CHAPTER XV

_THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN_

xliv.

"Since we left off burning incense and offering libations to the

Queen of Heaven, we have been in want of everything, and have been

consumed by the sword and the famine."--JER. xliv. 18.

The Jewish exiles in Egypt still retained a semblance of national life,

and were bound together by old religious ties. Accordingly we read that

they came together from their different settlements--from Migdol and

Tahpanhes on the north-eastern frontier, from Noph or Memphis on the

Nile south of the site of Cairo, and from Pathros or Upper Egypt--to a

"great assembly," no doubt a religious festival. The list of cities

shows how widely the Jews were scattered throughout Egypt.

Nothing is said as to where and when this "great assembly" met; but

for Jeremiah, such a gathering at all times and anywhere, in Egypt as

at Jerusalem, became an opportunity for fulfilling his Divine

commission. He once again confronted his fellow-countrymen with the

familiar threats and exhortations. A new climate had not created in

them either clean hearts or a right spirit.

Recent history had added force to his warnings. He begins therefore by

appealing to the direful consequences which had come upon the Holy

Land, through the sins of its inhabitants:--

"Ye have seen all the evil that I have brought upon Jerusalem,

and upon all the cities of Judah.

Behold, this day they are an uninhabited waste,

Because of their wickedness which they wrought to provoke Me

to anger,

By going to burn incense and to serve other gods whom neither

they nor their fathers knew."

The Israelites had enjoyed for centuries intimate personal relations

with Jehovah, and knew Him by this ancient and close fellowship and by

all His dealings with them. They had no such knowledge of the gods of

surrounding nations. They were like foolish children who prefer the

enticing blandishments of a stranger to the affection and discipline

of their home. Such children do not intend to forsake their home or to

break the bonds of filial affection, and yet the new friendship may

wean their hearts from their father. So these exiles still considered

themselves worshippers of Jehovah, and yet their superstition led them

to disobey and dishonour Him.

Before its ruin, Judah had sinned against light and leading:--

"Howbeit I sent unto you all My servants the prophets,

Rising up early and sending them, saying,

Oh do not this abominable thing that I hate.

But they hearkened not, nor inclined their ears, so as to

turn from their evil,

That they should not burn incense to other gods.

Wherefore My fury and My anger was poured forth."

Political and social questions, the controversies with the prophets

who contradicted Jeremiah in the name of Jehovah, have fallen into the

background; the poor pretence of loyalty to Jehovah which permitted

His worshippers to degrade Him to the level of Baal and Moloch is

ignored as worthless: and Jeremiah, like Ezekiel, finds the root of

the people's sin in their desertion of Jehovah. Their real religion

was revealed by their heathenish superstitions. Every religious life

is woven of many diverse strands; if the web as a whole is rotten, the

Great Taskmaster can take no account of a few threads that have a form

and profession of soundness. Our Lord declared that He would utterly

ignore and repudiate men upon whose lips His name was a too familiar

word, who had preached and cast out devils and done many mighty works

in that Holy Name. These were men who had worked iniquity, who had

combined promising externals with the worship of "other gods," Mammon

or Belial or some other of those evil powers, who place

"Within His sanctuary itself their shrines,

Abominations; and with cursed things

His holy rites and solemn feasts profane;

And with their darkness dare affront His light."

This profane blending of idolatry with a profession of zeal for Jehovah

had provoked the divine wrath against Judah: and yet the exiles had not

profited by their terrible experience of the consequences of sin; they

still burnt incense unto other gods. Therefore Jeremiah remonstrates

with them afresh, and sets before their eyes the utter ruin which will

punish persistent sin. This discourse repeats and enlarges the threats

uttered at Bethlehem. The penalties then denounced on disobedience are

now attributed to idolatry. We have here yet another example of the

tacit understanding attaching to all the prophet's predictions. The most

positive declarations of doom are often warnings and not final

sentences. Jehovah does not turn a deaf ear to the penitent, and the

doom is executed not because He exacts the uttermost farthing, but

because the culprit perseveres in his uttermost wrong. Lack of faith and

loyalty at Bethlehem and idolatry in Egypt were both symptoms of the

same deep-rooted disease.

On this occasion there was no rival prophet to beard Jeremiah and

relieve his hearers from their fears and scruples. Probably indeed no

professed prophet of Jehovah would have cared to defend the worship of

other gods. But, as at Bethlehem, the people themselves ventured to

defy their aged mentor. They seem to have been provoked to such

hardihood by a stimulus which often prompts timorous men to bold

words. Their wives were specially devoted to the superstitious burning

of incense, and these women were present in large numbers. Probably,

like Lady Macbeth, they had already in private

"Poured their spirits in their husbands' ears,

And chastised, with the valour of their tongues,

All that impeded"

those husbands from speaking their minds to Jeremiah. In their

presence, the men dared not shirk an obvious duty, for fear of more

domestic chastisement. The prophet's reproaches would be less

intolerable than such inflictions. Moreover the fair devotees did not

hesitate to mingle their own shrill voices in the wordy strife.

These idolatrous Jews--male and female--carried things with a very

high hand indeed:--

"We will not obey thee in that which thou hast spoken unto us in the

name of Jehovah. We are determined to perform all the vows we have made

to burn incense and other libations to the Queen of Heaven, exactly as

we have said and as we and our fathers and kings and princes did in the

cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem."[173]

Moreover they were quite prepared to meet Jeremiah on his own ground

and argue with him according to his own principles and methods. He had

appealed to the ruin of Judah as a proof of Jehovah's condemnation of

their idolatry and of His power to punish: they argued that these

misfortunes were a divine _spretæ injuria formæ_, the vengeance of the

Queen of Heaven, whose worship they had neglected. When they duly

honoured her,--

"Then had we plenty of victuals, and were prosperous and saw no evil;

but since we left off burning incense and offering libations to the

Queen of Heaven, we have been in want of everything, and have been

consumed by the sword and the famine."

Moreover the women had a special plea of their own:--

"When we burned incense and offered libations to the Queen of Heaven,

did we not make cakes to symbolise her and offer libations to her with

our husbands' permission?"

A wife's vows were not valid without her husband's sanction, and the

women avail themselves of this principle to shift the responsibility for

their superstition on the men's shoulders. Possibly too the unfortunate

Benedicts were not displaying sufficient zeal in the good cause, and

these words were intended to goad them into greater energy. Doubtless

they cannot be entirely exonerated of blame for tolerating their wives'

sins, probably they were guilty of participation as well as connivance.

Nothing however but the utmost determination and moral courage would

have curbed the exuberant religiosity of these devout ladies. The prompt

suggestion that, if they have done wrong, their husbands are to blame

for letting them have their own way, is an instance of the meanness

which results from the worship of "other gods."

But these defiant speeches raise a more important question. There is an

essential difference between regarding a national catastrophe as a

divine judgment and the crude superstition to which an eclipse expresses

the resentment of an angry god. But both involve the same practical

uncertainty. The sufferers or the spectators ask what god wrought these

marvels and what sins they are intended to punish, and to these

questions neither catastrophe nor eclipse gives any certain answer.

Doubtless the altars of the Queen of Heaven had been destroyed by

Josiah in his crusade against heathen cults; but her outraged majesty

had been speedily avenged by the defeat and death of the iconoclast,

and since then the history of Judah had been one long series of

disasters. Jeremiah declared that these were the just retribution

inflicted by Jehovah because Judah had been disloyal to Him; in the

reign of Manasseh their sin had reached its climax:--

"I will cause them to be tossed to and fro among all the nations of

the earth, because of Manasseh ben Hezekiah, king of Judah, for that

which he did in Jerusalem."[174]

His audience were equally positive that the national ruin was the

vengeance of the Queen of Heaven. Josiah had destroyed her altars, and

now the worshippers of Istar had retaliated by razing the Temple to

the ground. A Jew, with the vague impression that Istar was as real as

Jehovah, might find it difficult to decide between these conflicting

theories.

To us, as to Jeremiah, it seems sheer nonsense to speak of the

vengeance of the Queen of Heaven, not because of what we deduce from

the circumstances of the fall of Jerusalem, but because we do not

believe in any such deity. But the fallacy is repeated when, in

somewhat similar fashion, Protestants find proof of the superiority of

their faith in the contrast between England and Catholic Spain, while

Romanists draw the opposite conclusion from a comparison of Holland

and Belgium. In all such cases the assured truth of the disputant's

doctrine, which is set forth as the result of his argument, is in

reality the premise upon which his reasoning rests. Faith is not

deduced from, but dictates an interpretation of history. In an

individual the material penalties of sin may arouse a sleeping

conscience, but they cannot create a moral sense: apart from a moral

sense the discipline of rewards and punishments would be futile:--

"Were no inner eye in us to tell,

Instructed by no inner sense,

The light of heaven from the dark of hell,

That light would want its evidence."

