Feast of Tabernacles, just as modern philanthropists seek to find a
place for their favourite topics on the platform of May Meetings.
The prophet was to stand in the court of the Temple and repeat once
more to the Jews his message of warning and judgment, "all that I have
charged thee to speak unto them, thou shalt not keep back a single
word." The substance of this address is found in the various
prophecies which expose the sin and predict the ruin of Judah. They
have been dealt with in the former volume[11] on Jeremiah in this
series, and are also referred to in Book III.
According to the universal principle of Hebrew prophecy, the
predictions of ruin were conditional; they were still coupled with the
offer of pardon to repentance, and Jehovah did not forbid his prophet
to cherish a lingering hope that "perchance they may hearken and turn
every one from his evil way, so that I may repent Me of the evil I
purpose to inflict upon them because of the evil of their doings."
Probably the phrase "every one from his evil way" is primarily
collective rather than individual, and is intended to describe a
national reformation, which would embrace all the individual citizens;
but the actual words suggest another truth, which must also have been
in Jeremiah's mind. The nation is, after all, an aggregate of men and
women; there can be no national reformation, except through the
repentance and amendment of individuals.
Jeremiah's audience, it must be observed, consisted of worshippers on
the way to the Temple, and would correspond to an ordinary congregation
of church-goers, rather than to the casual crowd gathered round a street
preacher, or to the throngs of miners and labourers who listened to
Whitfield and Wesley. As an acknowledged prophet, he was well within his
rights in expecting a hearing from the attendants at the feast, and men
would be curious to see and hear one who had been the dominant influence
in Judah during the reign of Josiah. Moreover, in the absence of evening
newspapers and shop-windows, a prophet was too exciting a distraction to
be lightly neglected. From Jehovah's charge to speak all that He had
commanded him to speak and not to keep back a word, we may assume that
Jeremiah's discourse was long: it was also avowedly an old sermon[12];
most of his audience had heard it before, all of them were quite
familiar with its main topics. They listened in the various moods of a
modern congregation "sitting under" a distinguished preacher. Jeremiah's
friends and disciples welcomed the ideas and phrases that had become
part of their spiritual life. Many enjoyed the speaker's earnestness and
eloquence, without troubling themselves about the ideas at all. There
was nothing specially startling about the well-known threats and
warnings; they had become
"A tale of little meaning tho' the words were strong."
Men hardened their hearts against inspired prophets as easily as they
do against the most pathetic appeals of modern evangelists. Mingled
with the crowd were Jeremiah's professional rivals, who detested both
him and his teaching--priests who regarded him as a traitor to his own
caste, prophets who envied his superior gifts and his force of
passionate feeling. To these almost every word he uttered was
offensive, but for a while there was nothing that roused them to very
vehement anger. He was allowed to finish what he had to say, "to make
an end of speaking all that Jehovah had commanded him." But in this
peroration he had insisted on a subject that stung the indifferent
into resentment and roused the priests and prophets to fury.
"Go ye now unto My place which was in Shiloh, where I caused My name
to dwell at the first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of
My people Israel. And now, because ye have done all these works, saith
Jehovah, and I spake unto you, rising up early and speaking, but ye
heard not; and I called you, but ye answered not: therefore will I do
unto the house, that is called by My name, wherein ye trust, and unto
the place which I gave to you and to your fathers, as I have done to
Shiloh."[13]
The Ephraimite sanctuary of Shiloh, long the home of the Ark and its
priesthood, had been overthrown in some national catastrophe.
Apparently when it was destroyed it was no mere tent, but a
substantial building of stone, and its ruins remained as a permanent
monument of the fugitive glory of even the most sacred shrine.
The very presence of his audience in the place where they were met
showed their reverence for the Temple: the priests were naturally
devotees of their own shrine; of the prophets Jeremiah himself had said,
"The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests rule in accordance with
their teaching."[14] Can we wonder that "the priests and the prophets
and all the people laid hold on him, saying, Thou shalt surely die"? For
the moment there was an appearance of religious unity in Jerusalem; the
priests, the prophets, and the pious laity on one side, and only the
solitary heretic on the other. It was, though on a small scale, as if
the obnoxious teaching of some nineteenth-century prophet of God had
given an unexpected stimulus to the movement for Christian reunion; as
if cardinals and bishops, chairmen of unions, presidents of conferences,
moderators of assemblies, with great preachers and distinguished laymen,
united to hold monster meetings and denounce the Divine message as
heresy and blasphemy. In like manner Pharisees, Sadducees, and Herodians
found a basis of common action in their hatred of Christ, and Pilate and
Herod were reconciled by His cross.
