_JEREMIAH'S IMPRISONMENT_
xxxvii. 11-21, xxxviii., xxxix. 15-18.
"Jeremiah abode in the court of the guard until the day that
Jerusalem was taken."--JER. xxxviii. 28.
"When the Chaldean army was broken up from Jerusalem for fear of
Pharaoh's army, Jeremiah went forth out of Jerusalem to go into the land
of Benjamin" to transact certain family business at Anathoth.[149]
He had announced that all who remained in the city should perish, and
that only those who deserted to the Chaldeans should escape. In these
troubled times all who sought to enter or leave Jerusalem were
subjected to close scrutiny, and when Jeremiah wished to pass through
the gate of Benjamin he was stopped by the officer in charge--Irijah
ben Shelemiah ben Hananiah--and accused of being about to practise
himself what he had preached to the people: "Thou fallest away to the
Chaldeans." The suspicion was natural enough; for, although the
Chaldeans had raised the siege and marched away to the south-west,
while the gate of Benjamin was on the north of the city, Irijah might
reasonably suppose that they had left detachments in the
neighbourhood, and that this zealous advocate of submission to
Babylon had special information on the subject. Jeremiah indeed had
the strongest motives for seeking safety in flight. The party whom he
had consistently denounced had full control of the government, and
even if they spared him for the present any decisive victory over the
enemy would be the signal for his execution. When once Pharaoh Hophra
was in full march upon Jerusalem at the head of a victorious army, his
friends would show no mercy to Jeremiah. Probably Irijah was eager to
believe in the prophet's treachery, and ready to snatch at any pretext
for arresting him. The name of the captain's grandfather--Hananiah--is
too common to suggest any connection with the prophet who withstood
Jeremiah; but we may be sure that at this crisis the gates were in
charge of trusty adherents of the princes of the Egyptian party.
Jeremiah would be suspected and detested by such men as these. His
vehement denial of the charge was received with real or feigned
incredulity; Irijah "hearkened not unto him."
The arrest took place "in the midst of the people."[150] The gate was
crowded with other Jews hurrying out of Jerusalem: citizens eager to
breathe more freely after being cooped up in the overcrowded city;
countrymen anxious to find out what their farms and homesteads had
suffered at the hands of the invaders; not a few, perhaps, bound on
the very errand of which Jeremiah was accused, friends of Babylon,
convinced that Nebuchadnezzar would ultimately triumph, and hoping to
find favour and security in his camp. Critical events of Jeremiah's
life had often been transacted before a great assembly; for instance,
his own address and trial in the Temple, and the reading of the roll.
He knew the practical value of a dramatic situation. This time he had
sought the crowd, rather to avoid than attract attention; but when he
was challenged by Irijah, the accusation and denial must have been
heard by all around. The soldiers of the guard, necessarily hostile to
the man who had counselled submission, gathered round to secure their
prisoner; for a time the gate was blocked by the guards and
spectators. The latter do not seem to have interfered. Formerly the
priests and prophets and all the people had laid hold on Jeremiah, and
afterwards all the people had acquitted him by acclamation. Now his
enemies were content to leave him in the hands of the soldiers, and
his friends, if he had any, were afraid to attempt a rescue. Moreover
men's minds were not at leisure and craving for new excitement, as at
Temple festivals; they were preoccupied, and eager to get out of the
city. While the news quickly spread that Jeremiah had been arrested as
he was trying to desert, his guards cleared a way through the crowd,
and brought the prisoner before the princes. The latter seem to have
acted as a Committee of National Defence; they may either have been
sitting at the time, or a meeting, as on a previous occasion,[151] may
have been called when it was known that Jeremiah had been arrested.
Among them were probably those enumerated later on:[152] Shephatiah
ben Mattan, Gedaliah ben Pashhur, Jucal ben Shelemiah, and Pashhur ben
Malchiah. Shephatiah and Gedaliah are named only here; possibly
Gedaliah's father was Pashhur ben Immer, who beat Jeremiah and put him
in the stocks. Both Jucal and Pashhur ben Malchiah had been sent by
the king to consult Jeremiah. Jucal may have been the son of the
Shelemiah who was sent to arrest Jeremiah and Baruch after the reading
of the roll. We note the absence of the princes who then formed
Baruch's audience, some of whom tried to dissuade Jehoiakim from
burning the roll; and we especially miss the prophet's former friend
and protector, Ahikam ben Shaphan. Fifteen or sixteen years had
elapsed since these earlier events; some of Jeremiah's adherents were
dead, others in exile, others powerless to help him. We may safely
conclude that his judges were his personal and political enemies.