Jeremiah, therefore, is quite consistent in refraining from argument

and replying to his opponents by reiterating his former statements

that sin against Jehovah had ruined Judah and would yet ruin the

exiles. He spoke on the authority of the "inner sense," itself

instructed by Revelation. But, after the manner of the prophets, he

gave them a sign--Pharaoh Hophra should be delivered into the hand of

his enemies as Zedekiah had been. Such an event would indeed be an

unmistakable sign of imminent calamity to the fugitives who had sought

the protection of the Egyptian king against Nebuchadnezzar.[175]

We have reserved for separate treatment the questions suggested by the

references to the Queen of Heaven.[176] This divine name only occurs

again in the Old Testament in vii. 18, and we are startled, at first

sight, to discover that a cult about which all other historians and

prophets have been entirely silent is described in these passages as an

ancient and national worship. It is even possible that the "great

assembly" was a festival in her honour. We have again to remind

ourselves that the Old Testament is an account of the progress of

Revelation and not a History of Israel. Probably the true explanation is

that given by Kuenen. The prophets do not, as a rule, speak of the

details of false worship; they use the generic "Baal" and the collective

"other gods." Even in this chapter Jeremiah begins by speaking of "other

gods," and only uses the term "Queen of Heaven" when he quotes the reply

made to him by the Jews. Similarly when Ezekiel goes into detail

concerning idolatry[177] he mentions cults and ritual[178] which do not

occur elsewhere in the Old Testament. The prophets were little inclined

to discriminate between different forms of idolatry, just as the average

churchman is quite indifferent to the distinctions of the various

Nonconformist bodies, which are to him simply "dissenters." One might

read many volumes of Anglican sermons and even some English Church

History without meeting with the term Unitarian.

It is easy to find modern parallels--Christian and heathen--to the

name of this goddess. The Virgin Mary is honoured with the title

_Regina Cœli_, and at Mukden, the Sacred City of China, there is a

temple to the Queen of Heaven. But it is not easy to identify the

ancient deity who bore this name. The Jews are accused elsewhere of

worshipping "the sun and the moon and all the host of heaven," and one

or other of these heavenly bodies--mostly either the moon or the

planet Venus--has been supposed to have been the Queen of Heaven.

Neither do the symbolic cakes help us. Such emblems are found in the

ritual of many ancient cults: at Athens cakes called σελῆναι, and

shaped like a full-moon were offered to the moon-goddess Artemis; a

similar usage seems to have prevailed in the worship of the Arabian

goddess Al-Uzza, whose star was Venus, and also of connection with the

worship of the sun.[179]

Moreover we do not find the title "Queen of Heaven" as an ordinary and

well-established name of any neighbouring divinity. "Queen" is a

natural title for any goddess, and was actually given to many ancient

deities. Schrader[180] finds our goddess in the Atar-samain

(Athar-Astarte) who is mentioned in the Assyrian ascriptions as

worshipped by a North Arabian tribe of Kedarenes. Possibly too the

Assyrian Istar is called Queen of Heaven.[181]

Istar, however, is connected with the moon as well as with the planet

Venus.[182] For the present therefore we must be content to leave the

matter an open question,[183] but any day some new discovery may solve

the problem. Meanwhile it is interesting to notice how little

religious ideas and practices are affected by differences in

profession. St. Isaac the Great, of Antioch, who died about A.D. 460,

tells us that the Christian ladies of Syria--whom he speaks of very

ungallantly as "fools"--used to worship the planet Venus from the

roofs of their houses, in the hope that she would bestow upon them

some portion of her own brightness and beauty. His experience

naturally led St. Isaac to interpret the Queen of Heaven as the

luminary which his countrywomen venerated.[184]

The episode of the "great assembly" closes the history of Jeremiah's

life. We leave him (as we so often met with him before) hurling

ineffective denunciations at a recalcitrant audience. Vagrant fancy,

holding this to be a lame and impotent conclusion, has woven romantic

stories to continue and complete the narrative. There are traditions

that he was stoned to death at Tahpanhes, and that his bones were

removed to Alexandria by Alexander the Great; that he and Baruch

returned to Judea or went to Babylon and died in peace; that he

returned to Jerusalem and lived there three hundred years,--and other

such legends. As has been said concerning the Apocryphal Gospels,

these narratives serve as a foil to the history they are meant to

supplement: they remind us of the sequels of great novels written by

inferior pens, or of attempts made by clumsy mechanics to convert a

bust by some inspired sculptor into a full-length statue.

For this story of Jeremiah's life is not a torso. Sacred biography

constantly disappoints our curiosity as to the last days of holy men.

We are scarcely ever told how prophets and apostles died. It is

curious too that the great exceptions--Elijah in his chariot of fire

and Elisha dying quietly in his bed--occur before the period of

written prophecy. The deaths of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, Peter,

Paul, and John, are passed over in the Sacred Record, and when we seek

to follow them beyond its pages, we are taught afresh the unique

wisdom of inspiration. If we may understand Deuteronomy xxxiv. to

imply that no eye was permitted to behold Moses in the hour of death,

we have in this incident a type of the reticence of Scripture on such

matters. Moreover a moment's reflection reminds us that the inspired

method is in accordance with the better instincts of our nature. A

death in opening manhood, or the death of a soldier in battle or of a

martyr at the stake, rivets our attention; but when men die in a good

old age, we dwell less on their declining years than on the

achievements of their prime. We all remember the martyrdoms of Huss

and Latimer, but how many of those in whose mouths Calvin and Luther

are familiar as household words know how those great Reformers died?

There comes a time when we may apply to the aged saint the words of

Browning's _Death in the Desert_:--

"So is myself withdrawn into my depths,

The soul retreated from the perished brain

Whence it was wont to feel and use the world

Through these dull members, done with long ago."

And the poet's comparison of this soul to

"A stick once fire from end to end;

Now, ashes save the tip that holds a spark."

Love craves to watch to the last, because the spark may

"Run back, spread itself

A little where the fire was....

And we would not lose

The last of what might happen on his face."

Such privileges may be granted to a few chosen disciples, probably

they were in this case granted to Baruch; but they are mostly withheld

from the world, lest blind irreverence should see in the aged saint

nothing but

"Second childishness, and mere oblivion;

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything."

FOOTNOTES:

[173] Combined from verses 16, 17, and 25.

[174] xv. 4.

[175] As to the fulfilment of this prophecy see Chap. XVII.

[176] MELEKHETH HASHSHAMAYIM. The Masoretic pointing seems to indicate

a rendering "service" or work of heaven, probably in the sense of

"host of heaven," _i.e._ the stars, מְלֶכֶת being written defectively

for מְלֶאכֶת, but this translation is now pretty generally abandoned.

Cf. C. J. Ball, Giesebrecht, Orelli, Cheyne, etc., on vii. 18, and

especially Kuenen's treatise on the Queen of Heaven--in the

_Gesammelte Abhandlungen_, translated by Budde--to which this section

is largely indebted.

[177] Ezek. viii.

[178] The worship of Tammuz and of "creeping things and abominable

beasts" etc.

[179] Kuenen, 208.

[180] Schrader (Whitehouse's translation), ii. 207.

[181] Kuenen, 206.

[182] Sayce, _Higher Criticism_, etc., 80.

[183] So Giesebrecht on vii. 18. Kuenen argues for the identification

of the Queen of Heaven with the planet Venus.

[184] Kuenen, 211.

BOOK II

_PROPHECIES CONCERNING FOREIGN

NATIONS_

CHAPTER XVI

_JEHOVAH AND THE NATIONS_

xxv. 15-38.

"Jehovah hath a controversy with the nations."--JER. xxv. 31.

As the son of a king only learns very gradually that his father's

authority and activity extend beyond the family and the household, so

Israel in its childhood thought of Jehovah as exclusively concerned

with itself.

Such ideas as omnipotence and universal Providence did not exist;

therefore they could not be denied; and the limitations of the national

faith were not essentially inconsistent with later Revelation. But when

we reach the period of recorded prophecy we find that, under the

guidance of the Holy Spirit, the prophets had begun to recognise

Jehovah's dominion over surrounding peoples. There was, as yet, no

deliberate and formal doctrine of omnipotence, but, as Israel became

involved in the fortunes first of one foreign power and then of another,

the prophets asserted that the doings of these heathen states were

overruled by the God of Israel. The idea of Jehovah's Lordship of the

Nations enlarged with the extension of international relations, as our

conception of the God of Nature has expanded with the successive

discoveries of science. Hence, for the most part, the prophets devote

special attention to the concerns of Gentile peoples. Hosea, Micah,

Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi are partial exceptions. Some of the minor

prophets have for their main subject the doom of a heathen empire. Jonah

and Nahum deal with Nineveh, Habbakuk with Chaldea, and Edom is

specially honoured by being almost the sole object of the denunciations

of Obadiah. Daniel also deals with the fate of the kingdoms of the

world, but in the Apocalyptic fashion of the Pseudepigrapha. Jewish

criticism rightly declined to recognise this book as prophetic, and

relegated it to the latest collection of canonical scriptures.

Each of the other prophetical books contains a longer or shorter

series of utterances concerning the neighbours of Israel, its friends

and foes, its enemies and allies. The fashion was apparently set by

Amos, who shows God's judgment upon Damascus, the Philistines, Tyre,

Edom, Ammon, and Moab. This list suggests the range of the prophet's

religious interest in the Gentiles. Assyria and Egypt were, for the

present, beyond the sphere of Revelation, just as China and India were

to the average Protestant of the seventeenth century. When we come to

the Book of Isaiah, the horizon widens in every direction. Jehovah is

concerned with Egypt and Ethiopia, Assyria and Babylon.[185] In very

short books like Joel and Zephaniah we could not expect exhaustive

treatment of this subject. Yet even these prophets deal with the

fortunes of the Gentiles: Joel, variously held one of the latest or

one of the earliest of the canonical books, pronounces a divine

judgment on Tyre and Sidon and the Philistines, on Egypt and Edom; and

Zephaniah, an elder contemporary of Jeremiah, devotes sections to the

Philistines, Moab and Ammon, Ethiopia and Assyria.

