without fear--it is the utterance of Jehovah--
Which abide alone, without gates or bars"--
like the people of Laish before the Danites came, and like Sparta
before the days of Epaminondas.
Possibly we are to combine these successive "utterances," and to
understand that it was alike Jehovah's will that the Chaldeans should
invade and lay waste Hazor, and that the unfortunate inhabitants
should escape--but escape plundered and impoverished: for
"Their camels shall become a spoil,
The multitude of their cattle a prey:
I will scatter to every wind them that have the corners of
their hair polled;[241]
I will bring their calamity upon them from all sides.
Hazor shall be a haunt of jackals, a desolation for ever:
No one shall dwell there,
No soul shall sojourn therein."
FOOTNOTES:
[240] Magor-missabib: cf. xlvi. 5.
[241] _I.e._ cut off.
CHAPTER XXIV
_ELAM_
xlix. 34-39
"I will break the bow of Elam, the chief of their might."--JER.
xlix. 35.
We do not know what principle or absence of principle determined the
arrangement of these prophecies; but, in any case, these studies in
ancient geography and politics present a series of dramatic contrasts.
From two ancient and enduring types of Eastern life, the city of
Damascus and the Bedouin of the desert, we pass to a state of an
entirely different order, only slightly connected with the
international system of Western Asia. Elam contended for the palm of
supremacy with Assyria and Babylon in the farther east, as Egypt did
to the south-west. Before the time of Abraham Elamite kings ruled over
Chaldea, and Genesis xiv. tells us how Chedorlaomer with his
subject-allies collected his tribute in Palestine. Many centuries
later, the Assyrian king Ashur-bani-pal (B.C. 668-626) conquered Elam,
sacked the capital Shushan, and carried away many of the inhabitants
into captivity. According to Ezra iv. 9, 10, Elamites were among the
mingled population whom "the great and noble Asnapper" (probably
Ashur-bani-pal) settled in Samaria.
When we begin to recall even a few of the striking facts concerning
Elam discovered in the last fifty years, and remember that for
millenniums Elam had played the part of a first-class Asiatic power,
we are tempted to wonder that Jeremiah only devotes a few conventional
sentences to this great nation. But the prophet's interest was simply
determined by the relations of Elam with Judah; and, from this point
of view, an opposite difficulty arises. How came the Jews in Palestine
in the time of Jeremiah to have any concern with a people dwelling
beyond the Euphrates and Tigris, on the farther side of the Chaldean
dominions? One answer to this question has already been suggested: the
Jews may have learnt from the Elamite colonists in Samaria something
concerning their native country; it is also probable that Elamite
auxiliaries served in the Chaldean armies that invaded Judah.
Accordingly the prophet sets forth, in terms already familiar to us, how
Elamite fugitives should be scattered to the four quarters of the earth
and be found in every nation under heaven, how the sword should follow
them into their distant places of refuge and utterly consume them.
"I will set My throne in Elam;
I will destroy out of it both king and princes--
It is the utterance of Jehovah."
In the prophecy concerning Egypt, Nebuchadnezzar was to set his throne
at Tahpanhes to decide the fate of the captives; but here Jehovah
Himself is pictured as the triumphant and inexorable conqueror, holding
His court as the arbiter of life and death. The vision of the "great
white throne" was not first accorded to John in his Apocalypse.
Jeremiah's eyes were opened to see beside the tribunals of heathen
conquerors the judgment-seat of a mightier Potentate; and his inspired
utterances remind the believer that every battle may be an Armageddon,
and that at every congress there is set a mystic throne from which the
Eternal King overrules the decisions of plenipotentiaries.
But this sentence of condemnation was not to be the final "utterance
of Jehovah" with regard to Elam. A day of renewed prosperity was to
dawn for Elam, as well as for Moab, Ammon, Egypt, and Judah:--
"In the latter days I will bring again the captivity of Elam--
It is the utterance of Jehovah."
The Apostle Peter[242] tells us that the prophets "sought and searched
diligently" concerning the application of their words, "searching what
time and what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them
did point unto." We gather from these verses that, as Newton could not
have foreseen all that was contained in the law of gravitation, so the
prophets often understood little of what was involved in their own
inspiration. We could scarcely have a better example than this
prophecy affords of the knowledge of the principles of God's future
action combined with ignorance of its circumstances and details. If we
may credit the current theory, Cyrus, the servant of Jehovah, the
deliverer of Judah, was a king of Elam. If Jeremiah had foreseen how
his prophecies of the restoration of Elam and of Judah would be
fulfilled, we may be sure that this utterance would not have been so
brief, its hostile tone would have been mitigated, and the concluding
sentence would not have been so cold and conventional.
FOOTNOTE:
[242] 1 Peter i. 10, 11.
CHAPTER XXV
_BABYLON_
l., li.
"Babylon is taken, Bel is confounded, Merodach is broken in
pieces."--JER. l., 2.
These chapters present phenomena analogous to those of Isaiah
xl.-lxvi., and have been very commonly ascribed to an author writing
at Babylon towards the close of the Exile, or even at some later date.
The conclusion has been arrived at in both cases by the application of
the same critical principles to similar data. In the present case the
argument is complicated by the concluding paragraph of chapter li.,
which states that "Jeremiah wrote in a book all the evil that should
come upon Babylon, even all these words that are written against
Babylon," in the fourth year of Zedekiah, and gave the book to Seraiah
ben Neriah to take to Babylon and tie a stone to it and throw it into
the Euphrates.
Such a statement, however, cuts both ways. On the one hand, we seem to
have--what is wanting in the case of Isaiah xl.-lxvi.--a definite and
circumstantial testimony as to authorship. But, on the other hand,
this very testimony raises new difficulties. If l. and li. had been
simply assigned to Jeremiah, without any specification of date, we
might possibly have accepted the tradition according to which he spent
his last years at Babylon, and have supposed that altered,
circumstances and novel experiences account for the differences
between these chapters and the rest of the book. But Zedekiah's fourth
year is a point in the prophet's ministry at which it is extremely
difficult to account for his having composed such a prophecy. If,
however, li. 59-64 is mistaken in its exact and circumstantial account
of the origin of the preceding section, we must hesitate to recognise
its authority as to that section's authorship.
A detailed discussion of the question would be out of place here,[243]
but we may notice a few passages which illustrate the arguments for an
exilic date. We learn from Jeremiah xxvii.-xxix. that, in the fourth
year of Zedekiah,[244] the prophet was denouncing as false teachers
those who predicted that the Jewish captives in Babylon would speedily
return to their native land. He himself asserted that judgment would not
be inflicted upon Babylon for seventy years, and exhorted the exiles to
build houses and marry, and plant gardens, and to pray for the peace of
Babylon.[245] We can hardly imagine that, in the same breath almost, he
called upon these exiles to flee from the city of their captivity, and
summoned the neighbouring nations to execute Jehovah's judgment against
the oppressors of His people. And yet we read:--
"There shall come the Israelites, they and the Jews together:
They shall weep continually, as they go to seek Jehovah their
God;
They shall ask their way to Zion, with their faces
hitherward"[246] (l. 4, 5).
