_JEHOIACHIN_[86]
xxii. 20-30.
"A despised broken vessel,"--JER. xxii. 28.
"A young lion. And he went up and down among the lions, he became
a young lion and he learned to catch the prey, he devoured
men."--EZEK. xix. 5, 6.
"Jehoiachin ... did evil in the sight of Jehovah, according to all
that his father had done."--2 KINGS xxiv. 8, 9.
We have seen that our book does not furnish a consecutive biography of
Jeremiah; we are not even certain as to the chronological order of the
incidents narrated. Yet these chapters are clear and full enough to
give us an accurate idea of what Jeremiah did and suffered during the
eleven years of Jehoiakim's reign. He was forced to stand by while the
king lent the weight of his authority to the ancient corruptions of
the national religion, and conducted his home and foreign policy
without any regard to the will of Jehovah, as expressed by His
prophet. His position was analogous to that of a Romanist priest under
Elizabeth or a Protestant divine in the reign of James II. According
to some critics, Nebuchadnezzar was to Jeremiah what Philip of Spain
was to the priest and William of Orange to the Puritan.
During all these long and weary years, the prophet watched the ever
multiplying tokens of approaching ruin. He was no passive spectator,
but a faithful watchman to the house of Israel; again and again he
risked his life in a vain attempt to make his fellow-countrymen aware
of their danger.[87] The vision of the coming sword was ever before
his eyes, and he blew the trumpet and warned the people; but they
would not be warned, and the prophet knew that the sword would come
and take them away in their iniquity. He paid the penalty of his
faithfulness; at one time or another he was beaten, imprisoned,
proscribed, and driven to hide himself; still he persevered in his
mission, as time and occasion served. Yet he survived Jehoiakim,
partly because he was more anxious to serve Jehovah than to gain the
glorious deliverance of martyrdom; partly because his royal enemy
feared to proceed to extremities against a prophet of Jehovah, who was
befriended by powerful nobles, and might possibly have relations with
Nebuchadnezzar himself. Jehoiakim's religion--for like the Athenians
he was probably "very religious"--was saturated with superstition, and
it was only when deeply moved that he lost the sense of an external
sanctity attaching to Jeremiah's person. In Israel prophets were
hedged by a more potent divinity than kings.
Meanwhile Jeremiah was growing old in years and older in experience.
When Jehoiakim died, it was nearly forty years since the young priest
had first been called "to pluck up and to break down, and to destroy
and to overthrow; to build and to plant"; it was more than eleven
since his brighter hopes were buried in Josiah's grave. Jehovah had
promised that He would make His servant into "an iron pillar and
brasen walls."[88] The iron was tempered and hammered into shape
during these days of conflict and endurance, like--
" ... iron dug from central gloom,
And heated hot with burning fears
And dipt in baths of hissing tears,
And battered with the shocks of doom,
To shape and use."
He had long lost all trace of that sanguine youthful enthusiasm which
promises to carry all before it. His opening manhood had felt its happy
illusions, but they did not dominate his soul and they soon passed away.
At the Divine bidding, he had surrendered his most ingrained prejudices,
his dearest desires. He had consented to be alienated from his brethren
at Anathoth, and to live without home or family; although a patriot, he
accepted the inevitable ruin of his nation as the just judgment of
Jehovah; he was a priest, imbued by heredity and education with the
religious traditions of Israel, yet he had yielded himself to Jehovah,
to announce, as His herald, the destruction of the Temple, and the
devastation of the Holy Land. He had submitted his shrinking flesh and
reluctant spirit to God's most unsparing demands, and had dared the
worst that man could inflict. Such surrender and such experiences
wrought in him a certain stern and terrible strength, and made his life
still more remote from the hopes and fears, the joys and sorrows of
common men. In his isolation and his inspired self-sufficiency he had
become an "iron pillar." Doubtless he seemed to many as hard and cold as
iron; but this pillar of the faith could still glow with white heat of
indignant passion, and within the shelter of the "brasen walls" there
still beat a human heart, touched with tender sympathy for those less
disciplined to endure.
We have thus tried to estimate the development of Jeremiah's character
during the second period of his ministry, which began with the death
of Josiah and terminated with the brief reign of Jehoiachin. Before
considering Jeremiah's judgment upon this prince we will review the
scanty data at our disposal to enable us to appreciate the prophet's
verdict.