The fall of Nineveh revolutionised the international system of the

East. The judgment on Asshur was accomplished, and her name disappears

from these catalogues of doom. In other particulars Jeremiah, as well

as Ezekiel, follows closely in the footsteps of his predecessors. He

deals, like them, with the group of Syrian and Palestinian

states--Philistines, Moab, Ammon, Edom, and Damascus.[186] He dwells

with repeated emphasis on Egypt, and Arabia is represented by Kedar

and Hazor. In one section the prophet travels into what must have

seemed to his contemporaries the very far East, as far as Elam. On the

other hand, he is comparatively silent about Tyre, in which Joel,

Amos, the Book of Isaiah,[187] and above all Ezekiel display a lively

interest. Nebuchadnezzar's campaigns were directed against Tyre as

much as against Jerusalem; and Ezekiel, living in Chaldea, would have

attention forcibly directed to the Phœnician capital, at a time when

Jeremiah was absorbed in the fortunes of Zion.

But in the passage which we have chosen as the subject for this

introduction to the prophecies of the nations, Jeremiah takes a

somewhat wider range:--

"Thus saith unto me Jehovah, the God of Israel:

Take at My hand this cup of the wine of fury,

And make all the nations, to whom I send thee, drink it.

They shall drink, and reel to and fro, and be mad,

Because of the sword that I will send among them."

First and foremost of these nations, pre-eminent in punishment as in

privilege, stand "Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, with its kings

and princes."

This bad eminence is a necessary application of the principle laid

down by Amos[188]:--

"You only have I known of all the families of the earth:

Therefore I will visit upon you all your iniquities."

But as Jeremiah says later on, addressing the Gentile nations,--

"I begin to work evil at the city which is called by My name.

Should ye go scot-free? Ye shall not go scot-free."

And the prophet puts the cup of God's fury to their lips also, and

amongst them, Egypt, the _bête noir_ of Hebrew seers, is most

conspicuously marked out for destruction: "Pharaoh king of Egypt, and

his servants and princes and all his people, and all the mixed

population of Egypt."[189] Then follows, in epic fashion, a catalogue of

"all the nations" as Jeremiah knew them: "All the kings of the land of

Uz, all the kings of the land of the Philistines; Ashkelon, Gaza, Ekron,

and the remnant of Ashdod;[190] Edom, Moab, and the Ammonites; all the

kings[191] of Tyre, all the kings of Zidon, and the kings of their

colonies[192] beyond the sea; Dedan and Tema and Buz, and all that have

the corners of their hair polled;[193] and all the kings of Arabia, and

all the kings of the mixed populations that dwell in the desert; all the

kings of Zimri, all the kings of Elam, and all the kings of the Medes."

Jeremiah's definite geographical information is apparently exhausted,

but he adds by way of summary and conclusion: "And all the kings of the

north, far and near, one after the other; and all the kingdoms of the

world, which are on the face of the earth."

There is one notable omission in the list. Nebuchadnezzar, the servant

of Jehovah,[194] was the divinely appointed scourge of Judah and its

neighbours and allies. Elsewhere[195] the nations are exhorted to

submit to him, and here apparently Chaldea is exempted from the

general doom, just as Ezekiel passes no formal sentence on Babylon. It

is true that "all the kingdoms of the earth" would naturally include

Babylon, possibly were even intended to do so. But the Jews were not

long content with so veiled a reference to their conquerors and

oppressors. Some patriotic scribe added the explanatory note, "And the

king of Sheshach (_i.e._ Babylon) shall drink after them."[196]

Sheshach is obtained from Babel by the cypher 'Athbash, according to

which an alphabet is written out and a reversed alphabet written out

underneath it, and the letters of the lower row used for those of the

upper and _vice versâ_. Thus

Aleph B K L

T SH L K

The use of cypher seems to indicate that the note was added in

Chaldea during the Exile, when it was not safe to circulate documents

which openly denounced Babylon. Jeremiah's enumeration of the peoples

and rulers of his world is naturally more detailed and more exhaustive

than the list of the nations against which he prophesied. It includes

the Phœnician states, details the Philistine cities, associates with

Elam the neighbouring nations of Zimri and the Medes, and substitutes

for Kedar and Hazor Arabia and a number of semi-Arab states, Uz,

Dedan, Tema, and Buz.[197] Thus Jeremiah's world is the district

constantly shown in Scripture atlases in a map comprising the scenes

of Old Testament history, Egypt, Arabia, and Western Asia, south of a

line from the north-east corner of the Mediterranean to the southern

end of the Caspian Sea, and west of a line from the latter point to

the northern end of the Persian Gulf. How much of history has been

crowded into this narrow area! Here science, art, and literature won

those primitive triumphs which no subsequent achievements could

surpass or even equal. Here, perhaps for the first time, men tasted

the Dead Sea apples of civilisation, and learnt how little accumulated

wealth and national splendour can do for the welfare of the masses.

Here was Eden, where God walked in the cool of the day to commune with

man; and here also were many Mount Moriahs, where man gave his

firstborn for his transgression, the fruit of his body for the sin of

his soul, and no angel voice stayed his hand.

And now glance at any modern map and see for how little Jeremiah's

world counts among the great Powers of the nineteenth century. Egypt

indeed is a bone of contention between European states, but how often

does a daily paper remind its readers of the existence of Syria or

Mesopotamia? We may apply to this ancient world the title that Byron

gave to Rome, "Lone mother of dead empires," and call it:--

"The desert, where we steer

Stumbling o'er recollections."

It is said that Scipio's exultation over the fall of Carthage was

marred by forebodings that Time had a like destiny in store for Rome.

Where Cromwell might have quoted a text from the Bible, the Roman

soldier applied to his native city the Homeric lines:--

"Troy shall sink in fire,

And Priam's city with himself expire."

The epitaphs of ancient civilisations are no mere matters of

archæology; like the inscriptions on common graves, they carry a

_Memento mori_ for their successors.

But to return from epitaphs to prophecy: in the list which we have just

given, the kings of many of the nations are required to drink the cup of

wrath, and the section concludes with a universal judgment upon the

princes and rulers of this ancient world under the familiar figure of

shepherds, supplemented here by another, that of the "principal of the

flock," or, as we should say, "bell-wethers." Jehovah would break out

upon them to rend and scatter like a lion from his covert. Therefore:--

"Howl, ye shepherds, and cry!

Roll yourselves in the dust, ye bell-wethers!

The time has fully come for you to be slaughtered.

I will cast you down with a crash, like a vase of

porcelain.[198]

Ruin hath overtaken the refuge of the shepherds,

And the way of escape of the bell-wethers."

Thus Jeremiah announces the coming ruin of an ancient world, with all

its states and sovereigns, and we have seen that the prediction has

been amply fulfilled. We can only notice two other points with regard

to this section.

First, then, we have no right to accuse the prophet of speaking from a

narrow national standpoint. His words are not the expression of the

Jewish _adversus omnes alios hostile odium_;[199] if they were, we

should not hear so much of Judah's sin and Judah's punishment. He

applied to heathen states as he did to his own the divine standard of

national righteousness, and they too were found wanting. All history

confirms Jeremiah's judgment. This brings us to our second point.

Christian thinkers have been engrossed in the evidential aspect of

these national catastrophes. They served to fulfil prophecy, and

therefore the squalor of Egypt and the ruins of Assyria to-day have

seemed to make our way of salvation more safe and certain. But God did

not merely sacrifice these holocausts of men and nations to the

perennial craving of feeble faith for signs. Their fate must of

necessity illustrate His justice and wisdom and love. Jeremiah tells

us plainly that Judah and its neighbours had filled up the measure of

their iniquity before they were called upon to drink the cup of wrath;

national sin justifies God's judgments. Yet these very facts of the

moral failure and decadence of human societies perplex and startle us.

Individuals grow old and feeble and die, but saints and heroes do not

become slaves of vice and sin in their last days. The glory of their

prime is not buried in a dishonoured grave. Nay rather, when all else

fails, the beauty of holiness grows more pure and radiant. But of what

nation could we say:--

"Let me die the death of the righteous,

Let my last end be like his"?

Apparently the collective conscience is a plant of very slow growth;

and hitherto no society has been worthy to endure honourably or even

to perish nobly. In Christendom itself the ideals of common action are

still avowedly meaner than those of individual conduct. International

and collective morality is still in its infancy, and as a matter of

habit and system modern states are often wantonly cruel and unjust

towards obscure individuals and helpless minorities. Yet surely it

shall not always be so; the daily prayer of countless millions for the

coming of the Kingdom of God cannot remain unanswered.

FOOTNOTES:

[185] Doubts however have been raised as to whether any of the

sections about Babylon are by Isaiah himself.

[186] Doubts have been expressed as to the genuineness of the Damascus

prophecy.

[187] The Isaianic authorship of this prophecy (Isa. xxiii.) is

rejected by very many critics.

[188] Amos iii. 2.

[189] So Giesebrecht, Orelli, etc.

[190] Psammetichus had recently taken Ashdod, after a continuous siege

of twenty-nine years.

[191] The plural may refer to dependent chiefs or may be used for the

sake of symmetry.