Jeremiah was now their discomfited rival: a few weeks before he had
been master of the city and the court. Pharaoh Hophra's advance had
enabled them to overthrow him. We can understand that they would at
once take Irijah's view of the case. They treated their fallen
antagonist as a criminal taken in the act: "they were wroth with him,"
_i.e._ they overwhelmed him with a torrent of abuse; "they beat him,
and put him in prison in the house of Jonathan the secretary." But
this imprisonment in a private house was not mild and honourable
confinement under the care of a distinguished noble, who was rather
courteous host than harsh gaoler. "They had made that the prison,"
duly provided with a dungeon and cells, to which Jeremiah was
consigned and where he remained "many days." Prison accommodation at
Jerusalem was limited; the Jewish government preferred more summary
methods of dealing with malefactors. The revolution which had placed
the present government in power had given them special occasion for a
prison. They had defeated rivals whom they did not venture to execute
publicly, but who might be more safely starved and tortured to death
in secret. For such a fate they destined Jeremiah. We shall not do
injustice to Jonathan the secretary if we compare the hospitality
which he extended to his unwilling guests with the treatment of modern
Armenians in Turkish prisons. Yet the prophet remained alive "for many
days"; probably his enemies reflected that even if he did not succumb
earlier to the hardships of his imprisonment, his execution would
suitably adorn the looked-for triumph of Pharaoh Hophra.
Few however of the "many days" had passed, before men's exultant
anticipations of victory and deliverance began to give place to anxious
forebodings. They had hoped to hear that Nebuchadnezzar had been
defeated and was in headlong retreat to Chaldea; they had been prepared
to join in the pursuit of the routed army, to gratify their revenge by
massacring the fugitives and to share the plunder with their Egyptian
allies. The fortunes of war belied their hopes; Pharaoh retreated,
either after a battle or perhaps even without fighting. The return of
the enemy was announced by the renewed influx of the country people to
seek the shelter of the fortifications, and soon the Jews crowded to the
walls as Nebuchadnezzar's vanguard appeared in sight and the Chaldeans
occupied their old lines and re-formed the siege of the doomed city.
There was no longer any doubt that prudence dictated immediate
surrender. It was the only course by which the people might be spared
some of the horrors of a prolonged siege, followed by the sack of the
city. But the princes who controlled the government were too deeply
compromised with Egypt to dare to hope for mercy. With Jeremiah out of
the way, they were able to induce the king and the people to maintain
their resistance, and the siege went on.
But though Zedekiah was, for the most part, powerless in the hands of
the princes, he ventured now and then to assert himself in minor
matters, and, like other feeble sovereigns, derived some consolation
amidst his many troubles from intriguing with the opposition against
his own ministers. His feeling and behaviour towards Jeremiah were
similar to those of Charles IX. towards Coligny, only circumstances
made the Jewish king a more efficient protector of Jeremiah.
At this new and disastrous turn of affairs, which was an exact
fulfilment of Jeremiah's warnings, the king was naturally inclined to
revert to his former faith in the prophet--if indeed he had ever really
been able to shake himself free from his influence. Left to himself he
would have done his best to make terms with Nebuchadnezzar, as Jehoiakim
and Jehoiachin had done before him. The only trustworthy channel of
help, human or divine, was Jeremiah. Accordingly he sent secretly to the
prison and had the prophet brought into the palace. There in some inner
chamber, carefully guarded from intrusion by the slaves of the palace,
Zedekiah received the man who now for more than forty years had been the
chief counsellor of the kings of Judah, often in spite of themselves.
