_CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE EXILES_
xxix.
"Jehovah make thee like Zedekiah and Ahab, whom the king of
Babylon roasted in the fire."--JER. xxix. 22.
Nothing further is said about the proposed revolt, so that Jeremiah's
vigorous protest seems to have been successful. In any case, unless
irrevocable steps had been taken, the enterprise could hardly have
survived the death of its advocate, Hananiah. Accordingly Zedekiah
sent an embassy to Babylon, charged doubtless with plausible
explanations and profuse professions of loyalty and devotion. The
envoys were Elasah ben Shaphan and Gemariah ben Hilkiah. Shaphan and
Hilkiah were almost certainly the scribe and high priest who
discovered Deuteronomy in the eighteenth year of Josiah, and Elasah
was the brother of Ahikam ben Shaphan, who protected Jeremiah in the
fourth year of Jehoiakim, and of Gemariah ben Shaphan, in whose
chamber Baruch read the roll, and who protested against its
destruction. Probably Elasah and Gemariah were adherents of Jeremiah,
and the fact of the embassy, as well as the choice of ambassadors,
suggests that, for the moment, Zedekiah was acting under the influence
of the prophet. Jeremiah took the opportunity of sending a letter to
the exiles at Babylon. Hananiah had his allies in Chaldea: Ahab ben
Kolaiah, Zedekiah ben Maaseiah, and Shemaiah the Nehelamite, with
other prophets, diviners, and dreamers, had imitated their brethren in
Judah; they had prophesied without being sent and had caused the
people to believe a lie. We are not expressly told what they
prophesied, but the narrative takes for granted that they, like
Hananiah, promised the exiles a speedy return to their native land.
Such teaching naturally met with much acceptance, the people
congratulating themselves because, as they supposed, "Jehovah hath
raised us up prophets in Babylon." The presence of prophets among them
was received as a welcome proof that Jehovah had not deserted His
people in their house of bondage.
Thus when Jeremiah had confounded his opponents in Jerusalem he had
still to deal with their friends in Babylon. Here again the issue was
one of immediate practical importance. In Chaldea as at Jerusalem the
prediction that the exiles would immediately return was intended to
kindle the proposed revolt. The Jews at Babylon were virtually warned to
hold themselves in readiness to take advantage of any success of the
Syrian rebels, and, if opportunity offered, to render them assistance.
In those days information travelled slowly, and there was some danger
lest the captives should be betrayed into acts of disloyalty, even after
the Jewish government had given up any present intention of revolting
against Nebuchadnezzar. Such disloyalty might have involved their entire
destruction. Both Zedekiah and Jeremiah would be anxious to inform them
at once that they must refrain from any plots against their Chaldean
masters. Moreover the prospect of an immediate return had very much the
same effect upon these Jews as the expectation of Christ's Second Coming
had upon the primitive Church at Thessalonica. It made them restless and
disorderly. They could not settle to any regular work, but became
busybodies--wasting their time over the glowing promises of their
popular preachers, and whispering to one another wild rumours of
successful revolts in Syria; or were even more dangerously occupied in
planning conspiracies against their conquerors.
Jeremiah's letter sought to bring about a better state of mind. It is
addressed to the elders, priests, prophets, and people of the
Captivity. The enumeration reminds us how thoroughly the exiled
community reproduced the society of the ancient Jewish state--there
was already a miniature Judah in Chaldea, the first of those Israels
of the Dispersion which have since covered the face of the earth.
This is Jehovah's message by His prophet:--
"Build houses and dwell in them;
Plant gardens and eat the fruit thereof;
Marry and beget sons and daughters;
Marry your sons and daughters,
That they may bear sons and daughters,
That ye may multiply there and not grow few.
Seek the peace of the city whither I have sent you into
captivity:
Pray for it unto Jehovah;
For in its peace, ye shall have peace."
There was to be no immediate return; their captivity would last long
enough to make it worth their while to build houses and plant gardens.
For the present they were to regard Babylon as their home. The
prospect of restoration to Judah was too distant to make any practical
difference to their conduct of ordinary business. The concluding
command to "seek the peace of Babylon" is a distinct warning against
engaging in plots, which could only ruin the conspirators. There is an
interesting difference between these exhortations and those addressed
by Paul to his converts in the first century. He never counsels them
to marry, but rather recommends celibacy as more expedient for the
present necessity. Apparently life was more anxious and harassed for
the early Christians than for the Jews in Babylon. The return to
Canaan was to these exiles what the millennium and the Second Advent
were to the primitive Church. Jeremiah having bidden his
fellow-countrymen not to be agitated by supposing that this
much-longed event might come at any moment, fortifies their faith and
patience by a promise that it should not be delayed indefinitely.