Meanwhile the crowd was increasing: new worshippers were arriving, and
others as they left the Temple were attracted to the scene of the
disturbance. Doubtless too the mob, always at the service of
persecutors, hurried up in hope of finding opportunities for mischief
and violence. Some six and a half centuries later, history repeated
itself on the same spot, when the Asiatic Jews saw Paul in the Temple
and "laid hands on him, crying out, Men of Israel, help: This is the
man, that teacheth all men everywhere against the people and the law
and this place, ... and all the city was moved, and the people ran
together and laid hold on Paul."[15]
Our narrative, as it stands, is apparently incomplete: we find Jeremiah
before the tribunal of the princes, but we are not told how he came
there; whether the civil authorities intervened to protect him, as
Claudius Lysias came down with his soldiers and centurions and rescued
Paul, or whether Jeremiah's enemies observed legal forms, as Annas and
Caiaphas did when they arrested Christ. But, in any case, "the princes
of Judah, when they heard these things, came up from the palace into the
Temple, and took their seats as judges at the entry of the new gate of
the Temple." The "princes of Judah" play a conspicuous part in the last
period of the Jewish monarchy: we have little definite information about
them, and are left to conjecture that they were an aristocratic
oligarchy or an official clique, or both; but it is clear that they were
a dominant force in the state, with recognised constitutional status,
and that they often controlled the king himself. We are also ignorant as
to the "new gate"; it may possibly be the upper gate built by
Jotham[16] about a hundred and fifty years earlier.
Before these judges, Jeremiah's ecclesiastical accusers brought a
formal charge; they said, almost in the very words which the high
priest and the Sanhedrin used of Christ, "This man is worthy of death,
for he hath prophesied against this city, as ye have heard with your
ears"--_i.e._ when he said, "This house shall be like Shiloh, and this
city shall be desolate without inhabitant." Such accusations have been
always on the lips of those who have denounced Christ and His
disciples as heretics. One charge against Himself was that He said, "I
will destroy this Temple that is made with hands, and in three days I
will build another that is made without hands."[17] Stephen was
accused of speaking incessantly against the Temple and the Law, and
teaching that Jesus of Nazareth would destroy the Temple and change
the customs handed down from Moses. When he asserted that "the Most
High dwelleth not in temples made with hands," the impatience of his
audience compelled him to bring his defence to an abrupt
conclusion.[18] Of Paul we have already spoken.
How was it that these priests and prophets thought that their princes
might be induced to condemn Jeremiah to death for predicting the
destruction of the Temple? A prophet would not run much risk nowadays
by announcing that St. Paul's should be made like Stonehenge, or St.
Peter's like the Parthenon. Expositors of Daniel and the Apocalypse
habitually fix the end of the world a few years in advance of the
date at which they write, and yet they do not incur any appreciable
unpopularity. It is true that Jeremiah's accusers were a little afraid
that his predictions might be fulfilled, and the most bitter
persecutors are those who have a lurking dread that their victims are
right, while they themselves are wrong. But such fears could not very
well be evidence or argument against Jeremiah before any court of law.
In order to realise the situation we must consider the place which the
Temple held in the hopes and affections of the Jews. They had always
been proud of their royal sanctuary at Jerusalem, but within the last
hundred and fifty years it had acquired a unique importance for the
religion of Israel. First Hezekiah, and then Josiah, had taken away
the other high places and altars at which Jehovah was worshipped, and
had said to Judah and Jerusalem, "Ye shall worship before this
altar."[19] Doubtless the kings were following the advice of Isaiah
and Jeremiah. These prophets were anxious to abolish the abuses of the
local sanctuaries, which were a continual incentive to an extravagant
and corrupt ritual. Yet they did not intend to assign any supreme
importance to a priestly caste or a consecrated building. Certainly
for them the hope of Israel and the assurance of its salvation did not
consist in cedar and hewn stones, in silver and gold. And yet the
unique position given to the Temple inevitably became the
starting-point for fresh superstition. Once Jehovah could be
worshipped not only at Jerusalem, but at Beersheba and Bethel and many
other places where He had chosen to set His name. Even then, it was
felt that the Divine Presence must afford some protection for His
dwelling-places. But now that Jehovah dwelt nowhere else but at
Jerusalem, and only accepted the worship of His people at this single
shrine, how could any one doubt that He would protect His Temple and
His Holy City against all enemies, even the most formidable? Had He
not done so already?