Like Saul on the eve of Gilboa, he was too impatient to let disaster be
its own herald; the silence of Heaven seemed more terrible than any
spoken doom, and again like Saul he turned in his perplexity and despair
to the prophet who had rebuked and condemned him. "Is there any word
from Jehovah? And Jeremiah said, There is: ... thou shalt be delivered
into the hand of the king of Babylon."
The Church is rightly proud of Ambrose rebuking Theodosius at the
height of his power and glory, and of Thomas à Becket, unarmed and
yet defiant before his murderers; but the Jewish prophet showed
himself capable of a simpler and grander heroism. For "many days" he
had endured squalor, confinement, and semi-starvation. His body must
have been enfeebled and his spirit depressed. Weak and contemptible as
Zedekiah was, yet he was the prophet's only earthly protector from the
malice of his enemies. He intended to utilise this interview for an
appeal for release from his present prison. Thus he had every motive
for conciliating the man who asked him for a word from Jehovah. He was
probably alone with Zedekiah, and was not nerved to self-sacrifice by
any opportunity of making public testimony to the truth, and yet he
was faithful alike to God and to the poor helpless king--"Thou shalt
be delivered into the hand of the king of Babylon."
And then he proceeds, with what seems to us inconsequent audacity, to
ask a favour. Did ever petitioner to a king preface his supplication
with so strange a preamble? This was the request:--
"Now hear, I pray thee, O my lord the king: let my supplication, I
pray thee, be accepted before thee; that thou do not cause me to
return to the house of Jonathan the secretary, lest I die there.
"Then Zedekiah the king commanded, and they committed Jeremiah into
the court of the guard, and they gave him daily a loaf of bread out of
the bakers' street."
A loaf of bread is not sumptuous fare, but it is evidently mentioned as
an improvement upon his prison diet: it is not difficult to understand
why Jeremiah was afraid he would die in the house of Jonathan.
During this milder imprisonment in the court of the guard occurred
the incident of the purchase of the field at Anathoth, which we have
dealt with in another chapter. This low ebb of the prophet's fortunes
was the occasion of Divine revelation of a glorious future in store
for Judah. But this future was still remote, and does not seem to have
been conspicuous in his public teaching. On the contrary Jeremiah
availed himself of the comparative publicity of his new place of
detention to reiterate in the ears of all the people the gloomy
predictions with which they had so long been familiar: "This city
shall assuredly be given into the hand of the army of the king of
Babylon." He again urged his hearers to desert to the enemy: "He that
abideth in this city shall die by the sword, the famine, and the
pestilence; but he that goeth forth to the Chaldeans shall live." We
cannot but admire the splendid courage of the solitary prisoner,
helpless in the hands of his enemies and yet openly defying them. He
left his opponents only two alternatives, either to give up the
government into his hands or else to silence him. Jeremiah in the
court of the guard was really carrying on a struggle in which neither
side either would or could give quarter. He was trying to revive the
energies of the partisans of Babylon, that they might overpower the
government and surrender the city to Nebuchadnezzar. If he had
succeeded, the princes would have had a short shrift. They struck back
with the prompt energy of men fighting for their lives. No government
conducting the defence of a besieged fortress could have tolerated
Jeremiah for a moment. What would have been the fate of a French
politician who should have urged Parisians to desert to the Germans
during the siege of 1870?[153] The princes' former attempt to deal
with Jeremiah had been thwarted by the king; this time they tried to
provide beforehand against any officious intermeddling on the part of
Zedekiah. They extorted from him a sanction of their proceedings.
"Then the princes said unto the king, Let this man, we pray thee, be put
to death: for he weakeneth the hands of the soldiers that are left in
this city, and of all the people, by speaking such words unto them: for
this man seeketh not the welfare of this people, but the hurt."
Certainly Jeremiah's word was enough to take the heart out of the
bravest soldiers; his preaching would soon have rendered further
resistance impossible. But the concluding sentence about the "welfare of
the people" was merely cheap cant, not without parallel in the sayings
of many "princes" in later times. "The welfare of the people" would have
been best promoted by the surrender which Jeremiah advocated. The king
does not pretend to sympathise with the princes; he acknowledges himself
a mere tool in their hands. "Behold," he answers, "he is in your power,
for the king can do nothing against you."