Jehoiakim died while Nebuchadnezzar was on the march to punish his
rebellion. His son Jehoiachin, a youth of eighteen,[89] succeeded his
father and continued his policy. Thus the accession of the new king
was no new departure, but merely a continuance of the old order; the
government was still in the hands of the party attached to Egypt, and
opposed to Babylon and hostile to Jeremiah. Under these circumstances
we are bound to accept the statement of Kings that Jehoiakim "slept
with his fathers," _i.e._ was buried in the royal sepulchre.[90] There
was no literal fulfilment of the prediction that he should "be buried
with the burial of an ass." Jeremiah had also declared concerning
Jehoiakim: "He shall have none to sit upon the throne of David."[91]
According to popular superstition, the honourable burial of Jehoiakim
and the succession of his son to the throne further discredited
Jeremiah and his teaching. Men read happy omens in the mere observance
of ordinary constitutional routine. The curse upon Jehoiakim seemed so
much spent breath: why should not Jeremiah's other predictions of ruin
and exile also prove a mere _vox et præterea nihil_? In spite of a
thousand disappointments, men's hopes still turned to Egypt; and if
earthly resources failed they trusted to Jehovah Himself to intervene,
and deliver Jerusalem from the advancing hosts of Nebuchadnezzar, as
from the army of Sennacherib.
Ezekiel's elegy over Jehoiachin suggests that the young king displayed
energy and courage worthy of a better fortune:--
"He walked up and down among the lions,
He became a young lion;
He learned to catch the prey,
He devoured men.
He broke down[92] their palaces,
He wasted their cities;
The land, was desolate, and the fulness thereof,
At the noise of his roaring."[93]
However figurative these lines may be, the hyperbole must have had some
basis in fact. Probably before the regular Babylonian army entered
Judah, Jehoiachin distinguished himself by brilliant but useless
successes against the marauding bands of Chaldeans, Syrians, Moabites,
and Ammonites, who had been sent to prepare the way for the main body.
He may even have carried his victorious arms into the territory of Moab
or Ammon. But his career was speedily cut short: "The servants of
Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came up to Jerusalem and besieged the
city." Pharaoh Necho made no sign, and Jehoiachin was forced to retire
before the regular forces of Babylon, and soon found himself shut up in
Jerusalem. Still for a time he held out, but when it was known in the
beleaguered city that Nebuchadnezzar was present in person in the camp
of the besiegers, the Jewish captains lost heart. Perhaps too they hoped
for better treatment, if they appealed to the conqueror's vanity by
offering him an immediate submission which they had refused to his
lieutenants. The gates were thrown open; Jehoiachin and the Queen
Mother, Nehushta, with his ministers and princes and the officers of his
household, passed out in suppliant procession, and placed themselves and
their city at the disposal of the conqueror. In pursuance of the policy
which Nebuchadnezzar had inherited from the Assyrians, the king and his
court and eight thousand picked men were carried away captive to
Babylon.[94] For thirty-seven years Jehoiachin languished in a Chaldean
prison, till at last his sufferings were mitigated by an act of grace,
which signalised the accession of a new king of Babylon.
Nebuchadnezzar's successor Evil Merodach, "in the year when he began to
reign, lifted up the head of Jehoiachin king of Judah out of prison, and
spake kindly to him, and set his throne above the throne of the kings
that were with him in Babylon. And Jehoiachin changed his prison
garments, and ate at the royal table continually all the days of his
life, and had a regular allowance given him by the king, a daily
portion, all the days of his life."[95] At the age of fifty-five, the
last survivor of the reigning princes of the house of David emerges from
his dungeon, broken in mind and body by his long captivity, to be a
grateful dependent upon the charity of Evil Merodach, just as the
survivor of the house of Saul had sat at David's table. The young lion
that devoured the prey and caught men and wasted cities was thankful to
be allowed to creep out of his cage and die in comfort--"a despised
broken vessel."
We feel a shock of surprise and repulsion as we turn from this
pathetic story to Jeremiah's fierce invectives against the unhappy
king. But we wrong the prophet and misunderstand his utterance if we
forget that it was delivered during that brief frenzy in which the
young king and his advisers threw away the last chance of safety for
Judah. Jehoiachin might have repudiated his father's rebellion against
Babylon; Jehoiakim s death had removed the chief offender, no personal
blame attached to his successor, and a prompt submission might have
appeased Nebuchadnezzar's wrath against Judah and obtained his favour
for the new king. If a hot-headed young rajah of some protected Indian
state revolted against the English suzerainty and exposed his country
to the misery of a hopeless war, we should sympathise with any of his
counsellors who condemned such wilful folly; we have no right to find
fault with Jeremiah for his severe censure of the reckless vanity
which precipitated his country's fate.