* * * * *
"Remove from the midst of Babylon, and be ye as he-goats
before the flock" (l. 8).
These verses imply that the Jews were already in Babylon, and
throughout the author assumes the circumstances of the Exile. "The
vengeance of the Temple," _i.e._ vengeance for the destruction of the
Temple at the final capture of Jerusalem, is twice threatened.[247]
The ruin of Babylon is described as imminent:--
"Set up a standard on the earth,
Blow the trumpet among the nations,
Prepare the nations against her."
If these words were written by Jeremiah in the fourth year of
Zedekiah, he certainly was not practising his own precept to pray for
the peace of Babylon.
Various theories have been advanced to meet the difficulties which are
raised by the ascription of this prophecy to Jeremiah. It may have
been expanded from an authentic original. Or again, li. 59-64 may not
really refer to l. 1-li. 58; the two sections may once have existed
separately, and may owe their connection to an editor, who met with l.
1-li. 58 as an anonymous document, and thought he recognised in it the
"book" referred to in li. 59-64. Or again, l. 1-li. 58 may be a
hypothetical reconstruction of a lost prophecy of Jeremiah; li. 59-64
mentioned such a prophecy and none was extant, and some student and
disciple of Jeremiah's school utilised the material and ideas of
extant writings to supply the gap. In any case, it must have been
edited more than once, and each time with modifications. Some support
might be obtained for any one of these theories from the fact that l.
1-li. 58 is _primâ facie_ partly a cento of passages from the rest of
the book and from the Book of Isaiah.[248]
In view of the great uncertainty as to the origin and history of this
prophecy, we do not intend to attempt any detailed exposition.
Elsewhere whatever non-Jeremianic matter occurs in the book is mostly
by way of expansion and interpretation, and thus lies in the direct
line of the prophet's teaching. But the section on Babylon attaches
itself to the new departure in religious thought that is more fully
expressed in Isaiah xl.-lxvi. Chapters l., li., may possibly be
Jeremiah's swan-song, called forth by one of those Pisgah visions of a
new dispensation sometimes granted to aged seers; but such visions of
a new era and a new order can scarcely be combined with earlier
teaching. We will therefore only briefly indicate the character and
contents of this section.
It is apparently a mosaic, complied from lost as well as extant
sources; and dwells upon a few themes with a persistent iteration of
ideas and phrases hardly to be paralleled elsewhere, even in the Book
of Jeremiah. It has been reckoned[249] that the imminence of the
attack on Babylon is introduced afresh eleven times, and its conquest
and destruction nine times. The advent of an enemy from the north is
announced four times.[250]
The main theme is naturally that dwelt upon most frequently, the
imminent invasion of Chaldea by victorious enemies who shall capture
and destroy Babylon. Hereafter the great city and its territory will
be a waste, howling wilderness:--
"Your mother shall be sore ashamed,
She that bare you shall be confounded;
Behold, she shall be the hindmost of the nations,
A wilderness, a parched land, and a desert.
Because of the wrath of Jehovah, it shall be uninhabited;
The whole land shall be a desolation.
Every one that goeth by Babylon
Shall hiss with astonishment because of all her
plagues."[251]
The gods of Babylon, Bel and Merodach, and all her idols, are involved
in her ruin, and reference is made to the vanity and folly of
idolatry.[252] But the wrath of Jehovah has been chiefly excited, not
by false religion, but by the wrongs inflicted by the Chaldeans on His
Chosen People. He is moved to avenge His Temple[253]:--
"I will recompense unto Babylon
And all the inhabitants of Chaldea
All the evil which they wrought in Zion,
And ye shall see it--it is the utterance of Jehovah"
(li. 24).
Though He thus avenge Judah, yet its former sins are not yet blotted
out of the book of His remembrance:--
"Their adversaries said, We incur no guilt,
Because they have sinned against Jehovah, the Pasture of
Justice,
Against the Hope of their fathers, even Jehovah" (l. 7).
Yet now there is forgiveness:--
"The iniquity of Israel shall be sought for, and there shall
be none;
And the sins of Judah, and they shall not be found:
For I will pardon the remnant that I preserve" (l. 20).
The Jews are urged to flee from Babylon, lest they should be involved
in its punishment, and are encouraged to return to Jerusalem and enter
afresh into an everlasting covenant with Jehovah. As in Jeremiah
xxxi., Israel is to be restored as well as Judah:--
"I will bring Israel again to his Pasture:
He shall feed on Carmel and Bashan;
His desires shall be satisfied on the hills of Ephraim and in
Gilead" (l. 19).
FOOTNOTES:
[243] See against the authenticity Driver's _Introduction, in loco_;
and in support of it _Speaker's Commentary_, Streane (C.B.S.). Cf.
also Sayce, _Higher Criticism_, etc., pp. 484-486.
[244] In xxvii. 1 we must read, "In the beginning of the reign of
_Zedekiah_," not Jehoiakim.
[245] xxix. 4-14.
[246] "Hitherward" seems to indicate that the writers local standpoint
is that of Palestine.
[247] l. 28, li. 11.
[248] Cf. l. 8, li. 6, with Isa. xlviii. 20; l. 13 with xlix. 17; l.
41-43 with vi. 22-24; l. 44-46 with xlix. 19-21; li. 15-19 with x.
12-16.
[249] Budde ap. Giesebrecht, _in loco_.
[250] l. 3, 9, li. 41, 48.
[251] l. 12, 13: cf. l. 39, 40, li. 26, 29, 37, 41-43.
[252] li. 17, 18.
[253] l. 28.
BOOK III
_JEREMIAH'S TEACHING CONCERNING
ISRAEL AND JUDAH_
CHAPTER XXVI
_INTRODUCTORY_
"I will be the God of all the families of Israel, and they shall
be My people."--JER. xxxi. 1.
In this third book an attempt is made to present a general view of
Jeremiah's teaching on the subject with which he was most
preoccupied--the political and religious fortunes of Judah.
Certain[254] chapters detach themselves from the rest, and stand in no
obvious connection with any special incident of the prophet's life.
These are the main theme of this book, and have been dealt with in the
ordinary method of detailed exposition. They have been treated
separately, and not woven into the continuous narrative, partly
because we thus obtain a more adequate emphasis upon important aspects
of their teaching, but chiefly because their date and occasion cannot
be certainly determined. With them other sections have been
associated, on account of the connection of subject. Further material
for a synopsis of Jeremiah's teaching has been collected from chapters
xxi.-xlix. generally, supplemented by brief[255] references to the
previous chapters. Inasmuch as the prophecies of our book do not form
an ordered treatise on dogmatic theology, but were uttered with
regard to individual conduct and critical events, topics are not
exclusively dealt with in a single section, but are referred to at
intervals throughout. Moreover, as both the individuals and the crises
were very much alike, ideas and phrases are constantly reappearing, so
that there is an exceptionally large amount of repetition in the Book
of Jeremiah. The method we have adopted avoids some of the
difficulties which would arise if we attempted to deal with these
doctrines in our continuous exposition.