"Then they took Jeremiah, and cast him into the cistern of Malchiah
ben Hammelech, that was in the court of the guard; and they let
Jeremiah down with cords. And there was no water in the cistern, only
mud, and Jeremiah sank in the mud."
The depth of this improvised oubliette is shown by the use of cords to
let the prisoner down into it. How was it, however, that, after the
release of Jeremiah from the cells in the house of Jonathan, the
princes did not at once execute him? Probably, in spite of all that
had happened, they still felt a superstitious dread of actually
shedding the blood of a prophet. In some mysterious way they felt that
they would be less guilty if they left him in the empty cistern to
starve to death or be suffocated in the mud, than if they had his head
cut off. They acted in the spirit of Reuben's advice concerning
Joseph, who also was cast into an empty pit, with no water in it:
"Shed no blood, but cast him into this pit in the wilderness, and lay
no hand upon him."[154] By a similar blending of hypocrisy and
superstition, the mediæval Church thought to keep herself unstained by
the blood of heretics, by handing them over to the secular arm; and
Macbeth having hired some one else to kill Banquo was emboldened to
confront his ghost with the words:--
"Thou canst not say I did it. Never shake
Thy gory locks at me."
But the princes were again baffled; the prophet had friends in the
royal household who were bolder than their master: Ebed-melech the
Ethiopian, an eunuch, heard that they had put Jeremiah in the cistern.
He went to the king, who was then sitting in the gate of Benjamin,
where he would be accessible to any petitioner for favour or justice,
and interceded for the prisoner:--
"My lord the king, these men have done evil in all that they have done
to Jeremiah the prophet, whom they have cast into the cistern; and he
is like to die in the place where he is because of the famine, for
there is no more bread in the city."
Apparently the princes, busied with the defence of the city and in
their pride "too much despising" their royal master, had left him for
a while to himself. Emboldened by this public appeal to act according
to the dictates of his own heart and conscience, and possibly by the
presence of other friends of Jeremiah, the king acts with unwonted
courage and decision.
"The king commanded Ebed-melech the Ethiopian, saying, Take with thee
hence thirty men, and draw up Jeremiah the prophet out of the cistern,
before he die. So Ebed-melech took the men with him, and went into the
palace under the treasury, and took thence old cast clouts and rotten
rags, and let them down by cords into the cistern to Jeremiah. And he
said to Jeremiah, Put these old cast clouts and rotten rags under
thine armholes under the cords. And Jeremiah did so. So they drew him
up with the cords, and took him up out of the cistern: and he remained
in the court of the guard."
Jeremiah's gratitude to his deliverer is recorded in a short paragraph
in which Ebed-melech, like Baruch, is promised that "his life shall be
given him for a prey." He should escape with his life from the sack of
the city--"because he trusted" in Jehovah. As of the ten lepers whom
Jesus cleansed only the Samaritan returned to give glory to God, so
when none of God's people were found to rescue His prophet, the
dangerous honour was accepted by an Ethiopian proselyte.[155]
Meanwhile the king was craving for yet another "word of Jehovah."
True, the last "word" given him by the prophet had been, "Thou shalt
be delivered into the hand of the king of Babylon." But now that he
had just rescued Jehovah's prophet from a miserable death (he forgot
that Jeremiah had been consigned to the cistern by his own authority),
possibly there might be some more encouraging message from God.
Accordingly he sent and took Jeremiah unto him for another secret
interview, this time in the "corridor of the bodyguard,"[156] a
passage between the palace and the Temple.
Here he implored the prophet to give him a faithful answer to his
questions concerning his own fate and that of the city: "Hide nothing
from me." But Jeremiah did not respond with his former prompt frankness.
He had had too recent a warning not to put his trust in princes. "If I
declare it unto thee," said he, "wilt thou not surely put me to death?
and if I give thee counsel, thou wilt not hearken unto me. So Zedekiah
the king sware secretly to Jeremiah, As Jehovah liveth, who is the
source and giver of our life, I will not put thee to death, neither will
I give thee into the hand of these men that seek thy life.