Jeremiah's deep and absorbing interest in Judah and Jerusalem is
indicated by the form of this utterance; it is addressed to the
"Daughter of Zion"[96]:--
"Go up to Lebanon, and lament,
And lift up thy voice in Bashan,
And lament from Abarim,[97]
For thy lovers are all destroyed!"
Her "lovers," her heathen allies, whether gods or men, are impotent,
and Judah is as forlorn and helpless as a lonely and unfriended woman;
let her bewail her fate upon the mountains of Israel, like Jephthah's
daughter in ancient days.
"I spake unto thee in thy prosperity;
Thou saidst, I will not hearken.
This hath been thy way from thy youth,
That thou hast not obeyed My voice.
The tempest shall be the shepherd to all thy shepherds."
Kings and nobles, priests and prophets, shall be carried off by the
Chaldean invaders, as trees and houses are swept away by a hurricane.
These shepherds who had spoiled and betrayed their flock would
themselves be as silly sheep in the hands of robbers.
"Thy lovers shall go into captivity.
Then, verily, shalt thou be ashamed and confounded
Because of all thy wickedness.
O thou that dwellest in Lebanon!
O thou that hast made thy nest in the cedar!"
The former mention of Lebanon reminded Jeremiah of Jehoiakim's halls
of cedar. With grim irony he links together the royal magnificence of
the palace and the wild abandonment of the people's lamentation.
"How wilt thou groan[98] when pangs come upon thee,
Anguish as of a woman in travail!"
The nation is involved in the punishment inflicted upon her rulers. In
such passages the prophets largely identify the nation with the
governing classes--not without justification. No government, whatever
the constitution may be, can ignore a strong popular demand for
righteous policy, at home and abroad. A special responsibility of
course rests on those who actually wield the authority of the state,
but the policy of rulers seldom succeeds in effecting much either for
good or evil without some sanction of public feeling. Our revolution
which replaced the Puritan Protectorate by the restored Monarchy was
rendered possible by the change of popular sentiment. Yet even under
the purest democracy men imagine that they divest themselves of civic
responsibility by neglecting their civic duties; they stand aloof, and
blame officials and professional politicians for the injustice and
crime wrought by the state. National guilt seems happily disposed of
when laid on the shoulders of that convenient abstraction "the
government"; but neither the prophets nor the Providence which they
interpret recognise this convenient theory of vicarious atonement: the
king sins, but the prophet's condemnation is uttered against and
executed upon the nation.
Nevertheless a special responsibility rests upon the ruler, and now
Jeremiah turns from the nation to its king.
"As I live--Jehovah hath spoken it--
Though Coniah ben Jehoiakim king of Judah were a signet ring
upon My right hand----"
By a forcible Hebrew idiom Jehovah, as it were, turns and confronts
the king and specially addresses him:--
"Yet would I pluck thee thence."
A signet ring was valuable in itself, and, as far as an inanimate object
could be, was an "_alter ego_" of the sovereign; it scarcely ever left
his finger, and when it did, it carried with it the authority of its
owner. A signet ring could not be lost or even cast away without some
reflection upon the majesty of the king. Jehoiachin's character was by
no means worthless; he had courage, energy, and patriotism. The heir of
David and Solomon, the patron and champion of the Temple, dwelt, as it
were, under the very shadow of the Almighty. Men generally believed that
Jehovah's honour was engaged to defend Jerusalem and the house of David.
He Himself would be discredited by the fall of the elect dynasty and the
captivity of the chosen people. Yet everything must be sacrificed--the
career of a gallant young prince, the ancient association of the sacred
Name with David and Zion, even the superstitious awe with which the
heathen regarded the God of the Exodus and of the deliverance from
Sennacherib. Nothing will be allowed to stand in the way of the Divine
judgment. And yet we still sometimes dream that the working out of the
Divine righteousness will be postponed in the interests of
ecclesiastical traditions and in deference to the criticisms of ungodly
men!
"And I will give thee into the hand of them that seek thy
life,
Into the hand of them of whom thou art afraid,
Into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and the
Chaldeans.
And I will hurl thee and the mother that bare thee into
another land, where ye were not born:
There shall ye die.
And unto the land whereunto their soul longeth to return,
Thither they shall not return."