Our general sketch of the prophet's teaching is naturally arranged under
categories suggested by the book itself, and not according to the
sections of a modern treatise on Systematic Theology. No doubt much may
legitimately be extracted or deduced concerning Anthropology,
Soteriology, and the like; but true proportion is as important in
exposition as accurate interpretation. If we wish to understand
Jeremiah, we must be content to dwell longest upon what he emphasised
most, and to adopt the standpoint of time and race which was his own.
Accordingly in our treatment we have followed the cycle of sin,
punishment, and restoration, so familiar to students of Hebrew prophecy.
* * * * *
NOTE
SOME CHARACTERISTIC EXPRESSIONS OF
JEREMIAH
This note is added partly for convenience of reference, and partly to
illustrate the repetition just mentioned as characteristic of
Jeremiah. The instances are chosen from expressions occurring in
chapters xxi.-lii. The reader will find fuller lists dealing with the
whole book in the _Speaker's Commentary_ and the _Cambridge Bible for
Schools and Colleges_. The Hebrew student is referred to the list in
Driver's _Introduction_, upon which the following is partly based.
1. _Rising up early_: vii. 13, 25; xi. 7; xxv. 3, 4; xxvi. 5; xxix. 19;
xxxii. 33; xxxv. 14, 15; xliv. 4. This phrase, familiar to us in the
narratives of Genesis and in the historical books, is used here, as in 2
Chron. xxxvi. 15, of God addressing His people on sending the prophets.
2. _Stubbornness of heart_ (A.V. imagination of heart): iii. 17; vii.
24; ix. 14; xi. 8; xiii. 10; xvi. 12; xviii. 12; xxiii. 17; also found
Deut. xxix. 19 and Ps. lxxxi. 15.
3. _The evil of your doings_: iv. 4; xxi. 12; xxiii. 2, 22; xxv. 5;
xxvi. 3; xliv. 22; also Deut. xxviii. 20; 1 Sam. xxv. 3; Isa. i. 16;
Hos. ix. 15; Ps. xxviii. 4; and in slightly different form in xi. 18
and Zech. i. 4.
_The fruit of your doings_: xvii. 10; xxi. 14; xxxii. 19; also found
in Micah vii. 13.
_Doings, your doings_, etc., are also found in Jeremiah and elsewhere.
4. _The sword, the pestilence, and the famine_, in various orders, and
either as a phrase or each word occurring in one of three successive
clauses: xiv. 12; xv. 2; xxi. 7, 9; xxiv. 10; xxvii. 8, 13; xxix. 17,
18; xxxii. 24, 36; xxxiv. 17; xxxviii. 2; xlii. 17, 22; xliv. 13.
_The sword and the famine_, with similar variations: v. 12; xi. 22;
xiv. 13, 15, 16, 18; xvi. 4; xviii. 21; xlii. 16; xliv. 12, 18, 27.
Cf. similar lists, etc., "death ... sword ... captivity" in xliii. 11;
"war ... evil ... pestilence," xxviii. 8.
5. _Kings_ ... _princes_ ... _priests_ ... _prophets_, in various
orders and combinations: ii. 26; iv. 9; viii. 1; xiii. 13; xxiv. 8;
xxxii. 32.
Cf. _Prophet_ ... _priest_ ... _people_, xxiii. 33, 34. _Prophets_ ...
_divines_ ... _dreamers_ ... _enchanters_ ... _sorcerers_, xxvii. 9.
FOOTNOTES:
[254] xxx., xxxi., and, in part, xxxiii.
[255] Brief, in order not to trespass more than is absolutely
necessary upon the ground covered by the previous _Expositor's Bible_
volume on Jeremiah.
CHAPTER XXVII
_SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS CORRUPTION_
"Very bad figs, ... too bad to be eaten."--JER. xxiv. 2, 8, xxix.
17.
Prophets and preachers have taken the Israelites for God's helots, as
if the Chosen People had been made drunk with the cup of the Lord's
indignation, in order that they might be held up as a warning to His
more favoured children throughout after ages. They seem depicted as
"sinners above all men," that by this supreme warning the heirs of a
better covenant may be kept in the path of righteousness. Their sin is
no mere inference from the long tragedy of their national history,
"because they have suffered such things"; their own prophets and their
own Messiah testify continually against them. Religious thought has
always singled out Jeremiah as the most conspicuous and uncompromising
witness to the sins of his people. One chief feature of his mission
was to declare God's condemnation of ancient Judah. Jeremiah watched
and shared the prolonged agony and overwhelming catastrophes of the
last days of the Jewish monarchy, and ever and anon raised his voice
to declare that his fellow-countrymen suffered, not as martyrs, but as
criminals. He was like the herald who accompanies a condemned man on
the way to execution, and proclaims his crime to the spectators.
What were these crimes? How was Jerusalem a sink of iniquity, an
Augean stable, only to be cleansed by turning through it the floods of
Divine chastisement? The annalists of Egypt and Chaldea show no
interest in the morality of Judah; but there is no reason to believe
that they regarded Jerusalem as more depraved than Tyre, or Babylon,
or Memphis. If a citizen of one of these capitals of the East visited
the city of David he might miss something of accustomed culture, and
might have occasion to complain of the inferiority of local police
arrangements, but he would be as little conscious of any extraordinary
wickedness in the city as a Parisian would in London. Indeed, if an
English Christian familiar with the East of the nineteenth century
could be transported to Jerusalem under King Zedekiah, in all
probability its moral condition would not affect him very differently
from that of Cabul or Ispahan.
When we seek to learn from Jeremiah wherein the guilt of Judah lay,
his answer is neither clear nor full: he does not gather up her sins
into any complete and detailed indictment; we are obliged to avail
ourselves of casual references scattered through his prophecies. For
the most part Jeremiah speaks in general terms; a precise and
exhaustive catalogue of current vices would have seemed too familiar
and commonplace for the written record.
The corruption of Judah is summed up by Jeremiah in the phrase "the
evil of your doings,"[256] and her punishment is described in a
corresponding phrase as "the fruit of your doings," or as coming upon
her "because of the evil of your doings." The original of "doings" is
a peculiar word[257] occurring most frequently in Jeremiah, and the
phrases are very common in Jeremiah, and hardly occur at all
elsewhere. The constant reiteration of this melancholy refrain is an
eloquent symbol of Jehovah's sweeping condemnation. In the total
depravity of Judah, no special sin, no one group of sins, stood out
from the rest. Their "doings" were evil altogether.
The picture suggested by the scattered hints as to the character of
these evil doings is such as might be drawn of almost any Eastern
state in its darker days. The arbitrary hand of the government is
illustrated by Jeremiah's own experience of the bastinado[258] and the
dungeon,[259] and by the execution of Uriah ben Shemaiah.[260] The
rights of less important personages were not likely to be more
scrupulously respected. The reproach of shedding innocent blood is
more than once made against the people and their rulers;[261] and the
more general charge of oppression occurs still more frequently.[262]
The motive for both these crimes was naturally covetousness;[263] as
usual, they were specially directed against the helpless, "the
poor,"[264] "the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow"; and the
machinery of oppression was ready to hand in venal judges and rulers.