"Then said Jeremiah unto Zedekiah, Thus saith Jehovah, the God of hosts,
the God of Israel: If thou wilt go forth unto the king of Babylon's
princes, thy life shall be spared, and this city shall not be burned,
and thou and thine house shall live; but if thou wilt not go forth, then
shall this city be given into the hand of the Chaldeans, and they shall
burn it, and thou shalt not escape out of their hand.
"Zedekiah said unto Jeremiah, I am afraid of the Jews that have
deserted to the Chaldeans, lest they deliver me into their hand, and
they mock me."
He does not, however, urge that the princes will hinder any such
surrender; he believed himself sufficiently master of his own actions
to be able to escape to the Chaldeans if he chose.
But evidently, when he first revolted against Babylon, and more
recently when the siege was raised, he had been induced to behave
harshly towards her partisans: they had taken refuge in considerable
numbers in the enemy's camp, and now he was afraid of their vengeance.
Similarly, in _Quentin Durward_, Scott represents Louis XI. on his
visit to Charles the Bold as startled by the sight of the banners of
some of his own vassals, who had taken service with Burgundy, and as
seeking protection from Charles against the rebel subjects of France.
Zedekiah is a perfect monument of the miseries that wait upon weakness:
he was everybody's friend in turn--now a docile pupil of Jeremiah and
gratifying the Chaldean party by his professions of loyalty to
Nebuchadnezzar, and now a pliant tool in the hands of the Egyptian party
persecuting his former friends. At the last he was afraid alike of the
princes in the city, of the exiles in the enemy's camp, and of the
Chaldeans. The mariner who had to pass between Scylla and Charybdis was
fortunate compared to Zedekiah. To the end he clung with a pathetic
blending of trust and fearfulness to Jeremiah. He believed him, and yet
he seldom had courage to act according to his counsel.
Jeremiah made a final effort to induce this timid soul to act with
firmness and decision. He tried to reassure him: "They shall not
deliver thee into the hands of thy revolted subjects. Obey, I beseech
thee, the voice of Jehovah, in that which I speak unto thee: so it
shall be well with thee, and thy life shall be spared." He appealed to
that very dread of ridicule which the king had just betrayed. If he
refused to surrender, he would be taunted for his weakness and folly
by the women of his own harem:--
"If thou refuse to go forth, this is the word that Jehovah hath showed
me: Behold, all the women left in the palace shall be brought forth to
the king of Babylon's princes, and those women shall say, Thy familiar
friends have duped thee and got the better of thee; thy feet are sunk in
the mire, and they have left thee in the lurch." He would be in worse
plight than that from which Jeremiah had only just been rescued, and
there would no Ebed-melech to draw him out. He would be humiliated by
the suffering and shame of his own family: "They shall bring out all thy
wives and children to the Chaldeans." He himself would share with them
the last extremity of suffering: "Thou shalt not escape out of their
hand, but shalt be taken by the hand of the king of Babylon."
And as Tennyson makes it the climax of Geraint's degeneracy that he
was not only--
"Forgetful of his glory and his name,"
but also--
"Forgetful of his princedom and its cares,"
so Jeremiah appeals last of all to the king's sense of responsibility
for his people: "Thou wilt be the cause of the burning of the city."
In spite of the dominance of the Egyptian party, and their desperate
determination, not only to sell their own lives dearly, but also to
involve king and people, city and temple, in their own ruin, the power
of decisive action still rested with Zedekiah; if he failed to use it,
he would be responsible for the consequences.
Thus Jeremiah strove to possess the king with some breath of his own
dauntless spirit and iron will.
Zedekiah paused irresolute. A vision of possible deliverance passed
through his mind. His guards and the domestics of the palace were
within call. The princes were unprepared; they would never dream that
he was capable of anything so bold. It would be easy to seize the
nearest gate, and hold it long enough to admit the Chaldeans. But no!
he had not nerve enough. Then his predecessors Joash, Amaziah, and
Amon had been assassinated, and for the moment the daggers of the
princes and their followers seemed more terrible than Chaldean
instruments of torture. He lost all thought of his own honour and his
duty to his people in his anxiety to provide against this more
immediate danger. Never was the fate of a nation decided by a meaner
utterance. "Then said Zedekiah to Jeremiah, No one must know about our
meeting, and thou shalt not die. If the princes hear that I have
talked with thee, and come and say unto thee, Declare unto us now what
thou hast said unto the king; hide it not from us, and we will not put
thee to death: declare unto us what the king said unto thee: then thou
shalt say unto them, I presented my supplication unto the king, that
he would not cause me to return to Jonathan's house, to die there.