[192] Lit. "the coasts" (_i.e._ islands and coastland) where the

Phœnicians had planted their colonies.

[193] See on xlix. 28-32.

[194] xxv. 9.

[195] xxvii. 8.

[196] Sheshach (Sheshakh) for Babel also occurs in li. 41. This

explanatory note is omitted by LXX.

[197] As to Damascus cf. note on p. 213.

[198] This line is somewhat paraphrased. Lit. "I will shatter you, and

ye shall fall like an ornamental vessel" (KELI HEMDA).

[199] Tacitus, _History_, v. 5.

CHAPTER XVII

_EGYPT_

xliii. 8-13, xliv. 30, xlvi.

"I will visit Amon of No, and Pharaoh, and Egypt, with their gods

and their kings; even Pharaoh, and all them that trust in

him."--JER. xlvi. 25.

The kings of Egypt with whom Jeremiah was contemporary--Psammetichus

II., Pharaoh Necho, and Pharaoh Hophra--belonged to the twenty-sixth

dynasty. When growing distress at home compelled Assyria to loose her

hold on her distant dependencies, Egypt still retained something of

her former vigorous elasticity. In the rebound from subjection under

the heavy hand of Sennacherib, she resumed her ancient forms of life

and government. She regained her unity and independence, and posed

afresh as an equal rival with Chaldea for the supremacy of Western

Asia. At home there was a renascence of art and literature, and, as of

old, the wealth and devotion of powerful monarchs restored the ancient

temples and erected new shrines of their own.

But this revival was no new growth springing up with a fresh and

original life from the seeds of the past; it cannot rank with the

European Renascence of the fifteenth century. It is rather to be

compared with the reorganisations by which Diocletian and Constantine

prolonged the decline of the Roman Empire, the rally of a strong

constitution in the grip of mortal disease. These latter-day Pharaohs

failed ignominiously in their attempts to recover the Syrian dominion of

the Thothmes and Rameses; and, like the Roman Empire in its last

centuries, the Egypt of the twenty-sixth dynasty surrendered itself to

Greek influence and hired foreign mercenaries to fight its battles. The

new art and literature were tainted by pedantic archaism. According to

Brugsch,[200] "Even to the newly created dignities and titles, the

return to ancient times had become the general watchword.... The stone

door-posts of this age reveal the old Memphian style of art, mirrored in

its modern reflection after the lapse of four thousand years." Similarly

Meyer[201] tells us that apparently the Egyptian state was reconstituted

on the basis of a religious revival, somewhat in the fashion of the

establishment of Deuteronomy by Josiah.

Inscriptions after the time of Psammetichus are written in archaic

Egyptian of a very ancient past; it is often difficult to determine at

first sight whether inscriptions belong to the earliest or latest

period of Egyptian history.

The superstition that sought safety in an exact reproduction of a remote

antiquity could not, however, resist the fascination of Eastern

demonology. According to Brugsch,[202] in the age called the Egyptian

Renascence the old Egyptian theology was adulterated with Græco-Asiatic

elements--demons and genii of whom the older faith and its purer

doctrine had scarcely an idea; exorcisms became a special science, and

are favourite themes for the inscriptions of this period. Thus, amid

many differences, there are also to be found striking resemblances

between the religious movements of the period in Egypt and amongst the

Jews, and corresponding difficulties in determining the dates of

Egyptian inscriptions and of sections of the Old Testament.

This enthusiasm for ancient custom and tradition was not likely to

commend the Egypt of Jeremiah's age to any student of Hebrew history. He

would be reminded that the dealings of the Pharaohs with Israel had

almost always been to its hurt; he would remember the Oppression and the

Exodus--how, in the time of Solomon, friendly intercourse with Egypt

taught that monarch lessons in magnificent tyranny, how Shishak

plundered the Temple, how Isaiah had denounced the Egyptian alliance as

a continual snare to Judah. A Jewish prophet would be prompt to discern

the omens of coming ruin in the midst of renewed prosperity on the Nile.

Accordingly at the first great crisis of the new international system,

in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, either just before or just after the

battle of Carchemish--it matters little which--Jeremiah takes up his

prophecy against Egypt. First of all, with an ostensible friendliness

which only masks his bitter sarcasm, he invites the Egyptians to take

the field:--

"Prepare buckler and shield, and draw near to battle.

Harness the horses to the chariots, mount the chargers, stand

forth armed cap-à-pie for battle;

Furbish the spears, put on the coats of mail."

This great host with its splendid equipment must surely conquer. The

prophet professes to await its triumphant return; but he sees instead

a breathless mob of panic-stricken fugitives, and pours upon them the

torrent of his irony:--

"How is it that I behold this? These heroes are dismayed and

have turned their backs;

Their warriors have been beaten down;

They flee apace, and do not look behind them:

Terror on every side--is the utterance of Jehovah."

Then irony passes into explicit malediction:--

"Let not the swift flee away, nor the warrior escape;

Away northward, they stumble and fall by the river

Euphrates."

Then, in a new strophe, Jeremiah again recurs in imagination to the

proud march of the countless hosts of Egypt:--

"Who is this that riseth up like the Nile,

Whose waters toss themselves like the rivers?

Egypt riseth up like the Nile,

His waters toss themselves like the rivers.

And he saith, I will go up and cover the land"

(like the Nile in flood);

"I will destroy the cities and their inhabitants"

(and, above all other cities, Babylon).

Again the prophet urges them on with ironical encouragement:--

"Go up, ye horses; rage, ye chariots;

Ethiopians and Libyans that handle the shield,

Lydians that handle and bend the bow"

(the tributaries and mercenaries of Egypt).

Then, as before, he speaks plainly of coming disaster:

"That day is a day of vengeance for the Lord Jehovah Sabaoth,

whereon He will avenge Him of His adversaries"

(a day of vengeance upon Pharaoh Necho for Megiddo and Josiah).

"The sword shall devour and be sated, and drink its fill of

their blood:

For the Lord Jehovah Sabaoth hath a sacrifice in the northern

land, by the river Euphrates."

In a final strophe, the prophet turns to the land left bereaved and

defenceless by the defeat at Carchemish:--

"Go up to Gilead and get thee balm, O virgin daughter of

Egypt:

In vain dost thou multiply medicines; thou canst not be

healed.

The nations have heard of thy shame, the earth is full of thy

cry:

For warrior stumbles against warrior; they fall both

together."

Nevertheless the end was not yet. Egypt was wounded to death, but she

was to linger on for many a long year to be a snare to Judah and to

vex the righteous soul of Jeremiah. The reed was broken, but it still

retained an appearance of soundness, which more than once tempted the

Jewish princes to lean upon it and find their hands pierced for their

pains. Hence, as we have seen already, Jeremiah repeatedly found

occasion to reiterate the doom of Egypt, of Necho's successor, Pharaoh

Hophra, and of the Jewish refugees who had sought safety under his

protection. In the concluding part of chapter xlvi., a prophecy of

uncertain date sets forth the ruin of Egypt with rather more literary

finish than in the parallel passages.

This word of Jehovah was to be proclaimed in Egypt, and especially in

the frontier cities, which would have to bear the first brunt of

invasion:--

"Declare in Egypt, proclaim in Migdol, proclaim in Noph and

Tahpanhes:

Say ye, Take thy stand and be ready, for the sword hath

devoured round about thee.

Why hath Apis[203] fled and thy calf not stood? Because

Jehovah overthrew it."

Memphis was devoted to the worship of Apis, incarnate in the sacred

bull; but now Apis must succumb to the mightier divinity of Jehovah,

and his sacred city become a prey to the invaders.

"He maketh many to stumble; they fall one against another.

Then they say, Arise, and let us return to our own people and

to our native land, before the oppressing sword."

We must remember that the Egyptian armies were largely composed of

foreign mercenaries. In the hour of disaster and defeat these

hirelings would desert their employers and go home.

"Give unto Pharaoh king of Egypt the name[204] Crash; he hath

let the appointed time pass by."

The form of this enigmatic sentence is probably due to a play upon

Egyptian names and titles. When the allusions are forgotten, such

paronomasia naturally results in hopeless obscurity. The "appointed

time" has been explained as the period during which Jehovah gave

Pharaoh the opportunity of repentance, or as that within which he

might have submitted to Nebuchadnezzar on favourable terms.

"As I live, is the utterance of the King, whose name is

Jehovah Sabaoth,

One shall come like Tabor among the mountains and like Carmel

by the sea."

It was not necessary to name this terrible invader; it could be no

other than Nebuchadnezzar.

"Get thee gear for captivity, O daughter of Egypt, that

dwellest in thine own land:

For Noph shall become a desolation, and shall be burnt up and

left without inhabitants.

Egypt is a very fair heifer, but destruction is come upon her

from the north."

This tempest shattered the Greek phalanx in which Pharaoh trusted:--

"Even her mercenaries in the midst of her are like calves of

the stall;

Even they have turned and fled together, they have not stood:

For their day of calamity hath come upon them, their day of

reckoning."

We do not look for chronological sequence in such a poem, so that this

picture of the flight and destruction of the mercenaries is not

necessarily later in time than their overthrow and contemplated

desertion in verse 15. The prophet is depicting a scene of bewildered

confusion; the disasters that fell thick upon Egypt crowd into his

vision without order or even coherence. Now he turns again to Egypt

herself:--

"Her voice goeth forth like the (low hissing of) the serpent;

For they come upon her with a mighty army, and with axes like

woodcutters."