Upon occasion, however, recourse was had to open violence--men could
"steal and murder," as well as "swear falsely";[265] they lived in an
atmosphere of falsehood, they "walked in a lie."[266] Indeed the word
"lie" is one of the keynotes of these prophecies.[267] The last days
of the monarchy offered special temptations to such vices. Social
wreckers reaped an unhallowed harvest in these stormy times.
Revolutions were frequent, and each in its turn meant fresh plunder
for unscrupulous partisans. Flattery and treachery could always find a
market in the court of the suzerain or the camp of the invader.
Naturally, amidst this general demoralisation, the life of the family
did not remain untouched: "the land was full of adulterers."[268]
Zedekiah and Ahab, the false prophets at Babylon, are accused of
having committed adultery with their neighbours' wives.[269] In these
passages "adultery" can scarcely be a figure for idolatry; and even if
it is, idolatry always involved immoral ritual.
In accordance with the general teaching of the Old Testament, Jeremiah
traces the roots of the people's depravity to a certain moral stupidity;
they are "a foolish people, without understanding," who, like the idols
in Psalm cxv. 5, 6, "have eyes and see not" and "have ears and hear
not."[270] In keeping with their stupidity was an unconsciousness of
guilt which even rose into proud self-righteousness. They could still
come with pious fervour to worship in the temple of Jehovah and to claim
the protection of its inviolable sanctity. They could still assail
Jeremiah with righteous indignation because he announced the coming
destruction of the place where Jehovah had chosen to set His name.[271]
They said that they had no sin, and met the prophet's rebukes with
protests of conscious innocence: "Wherefore hath Jehovah pronounced all
this great evil against us? or what is our iniquity? or what is our sin
that we have committed against Jehovah our God?"[272]
When the public conscience condoned alike the abuse of the forms of
law and its direct violation, actual legal rights would be strained to
the utmost against debtors, hired labourers, and slaves. In their
extremity, the princes and people of Judah sought to propitiate the
anger of Jehovah by emancipating their Hebrew slaves; when the
immediate danger had passed away for a time, they revoked the
emancipation.[273] The form of their submission to Jehovah reveals
their consciousness that their deepest sin lay in their behaviour to
their helpless dependents. This prompt repudiation of a most solemn
covenant illustrated afresh their callous indifference to the
well-being of their inferiors.
The depravity of Judah was not only total, it was also universal. In
the older histories we read how Achan's single act of covetousness
involved the whole people in misfortune, and how the treachery of the
bloody house of Saul brought three years' famine upon the land; but
now the sins of individuals and classes were merged in the general
corruption. Jeremiah dwells with characteristic reiteration of idea
and phrase upon this melancholy truth. Again and again he enumerates
the different classes of the community: "kings, princes, priests,
prophets, men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem." They had all
done evil and provoked Jehovah to anger; they were all to share the
same punishment.[274] They were all arch-rebels, given to slander;
nothing but base metal;[275] corrupters, every one of them.[276] The
universal extent of total depravity is most forcibly expressed when
Zedekiah with his court and people are summarily described as a basket
of "very bad figs, too bad to be eaten."
The dark picture of Israel's corruption is not yet complete--Israel's
corruption, for now the prophet is no longer exclusively concerned
with Judah. The sin of these last days is no new thing; it is as old
as the Israelite occupation of Jerusalem. "This city hath been to Me a
provocation of My anger and of My fury from the day that they built it
even unto this day"; from the earliest days of Israel's national
existence, from the time of Moses and the Exodus, the people have been
given over to iniquity. "The children of Israel and the children of
Judah have done nothing but evil before Me from their youth up."[277]
Thus we see at last that Jeremiah's teaching concerning the sin of
Judah can be summed up in one brief and comprehensive proposition.
Throughout their whole history all classes of the community have been
wholly given over to every kind of wickedness.
This gloomy estimate of God's Chosen People is substantially confirmed
by the prophets of the later monarchy, from Amos and Hosea onwards.
Hosea speaks of Israel in terms as sweeping as those of Jeremiah. "Hear
the word of Jehovah, ye children of Israel; for Jehovah hath a
controversy with the inhabitants of the land, because there is no truth,
nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land. Swearing and lying and
killing and stealing and committing adultery, they cast off all
restraint, and blood toucheth blood."[278] As a prophet of the Northern
Kingdom, Hosea is mainly concerned with his own country, but his casual
references to Judah include her in the same condemnation.[279] Amos
again condemns both Israel and Judah: Judah, "because they have despised
the law of Jehovah, and have not kept His commandments, and their lies
caused them to err, after the which their fathers walked"; Israel,
"because they sold the righteous for silver and the poor for a pair of
shoes, and pant after the dust of the earth on the head of the poor and
turn aside the way of the meek."[280] The first chapter of Isaiah is in
a similar strain: Israel is "a sinful nation, a people laden with
iniquity, a seed of evil-doers"; "the whole head is sick, the whole
heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no
soundness in it, but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores." According
to Micah, "Zion is built up with blood and Jerusalem with iniquity. The
heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire,
and the prophets thereof divine for money."[281]
Jeremiah's older and younger contemporaries, Zephaniah and Ezekiel,
alike confirm his testimony. In the spirit and even the style afterwards
used by Jeremiah, Zephaniah enumerates the sins of the nobles and
teachers of Jerusalem. "Her princes within her are roaring lions; her
judges are evening wolves.... Her prophets are light and treacherous
persons: her priests have polluted the sanctuary, they have done
violence to the law."[282] Ezekiel xx. traces the defections of Israel
from the sojourn in Egypt to the Captivity. Elsewhere Ezekiel says that
"the land is full of bloody crimes, and the city is full of
violence";[283] and in xxii. 23-31 he catalogues the sins of priests,
princes, prophets, and people, and proclaims that Jehovah "sought for a
man among them that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap
before Me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none."
