_THE JUDGMENT ON JEHOIAKIM_
xxii. 13-19, xxxvi. 30, 31.
"Jehoiakim ... slew him (Uriah) with the sword, and cast his dead
body into the graves of the common people."--JER. xxvi. 23.
"Therefore thus saith Jehovah concerning Jehoiakim, ... He shall be
buried with the burial of an ass, drawn and cast forth beyond the
gates of Jerusalem."--JER. xxii. 18, 19.
"Jehoiakim ... did that which was evil in the sight of Jehovah,
according to all that his fathers had done."--2 KINGS xxiii. 36, 37.
Our last four chapters have been occupied with the history of Jeremiah
during the reign of Jehoiakim, and therefore necessarily with the
relations of the prophet to the king and his government. Before we
pass on to the reigns of Jehoiachin and Zedekiah, we must consider
certain utterances which deal with the personal character and career
of Jehoiakim. We are helped to appreciate these passages by what we
here read, and by the brief paragraph concerning this reign in the
Second Book of Kings. In Jeremiah the king's policy and conduct are
specially illustrated by two incidents, the murder of the prophet
Uriah and the destruction of the roll. The historian states his
judgment of the reign, but his brief record[69] adds little to our
knowledge of the sovereign.
Jehoiakim was placed upon the throne as the nominee and tributary of
Pharaoh Necho; but he had the address or good fortune to retain his
authority under Nebuchadnezzar, by transferring his allegiance to the
new suzerain of Western Asia. When a suitable opportunity offered, the
unwilling and discontented vassal naturally "turned and rebelled
against" his lord. Even then his good fortune did not forsake him;
although in his latter days Judah was harried by predatory bands of
Chaldeans, Syrians, Moabites, and Ammonites, yet Jehoiakim "slept with
his fathers" before Nebuchadnezzar had set to work in earnest to
chastise his refractory subject. He was not reserved, like Zedekiah,
to endure agonies of mental and physical torture, and to rot in a
Babylonian dungeon.
Jeremiah's judgment upon Jehoiakim and his doings is contained in the
two passages which form the subject of this chapter. The utterance in
xxxvi. 30, 31, was evoked by the destruction of the roll, and we may
fairly assume that xxii. 13-19 was also delivered after that incident.
The immediate context of the latter paragraph throws no light on the
date of its origin. Chapter xxii. is a series of judgments on the
successors of Josiah, and was certainly composed after the deposition
of Jehoiachin, probably during the reign of Zedekiah; but the section
on Jehoiakim must have been uttered at an earlier period. Renan indeed
imagines[70] that Jeremiah delivered this discourse at the gate of the
royal palace at the very beginning of the new reign. The nominee of
Egypt was scarcely seated on the throne, his "new name" Jehoiakim--"He
whom Jehovah establisheth"--still sounded strange in his ears, when
the prophet of Jehovah publicly menaced the king with condign
punishment. Renan is naturally surprised that Jehoiakim tolerated
Jeremiah, even for a moment. But, here as often elsewhere, the French
critic's dramatic instinct has warped his estimate of evidence. We
need not accept the somewhat unkind saying that picturesque anecdotes
are never true, but, at the same time, we have always to guard against
the temptation to accept the most dramatic interpretation of history
as the most accurate. The contents of this passage, the references to
robbery, oppression, and violence, clearly imply that Jehoiakim had
reigned long enough for his government to reveal itself as hopelessly
corrupt. The final breach between the king and the prophet was marked
by the destruction of the roll, and xxii. 13-19, like xxxvi. 30, 31,
may be considered a consequence of this breach.
Let us now consider these utterances. In xxxvi. 30_a_ we read,
"Therefore thus saith Jehovah concerning Jehoiakim king of Judah, He
shall have none to sit upon the throne of David." Later on,[71] a like
judgment was pronounced upon Jehoiakim's son and successor Jehoiachin.
The absence of this threat from xxii. 13-19 is doubtless due to the
fact that the chapter was compiled when the letter of the prediction
seemed to have been proved to be false by the accession of Jehoiachin.