When Hezekiah abolished the high places, did not Jehovah set the seal
of approval upon his policy by destroying the army of Sennacherib? Was
not this great deliverance wrought to guard the Temple against
desecration and destruction, and would not Jehovah work out a like
salvation in any future time of danger? The destruction of Sennacherib
was essential to the religious future of Israel and of mankind; but it
had a very mingled influence upon the generations immediately
following. They were like a man who has won a great prize in a
lottery, or who has, quite unexpectedly, come into an immense
inheritance. They ignored the unwelcome thought that the Divine
protection depended on spiritual and moral conditions, and they clung
to the superstitious faith that at any moment, even in the last
extremity of danger and at the eleventh hour, Jehovah might, nay, even
_must_, intervene. The priests and the inhabitants of Jerusalem could
look on with comparative composure while the country was ravaged, and
the outlying towns were taken and pillaged; Jerusalem itself might
seem on the verge of falling into the hands of the enemy, but they
still trusted in their Palladium. Jerusalem could not perish, because
it contained the one sanctuary of Jehovah; they sought to silence
their own fears and to drown the warning voice of the prophet by
vociferating their watchword: "The Temple of Jehovah! the Temple of
Jehovah! The Temple of Jehovah is in our midst!"[20]
In prosperous times a nation may forget its Palladium, and may
tolerate doubts as to its efficacy; but the strength of the Jews was
broken, their resources were exhausted, and they were clinging in an
agony of conflicting hopes and fears to their faith in the
inviolability of the Temple. To destroy their confidence was like
snatching away a plank from a drowning man. When Jeremiah made the
attempt, they struck back with the fierce energy of despair. It does
not seem that at this time the city was in any immediate danger; the
incident rather falls in the period of quiet submission to Pharaoh
Necho that preceded the battle of Carchemish. But the disaster of
Megiddo was fresh in men's memories, and in the unsettled state of
Eastern Asia no one knew how soon some other invader might advance
against the city. On the other hand, in the quiet interval, hopes
began to revive, and men were incensed when the prophet made haste to
nip these hopes in the bud, all the more so because their excited
anticipations of future glory had so little solid basis. Jeremiah's
appeal to the ill-omened precedent of Shiloh naturally roused the
sanguine and despondent alike into frenzy.
Jeremiah's defence was simple and direct: "Jehovah sent me to prophesy
all that ye have heard against this house and against this city. Now
therefore amend your ways and your doings, and hearken unto the voice
of Jehovah your God, that He may repent Him of the evil that He hath
spoken against you. As for me, behold, I am in your hands: do unto me
as it seems good and right unto you. Only know assuredly that, if ye
put me to death, ye will bring the guilt of innocent blood upon
yourselves, and upon this city and its inhabitants: for of a truth
Jehovah sent me unto you to speak all these words in your ears." There
is one curious feature in this defence. Jeremiah contemplates the
possibility of two distinct acts of wickedness on the part of his
persecutors: they may turn a deaf ear to his appeal that they should
repent and reform, and their obstinacy will incur all the
chastisements which Jeremiah had threatened; they may also put him to
death and incur additional guilt. Scoffers might reply that his
previous threats were so awful and comprehensive that they left no
room for any addition to the punishment of the impenitent. Sinners
sometimes find a grim comfort in the depth of their wickedness; their
case is so bad that it cannot be made worse, they may now indulge
their evil propensities with a kind of impunity. But Jeremiah's
prophetic insight made him anxious to save his countrymen from further
sin, even in their impenitence; the Divine discrimination is not taxed
beyond its capabilities even by the extremity of human wickedness.
But to return to the main feature in Jeremiah's defence. His accusers'
contention was that his teaching was so utterly blasphemous, so
entirely opposed to every tradition and principle of true
religion--or, as we should say, so much at variance with all
orthodoxy--that it could not be a word of Jehovah. Jeremiah does not
attempt to discuss the relation of his teaching to the possible limits
of Jewish orthodoxy. He bases his defence on the bare assertion of his
prophetic mission--Jehovah had sent him. He assumes that there is no
room for evidence or discussion; it is a question of the relative
authority of Jeremiah and his accusers, whether he or they had the
better right to speak for God. The immediate result seemed to justify
him in this attitude. He was no obscure novice, seeking for the first
time to establish his right to speak in the Divine name. The princes
and people had been accustomed for twenty years to listen to him, as
to the most fully acknowledged mouthpiece of Heaven; they could not
shake off their accustomed feeling of deference, and once more
succumbed to the spell of his fervid and commanding personality. "Then
said the princes and all the people unto the priests and the prophets,
This man is not worthy of death; for he hath spoken to us in the name
of Jehovah our God." For the moment the people were won over and the
princes convinced; but priests and prophets were not so easily
influenced by inspired utterances; some of these probably thought that
they had an inspiration of their own, and their professional
experience made them callous.