We have now fairly before us the teaching of Jeremiah and the other
prophets as to the condition of Judah: the passages quoted or referred
to represent its general tone and attitude; it remains to estimate its
significance. We should naturally suppose that such sweeping
statements as to the total depravity of the whole people throughout
all their history were not intended to be interpreted as exact
mathematical formulæ. And the prophets themselves state or imply
qualifications. Isaiah insists upon the existence of a righteous
remnant. When Jeremiah speaks of Zedekiah and his subjects as a basket
of very bad figs, he also speaks of the Jews who had already gone into
captivity as a basket of very good figs. The mere fact of going into
captivity can hardly have accomplished an immediate and wholesale
conversion. The "good figs" among the captives were presumably good
before they went into exile. Jeremiah's general statements that "they
were all arch-rebels" do not therefore preclude the existence of
righteous men in the community. Similarly, when he tells us that the
city and people have always been given over to iniquity, Jeremiah is
not ignorant of Moses and Joshua, David and Solomon, and the kings
"who did right in the eyes of Jehovah"; nor does he intend to
contradict the familiar accounts of ancient history. On the other
hand, the universality which the prophets ascribe to the corruption of
their people is no mere figure of rhetoric, and yet it is by no means
incompatible with the view that Jerusalem, in its worst days, was not
more conspicuously wicked than Babylon or Tyre; or even, allowing for
the altered circumstances of the times, than London or Paris. It would
never have occurred to Jeremiah to apply the average morality of
Gentile cities as a standard by which to judge Jerusalem; and
Christian readers of the Old Testament have caught something of the
old prophetic spirit. The very introduction into the present context
of any comparison between Jerusalem and Babylon may seem to have a
certain flavour of irreverence. We perceive with the prophets that the
City of Jehovah and the cities of the Gentiles must be placed in
different categories. The popular modern explanation is that
heathenism was so utterly abominable that Jerusalem at its worst was
still vastly superior to Nineveh or Tyre. However exaggerated such
views may be, they still contain an element of truth; but Jeremiah's
estimate of the moral condition of Judah was based on entirely
different ideas. His standards were not relative but absolute, not
practical but ideal. His principles were the very antithesis of the
tacit ignoring of difficult and unusual duties, the convenient and
somewhat shabby compromise represented by the modern word
"respectable." Israel was to be judged by its relation to Jehovah's
purpose for His people. Jehovah had called them out of Egypt, and
delivered them from a thousand dangers. He had raised up for them
judges and kings, Moses, David, and Isaiah. He had spoken to them by
Torah and by prophecy. This peculiar munificence of Providence and
Revelation was not meant to produce a people only better by some small
percentage than their heathen neighbours.
The comparison between Israel and its neighbours would no doubt be
much more favourable under David than under Zedekiah, but even then
the outcome of Mosaic religion as practically embodied in the national
life was utterly unworthy of the Divine ideal; to have described the
Israel of David or the Judah of Hezekiah as Jehovah's specially
cherished possession, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation,[284]
would have seemed a ghastly irony even to the sons of Zeruiah, far
more to Nathan, Gad, or Isaiah. Nor had any class, as a class, been
wholly true to Jehovah at any period of the history. If for any
considerable time the numerous order of professional prophets had had
a single eye to the glory of Jehovah, the fortunes of Israel would
have been altogether different, and where prophets failed, priests and
princes and common people were not likely to succeed.
Hence, judged as citizens of God's Kingdom on earth, the Israelites
were corrupt in every faculty of their nature: as masters and
servants, as rulers and subjects, as priests, prophets, and
worshippers of Jehovah, they succumbed to selfishness and cowardice,
and perpetrated the ordinary crimes and vices of ancient Eastern life.
The reader is perhaps tempted to ask: Is this all that is meant by the
fierce and impassioned denunciations of Jeremiah? Not quite all.
Jeremiah had had the mortification of seeing the great religious
revival under Josiah spend itself, apparently in vain, against the
ingrained corruption of the people. The reaction, as under Manasseh,
had accentuated the worst features of the national life. At the same
time the constant distress and dismay caused by disastrous invasions
tended to general licence and anarchy. A long period of decadence
reached its nadir.
But these are mere matters of degree and detail; the main thing for
Jeremiah was not that Judah had become worse, but that it had failed
to become better. One great period of Israel's probation was finally
closed. The kingdom had served its purpose in the Divine Providence;
but it was impossible to hope any longer that the Jewish monarchy was
to prove the earthly embodiment of the Kingdom of God. There was no
prospect of Judah attaining a social order appreciably better than
that of the surrounding nations. Jehovah and His Revelation would be
disgraced by any further association with the Jewish state.
Certain schools of socialists bring a similar charge against the
modern social order; that it is not a Kingdom of God upon earth is
sufficiently obvious; and they assert that our social system has
become stereotyped on lines that exclude and resist progress towards
any higher ideal. Now it is certainly true that every great
civilisation hitherto has grown old and obsolete; if Christian society
is to establish its right to abide permanently, it must show itself
something more than an improved edition of the Athens of Pericles or
the Empire of the Antonines.
All will agree that Christendom falls sadly short of its ideal, and
therefore we may seek to gather instruction from Jeremiah's judgment
on the shortcomings of Judah. Jeremiah specially emphasises the
universality of corruption in individual character, in all classes of
society and throughout the whole duration of history. Similarly we
have to recognise that prevalent social and moral evils lower the
general tone of individual character. Moral faculties are not set
apart in watertight compartments. "Whosoever shall keep the whole law,
and yet offend in one point, is guilty of all," is no mere forensic
principle. The one offence impairs the earnestness and sincerity with
which a man keeps the rest of the law, even though there may be no
obvious lapse. There are moral surrenders made to the practical
exigencies of commercial, social, political, and ecclesiastical life.
Probably we should be startled and dismayed if we understood the
consequent sacrifice of individual character.
We might also learn from the prophet that the responsibility for our
social evils rests with all classes. Time was when the lower classes
were plentifully lectured as the chief authors of public troubles; now
it is the turn of the capitalist, the parson, and the landlord. The
former policy had no very marked success, possibly the new method may
not fare better.
Wealth and influence imply opportunity and responsibility which do not
belong to the poor and feeble; but power is by no means confined to
the privileged classes; and the energy, ability, and self-denial
embodied in the great Trades Unions have sometimes shown themselves as
cruel and selfish towards the weak and destitute as any association of
capitalists. A necessary preliminary to social amendment is a General
Confession by each class of its own sins.
Finally, the Divine Spirit had taught Jeremiah that Israel had always
been sadly imperfect. He did not deny Divine Providence and human
hope by teaching that the Golden Age lay in the past, that the Kingdom
of God had been realised and allowed to perish. He was under no
foolish delusion as to "the good old times"; in his most despondent
moods he was not given over to wistful reminiscence. His example may
help us not to become discouraged through exaggerated ideas about the
attainments of past generations.
In considering modern life it may seem that we pass to an altogether
different quality of evil to that denounced by Jeremiah, that we have
lost sight of anything that could justify his fierce indignation, and
thus that we fail in appreciating his character and message. Any such
illusion may be corrected by a glance at the statistics of congested
town districts, sweated industries, and prostitution. A social
reformer, living in contact with these evils, may be apt to think
Jeremiah's denunciations specially adapted to the society which
tolerates them with almost unruffled complacency.
FOOTNOTES:
[256] Characteristic Expressions (1), p. 269.
[257] מצלל.
[258] xx. 2, xxxvii. 15.
[259] xxxvii., xxxviii.
[260] xxvi. 20-24.
[261] ii. 34, xix. 4, xxii. 17.
[262] v. 25, vi. 6, vii. 5.
[263] vi. 13.
[264] ii. 34.
[265] vii. 5-9.
[266] xxiii. 14.
[267] Characteristic Expressions (2), p. 269.
[268] xxiii. 10, 14.
[269] xxix. 23.
[270] v. 21, quoted by Ezekiel, xii. 2. The verse is also the
foundation of the description of Israel as "the blind people that have
eyes, and the deaf that have ears," in Isa. xlii. 18 ff., xliii. 8.
Cf. Giesebrecht on Jer. v. 21.
[271] vii., xxvi.
[272] xvi. 10.
[273] xxxiv.