Its spirit and substance were amply satisfied by the latter's
deposition and captivity after a brief reign of a hundred days.
The next clause in the sentence on Jehoiakim runs: "His dead body
shall be cast out in the day to the heat, and in the night to the
frost." The same doom is repeated in the later prophecy:--
"They shall not lament for him,
Alas my brother! Alas my brother!
They shall not lament for him,
Alas lord! Alas lord![72]
He shall be buried with the burial of an ass,
Dragged forth and cast away without the gates of Jerusalem."
Jeremiah did not need to draw upon his imagination for this vision of
judgment. When the words were uttered, his memory called up the murder
of Uriah ben Shemaiah and the dishonour done to his corpse. Uriah's
only guilt had been his zeal for the truth that Jeremiah had
proclaimed. Though Jehoiakim and his party had not dared to touch
Jeremiah or had not been able to reach him, they had struck his
influence by killing Uriah. But for their hatred of the master, the
disciple might have been spared. And Jeremiah had neither been able to
protect him, nor allowed to share his fate. Any generous spirit will
understand how Jeremiah's whole nature was possessed and agitated by a
tempest of righteous indignation, how utterly humiliated he felt to be
compelled to stand by in helpless impotence. And now, when the tyrant
had filled up the measure of his iniquity, when the imperious impulse
of the Divine Spirit bade the prophet speak the doom of his king,
there breaks forth at last the long pent-up cry for vengeance:
"Avenge, O Lord, Thy slaughtered saint"--let the persecutor suffer the
agony and shame which he inflicted on God's martyr, fling out the
murderer's corpse unburied, let it lie and rot upon the dishonoured
grave of his victim.
Can we say, Amen? Not perhaps without some hesitation. Yet surely, if
our veins run blood and not water, our feelings, had we been in
Jeremiah's place, would have been as bitter and our words as fierce.
Jehoiakim was more guilty than our Queen Mary, but the memory of the
grimmest of the Tudors still stinks in English nostrils. In our own
days, we have not had time to forget how men received the news of
Hannington's murder at Uganda, and we can imagine what European
Christians would say and feel if their missionaries were massacred in
China.
And yet, when we read such a treatise as Lactantius wrote _Concerning
the Deaths of Persecutors_, we cannot but recoil. We are shocked at the
stern satisfaction he evinces in the miserable ends of Maximin and
Galerius, and other enemies of the true faith. Discreet historians have
made large use of this work, without thinking it desirable to give an
explicit account of its character and spirit. Biographers of Lactantius
feel constrained to offer a half-hearted apology for the _De Morte
Persecutorum_. Similarly we find ourselves of one mind with Gibbon,[73]
in refusing to derive edification from a sermon in which Constantine the
Great, or the bishop who composed it for him, affected to relate the
miserable end of all the persecutors of the Church. Nor can we share the
exultation of the Covenanters in the Divine judgment which they saw in
the death of Claverhouse; and we are not moved to any hearty sympathy
with more recent writers, who have tried to illustrate from history the
danger of touching the rights and privileges of the Church. Doubtless
God will avenge His own elect; nevertheless _Nemo me impune lacessit_ is
no seemly motto for the Kingdom of God. Even Greek mythologists taught
that it was perilous for men to wield the thunderbolts of Zeus. Still
less is the Divine wrath a weapon for men to grasp in their differences
and dissensions, even about the things of God. Michael the Archangel,
even when contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses,
durst not bring against him a railing judgment, but said, The Lord
rebuke thee.[74]
How far Jeremiah would have shared such modern sentiment, it is hard
to say. At any rate his personal feeling is kept in the background; it
is postponed to the more patient and deliberate judgment of the Divine
Spirit, and subordinated to broad considerations of public morality.