A like fate is predicted in Isaiah xxix. 4 for "Ariel, the city where

David dwelt":--

"Thou shalt be brought low and speak from the ground;

Thou shalt speak with a low voice out of the dust;

Thy voice shall come from the ground, like that of a familiar

spirit,

And thou shalt speak in a whisper from the dust."

Thus too Egypt would seek to writhe herself from under the heel of the

invader; hissing out the while her impotent fury, she would seek to

glide away into some safe refuge amongst the underwood. Her

dominions, stretching far up the Nile, were surely vast enough to

afford her shelter somewhere; but no! the "woodcutters" are too many

and too mighty for her:--

"They cut down her forest--it is the utterance of Jehovah--for

it is impenetrable;

For they are more than the locusts, and are innumerable."

The whole of Egypt is overrun and subjugated; no district holds out

against the invader, and remains unsubjugated to form the nucleus of a

new and independent empire.

"The daughter of Egypt is put to shame; she is delivered into

the hand of the northern people."

Her gods share her fate; Apis had succumbed at Memphis, but Egypt had

countless other stately shrines whose denizens must own the

overmastering might of Jehovah:--

"Thus saith Jehovah Sabaoth, the God of Israel:

Behold, I will visit Amon of No,

And Pharaoh, and Egypt, and all her gods and kings,

Even Pharaoh and all who trust in him."

Amon of No, or Thebes, known to the Greeks as Ammon and called by his

own worshippers Amen, or "the hidden one," is apparently mentioned

with Apis as sharing the primacy of the Egyptian divine hierarchy. On

the fall of the twentieth dynasty, the high priest of the Theban Amen

became king of Egypt, and centuries afterwards Alexander the Great

made a special pilgrimage to the temple in the oasis of Ammon and was

much gratified at being there hailed son of the deity.

Probably the prophecy originally ended with this general threat of

"visitation" of Egypt and its human and divine rulers. An editor,

however, has added,[205] from parallel passages, the more definite

but sufficiently obvious statement that Nebuchadnezzar and his

servants were to be the instruments of the Divine visitation.

A further addition is in striking contrast to the sweeping statements

of Jeremiah:--

"Afterward it shall be inhabited, as in the days of old."

Similarly, Ezekiel foretold a restoration for Egypt:--

"At the end of forty years, I will gather the Egyptians, and will

cause them to return ... to their native land; and they shall be there

a base kingdom: it shall be the basest of the kingdoms."[206]

And elsewhere we read yet more gracious promises to Egypt:--

"Israel shall be a third with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the

midst of the land: whom Jehovah Sabaoth shall bless, saying, Blessed

be Egypt My people, and Assyria the work of My hands, and Israel Mine

inheritance."[207]

Probably few would claim to discover in history any literal fulfilment

of this last prophecy. Perhaps it might have been appropriated for the

Christian Church in the days of Clement and Origen. We may take Egypt

and Assyria as types of heathendom, which shall one day receive the

blessings of the Lord's people and of the work of His hands. Of

political revivals and restorations Egypt has had her share. But less

interest attaches to these general prophecies than to more definite

and detailed predictions; and there is much curiosity as to any

evidence which monuments and other profane witnesses may furnish as to

a conquest of Egypt and capture of Pharaoh Hophra by Nebuchadnezzar.

According to Herodotus,[208] Apries (Hophra) was defeated and

imprisoned by his successor Amasis, afterwards delivered up by him to

the people of Egypt, who forthwith strangled their former king. This

event would be an exact fulfilment of the words, "I will give Pharaoh

Hophra king of Egypt into the hand of his enemies, and into the hand of

them that seek his life,"[209] if it were not evident from parallel

passages[210] that the Book of Jeremiah intends Nebuchadnezzar to be the

enemy into whose hands Pharaoh is to be delivered. But Herodotus is

entirely silent as to the relations of Egypt and Babylon during this

period; for instance, he mentions the victory of Pharaoh Necho at

Megiddo--which he miscalls Magdolium--but not his defeat at Carchemish.

Hence his silence as to Chaldean conquests in Egypt has little weight.

Even the historian's explicit statement as to the death of Apries might

be reconciled with his defeat and capture by Nebuchadnezzar, if we knew

all the facts. At present, however, the inscriptions do little to fill

the gap left by the Greek historian; there are, however, references

which seem to establish two invasions of Egypt by the Chaldean king, one

of which fell in the reign of Pharaoh Hophra. But the spiritual lessons

of this and the following prophecies concerning the nations are not

dependent on the spade of the excavator or the skill of the decipherers

of hieroglyphics and cuneiform script; whatever their relation may be to

the details of subsequent historical events, they remain as monuments of

the inspired insight of the prophet into the character and destiny alike

of great empires and petty states. They assert the Divine government of

the nations, and the subordination of all history to the coming of the

Kingdom of God.

FOOTNOTES:

[200] Second edition, ii. 291, 292.

[201] Meyer, _Geschichte des alten Ägypten_, 371, 373.

[202] ii. 293.

[203] Giesebrecht, with LXX.

[204] Giesebrecht, Orelli, Kautzsch, with LXX., Syr., and Vulg., by an

alteration of the pointing.

[205] LXX. omits verse 26. Verses 27, 28 = xxx. 10, 11, and probably

are an insertion here.

[206] Ezek. xxix. 13-15.

[207] Isa. xix. 25.

[208] Herodotus, II. clxix.

[209] xliv. 30.

[210] xlvi. 25.

CHAPTER XVIII

_THE PHILISTINES_

xlvii.

"O sword of Jehovah, how long will it be ere thou be quiet? put up

thyself into thy scabbard; rest, and be still."--JER. xlvii. 6.

According to the title placed at the head of this prophecy, it was

uttered "before Pharaoh smote Gaza." The Pharaoh is evidently Pharaoh

Necho, and this capture of Gaza was one of the incidents of the

campaign which opened with the victory at Megiddo and concluded so

disastrously at Carchemish. Our first impulse is to look for some

connection between this incident and the contents of the prophecy:

possibly the editor who prefixed the heading may have understood by

the northern enemy Pharaoh Necho on his return from Carchemish; but

would Jeremiah have described a defeated army thus?

"Behold, waters rise out of the north, and become an

overflowing torrent;

They overflow the land, and all that is therein, the city and

its inhabitants.

Men cry out, and all the inhabitants of the land howl,

At the sound of the stamping of the hoofs of his stallions,

At the rattling of his chariots and the rumbling of his

wheels."

Here as elsewhere the enemy from the north is Nebuchadnezzar. Pharaohs

might come and go, winning victories and taking cities, but these

broken reeds count for little; not they, but the king of Babylon is

the instrument of Jehovah's supreme purpose. The utter terror caused

by the Chaldean advance is expressed by a striking figure:--

"The fathers look not back to their children for slackness of

hands."

Their very bodies are possessed and crippled with fear, their palsied

muscles cannot respond to the impulses of natural affection; they can

do nothing but hurry on in headlong flight, unable to look round or

stretch out a helping hand to their children:--

"Because of the day that cometh for the spoiling of all the

Philistines,

For cutting off every ally that remaineth unto Tyre and

Zidon:

For Jehovah spoileth the Philistines, the remnant of the

coast of Caphtor.[211]

Baldness cometh upon Gaza; Ashkelon is destroyed:

O remnant of the Anakim,[212] how long wilt thou cut

thyself?"

This list is remarkable both for what it includes and what it omits.

In order to understand the reference to Tyre and Zidon, we must

remember that Nebuchadnezzar's expedition was partly directed against

these cities, with which the Philistines had evidently been allied.

The Chaldean king would hasten the submission of the Phœnicians, by

cutting off all hope of succour from without. There are various

possible reasons why out of the five Philistine cities only

two--Ashkelon and Gaza--are mentioned; Ekron, Gath, and Ashdod may

have been reduced to comparative insignificance. Ashdod had recently

been taken by Psammetichus after a twenty-nine years' siege. Or the

names of two of these cities may be given by way of paronomasia in the

text: Ashdod may be suggested by the double reference to the

_spoiling_ and the _spoiler_, _Shdod_ and _Shoded_; Gath may be hinted

at by the word used for the mutilation practised by mourners,

_Tithgoddadi_, and by the mention of the Anakim, who are connected

with Gath, Ashdod, and Gaza in Joshua xi. 22.

As Jeremiah contemplates this fresh array of victims of Chaldean

cruelty, he is moved to protest against the weary monotony of ruin:--

"O sword of Jehovah, how long will it be ere thou be quiet?

Put up thyself into thy scabbard; rest, and be still."

The prophet ceases to be the mouthpiece of God, and breaks out into

the cry of human anguish. How often since, amid the barbarian inroads

that overwhelmed the Roman Empire, amid the prolonged horrors of the

Thirty Years' War, amid the carnage of the French Revolution, men have

uttered a like appeal to an unanswering and relentless Providence!

Indeed, not in war only, but even in peace, the tide of human misery

and sin often seems to flow, century after century, with undiminished

volume, and ever and again a vain "How long" is wrung from pallid and

despairing lips. For the Divine purpose may not be hindered, and the

sword of Jehovah must still strike home.

"How can it be quiet, seeing that Jehovah hath given it a

charge?

Against Ashkelon and against the sea-shore, there hath He

appointed it."