[274] xxxii. 26-35: cf. p. 269, Characteristic Expressions (3).
[275] Literally "copper and iron."
[276] vi. 28.
[277] xxxii. 26-35.
[278] Hosea iv. 1, 2; also Hosea's general picture of the kingdom of
Samaria.
[279] The A.V. translation of xi. 12 ("Judah yet ruleth with God, and
is faithful with the saints") must be set aside. The sense is obscure
and the text doubtful.
[280] Amos ii. 4-8.
[281] Micah iii. 10, 11.
[282] Zeph. iii. 3, 4.
[283] Ezek. vii. 23: cf. vii. 9, xxii. 1-12.
[284] Exod. xix. 6.
CHAPTER XXVIII
_PERSISTENT APOSTASY_
"They have forsaken the covenant of Jehovah their God, and
worshipped other gods, and served them."--JER. xxii. 9.
"Every one that walketh in the stubbornness of his heart."--JER.
xxiii. 17.
The previous chapter has been intentionally confined, as far as
possible, to Jeremiah's teaching upon the moral condition of Judah.
Religion, in the narrower sense, was kept in the background, and
mainly referred to as a social and political influence. In the same
way the priests and prophets were mentioned chiefly as classes of
notables--estates of the realm. This method corresponds with a stage
in the process of Revelation; it is that of the older prophets. Hosea,
as a native of the Northern Kingdom, may have had a fuller experience
and clearer understanding of religious corruption than his
contemporaries in Judah. But, in spite of the stress that he lays upon
idolatry and the various corruptions of worship, many sections of his
book simply deal with social evils. We are not explicitly told why the
prophet was "a fool" and "a snare of a fowler," but the immediate
context refers to the abominable immorality of Gibeah.[285] The
priests are not reproached with incorrect ritual, but with conspiracy
to murder.[286] In Amos, the land is not so much punished on account
of corrupt worship, as the sanctuaries are destroyed because the
people are given over to murder, oppression, and every form of vice.
In Isaiah again the main stress is constantly upon international
politics and public and private morality.[287] For instance, none of
the woes in v. 8-24 are directed against idolatry or corrupt worship,
and in xxviii. 7 the charge brought against Ephraim does not refer to
ecclesiastical matters; they have erred through strong drink.
In Jeremiah's treatment of the ruin of Judah, he insists, as Hosea had
done as regards Israel, on the fatal consequences of apostasy from
Jehovah to other gods. This very phrase "other gods" is one of
Jeremiah's favourite expressions, and in the writings of the other
prophets only occurs in Hosea iii. 1. On the other hand, references to
idols are extremely rare in Jeremiah. These facts suggest a special
difficulty in discussing the apostasy of Judah. The Jews often combined
the worship of other gods with that of Jehovah. According to the analogy
of other nations, it was quite possible to worship Baal and Ashtaroth,
and the whole heathen Pantheon, without intending to show any special
disrespect to the national Deity. Even devout worshippers, who confined
their adorations to the one true God, sometimes thought they did honour
to Him by introducing into His services the images and all the
paraphernalia of the splendid cults of the great heathen empires. It is
not always easy to determine whether statements about idolatry imply
formal apostasy from Jehovah, or merely a debased worship. When the
early Mohammedans spoke with lofty contempt of image-worshippers, they
were referring to the Eastern Christians; the iconoclast heretics
denounced the idolatry of the Orthodox Church, and the Covenanters used
similar terms as to prelacy. Ignorant modern Jews are sometimes taught
that Christians worship idols.
Hence when we read of the Jews, "They set their abominations in the
house which is called by My name, to defile it," we are not to
understand that the Temple was transferred from Jehovah to some other
deities, but that the corrupt practices and symbols of heathen worship
were combined with the Mosaic ritual. Even the high places of Baal, in
the Valley of Ben-Hinnom, where children were passed through the fire
unto Moloch, professed to offer an opportunity of supreme devotion to
the God of Israel. Baal and Melech, Lord and King, had in ancient
times been amongst His titles; and when they became associated with
the more heathenish modes of worship, their misguided devotees still
claimed that they were doing homage to the national Deity. The inhuman
sacrifices to Moloch were offered in obedience to sacred tradition and
Divine oracles, which were supposed to emanate from Jehovah. In three
different places, Jeremiah explicitly and emphatically denies that
Jehovah had required or sanctioned these sacrifices: "I commanded them
not, neither came it into My mind, that they should do this
abomination, to cause Judah to sin."[288] The Pentateuch preserves an
ancient ordinance which the Moloch-worshippers probably interpreted
in support of their unholy rites, and Jeremiah's protests are partly
directed against the misinterpretation of the command "the first-born
of thy sons shalt thou give Me." The immediate context also commanded
that the firstlings of sheep and oxen should be given to Jehovah. The
beasts were killed; must it not be intended that the children should
be killed too?[289] A similar blind literalism has been responsible
for many of the follies and crimes perpetrated in the name of Christ.
The Church is apt to justify its most flagrant enormities by appealing
to a misused and misinterpreted Old Testament. "Thou shalt not suffer
a witch to live" and "Cursed be Canaan" have been proof-texts for
witch-hunting and negro-slavery; and the book of Joshua has been
regarded as a Divine charter, authorising the unrestrained indulgence
of the passion for revenge and blood.
When it was thus necessary to put on record reiterated denials that
inhuman rites of Baal and Moloch were a divinely sanctioned adoration
of Jehovah, we can understand that the Baal-worship constantly
referred to by Hosea, Jeremiah, and Zephaniah[290] was not generally
understood to be apostasy. The worship of "other gods," "the sun, the
moon, and all the host of heaven,"[291] and of the "Queen of Heaven,"
would be more difficult to explain as mere syncretism, but the
assimilation of Jewish worship to heathen ritual and the confusion of
the Divine Name with the titles of heathen deities masked the
transition from the religion of Moses and Isaiah to utter apostasy.
Such assimilation and confusion perplexed and baffled the
prophets.[292] Social and moral wrongdoing were easily exposed and
denounced; and the evils thus brought to light were obvious symptoms
of serious spiritual disease. The Divine Spirit taught the prophets
that sin was often most rampant in those who professed the greatest
devotion to Jehovah and were most punctual and munificent in the
discharge of external religious duties. When the prophecy in Isaiah i.
was uttered it almost seemed as if the whole system of Mosaic ritual
would have to be sacrificed, in order to preserve the religion of
Jehovah. But the further development of the disease suggested a less
heroic remedy. The passion for external rites did not confine itself
to the traditional forms of ancient Israelite worship. The practices
of unspiritual and immoral ritualism were associated specially with
the names of Baal and Moloch and with the adoration of the host of
heaven; and the departure from the true worship became obvious when
the deities of foreign nations were openly worshipped.