At this point again the sequence of events is not clear; possibly the
account was compiled from the imperfect recollections of more than one
of the spectators. The pronouncement of the princes and the people
seems, at first sight, a formal acquittal that should have ended the
trial, and left no room for the subsequent intervention of "certain of
the elders," otherwise the trial seems to have come to no definite
conclusion, and the incident simply terminated in the personal
protection given to Jeremiah by Ahikam ben Shaphan. Possibly, however,
the tribunal of the princes was not governed by any strict rules of
procedure; and the force of the argument used by the elders does not
depend on the exact stage of the trial at which it was introduced.
Either Jeremiah was not entirely successful in his attempt to get the
matter disposed of on the sole ground of his own prophetic authority, or
else the elders were anxious to secure weight and finality for the
acquittal, by bringing forward arguments in its support. The elders were
an ancient Israelite institution, and probably still represented the
patriarchal side of the national life; nothing is said as to their
relation to the princes, and this might not be very clearly defined. The
elders appealed, by way of precedent, to an otherwise unrecorded
incident of the reign of Hezekiah. Micah the Morasthite had uttered
similar threats against Jerusalem and the Temple: "Zion shall be
ploughed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain
of the house as the high places of the forest."[21] But Hezekiah and his
people, instead of slaying Micah, had repented, and the city had been
spared. They evidently wished that the precedent could be wholly
followed in the present instance; but, at any rate, it was clear that
one of the most honoured and successful of the kings of Judah had
accepted a threat against the Temple as a message from Jehovah.
Therefore the mere fact that Jeremiah had uttered such a threat was
certainly not _primâ facie_ evidence that he was a false prophet. We are
not told how this argument was received, but the writer of the chapter,
possibly Baruch, does not attribute Jeremiah's escape either to his
acquittal by the princes or to the reasoning of the elders. The people
apparently changed sides once more, like the common people in the New
Testament, who heard Christ gladly and with equal enthusiasm clamoured
for His crucifixion. At the end of the chapter we find them eager to
have the prophet delivered into their hands that they may put him to
death. Apparently the prophets and priests, having brought matters into
this satisfactory position, had retired from the scene of action; the
heretic was to be delivered over to the secular arm. The princes, like
Pilate, seemed inclined to yield to popular pressure; but Ahikam, a son
of the Shaphan who had to do with the finding of Deuteronomy, stood by
Jeremiah, as John of Gaunt stood by Wyclif, and the Protestant Princes
by Luther, and the magistrates of Geneva by Calvin; and Jeremiah could
say with the Psalmist:--
"I have heard the defaming of many,
Terror on every side:
While they took counsel together against me,
They devised to take away my life.
But I trusted in Thee, O Jehovah:
I said, Thou art my God.
My times are in Thy hand:
Deliver me from the hand of mine enemies, and from them that
persecute me.
* * * * *
Let the lying lips be dumb,
Which speak against the righteous insolently,
With pride and contempt.
Oh, how great is Thy goodness, which Thou hast laid up for
them that fear Thee,
Which Thou hast wrought for them that put their trust in
Thee, before the sons of men."[22]
We have here an early and rudimentary example of religious toleration,
of the willingness, however reluctant, to hear as a possible Divine
message unpalatable teaching, at variance with current theology; we
see too the fountain-head of that freedom which since has "broadened
down from precedent to precedent."
But unfortunately no precedent can bind succeeding generations, and both
Judaism and Christianity have sinned grievously against the lesson of
this chapter. Jehoiakim himself soon broke through the feeble restraint
of this new-born tolerance. The writer adds an incident that must have
happened somewhat later,[23] to show how real was Jeremiah's danger, and
how transient was the liberal mood of the authorities. A certain Uriah
ben Shemaiah of Kirjath Jearim had the courage to follow in Jeremiah's
footsteps and speak against the city "according to all that Jeremiah had
said." With the usual meanness of persecutors, Jehoiakim and his
captains and princes vented upon this obscure prophet the ill-will which
they had not dared to indulge in the case of Jeremiah, with his
commanding personality and influential friends. Uriah fled into Egypt,
but was brought back and slain, and his body cast out unburied into the
common cemetery. We can understand Jeremiah's fierce and bitter
indignation against the city where such things were possible.