Yet Ashkelon survived to be a stronghold of the Crusaders, and Gaza to

be captured by Alexander and even by Napoleon. Jehovah has other

instruments besides His devastating sword; the victorious endurance

and recuperative vitality of men and nations also come from Him.

"Come, and let us return unto Jehovah:

For He hath torn, and He will heal us;

He hath smitten, and He will bind us up."[213]

FOOTNOTES:

[211] Referring to their ancient immigration from Caphtor, probably

Crete.

[212] Kautzsch, Giesebrecht, with LXX., reading 'Nqm for the Masoretic

'Mqm; Eng. Vers., "their valley."

[213] Hosea vi. 1.

CHAPTER XIX

_MOAB_

xlviii.

"Moab shall be destroyed from being a people, because he hath

magnified himself against Jehovah."--JER. xlviii. 42.

"Chemosh said to me, Go, take Nebo against Israel ... and I took

it ... and I took from it the vessels of Jehovah, and offered them

before Chemosh."--MOABITE STONE.

"Yet will I bring again the captivity of Moab in the latter

days."--JER. xlviii. 47.

The prophets show a very keen interest in Moab. With the exception of

the very short Book of Joel, all the prophets who deal in detail with

foreign nations devote sections to Moab. The unusual length of such

sections in Isaiah and Jeremiah is not the only resemblance between the

utterances of these two prophets concerning Moab. There are many

parallels[214] of idea and expression, which probably indicate the

influence of the elder prophet upon his successor; unless indeed both of

them adapted some popular poem which was early current in Judah.[215]

It is easy to understand why the Jewish Scriptures should have much

to say about Moab, just as the sole surviving fragment of Moabite

literature is chiefly occupied with Israel. These two Terahite

tribes--the children of Jacob and the children of Lot--had dwelt side

by side for centuries, like the Scotch and English borderers before

the accession of James I. They had experienced many alternations of

enmity and friendship, and had shared complex interests, common and

conflicting, after the manner of neighbours who are also kinsmen. Each

in its turn had oppressed the other; and Moab had been the tributary

of the Israelite monarchy till the victorious arms of Mesha had

achieved independence for his people and firmly established their

dominion over the debatable frontier lands. There are traces, too, of

more kindly relations: the House of David reckoned Ruth the Moabitess

amongst its ancestors, and Jesse, like Elimelech and Naomi, had taken

refuge in Moab.

Accordingly this prophecy concerning Moab, in both its editions,

frequently strikes a note of sympathetic lamentation and almost

becomes a dirge.

"Therefore will I howl for Moab;

Yea, for all Moab will I cry out.

For the men of Kir-heres shall they mourn.

With more than the weeping of Jazer

Will I weep for thee, O vine of Sibmah.

* * * * *

Therefore mine heart soundeth like pipes for Moab,

Mine heart soundeth like pipes for the men of Kir-heres."

But this pity could not avail to avert the doom of Moab; it only

enabled the Jewish prophet to fully appreciate its terrors. The

picture of coming ruin is drawn with the colouring and outlines

familiar to us in the utterances of Jeremiah--spoiling and

destruction, fire and sword and captivity, dismay and wild

abandonment of wailing.

"Chemosh shall go forth into captivity, his priests and his

princes together.

Every head is bald, and every beard clipped;

Upon all the hands are cuttings, and upon the loins

sackcloth.

On all the housetops and in all the streets of Moab there is

everywhere lamentation;

For I have broken Moab like a useless vessel--it is the

utterance of Jehovah.

How is it broken down! Howl ye! Be thou ashamed!

How hath Moab turned the back!

All the neighbours shall laugh and shudder at Moab.

* * * * *

The heart of the mighty men of Moab at that day

Shall be like the heart of a woman in her pangs."

This section of Jeremiah illustrates the dramatic versatility of the

prophet's method. He identifies himself now with the blood-thirsty

invader, now with his wretched victims, and now with the

terror-stricken spectators; and sets forth the emotions of each in

turn with vivid realism. Hence at one moment we have the pathos and

pity of such verses as we have just quoted, and at another such stern

and savage words as these:--

"Cursed be he that doeth the work of Jehovah negligently,

Cursed be he that stinteth his sword of blood."

These lines might have served as a motto for Cromwell at the massacre

of Drogheda, for Tilly's army at the sack of Magdeburg, or for Danton

and Robespierre during the Reign of Terror. Jeremiah's words were the

more terrible because they were uttered with the full consciousness

that in the dread Chaldean king[216] a servant of Jehovah was at hand

who would be careful not to incur any curse for stinting his sword of

blood. We shrink from what seems to us the prophet's brutal assertion

that relentless and indiscriminate slaughter is sometimes the service

which man is called upon to render to God. Such sentiment is for the

most part worthless and unreal; it does not save us from epidemics of

war fever, and is at once ignored under the stress of horrors like the

Indian Mutiny. There is no true comfort in trying to persuade

ourselves that the most awful events of history lie outside of the

Divine purpose, or in forgetting that the human scourges of their kind

do the work that God has assigned to them.

In this inventory, as it were, of the ruin of Moab our attention is

arrested by the constant and detailed references to the cities. This

feature is partly borrowed from Isaiah. Ezekiel too speaks of the

Moabite cities which are the glory of the country;[217] but Jeremiah's

prophecy is a veritable Domesday Book of Moab. With his epic fondness

for lists of sonorous names--after the manner of Homer's catalogue of

the ships--he enumerates Nebo, Kiriathaim, Heshbon, and Horonaim, city

after city, till he completes a tale of no fewer than twenty-six,[218]

and then summarises the rest as "all the cities of the land of Moab,

far and near." Eight of these cities are mentioned in Joshua[219] as

part of the inheritance of Reuben and Gad. Another, Bozrah, is usually

spoken of as a city of Edom.[220]

The Moabite Stone explains the occurrence of Reubenite cities in

these lists. It tells us how Mesha took Nebo, Jahaz, and Horonaim from

Israel. Possibly in this period of conquest Bozrah became tributary to

Moab, without ceasing to be an Edomite city. This extension of

territory and multiplication of towns points to an era of power and

prosperity, of which there are other indications in this chapter. "We

are mighty and valiant for war," said the Moabites. When Moab fell

"there was broken a mighty sceptre and a glorious staff." Other verses

imply the fertility of the land and the abundance of its vintage.

Moab in fact had profited by the misfortunes of its more powerful and

ambitious neighbours. The pressure of Damascus, Assyria, and Chaldea

prevented Israel and Judah from maintaining their dominion over their

ancient tributary. Moab lay less directly in the track of the

invaders; it was too insignificant to attract their special attention,

perhaps too prudent to provoke a contest with the lords of the East.

Hence, while Judah was declining, Moab had enlarged her borders and

grown in wealth and power.

And even as Jeshurun kicked, when he was waxen fat,[221] so Moab in

its prosperity was puffed up with unholy pride. Even in Isaiah's time

this was the besetting sin of Moab; he says in an indictment which

Jeremiah repeats almost word for word:--

"We have heard of the pride of Moab, that he is very proud,

Even of his arrogancy and his pride and his wrath."[222]

This verse is a striking example of the Hebrew method of gaining

emphasis by accumulating derivatives of the same and similar roots.

The verse in Jeremiah runs thus: "We have heard of the pride (Ge'ON)

of Moab, that he is very proud (GE'EH); his loftiness (GABHeHO), and

his pride (Ge'ONO), and his proudfulness (GA'aWATHO)."

Jeremiah dwells upon this theme:--

"Moab shall be destroyed from being a people,

Because he hath magnified himself against Jehovah."

Zephaniah bears like testimony[223]:--

"This shall they have for their pride,

Because they have been insolent, and have magnified

themselves

Against the people of Jehovah Sabaoth."

Here again the Moabite Stone bears abundant testimony to the justice

of the prophet's accusations; for there Mesha tells how in the name

and by the grace of Chemosh he conquered the cities of Israel; and

how, anticipating Belshazzar's sacrilege, he took the sacred vessels

of Jehovah from His temple at Nebo and consecrated them to Chemosh.

Truly Moab had "magnified himself against Jehovah."

Prosperity had produced other baleful effects beside a haughty spirit,

and pride was not the only cause of the ruin of Moab. Jeremiah applies

to nations the dictum of Polonius--

"Home-keeping youths have ever homely wits,"

and apparently suggests that ruin and captivity were necessary

elements in the national discipline of Moab:--

"Moab hath been undisturbed from his youth;

He hath settled on his lees;

He hath not been emptied from vessel to vessel;

He hath not gone into captivity:

Therefore his taste remaineth in him,

His scent is not changed.

Wherefore, behold, the days come--it is the utterance of

Jehovah--

That I will send men unto him that shall tilt him up;

They shall empty his vessels and break his[224] bottles."

As the chapter, in its present form, concludes with a note--

"I will bring again the captivity of Moab in the latter

days--it is the utterance of Jehovah"--

we gather that even this rough handling was disciplinary; at any rate,

the former lack of such vicissitudes had been to the serious detriment

of Moab. It is strange that Jeremiah did not apply this principle to

Judah. For, indeed, the religion of Israel and of mankind owes an

incalculable debt to the captivity of Judah, a debt which later writers

are not slow to recognise. "Behold," says the prophet of the Exile,--

"I have refined thee, but not as silver;

I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction."[225]

History constantly illustrates how when Christians were undisturbed

and prosperous the wine of truth settled on the lees and came to taste

of the cask; and--to change the figure--how affliction and persecution

proved most effectual tonics for a debilitated Church. Continental

critics of modern England speak severely of the ill-effects which our

prolonged freedom from invasion and civil war, and the unbroken

continuity of our social life have had on our national character and

manners. In their eyes England is a perfect Moab, concerning which

they are ever ready to prophesy after the manner of Jeremiah. The

Hebrew Chronicler blamed Josiah because he would not listen to the

advice and criticism of Pharaoh Necho. There may be warnings which we

should do well to heed, even in the acrimony of foreign journalists.