Again the sudden change in the person addressed emphasises the scope
of the Divine proclamation; the doom of the royal house is not only
announced to them, but also to the world at large. The mention of the
Queen Mother, Nehushta, reveals what we should in any case have
conjectured, that the policy of the young prince was largely
determined by his mother. Her importance is also indicated by xiii.
18, usually supposed to be addressed to Jehoiachin and Nehushta:---
"Say unto the king and the queen mother,
Leave your thrones and sit in the dust,
For your glorious diadems are fallen."
The Queen Mother is a characteristic figure of polygamous Eastern
dynasties, but we may be helped to understand what Nehushta was to
Jehoiachin if we remember the influence of Eleanor of Poitou over
Richard I. and John, and the determined struggle which Margaret of
Anjou made on behalf of her ill-starred son.
The next verse of our prophecy seems to be a protest against the
severe sentence pronounced in the preceding clauses:--
"Is then this man Coniah a despised vessel, only fit to be
broken?
Is he a tool, that no one wants?"
Thus Jeremiah imagines the citizens and warriors of Jerusalem crying
out against him, for his sentence of doom against their darling prince
and captain. The prophetic utterance seemed to them monstrous and
incredible, only worthy to be met with impatient scorn. We may find a
mediæval analogy to the situation at Jerusalem in the relations of
Clement IV. to Conradin, the last heir of the house of Hohenstaufen.
When this youth of sixteen was in the full career of victory, the Pope
predicted that his army would be scattered like smoke, and pointed out
the prince and his allies as victims for the sacrifice. When Conradin
was executed after his defeat at Tagliacozzo, Christendom was filled
with abhorrence at the suspicion that Clement had countenanced the
doing to death of the hereditary enemy of the Papal See. Jehoiachin's
friends felt towards Jeremiah somewhat as these thirteenth-century
Ghibellines towards Clement.
Moreover the charge against Clement was probably unfounded; Milman[99]
says of him, "He was doubtless moved with inner remorse at the
cruelties of 'his champion' Charles of Anjou." Jeremiah too would
lament the doom he was constrained to utter. Nevertheless he could not
permit Judah to be deluded to its ruin by empty dreams of glory:--
"O land, land, land,
Hear the word of Jehovah."
Isaiah had called all Nature, heaven and earth to bear witness against
Israel, but now Jeremiah is appealing with urgent importunity to Judah.
"O Chosen Land of Jehovah, so richly blessed by His favour, so sternly
chastised by His discipline, Land of prophetic Revelation, now at last,
after so many warnings, believe the word of thy God and submit to His
judgment. Hasten not thy unhappy fate by shallow confidence in the
genius and daring of Jehoiachin: he is no true Messiah."
"For saith Jehovah,
Write this man childless,
A man whose life shall not know prosperity:
For none of his seed shall prosper;
None shall sit upon the throne of David,
Nor rule any more over Judah."
Thus, by Divine decree, the descendants of Jehoiakim were
disinherited; Jehoiachin was to be recorded in the genealogies of
Israel as having no heir. He might have offspring,[100] but the
Messiah, the Son of David, would not come of his line.
Two points suggest themselves in connection with this utterance of
Jeremiah; first as to the circumstances under which it was uttered,
then as to its application to Jehoiachin.
A moment's reflection will show that this prophecy implied great courage
and presence of mind on the part of Jeremiah--his enemies might even
have spoken of his barefaced audacity. He had predicted that Jehoiakim's
corpse should be cast forth without any rites of honourable sepulture;
and that no son of his should sit upon the throne. Jehoiakim had been
buried like other kings, he slept with his fathers, and Jehoiachin his
son reigned in his stead. The prophet should have felt himself utterly
discredited; and yet here was Jeremiah coming forward unabashed with new
prophecies against the king, whose very existence was a glaring disproof
of his prophetic inspiration. Thus the friends of Jehoiachin. They would
affect towards Jeremiah's message the same indifference which the
present generation feels for the expositors of Daniel and the
Apocalypse, who confidently announce the end of the world for 1866, and
in 1867 fix a new date with cheerful and undiminished assurance. But
these students of sacred records can always save the authority of
Scripture by acknowledging the fallibility of their calculations. When
their predictions fail, they confess that they have done their sum wrong
and start it afresh. But Jeremiah's utterances were not published as
human deductions from inspired data; he himself claimed to be inspired.