We have no right to contrast Jeremiah with our Lord and His
proto-martyr Stephen, because we have no prayer of the ancient prophet
to rank with, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do,"
or again with, "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." Christ and
His disciple forgave wrongs done to themselves: they did not condone
the murder of their brethren. In the Apocalypse, which concludes the
English Bible, and was long regarded as God's final revelation, His
last word to man, the souls of the martyrs cry out from beneath the
altar: "How long, O Master, the holy and true, dost Thou not judge and
avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?"[75]
Doubtless God will avenge His own elect, and the appeal for justice
may be neither ignoble nor vindictive. But such prayers, beyond all
others, must be offered in humble submission to the Judge of all. When
our righteous indignation claims to pass its own sentence, we do well
to remember that our halting intellect and our purblind conscience
are ill qualified to sit as assessors of the Eternal Justice.
When Saul set out for Damascus, "breathing out threatening and
slaughter against the disciples of the Lord," the survivors of his
victims cried out for a swift punishment of the persecutor, and
believed that their prayers were echoed by martyred souls in the
heavenly Temple. If that ninth chapter of the Acts had recorded how
Saul of Tarsus was struck dead by the lightnings of the wrath of God,
preachers down all the Christian centuries would have moralised on the
righteous Divine judgment. Saul would have found his place in the
homiletic Chamber of Horrors with Ananias and Sapphira, Herod and
Pilate, Nero and Diocletian. Yet the Captain of our salvation,
choosing His lieutenants, passes over many a man with blameless
record, and allots the highest post to this blood-stained persecutor.
No wonder that Paul, if only in utter self-contempt, emphasised the
doctrine of Divine election. Verily God's ways are not our ways and
His thoughts are not our thoughts.
Still, however, we easily see that Paul and Jehoiakim belong to two
different classes. The persecutor who attempts in honest but misguided
zeal to make others endorse his own prejudices, and turn a deaf ear
with him to the teaching of the Holy Spirit, must not be ranked with
politicians who sacrifice to their own private interests the
Revelation and the Prophets of God.
This prediction which we have been discussing of Jehoiakim's shameful
end is followed in the passage in chapter xxxvi. by a general
announcement of universal judgment, couched in Jeremiah's usual
comprehensive style:--
"I will visit their sin upon him and upon his children and upon his
servants, and I will bring upon them and the inhabitants of Jerusalem
and the men of Judah all the evil which I spake unto them and they did
not hearken."
In chapter xxii. the sentence upon Jehoiakim is prefaced by a
statement of the crimes for which he was punished. His eyes and his
heart were wholly possessed by avarice and cruelty; as an
administrator he was active in oppression and violence.[76] But
Jeremiah does not confine himself to these general charges; he
specifies and emphasises one particular form of Jehoiakim's
wrong-doing, the tyrannous exaction of forced labour for his
buildings. To the sovereigns of petty Syrian states, old Memphis and
Babylon were then what London and Paris are to modern Ameers,
Khedives, and Sultans. Circumstances, indeed, did not permit a Syrian
prince to visit the Egyptian or Chaldean capital with perfect comfort
and unrestrained enjoyment. Ancient Eastern potentates, like mediæval
suzerains, did not always distinguish between a guest and a hostage.
But the Jewish kings would not be debarred from importing the luxuries
and imitating the vices of their conquerors.
Renan says[77] of this period: "L'Egypte était, à cette époque, le
pays où les industries de luxe étaient le plus développées. Tout le
monde raffolaient, en particulier, de sa carrosserie et de ses meubles
ouvragés. Joiaquin et la noblesse de Jérusalem ne songeaient qu'à se
procurer ces beaux objets, qui réalisaient ce qu'on avait vu de plus
exquis en fait de goût jusque-là."
The supreme luxury of vulgar minds is the use of wealth as a means of
display, and monarchs have always delighted in the erection of vast
and ostentatious buildings. At this time Egypt and Babylon vied with
one another in pretentious architecture. In addition to much useful
engineering work, Psammetichus I. made large additions to the temples
and public edifices at Memphis, Thebes, Sais, and elsewhere, so that
"the entire valley of the Nile became little more than one huge
workshop, where stone-cutters and masons, bricklayers and carpenters,
laboured incessantly."[78] This activity in building continued even
after the disaster to the Egyptian arms at Carchemish.