But any such suggestion raises wider and more difficult issues; for

ordinary individuals and nations the discipline of calamity seems

necessary. What degree of moral development exempts from such

discipline, and how may it be attained? Christians cannot seek to

compound for such discipline by self-inflicted loss or pain, like

Polycrates casting away his ring or Browning's Caliban, who in his

hour of terror,

"Lo! 'Lieth flat and loveth Setebos!

'Maketh his teeth meet through his upper lip,

Will let those quails fly, will not eat this month

One little mess of whelks, so he may 'scape."

But though it is easy to counsel resignation and the recognition of a

wise loving Providence in national as in personal suffering, yet

mankind longs for an end to the period of pupilage and chastisement

and would fain know how it may be hastened.

FOOTNOTES:

[214] _E.g._ xlviii. 5, "For by the ascent of Luhith with continual

weeping shall they go up; for in going down of Horonaim they have

heard the distress of the cry of destruction," is almost identical

with Isa. xv. 5. Cf. also xlviii. 29-34 with Isa. xv. 4, xvi. 6-11.

[215] Verse 47 with the subscription, "Thus far is the judgment of

Moab," is wanting in the LXX.

[216] The exact date of the prophecy is uncertain, but it must have

been written during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar.

[217] Ezek. xxv. 9.

[218] Some of the names, however, may be variants.

[219] Josh. xiii. 15-28 (possibly on JE. basis).

[220] xlix. 13, possibly this is not the Edomite Bozrah.

[221] Deut. xxxii. 15.

[222] Isa. xvi. 6.

[223] ii. 10.

[224] Kautzsch, Giesebrecht, with LXX.; A.V., R.V., with Hebrew Text,

"their bottles."

[225] Isa. xlviii. 10.

CHAPTER XX

_AMMON_

xlix. 1-6.

"Hath Israel no sons? hath he no heir? why then doth Moloch

possess Gad, and his people dwell in the cities thereof?"--JER.

xlix. 1

The relations of Israel with Ammon were similar but less intimate than

they were with his twin-brother Moab. Hence this prophecy is, _mutatis

mutandis_, an abridgment of that concerning Moab. As Moab was charged

with magnifying himself against Jehovah, and was found to be occupying

cities which Reuben claimed as its inheritance, so Ammon had presumed

to take possession of the Gadite cities, whose inhabitants had been

carried away captive by the Assyrians. Here again the prophet

enumerates Heshbon, Ai, Rabbah, and the dependent towns, "the

daughters of Rabbah." Only in the territory of this half-nomadic

people the cities are naturally not so numerous as in Moab; and

Jeremiah mentions also the fertile valleys wherein the Ammonites

gloried. The familiar doom of ruin and captivity is pronounced against

city and country and all the treasures of Ammon; Moloch,[226] like

Chemosh, must go into captivity with his priests and princes. This

prophecy also concludes with a promise of restoration:--

"Afterward I will bring again the captivity of the children of

Ammon--it is the utterance of Jehovah."

FOOTNOTE:

[226] xlix. 3: A.V., "their king"; R.V., "Malcam," which here and in

verse 1 is a form of Moloch.

CHAPTER XXI

_EDOM_

xlix. 7-22.

"Bozrah shall become an astonishment, a reproach, a waste, and a

curse."--JER. xlix. 13.

The prophecy concerning Edom is not formulated along the same line as

those which deal with the twin children of Lot, Moab and Ammon. Edom was

not merely the cousin, but the brother of Israel. His history, his

character and conduct, had marked peculiarities, which received special

treatment. Edom had not only intimate relations with Israel as a whole,

but was also bound by exceptionally close ties to the Southern Kingdom.

The Edomite clan Kenaz had been incorporated in the tribe of Judah;[227]

and when Israel broke up into two states, Edom was the one tributary

which was retained or reconquered by the House of David, and continued

subject to Judah till the reign of Jehoram ben Jehoshaphat.[228]

Much virtuous indignation is often expressed at the wickedness of

Irishmen in contemplating rebellion against the dominion of England: we

cannot therefore be surprised that the Jews resented the successful

revolt of Edom, and regarded the hostility of Mount Seir to its former

masters as ingratitude and treachery. In moments of hot indignation

against the manifold sins of Judah Jeremiah might have announced with

great vehemence that Judah should be made a "reproach and a proverb";

but when, as Obadiah tells us, the Edomites stood gazing with eager

curiosity on the destruction of Jerusalem, and rejoiced and exulted in

the distress of the Jews, and even laid hands on their substance in the

day of their calamity, and occupied the roads to catch fugitives and

deliver them up to the Chaldeans,[229] then the patriotic fervour of the

prophet broke out against Edom. Like Moab and Ammon, he was puffed up

with pride, and deluded by baseless confidence into a false security.

These hardy mountaineers trusted in their reckless courage and in the

strength of their inaccessible mountain fastnesses.

"Men shall shudder at thy fate,[230] the pride of thy heart

hath deceived thee,

O thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, that holdest

the height of the hill:

Though thou shouldest make thy nest as high as the

eagle,[231]

I will bring thee down from thence--it is the utterance of

Jehovah."

Pliny speaks of the Edomite capital as "oppidum circumdatum montibus

inaccessis,"[232] and doubtless the children of Esau had often watched

from their eyrie Assyrian and Chaldean armies on the march to plunder

more defenceless victims, and trusted that their strength, their good

fortune, and their ancient and proverbial wisdom would still hold them

scatheless. Their neighbours--the Jews amongst the rest--might be

plundered, massacred, and carried away captive, but Edom could look on

in careless security, and find its account in the calamities of

kindred tribes. If Jerusalem was shattered by the Chaldean tempest,

the Edomites would play the part of wreckers. But all this shrewdness

was mere folly: how could these Solons of Mount Seir prove so unworthy

of their reputation?

"Is wisdom no more in Teman?

Has counsel perished from the prudent?

Has their wisdom vanished?"

They thought that Jehovah would punish Jacob whom He loved, and yet

spare Esau whom He hated. But:--

"Thus saith Jehovah:

Behold, they to whom it pertained not to drink of the cup

shall assuredly drink.

Art thou he that shall go altogether unpunished?

Thou shalt not go unpunished, but thou shalt assuredly drink"

(12).

Ay, and drink to the dregs:--

"If grape-gatherers come to thee, would they not leave

gleanings?

If thieves came by night, they would only destroy till they

had enough.

But I have made Esau bare, I have stripped him stark naked;

he shall not be able to hide himself.

His children, and his brethren, and his neighbours are given

up to plunder, and there is an end of him" (9, 10).

"I have sworn by Myself--is the utterance of Jehovah--

That Bozrah shall become an astonishment, a reproach, a

desolation, and a curse;

All her cities shall become perpetual wastes.

I have heard tidings from Jehovah, and an ambassador is sent

among the nations, saying,

Gather yourselves together and come against her, arise to

battle" (13, 14).

There was obviously but one leader who could lead the nations to achieve

the overthrow of Edom and lead her little ones away captive, who could

come up like a lion from the thickets of Jordan, or "flying like an

eagle and spreading his wings against Bozrah" (22)--Nebuchadnezzar, king

of Babylon, who had come up against Judah with all the kingdoms and

peoples of his dominions.[233]

In this picture of chastisement and calamity, there is one apparent

touch of pitifulness:--

"Leave thine orphans, I will preserve their lives;

Let thy widows put their trust in Me" (11).

At first sight, at any rate, these seem to be the words of Jehovah.

All the adult males of Edom would perish, yet the helpless widows and

orphans would not be without a protector. The God of Israel would

watch over the lambs of Edom,[234] when they were dragged away into

captivity. We are reluctant to surrender this beautiful and touching

description of a God, who, though He may visit the iniquity of the

fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation, yet

even in such judgment ever remembers mercy. It is impossible, however,

to ignore the fact that such ideas are widely different from the tone

and sentiment of the rest of the section. These words may be an

immediate sequel to the previous verse, "No Edomite survives to say to

his dying brethren, Leave thine orphans to me," or possibly they may

be quoted, in bitter irony, from some message from Edom to Jerusalem,

inviting the Jews to send their wives and children for safety to Mount

Seir. Edom, ungrateful and treacherous Edom, shall utterly

perish--Edom that offered an asylum to Jewish refugees, and yet shared

the plunder of Jerusalem and betrayed her fugitives to the Chaldeans.

There is no word of restoration. Moab and Ammon and Elam might revive

and flourish again, but for Esau, as of old, there should be no place of

repentance. For Edom, in the days of the Captivity, trespassed upon the

inheritance of Israel more grievously than Ammon and Moab upon Reuben

and Gad. The Edomites possessed themselves of the rich pastures of the

south of Judah, and the land was thenceforth called Idumea. Thus they

earned the undying hatred of the Jews, in whose mouths Edom became a

curse and a reproach, a term of opprobrium. Like Babylon, Edom was used

as a secret name for Rome, and later on for the Christian Church.