"Then all the princes came to Jeremiah, and asked him; and he told them
just what the king had commanded. So they let him alone, for no report
of the matter had got abroad." We are a little surprised that the
princes so easily abandoned their purpose of putting Jeremiah to death,
and did not at once consign him afresh to the empty cistern. Probably
they were too disheartened for vigorous action; the garrison were
starving, and it was clear that the city could not hold out much longer.
Moreover the superstition that had shrunk from using actual violence to
the prophet would suspect a token of Divine displeasure in his release.
Another question raised by this incident is that of the prophet's
veracity, which, at first sight, does not seem superior to that of the
patriarchs. It is very probable that the prophet, as at the earlier
interview, had entreated the king not to allow him to be confined in
the cells in Jonathan's house, but the narrative rather suggests that
the king constructed this pretext on the basis of the former
interview. Moreover, if the princes let Jeremiah escape with nothing
less innocent than a _suppressio veri_, if they were satisfied with
anything less than an explicit statement that the place of the
prophet's confinement was the sole topic of conversation, they must
have been more guileless that we can easily imagine. But, at any rate,
if Jeremiah did stoop to dissimulation, it was to protect Zedekiah,
not to save himself.
Zedekiah is a conspicuous example of the strange irony with which
Providence entrusts incapable persons with the decision of most
momentous issues; It sets Laud and Charles I. to adjust the Tudor
Monarchy to the sturdy self-assertion of Puritan England, and Louis
XVI. to cope with the French Revolution. Such histories are after all
calculated to increase the self-respect of those who are weak and
timid. Moments come, even to the feeblest, when their action must have
the most serious results for all connected with them. It is one of the
crowning glories of Christianity that it preaches a strength that is
made perfect in weakness.
Perhaps the most significant feature in this narrative is the
conclusion of Jeremiah's first interview with the king. Almost in the
same breath the prophet announces to Zedekiah his approaching ruin and
begs from him a favour. He thus defines the true attitude of the
believer towards the prophet.
Unwelcome teaching must not be allowed to interfere with wonted respect
and deference, or to provoke resentment. Possibly if this truth were
less obvious men would be more willing to give it a hearing and it might
be less persistently ignored. But the prophet's behaviour is even more
striking and interesting as a revelation of his own character and of the
true prophetic spirit. His faithful answer to the king involved much
courage, but that he should proceed from such an answer to such a
petition shows a simple and sober dignity not always associated with
courage. When men are wrought up to the pitch of uttering disagreeable
truths at the risk of their lives, they often develop a spirit of
defiance, which causes personal bitterness and animosity between
themselves and their hearers, and renders impossible any asking or
granting of favours. Many men would have felt that a petition
compromised their own dignity and weakened the authority of the divine
message. The exaltation of self-sacrifice which inspired them would have
suggested that they ought not to risk the crown of martyrdom by any such
appeal, but rather welcome torture and death. Thus some amongst the
early Christians would present themselves before the Roman tribunals and
try to provoke the magistrates into condemning them. But Jeremiah, like
Polycarp and Cyprian, neither courted nor shunned martyrdom; he was as
incapable of bravado as he was of fear. He was too intent upon serving
his country and glorifying God, too possessed with his mission and his
message, to fall a prey to the self-consciousness which betrays men,
sometimes even martyrs, into theatrical ostentation.
FOOTNOTES:
[149] Cf. xxxii. 6-8.
[150] xxxvii. 12; so R.V., Streane (Camb. Bible), Kautzsch, etc.
[151] xxvi. 10.
[152] xxxviii. 1.
[153] Cf. Renan, iii. 333.
[154] Gen. xxxvii. 22-24.
[155] xxxix. 15-18.
[156] So Giesebrecht, _in loco_; A.V., R.V., "third entry." In any
case it will naturally be a passage from the palace to the Temple.