Nebuchadnezzar had an absolute mania for architecture. His numerous
inscriptions are mere catalogues of his achievements in building. His
home administration and even his extensive conquests are scarcely
noticed; he held them of little account compared with his temples and
palaces--"this great Babylon, which I have built for the royal
dwelling-place, by the might of my power and for the glory of my
majesty."[79] Nebuchadnezzar created most of the magnificence that
excited the wonder and admiration of Herodotus a century later.
Jehoiakim had been moved to follow the notable example of Chaldea and
Egypt. By a strange irony of fortune, Egypt, once the cynosure of
nations, has become in our own time the humble imitator of Western
civilisation, and now boulevards have rendered the suburbs of Cairo "a
shabby reproduction of modern Paris." Possibly in the eyes of Egyptians
and Chaldeans Jehoiakim's efforts only resulted in a "shabby
reproduction" of Memphis or Babylon. Nevertheless these foreign luxuries
are always expensive; and minor states had not then learnt the art of
trading on the resources of their powerful neighbours by means of
foreign loans. Moreover Judah had to pay tribute first to Pharaoh Necho,
and then to Nebuchadnezzar. The times were bad, and additional taxes for
building purposes must have been felt as an intolerable oppression.
Naturally the king did not pay for his labour; like Solomon and all
other great Eastern despots, he had recourse to the _corvee_, and for
this in particular Jeremiah denounced him.
"Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness
And his chambers by injustice;
That maketh his neighbour toil without wages,
And giveth him no hire;
That saith, 'I will build me a wide house
And spacious chambers,'
And openeth out broad windows, with woodwork of cedar
And vermilion painting."
Then the denunciation passes into biting sarcasm:--
"Art thou indeed a king,
Because thou strivest to excel in cedar?"[80]
Poor imitations of Nebuchadnezzar's magnificent structures could not
conceal the impotence and dependence of the Jewish king. The
pretentiousness of Jehoiakim's buildings challenged a comparison which
only reminded men that he was a mere puppet, with its strings pulled now
by Egypt and now by Babylon. At best he was only reigning on sufferance.
Jeremiah contrasts Jehoiakim's government both as to justice and
dignity with that of Josiah:--
"Did not thy father eat and drink?"[81]
(He was no ascetic, but, like the Son of Man, lived a full, natural,
human life.)
"And do judgment and justice?
Then did he prosper.
He judged the cause of the poor and needy,
Then was there prosperity.
Is not this to know Me?
Jehovah hath spoken it."
Probably Jehoiakim claimed by some external observance, or through
some subservient priest or prophet, to "know Jehovah"; and Jeremiah
repudiates the claim.
Josiah had reigned in the period when the decay of Assyria left Judah
dominant in Palestine, until Egypt or Chaldea could find time to
gather up the outlying fragments of the shattered empire. The wisdom
and justice of the Jewish king had used this breathing space for the
advantage and happiness of his people; and during part of his reign
Josiah's power seems to have been as extensive as that of any of his
predecessors on the throne of Judah. And yet, according to current
theology, Jeremiah's appeal to the prosperity of Josiah as a proof of
God's approbation was a startling anomaly. Josiah had been defeated
and slain at Megiddo in the prime of his manhood, at the age of
thirty-nine. None but the most independent and enlightened spirits
could believe that the Reformer's premature death, at the moment when
his policy had resulted in national disaster, was not an emphatic
declaration of Divine displeasure. Jeremiah's contrary belief might be
explained and justified. Some such justification is suggested by the
prophet's utterance concerning Jehoahaz: "Weep not for the dead,
neither bemoan him: but weep sore for him that goeth away." Josiah had
reigned with real authority, he died when independence was no longer
possible; and therein he was happier and more honourable than his
successors, who held a vassal throne by the uncertain tenure of
time-serving duplicity, and were for the most part carried into
captivity. "The righteous was taken away from the evil to come."[82]
The warlike spirit of classical antiquity and of Teutonic chivalry
welcomed a glorious death upon the field of battle:--
"And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his Gods?"