"When ye have fulfilled seventy years in Babylon I will visit
you,
And will perform for you My gracious promise to bring you
back to this place."[125]
Seventy is obviously a round number. Moreover the constant use of
seven and its multiples in sacred symbolism forbids us to understand
the prophecy as an exact chronological statement.
We should adequately express the prophet's meaning by translating "in
about two generations." We need not waste time and trouble in
discovering or inventing two dates exactly separated by seventy years,
one of which will serve for the beginning and the other for the end of
the Captivity. The interval between the destruction of Jerusalem and the
Return was fifty years (B.C. 586-536), but as our passage refers more
immediately to the prospects of those already in exile, we should obtain
an interval of sixty-five years from the deportation of Jehoiachin and
his companions in B.C. 601. But there can be no question of
approximation, however close. Either the "seventy years" merely stands
for a comparatively long period, or it is exact. We do not save the
inspiration of a date by showing that it is only five years wrong, and
not twenty. For an inspired date must be absolutely accurate; a mistake
of a second in such a case would be as fatal as a mistake of a century.
Israel's hope is guaranteed by God's self-knowledge of His gracious
counsel:--
"I know the purposes which I purpose concerning you, is the
utterance of Jehovah,
Purposes of peace and not of evil, to give you hope for the
days to come."
In the former clause "I" is emphatic in both places, and the phrase is
parallel to the familiar formula "by Myself have I sworn, saith
Jehovah." The future of Israel was guaranteed by the divine
consistency. Jehovah, to use a colloquial phrase, knew His own mind.
His everlasting purpose for the Chosen People could not be set aside.
"Did God cast off His people? God forbid."
Yet this persistent purpose is not fulfilled without reference to
character and conduct:--
"Ye shall call upon Me, and come and pray unto Me,
And I will hearken unto you.
Ye shall seek Me, and find Me,
Because ye seek Me with all your heart.
I will be found of you--it is the utterance of Jehovah.
I will bring back your captivity, and will gather you from
all nations and places whither I have scattered
you--it is the utterance of Jehovah.
I will bring you back to this place whence I sent you away to
captivity."[126]
As in the previous chapter, Jeremiah concludes with a personal
judgment upon those prophets who had been so acceptable to the exiles.
If verse 23 is to be understood literally, Ahab and Zedekiah had not
only spoken without authority in the name of Jehovah, but had also
been guilty of gross immorality. Their punishment was to be more
terrible than that of Hananiah. They had incited the exiles to revolt
by predicting the imminent ruin of Nebuchadnezzar. Possibly the Jewish
king proposed to make his own peace by betraying his agents, after the
manner of our own Elizabeth and other sovereigns.
They were to be given over to the terrible vengeance which a Chaldean
king would naturally take on such offenders, and would be publicly
roasted alive, so that the malice of him who desired to curse his
enemy might find vent in such words as:--
"Jehovah make thee like Zedekiah and Ahab, whom the king of Babylon
roasted alive."
We are not told whether this prophecy was fulfilled, but it is by no
means unlikely. The Assyrian king Assurbanipal says, in one of his
inscriptions concerning a viceroy of Babylon who had revolted, that
Assur and the other gods "in the fierce burning fire they threw him
and destroyed his life"--possibly through the agency of Assurbanipal's
servants.[127] One of the seven brethren who were tortured to death in
the persecutions of Antiochus Epiphanes is said to have been "fried in
the pan."[128] Christian hagiology commemorates St. Lawrence and many
other martyrs, who suffered similar torments. Such punishments
remained part of criminal procedure until a comparatively recent date;
they are still sometimes inflicted by lynch law in the United States,
and have been defended even by Christian ministers.
Jeremiah's letter caused great excitement and indignation among the
exiles. We have no rejoinder from Ahab and Zedekiah; probably they
were not in a position to make any. But Shemaiah the Nehelamite tried
to make trouble for Jeremiah at Jerusalem. He, in his turn, wrote
letters to "all the people at Jerusalem and to the priest Zephaniah
ben Maaseiah and to all the priests" to this effect:--
"Jehovah hath made thee priest in the room of Jehoiada the priest, to
exercise supervision over the Temple, and to deal with any mad fanatic
who puts himself forward to prophesy, by placing him in the stocks and
the collar. Why then hast thou not rebuked Jeremiah of Anathoth, who
puts himself forward to prophesy unto you? Consequently he has sent
unto us at Babylon: It (your captivity) will be long; build houses and
dwell in them, plant gardens and eat the fruit thereof."