Jeremiah clearly and constantly insisted on the distinction between
the true and the corrupt worship. The worship paid to Baal and Moloch
was altogether unacceptable to Jehovah. These and other objects of
adoration were not to be regarded as forms, titles, or manifestations
of the one God, but were "other gods," distinct and opposed in nature
and attributes; in serving them the Jews were forsaking Him. So far
from recognising such rites as homage paid to Jehovah, Jeremiah
follows Hosea in calling them "backsliding,"[293] a falling away from
true loyalty. When they addressed themselves to their idols, even if
they consecrated them in the Temple and to the glory of the Most High,
they were not really looking to Him in reverent supplication, but with
impious profanity were turning their backs upon Him: "They have turned
unto Me the back, and not the face."[294] These proceedings were a
violation of the covenant between Jehovah and Israel.[295]
The same anxiety to discriminate the true religion from spurious
imitations and adulterations underlies the stress which Jeremiah lays
upon the Divine Name. His favourite formula, "Jehovah Sabaoth is His
name,"[296] may be borrowed from Amos, or may be an ancient liturgical
sentence; in any case, its use would be a convenient protest against
the doctrine that Jehovah could be worshipped under the names of and
after the manner of Baal and Moloch. When Jehovah speaks of the people
forgetting "My name," He does not mean either that the people would
forget all about Him, or would cease to use the name Jehovah; but that
they would forget the character and attributes, the purposes and
ordinances, which were properly expressed by His Name. The prophets
who "prophesy lies in My name" "cause My people to forget My
name."[297] Baal and Moloch had sunk into fit titles for a god who
could be worshipped with cruel, obscene, and idolatrous rites, but the
religion of Revelation had been for ever associated with the one
sacred Name, when "Elohim said unto Moses, Thou shalt say unto the
Israelites: Jehovah, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the
God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is My
name for ever, and this is My memorial unto all generations." All
religious life and practice inconsistent with this Revelation given
through Moses and the prophets--all such worship, even if offered to
beings which, as Jehovah, sat in the Temple of Jehovah, professing to
be Jehovah--were nevertheless service and obedience paid to other and
false gods. Jeremiah's mission was to hammer these truths into dull
and unwilling minds.
His work seems to have been successful. Ezekiel, who is in a measure
his disciple,[298] drops the phrase "other gods," and mentions "idols"
very frequently.[299] Argument and explanation were no longer
necessary to show that idolatry was sin against Jehovah; the word
"idol" could be freely used and universally understood as indicating
what was wholly alien to the religion of Israel.[300] Jeremiah was too
anxious to convince the Jews that all syncretism was apostasy to
distinguish it carefully from the avowed neglect of Jehovah for other
gods. It is not even clear that such neglect existed in his day. In
chap. xliv. we have one detailed account of false worship to the Queen
of Heaven. It was offered by the Jewish refugees in Egypt; shortly
before, these refugees had unanimously entreated Jeremiah to pray for
them to Jehovah, and had promised to obey His commands. The punishment
of their false worship was that they should no longer be permitted to
name the Holy Name. Clearly, therefore, they had supposed that
offering incense to the Queen of Heaven was not inconsistent with
worshipping Jehovah. We need not dwell on a distinction which is
largely ignored by Jeremiah; the apostasy of Judah was real and
widespread, it matters little how far the delinquents ventured to
throw off the cloak of orthodox profession.[301] The most lapsed
masses in a Christian country do not utterly break their connection
with the Church; they consider themselves legitimate recipients of its
alms, and dimly contemplate as a vague and distant possibility the
reformation of their life and character through Christianity. So the
blindest worshippers of stocks and stones claimed a vested interest in
the national Deity, and in the time of their trouble they turned to
Jehovah with the appeal "Arise and save us."[302]
Jeremiah also dwells on the deliberate and persistent character of the
apostasy of Judah. Nations have often experienced a sort of satanic
revival when the fountains of the nether deep seemed broken up, and
flood-tides of evil influence swept all before them. Such, in a
measure, was the reaction from the Puritan Commonwealth, when so much
of English society lapsed into reckless dissipation. Such too was the
carnival of wickedness into which the First French Republic was
plunged in the Reign of Terror. But these periods were transient, and
the domination of lust and cruelty soon broke down before the
reassertion of an outraged national conscience. But we noticed, in the
previous chapter, that Israel and Judah alike steadily failed to
attain the high social ideal of the Mosaic dispensation. Naturally,
this continuous failure is associated with persistent apostasy from
true religious teaching of the Mosaic and prophetic Revelation.
Exodus, Deuteronomy and the Chronicler agree with Jeremiah that the
Israelites were a stiff-necked people;[303] and, in the Chronicler's
time at any rate, Israel had played a part in the world long enough
for its character to be accurately ascertained; and subsequent history
has shown that, for good or for evil, the Jews have never lacked
tenacity. Syncretism, the tendency to adulterate true teaching and
worship with elements from heathen sources, had been all along a
morbid affection of Israelite religion. The Pentateuch and the
historical books are full of rebukes of the Israelite passion for
idolatry, which must for the most part be understood as introduced
into or associated with the worship of Jehovah. Jeremiah constantly
refers to "the stubbornness of their evil heart":[304] "they ... have
walked after the stubbornness of their own heart and after the
Baalim." This stubbornness was shown in their resistance to all the
means which Jehovah employed to wean them from their sin. Again and
again, in our book, Jehovah speaks of Himself as "rising up
early"[305] to speak to the Jews, to teach them, to send prophets to
them, to solemnly adjure them to submit themselves to Him; but they
would not hearken either to Jehovah or to His prophets, they would not
accept His teaching or obey His commands, they made themselves
stiff-necked and would not bow to His will. He had subjected them to
the discipline of affliction, instruction had become correction;
Jehovah had wounded them "with the wound of an enemy, with the
chastisement of a cruel one"; but as they had been deaf to
exhortation, so they were proof against chastisement--"they refused to
receive correction." Only the ruin of the state and the captivity of
the people could purge out this evil leaven.
Apostasy from the Mosaic and prophetic religion was naturally
accompanied by social corruption. It has recently been maintained that
the universal instinct which inclines man to be religious is not
necessarily moral, and that it is the distinguishing note of the true
faith, or of religion proper, that it enlists this somewhat neutral
instinct in the cause of a pure morality. The Phœnician and Syrian
cults, with which Israel was most closely in contact, sufficiently
illustrated the combination of fanatical religious feeling with gross
impurity. On the other hand, the teaching of Revelation to Israel
consistently inculcated a high morality and an unselfish benevolence.
The prophets vehemently affirmed the worthlessness of religious
observances by men who oppressed the poor and helpless. Apostasy from
Jehovah to Baal and Moloch involved the same moral lapse as a change
from loyal service of Christ to a pietistic antinomianism. Widespread
apostasy meant general social corruption. The most insidious form of
apostasy was that specially denounced by Jeremiah, in which the
authority of Jehovah was more or less explicitly claimed for practices
and principles which defied His law. The Reformer loves a clear issue,
and it was more difficult to come to close quarters with the enemy
when both sides professed to be fighting in the King's name. Moreover
the syncretism which still recognised Jehovah was able without any
violent revolution to control the established institutions and orders
of the state--palace and temple, king and princes, priests and
prophets. For a moment the Reformation of Josiah, and the covenant
entered into by king and people to observe the law as laid down in the
newly discovered Book of Deuteronomy, seemed to have raised Judah from
its low estate. But the defeat and death of Josiah and the deposition
of Jehoahaz followed to discredit Jeremiah and his friends. In the
consequent reaction it seemed as if the religion of Jehovah and the
life of His people had become hopelessly corrupt.