No one spoke of Leonidas as a victim of Divine wrath. Later Judaism
caught something of the same temper. Judas Maccabæus, when in extreme
danger, said, "It is better for us to die in battle, than to look upon
the evils of our people and our sanctuary"; and later on, when he
refused to flee from inevitable death, he claimed that he would leave
behind him no stain upon his honour.[83] Islam also is prodigal in its
promises of future bliss to those soldiers who fall fighting for its
sake.
But the dim and dreary Sheôl of the ancient Hebrews was no glorious
Valhalla or houri-peopled Paradise. The renown of the battle-field was
poor compensation for the warm, full-blooded life of the upper air.
When David sang his dirge for Saul and Jonathan, he found no comfort
in the thought that they had died fighting for Israel. Moreover the
warrior's self-sacrifice for his country seems futile and inglorious,
when it neither secures victory nor postpones defeat. And at Megiddo
Josiah and his army perished in a vain attempt to come
"Between the pass and fell incensed points
Of mighty opposites."
We can hardly justify to ourselves Jeremiah's use of Josiah's reign as
an example of prosperity as the reward of righteousness; his
contemporaries must have been still more difficult to convince. We
cannot understand how the words of this prophecy were left without any
attempt at justification, or why Jeremiah did not meet by anticipation
the obvious and apparently crushing rejoinder that the reign
terminated in disgrace and disaster.
Nevertheless these difficulties do not affect the terms of the
sentence upon Jehoiakim, or the ground upon which he was condemned. We
shall be better able to appreciate Jeremiah's attitude and to discover
its lessons if we venture to reconsider his decisions. We cannot
forget that there was, as Cheyne puts it, a duel between Jeremiah and
Jehoiakim; and we should hesitate to accept the verdict of Hildebrand
upon Henry IV. of Germany, or of Thomas à Becket on Henry II. of
England. Moreover the data upon which we have to base our judgment,
including the unfavourable estimate in the Book of Kings, come to us
from Jeremiah or his disciples. Our ideas about Queen Elizabeth would
be more striking than accurate if our only authorities for her reign
were Jesuit historians of England. But Jeremiah is absorbed in lofty
moral and spiritual issues; his testimony is not tainted with that
sectarian and sacerdotal casuistry which is always so ready to
subordinate truth to the interests of "the Church." He speaks of facts
with a simple directness which leaves us in no doubt as to their
reality; his picture of Jehoiakim may be one-sided, but it owes
nothing to an inventive imagination.
Even Renan, who, in Ophite fashion, holds a brief for the bad
characters of the Old Testament, does not seriously challenge
Jeremiah's statements of fact. But the judgment of the modern critic
seems at first sight more lenient than that of the Hebrew prophet: the
former sees in Jehoiakim "un prince libéral et modéré,"[84] but when
this favourable estimate is coupled with an apparent comparison with
Louis Philippe, we must leave students of modern history to decide
whether Renan is really less severe than Jeremiah. Cheyne, on the
other hand, holds[85] that "we have no reason to question Jeremiah's
verdict upon Jehoiakim, who, alike from a religious and a political
point of view, appears to have been unequal to the crisis in the
fortunes of Israel." No doubt this is true; and yet perhaps Renan is
so far right that Jehoiakim's failure was rather his misfortune than
his fault. We may doubt whether any king of Israel or Judah would have
been equal to the supreme crisis which Jehoiakim had to face. Our
scanty information seems to indicate a man of strong will, determined
character, and able statesmanship. Though the nominee of Pharaoh
Necho, he retained his sceptre under Nebuchadnezzar, and held his own
against Jeremiah and the powerful party by which the prophet was
supported. Under more favourable conditions he might have rivalled
Uzziah or Jeroboam II. In the time of Jehoiakim, a supreme political
and military genius would have been as helpless on the throne of Judah
as were the Palæologi in the last days of the Empire at
Constantinople. Something may be said to extenuate his religious
attitude. In opposing Jeremiah he was not defying clear and
acknowledged truth. Like the Pharisees in their conflict with Christ,
the persecuting king had popular religious sentiment on his side.