Confidence in a speedy return had already been exalted into a cardinal
article of the exiles' faith, and Shemaiah claims that any one who
denied this comfortable doctrine must be _ipso facto_ a dangerous and
deluded fanatic, needing to be placed under strict restraint. This
letter travelled to Jerusalem with the returning embassy, and was duly
delivered to Zephaniah. Zephaniah is spoken of in the historical
section common to Kings and Jeremiah as "the second priest,"[129]
Seraiah being the High Priest; like Pashhur ben Immer, he seems to
have been the governor of the Temple. He was evidently well disposed
to Jeremiah, to whom Zedekiah twice sent him on important missions. On
the present occasion, instead of acting upon the suggestions made by
Shemaiah, he read the letter to Jeremiah, in order that the latter
might have an opportunity of dealing with it.
Jeremiah was divinely instructed to reply to Shemaiah, charging him,
in his turn, with being a man who put himself forward to prophesy
without any commission from Jehovah, and who thus deluded his hearers
into belief in falsehoods. Personal sentence is passed upon him, as
upon Hananiah, Ahab, and Zedekiah; no son of his shall be reckoned
amongst God's people or see the prosperity which they shall hereafter
enjoy. The words are obscure: it is said that Jehovah will "visit
Shemaiah and his seed," so that it cannot mean that he will be
childless; but it is further said that "he shall not have a man to
abide amongst this people." It is apparently a sentence of
excommunication against Shemaiah and his family.
Here the episode abruptly ends. We are not told whether the letter was
sent, or how it was received, or whether it was answered. We gather
that, here also, the last word rested with Jeremiah, and that at this
point his influence became dominant both at Jerusalem and at Babylon,
and that King Zedekiah himself submitted to his guidance.
Chapters xxviii., xxix., deepen the impression made by other sections
of Jeremiah's intolerance and personal bitterness towards his
opponents. He seems to speak of the roasting alive of the prophets at
Babylon with something like grim satisfaction, and we are tempted to
think of Torquemada and Bishop Bonner. But we must remember that the
stake, as we have already said, has scarcely yet ceased to be an
ordinary criminal punishment, and that, after centuries of
Christianity, More and Cranmer, Luther and Calvin, had hardly any more
tenderness for their ecclesiastical opponents than Jeremiah.
Indeed the Church is only beginning to be ashamed of the complacency
with which she has contemplated the fiery torments of hell as the
eternal destiny of unrepentant sinners. One of the most tolerant and
catholic of our religious teachers has written: "If the unlucky
malefactor, who in mere brutality of ignorance or narrowness of nature
or of culture has wronged his neighbour, excite our anger, how much
deeper should be our indignation when intellect and eloquence are
abused to selfish purposes, when studious leisure and learning and
thought turn traitors to the cause of human well-being and the wells
of a nation's moral life are poisoned."[130] The deduction is obvious:
society feels constrained to hang or burn "the unlucky malefactor";
consequently such punishments are, if anything, too merciful for the
false prophet. Moreover the teaching which Jeremiah denounced was no
mere dogmatism about abstruse philosophical and theological
abstractions. Like the Jesuit propaganda under Elizabeth, it was more
immediately concerned with politics than with religion. We are bound
to be indignant with a man, gifted in exploiting the emotions of his
docile audience, who wins the confidence and arouses the enthusiasm of
his hearers, only to entice them into hopeless and foolhardy ventures.
And yet we are brought back to the old difficulty, how are we to know
the false prophet? He has neither horns nor hoofs, his tie may be as
white and his coat as long as those of the true messenger of God.
Again, Jeremiah's method affords us some practical guidance. He does
not himself order and superintend the punishment of false prophets; he
merely announces a divine judgment, which Jehovah Himself is to
execute. He does not condemn men by the code of any Church, but each
sentence is a direct and special revelation from Jehovah. How many
sentences would have been passed upon heretics, if their accusers and
judges had waited for a similar sanction?
FOOTNOTES:
[125] Doubts have been expressed as to whether this verse originally
formed part of Jeremiah's letter, or was ever written by him; but in
view of his numerous references to a coming restoration those doubts
are unnecessary.
[126] The Hebrew Text inserts a paragraph (vv. 16-20) substantially
identical with other portions of the book, especially xxiv. 8-10,
announcing the approaching ruin and captivity of Zedekiah and the Jews
still remaining in Judah. This section is omitted by the LXX., and
breaks the obvious connection between verses 15 and 21.
[127] Smith's _Assurbanipal_, p. 163.
[128] 2 Macc. vii. 5.
[129] lii. 24; 2 Kings xxv. 18.
[130] _Ecce Homo_, xxi.