Nevertheless, even in this prophecy, there is a hint that these

predictions of utter ruin must not be taken too literally:--

"For, behold, I will make thee small among the nations,

Despised among men" (15).

These words are scarcely consistent with the other verses, which imply

that, as a people, Edom would utterly perish from off the face of the

earth. As a matter of fact, Edom flourished in her new territory till

the time of the Maccabees, and when the Messiah came to establish the

Kingdom of God, instead of "saviours standing on Mount Zion to judge

the Mount of Esau,"[235] an Edomite dynasty was reigning in Jerusalem.

FOOTNOTES:

[227] Cf. the designation of Caleb "ben Jephunneh the Kenizzite," Num.

xxxii. 12, etc., with the genealogies which trace the descent of Kenaz

to Esau, Gen. xxxvi. 11, etc. Cf. also _Expositor's Bible, Chronicles_.

[228] Cf. 1 Kings xxii. 47 with 2 Kings viii. 20.

[229] Obadiah 11-15. The difference between A.V. and R.V. is more

apparent than real. The prohibition which R.V. gives must have been

based on experience. The short prophecy of Obadiah has very much in

common with this section of Jeremiah: Obad. 1-6, 8, are almost

identical with Jer. xlix. 14-16, 9, 10_a_, 7. The relation of the two

passages is a matter of controversy, but probably both use a common

original. Cf. Driver's _Introduction_ on Obadiah.

[230] Lit. "thy terror," _i.e._ the terror inspired by thy fate. A.V.,

R.V., "thy terribleness," suggests that Edom trusted in the terror

felt for him by his enemies, but we can scarcely suppose that even the

fiercest highlanders expected Nebuchadnezzar to be terrified at them.

[231] Obad. 4: "Though thou set thy nest among the stars."

[232] _Hist. Nat._, vi. 28. Orelli.

[233] xxxiv. 1.

[234] Verse 20.

[235] Obadiah 21.

CHAPTER XXII

_DAMASCUS_

xlix. 23-27.

"I will kindle a fire in the wall of Damascus, and it shall devour

the palaces of Benhadad."--JER. xlix. 27.

We are a little surprised to meet with a prophecy of Jeremiah

concerning Damascus and the palaces of Benhadad. The names carry our

minds back for more than a couple of centuries. During Elisha's

ministry, Damascus and Samaria were engaged in their long, fierce duel

for the supremacy over Syria and Palestine. In the reign of Ahaz these

ancient rivals combined to attack Judah, so that Isaiah is keenly

interested in Damascus and its fortunes. But about B.C. 745, about a

hundred and fifty years before Jeremiah's time, the Assyrian king

Tiglath-Pileser[236] overthrew the Syrian kingdom and carried its

people into captivity. We know from Ezekiel,[237] what we might have

surmised from the position and later history of Damascus, that this

ancient city continued a wealthy commercial centre; but Ezekiel has no

oracle concerning Damascus, and the other documents of the period and

of later times do not mention the capital of Benhadad. Its name does

not even occur in Jeremiah's exhaustive list of the countries of his

world in xxv. 15-26. Religious interest in alien races depended on

their political relations with Israel; when the latter ceased, the

prophets had no word from Jehovah concerning foreign nations. Such

considerations have suggested doubts as to the authenticity of this

section, and it has been supposed that it may be a late echo of

Isaiah's utterances concerning Damascus.

We know, however, too little of the history of the period to warrant

such a conclusion. Damascus would continue to exist as a tributary

state, and might furnish auxiliary forces to the enemies of Judah or

join with her to conspire against Babylon, and would in either case

attract Jeremiah's attention. Moreover, in ancient as in modern times,

commerce played its part in international politics. Doubtless slaves

were part of the merchandise of Damascus, just as they were among the

wares of the Apocalyptic Babylon. Joel[238] denounces Tyre and Zidon

for selling Jews to the Greeks, and the Damascenes may have served as

slave-agents to Nebuchadnezzar and his captains, and thus provoked the

resentment of patriot Jews. So many picturesque and romantic

associations cluster around Damascus, that this section of Jeremiah

almost strikes a jarring note. We love to think of this fairest of

Oriental cities, "half as old as time," as the "Eye of the East" which

Mohammed refused to enter--because "Man," he said, "can have but one

paradise, and my paradise is fixed above"--and as the capital of

Noureddin and his still more famous successor Saladin. And so we

regret that, when it emerges from the obscurity of centuries into the

light of Biblical narrative, the brief reference should suggest a

disaster such as it endured in later days at the hands of the

treacherous and ruthless Tamerlane.

"Damascus hath grown feeble:

She turneth herself to flee;

Trembling hath seized on her.

* * * * *

How is the city of praise forsaken,[239]

The city of joy!

Her young men shall fall in the streets,

All the warriors shall be put to silence in that day."

We are moved to sympathy with the feelings of Hamath and Arpad, when

they heard the evil tidings, and were filled with sorrow, "like the

sea that cannot rest."

Yet even here this most uncompromising of prophets may teach us, after

his fashion, wholesome though perhaps unwelcome truths. We are reminded

how often the mystic glamour of romance has served to veil cruelty and

corruption, and how little picturesque scenery and interesting

associations can do of themselves to promote a noble life. Feudal

castles, with their massive grandeur, were the strongholds of avarice

and cruelty; and ancient abbeys which, even in decay, are like a dream

of fairyland, were sometimes the home of abominable corruption.

FOOTNOTES:

[236] 2 Kings xvi. 9.

[237] Ezek. xxvii. 18.

[238] Joel iii. 4.

[239] So Giesebrecht, with most of the ancient versions. A.V., R.V.,

with Masoretic Text, "not forsaken ... my joy," possibly meaning, "Why

did not the inhabitants forsake the doomed city?"

CHAPTER XXIII

_KEDAR AND HAZOR_

xlix. 28-33.

"Concerning Kedar, and the kingdoms of Hazor which Nebuchadnezzar

king of Babylon smote."--JER. xlix. 28.

From an immemorial seat of human culture, an "eternal city" which

antedates Rome by centuries, if not millenniums, we turn to those Arab

tribes whose national life and habits were as ancient and have been as

persistent as the streets of Damascus. While Damascus has almost

always been in the forefront of history, the Arab tribes--except in

the time of Mohammed and the early Caliphs--have seldom played a more

important part than that of frontier marauders. Hence, apart from a

few casual references, the only other passage in the Old Testament

which deals, at any length, with Kedar is the parallel prophecy of

Isaiah. And yet Kedar was the great northern tribe, which ranged the

deserts between Palestine and the Euphrates, and which must have had

closer relations with Judah than most Arab peoples.

"The kingdoms of Hazor" are still more unknown to history. There were

several "Hazors" in Palestine, besides sundry towns whose names are

also derived from _Hāçēr_, a village; and some of these are on or

beyond the southern frontier of Judah, in the wilderness of the

Exodus, where we might expect to find nomad Arabs. But even these

latter cities can scarcely be the "Hazor" of Jeremiah, and the more

northern are quite out of the question. It is generally supposed that

Hazor here is either some Arabian town, or, more probably, a

collective term for the district inhabited by Arabs, who lived not in

tents, but in _Hāçērîm_, or villages. This district would be in Arabia

itself, and more distant from Palestine than the deserts over which

Kedar roamed. Possibly Isaiah's "villages (_Hāçērîm_) that Kedar doth

inhabit" were to be found in the Hazor of Jeremiah, and the same

people were called Kedar and Hazor respectively according as they

lived a nomad life or settled in more permanent dwellings.

The great warlike enterprises of Egypt, Assyria, and Chaldea during

the last centuries of the Jewish monarchy would bring these desert

horsemen into special prominence. They could either further or hinder

the advance of armies marching westward from Mesopotamia, and could

command their lines of communication. Kedar, and possibly Hazor too,

would not be slack to use the opportunities of plunder presented by

the calamities of the Palestinian states. Hence their conspicuous

position in the pages of Isaiah and Jeremiah.

As the Assyrians, when their power was at its height, had chastised

the aggressions of the Arabs, so now Nebuchadnezzar "smote Kedar and

the kingdoms of Hazor." Even the wandering nomads and dwellers by

distant oases in trackless deserts could not escape the sweeping

activity of this scourge of God. Doubtless the ravages of Chaldean

armies might serve to punish many sins besides the wrongs they were

sent to revenge. The Bedouin always had their virtues, but the wild

liberty of the desert easily degenerated into unbridled licence. Judah

and every state bordering on the wilderness knew by painful experience

how large a measure of rapine and cruelty might coexist with primitive

customs, and the Jewish prophet gives Nebuchadnezzar a Divine

commission as for a holy war:--

"Arise, go up to Kedar;

Spoil the men of the east.

They (the Chaldeans) shall take away their tents and flocks;

They shall take for themselves their tent-coverings,

And all their gear and their camels:

Men shall cry concerning them,

Terror on every side."[240]

Then the prophet turns to the more distant Hazor with words of

warning:--

"Flee, get you far off, dwell in hidden recesses of the land,

O inhabitants of Hazor--

It is the utterance of Jehovah--

For Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon hath counselled a counsel

and purposed a purpose against you."

But then, as if this warning were a mere taunt, he renews his address

to the Chaldeans and directs their attack against Hazor:--