He did not ask his hearers to verify and acknowledge the accuracy of his
arithmetic or his logic, but to submit to the Divine message from his
lips. And yet it is clear that he did not stake the authority of Jehovah
or even his own prophetic status upon the accurate and detailed
fulfilment of his predictions. Nor does he suggest that, in announcing a
doom which was not literally accomplished, he had misunderstood or
misinterpreted his message. The details which both Jeremiah and those
who edited and transmitted his words knew to be unfulfilled were allowed
to remain in the record of Divine Revelation--not, surely, to illustrate
the fallibility of prophets, but to show that an accurate forecast of
details is not of the essence of prophecy; such details belong to its
form and not to its substance. Ancient Hebrew prophecy clothed its ideas
in concrete images; its messages of doom were made definite and
intelligible in a glowing series of definite pictures. The prophets were
realists and not impressionists. But they were also spiritual men,
concerned with the great issues of history and religion. Their message
had to do with _these_: they were little interested in minor matters;
and they used detailed imagery as a mere instrument of exposition.
Popular scepticism exulted when subsequent facts did not exactly
correspond to Jeremiah's images, but the prophet himself was
unconscious of either failure or mistake. Jehoiakim might be
magnificently buried, but his name was branded with eternal dishonour;
Jehoiachin might reign for a hundred days, but the doom of Judah was not
averted, and the house of David ceased for ever to rule in Jerusalem.
Our second point is the application of this prophecy to Jehoiachin.
How far did the king deserve his sentence? Jeremiah indeed does not
explicitly blame Jehoiachin, does not specify his sins as he did those
of his royal sire. The estimate recorded in the Book of Kings
doubtless expresses the judgment of Jeremiah, but it may be directed
not so much against the young king as against his ministers. Yet the
king cannot have been entirely innocent of the guilt of his policy and
government. In chapter xxiv., however, Jeremiah speaks of the captives
at Babylon, those carried away with Jehoiachin, as "good figs"; but we
scarcely suppose he meant to include the king himself in this
favourable estimate, otherwise we should discern some note of sympathy
in the personal sentence upon him. We are left, therefore, to conclude
that Jeremiah's judgment was unfavourable; although, in view of the
prince's youth and limited opportunities, his guilt must have been
slight compared to that of his father.
And, on the other hand, we have the manifest sympathy and even
admiration of Ezekiel. The two estimates stand side by side in the
sacred record to remind us that God neither tolerates man's sins
because there is a better side to his nature, nor yet ignores his
virtues on account of his vices. For ourselves we may be content to
leave the last word on this matter with Jeremiah. When he declares
God's sentence on Jehoiachin, he does not suggest that it was
undeserved, but he refrains from any explicit reproach. Probably if he
had known how entirely his prediction would be fulfilled, if he had
foreseen the seven-and-thirty weary years which the young lion was to
spend in his Babylonian cage, Jeremiah would have spoken more tenderly
and pitifully even of the son of Jehoiakim.
FOOTNOTES:
[86] Also called Coniah and Jeconiah.
[87] Considerable portions of chaps. i.-xx. are referred to the reigns
of Jehoiakim and Jehoiachin: see previous volume on Jeremiah.
[88] i. 18.
[89] The Chronicler's account of Jehoiakim's end (2 Chron. xxviii.
6-8) is due to a misunderstanding of the older records. According to
Chronicles Jehoiachin was only eight, but all our data indicate that
Kings is right.
[90] In LXX. of 2 Chron. xxxvi. 8, Jehoiakim, like Manasseh and Amon,
was "buried in the garden of Uzza": B, Ganozæ; A, Ganozan. Cheyne is
inclined to accept this statement, which he regards as derived from
tradition.
[91] xxxvi. 30.
[92] So A. B. Davidson in Cambridge Bible, etc., by a slight
conjectural emendation; there have been many other suggested
corrections of the text. The Hebrew text as it stands would mean
literally "he knew their widows" (R.V. margin); A.V., R.V., by a
slight change, "he knew their (A.V. desolate) palaces."
[93] Ezek. xix. 5-7.
[94] 2 Kings xxiv. 8-17.
[95] 2 Kings xxv. 27-30; Jer. lii. 31-34.
[96] The Hebrew verbs are in 2 s. fem.; the person addressed is not
named, but from analogy she can only be the "Daughter of Zion," _i.e._
Jerusalem personified.
[97] Identified with the mountains of Moab.
[98] R.V. margin, with LXX., Vulg., and Syr.
[99] Milman's _Latin Christianity_, vi. 392.
[100] 1 Chron. iii. 17 mentions the "sons" of Jeconiah, and in Matt.
i. 12 Shealtiel is called his "son," but in Luke iii. 27 Shealtiel is
called the son of Neri.