This chapter is so full of suggestive teaching that we can only touch
upon two or three of its more obvious lessons. The dogma which shaped
the charge against Jeremiah and caused the martyrdom of Uriah was the
inviolability of the Temple and the Holy City. This dogma was a
perversion of the teaching of Isaiah, and especially of Jeremiah
himself,[24] which assigned a unique position to the Temple in the
religion of Israel. The carnal man shows a fatal ingenuity in sucking
poison out of the most wholesome truth. He is always eager to discover
that something external, material, physical, concrete--some building,
organisation, ceremony, or form of words--is a fundamental basis of
the faith and essential to salvation. If Jeremiah had died with
Josiah, the "priests and prophets" would doubtless have quoted his
authority against Uriah. The teaching of Christ and His apostles, of
Luther and Calvin and their fellow-reformers, has often been twisted
and forged into weapons to be used against their true followers. We
are often tempted in the interest of our favourite views to lay undue
stress on secondary and accidental statements of great teachers. We
fail to keep the due proportion of truth which they themselves
observed, and in applying their precepts to new problems we sacrifice
the kernel and save the husk. The warning of Jeremiah's persecutors
might often "give us pause." We need not be surprised at finding
priests and prophets eager and interested champions of a perversion of
revealed truth. Ecclesiastical office does not necessarily confer any
inspiration from above. The hereditary priest follows the traditions
of his caste, and even the prophet may become the mouthpiece of the
passions and prejudices of those who accept and applaud him. When men
will not endure sound doctrine, they heap to themselves teachers
after their own lusts; having itching ears, they turn away their ears
from the truth and turn unto fables.[25] Jeremiah's experience shows
that even an apparent consensus of clerical opinion is not always to
be trusted. The history of councils and synods is stained by many foul
and shameful blots; it was the Œcumenical Council at Constance that
burnt Huss, and most Churches have found themselves, at some time or
other, engaged in building the tombs of the prophets whom their own
officials had stoned in days gone by. We forget that _Athanasius
contra mundum_ implies also _Athanasius contra ecclesiam_.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] The expression is curious; it usually means all the cities of
Judah, except Jerusalem; the LXX. reading varies between "all the
Jews" and "all Judah."
[11] See especially the exposition of chaps. vii.-x., which are often
supposed to be a reproduction of Jeremiah's utterance on this occasion.
[12] The Hebrew apparently implies that the discourse was a repetition
of former prophecies.
[13] vii. 12-14. Even if chaps. vii.-x. are not a report of Jeremiah's
discourse on this occasion, the few lines in xxvi. are evidently a
mere summary, and vii. will best indicate the substance of his
utterance. The verses quoted occur towards the beginning of vii.-x.,
but from the emphatic reference to Shiloh in the brief abstract in
xxvi., Jeremiah must have dwelt on this topic, and the fact that the
outburst followed his conclusion suggests that he reserved this
subject for his peroration.
[14] v. 31.
[15] Acts xxi. 27-30.
[16] 2 Kings xv. 35.
[17] Mark xiv. 58.
[18] Acts vi. 13, 14, vii. 48.
[19] 2 Kings xviii. 4, xxiii.; Isa. xxxvi. 7.
[20] vii. 4.
[21] Micah iii. 12. As the quotation exactly agrees with the verse in
our extant Book of Micah, we may suppose that the elders were
acquainted with his prophecies in writing.
[22] Psalm xxxi. 13-15, 18, 19. The Psalm is sometimes ascribed to
Jeremiah, because it can be so readily applied to this incident. The
reader will recognise his characteristic phrase "Terror on every side"
(Magor-missabib).
[23] This incident cannot be part of the speech of the elders; it would
only have told against the point they were trying to make. The various
phases--prophesy, persecution, flight, capture, and execution--must have
taken some time, and can scarcely have preceded Jeremiah's utterance "at
the beginning of the reign of King Jehoiakim."
[24] Assuming his sympathy with Deuteronomy.
[25] 2 Tim. iv. 3.