According to that current theology which had been endorsed in some
measure even by Isaiah and Jeremiah, the defeat at Megiddo proved that
Jehovah repudiated the religious policy of Josiah and his advisers.
The inspiration of the Holy Spirit enabled Jeremiah to resist this
shallow conclusion, and to maintain through every crisis his unshaken
faith in the profounder truth. Jehoiakim was too conservative to
surrender at the prophet's bidding the long-accepted and fundamental
doctrine of retribution, and to follow the forward leading of
Revelation. He "stood by the old truth" as did Charles V. at the
Reformation. "Let him that is without sin" in this matter "first cast
a stone at" him.
Though we extenuate Jehoiakim's conduct, we are still bound to condemn
it; not however because he was exceptionally wicked, but because he
failed to rise above a low spiritual average: yet in this judgment we
also condemn ourselves for our own intolerance, and for the prejudice
and self-will which have often blinded our eyes to the teachings of
our Lord and Master.
But Jeremiah emphasises one special charge against the king--his
exaction of forced and unpaid labour. This form of taxation was in
itself so universal that the censure can scarcely be directed against
its ordinary and moderate exercise. If Jeremiah had intended to
inaugurate a new departure, he would have approached the subject in a
more formal and less casual fashion. It was a time of national danger
and distress, when all moral and material resources were needed to
avert the ruin of the state, or at any rate to mitigate the sufferings
of the people; and at such a time Jehoiakim exhausted and embittered
his subjects--that he might dwell in spacious halls with woodwork of
cedar. The Temple and palaces of Solomon had been built at the expense
of a popular resentment, which survived for centuries, and with which,
as their silence seems to show, the prophets fully sympathised. If
even Solomon's exactions were culpable, Jehoiakim was altogether
without excuse.
His sin was that common to all governments, the use of the authority of
the state for private ends. This sin is possible not only to sovereigns
and secretaries of state, but to every town councillor and every one who
has a friend on a town council, nay, to every clerk in a public office
and to every workman in a government dockyard. A king squandering public
revenues on private pleasures, and an artisan pilfering nails and iron
with an easy conscience because they only belong to the state, are
guilty of crimes essentially the same. On the one hand, Jehoiakim as the
head of the state was oppressing individuals; and although modern states
have grown comparatively tender as to the rights of the individual, yet
even now their action is often cruelly oppressive to insignificant
minorities. But, on the other hand, the right of exacting labour was
only vested in the king as a public trust; its abuse was as much an
injury to the community as to individuals. If Jeremiah had to deal with
modern civilisation, we might, perchance, be startled by his passing
lightly over our religious and political controversies to denounce the
squandering of public resources in the interests of individuals and
classes, sects and parties.
FOOTNOTES:
[69] 2 Kings xxiii. 34-xxiv. 7.
[70] iii. 274.
[71] xxii. 30.
[72] R.V., "Ah my brother! or Ah sister!... Ah lord! or Ah his glory!"
The text is based on an emendation of Graetz, following the Syriac.
(Giesebrecht.)
[73] Chap. xiii.
[74] Jude 9.
[75] Apc. vi. 10.
[76] xxii. 17. The exact meaning of the word translated "violence" (so
A.V., R.V.) is very doubtful.
[77] _Hist._, etc., iii. 266.
[78] Rawlinson, _Ancient Egypt_ (Story of the Nations).
[79] Dan. iv. 30.
[80] I have followed R.V., but the text is probably corrupt. Cheyne
follows LXX. (A) in reading "because thou viest with Ahab": LXX. (B) has
"Ahaz" (so Ewald). Giesebrecht proposes to neglect the accents and
translate, "viest in cedar buildings with thy father" (_i.e._ Solomon).
[81] According to Giesebrecht (cf. however the last note) this clause
is an objection which the prophet puts into the mouth of the king. "My
father enjoyed the good things of life--why should not I?" The prophet
rejoins, "Nay, but he did judgment," etc.
[82] Isa. lvii. (English Versions).
[83] Macc. ii. 59, ix. 10.
[84] iii. 269.
[85] P. 142.