We are too much accustomed to think of the idolatry of Israel as
something openly and avowedly distinct from and opposed to the worship
of Jehovah. Modern Christians often suppose that the true worshipper
and the ancient idolater were as contrasted as a pious Englishman and
a devotee of one of the hideous images seen on missionary platforms;
or, at any rate, that they were as easily distinguishable as a native
Indian evangelist from his unconverted fellow-countrymen.
This mistake deprives us of the most instructive lessons to be derived
from the record. The sin which Jeremiah denounced is by no means outside
Christian experience; it is much nearer to us than conversion to
Buddhism--it is possible to the Church in every stage of its history.
The missionary finds that the lives of his converts continually threaten
to revert to a nominal profession which cloaks the immorality and
superstition of their old heathenism. The Church of the Roman Empire
gave the sanction of Christ's name and authority to many of the most
unchristian features of Judaism and Paganism; once more the rites of
strange gods were associated with the worship of Jehovah, and a new
Queen of Heaven was honoured with unlimited incense. The Reformed
Churches in their turn, after the first "kindness of their youth," the
first "love of their espousals," have often fallen into the very abuses
against which their great leaders protested; they have given way to the
ritualistic spirit, have put the Church in the place of Christ, and have
claimed for human formulæ the authority that can only belong to the
inspired Word of God. They have immolated their victims to the Baals and
Molochs of creeds and confessions, and thought that they were doing
honour to Jehovah thereby.
Moreover we have still to contend like Jeremiah with the continual
struggle of corrupt human nature to indulge in the luxury of religious
sentiment and emotion without submitting to the moral demands of
Christ. The Church suffers far less by losing the allegiance of the
lapsed masses than it does by those who associate with the service of
Christ those malignant and selfish vices which are often canonised as
Respectability and Convention.
FOOTNOTES:
[285] Hosea ix. 7-9: cf. Judges xix. 22.
[286] Hosea vi. 9.
[287] Isaiah xl.-lxvi. is excluded from this statement.
[288] xxxii. 34, 35, repeating vii. 30, 31, with slight variations. A
similar statement occurs in xix. 4, 5. Cf. 2 Kings xvi. 3, xxi. 6,
xxiii. 10; also Giesebrecht and Orelli _in loco_.
[289] Exod. xxii. 29 (JE.). Exod. xxxiv. 20 is probably a later
interpretation intended to guard against misunderstandings.
[290] Baal is not mentioned in the other prophetical books.
[291] vii. 2.
[292] Here and elsewhere, "prophet," unless specially qualified by the
context, is used of the true prophet, the messenger of Divine
Revelation, and does not include the mere professional prophets. Cf.
Chap. VIII.
[293] ii. 19, etc.
[294] xxxii. 33, etc.
[295] xxii. 9: cf. xi. 10, xxxi. 32, and Hosea vi. 7, viii. 1.
[296] x. 16: cf. Amos iv. 13.
[297] xxiii. 25-27: cf. Giesebrecht, _in loco_.
[298] Cheyne, _Jeremiah: Life and Times_, p. 150.
[299] Jeremiah hardly mentions idols.
[300] Cf. on this whole subject, Cheyne, _Jeremiah: Life and Times_,
p. 319.
[301] The strongest expressions are in chap. ii., for which see
previous volume on Jeremiah.
[302] ii. 27.
[303] xvii. 23: cf. Exod. xxxii. 9, etc. (JE.); Deut. ix. 6; 2 Chron.
xxx. 8.
[304] Characteristic Expressions, p. 269.
[305] _Ibid._, p. 269.
CHAPTER XXIX
_RUIN_
xxii. 1-9, xxvi. 14.
"The sword, the pestilence, and the famine."--JER. xxi. 9 _and
passim_.[306]
"Terror on every side."--JER. vi. 25, xx. 10, xlvi. 5, xlix. 29;
_also as proper name_, MAGOR-MISSABIB, xx. 3.
We have seen, in the two previous chapters, that the moral and
religious state of Judah not only excluded any hope of further
progress towards the realisation of the Kingdom of God, but also
threatened to involve Revelation itself in the corruption of His
people. The Spirit that opened Jeremiah's eyes to the fatal
degradation of his country showed him that ruin must follow as its
swift result. He was elect from the first to be a herald of doom, to
be set "over the nations and over the kingdoms, to pluck up and to
break down, and to destroy and to overthrow."[307] In his earliest
vision he saw the thrones of the northern conquerors set over against
the walls of Jerusalem and the cities of Judah.[308]
But Jeremiah was called in the full vigour of early manhood;[309] he
combined with the uncompromising severity of youth its ardent
affection and irrepressible hope. The most unqualified threats of
Divine wrath always carried the implied condition that repentance
might avert the coming judgment;[310] and Jeremiah recurred again and
again to the possibility that, even in these last days, amendment
might win pardon. Like Moses at Sinai and Samuel at Ebenezer, he
poured out his whole soul in intercession for Judah, only to receive
the answer, "Though Moses and Samuel stood before Me, yet My mind
could not be toward this people: cast them out of My sight and let
them go forth."[311] The record of these early hopes and prayers is
chiefly found in chapters i.-xx., and is dealt with in the previous
volume on Jeremiah. The prophecies in xiv. 1-xvii. 18 seem to
recognise the destiny of Judah as finally decided, and to belong to
the latter part of the reign of Jehoiakim,[312] and there is little in
the later chapters of an earlier date. In xxii. 1-5 the king of Judah
is promised that if he and his ministers and officers will refrain
from oppression, faithfully administer justice, and protect the
helpless, kings of the elect dynasty shall still pass with magnificent
retinues in chariots and on horses through the palace gates to sit
upon the throne of David. Possibly this section belongs to the earlier
part of Jeremiah's career. But there were pauses and recoils in the
advancing tide of ruin, alternations of hope and despair; and these
varying experiences were reflected in the changing moods of the court,
the people, and the prophet himself. We may well believe that Jeremiah
hastened to greet any apparent zeal for reformation with a renewed
declaration that sincere and radical amendment would be accepted by
Jehovah. The proffer of mercy did not avert the ruin of the state, but
it compelled the people to recognise that Jehovah was neither harsh
nor vindictive. His sentence was only irrevocable because the obduracy
of Israel left no other way open for the progress of Revelation,
except that which led through fire and blood. The Holy Spirit has
taught mankind in many ways that when any government or church, any
school of thought or doctrine, ossifies so as to limit the expansion
of the soul, that society or system must be shattered by the forces it
seeks to restrain. The decadence of Spain and the distractions of
France sufficiently illustrate the fruits of persistent refusal to
abide in the liberty of the Spirit.
But, until the catastrophe is clearly inevitable, the Christian, both
as patriot and as churchman,[313] will be quick to cherish all those
symptoms of higher life which indicate that society is still a living
organism. He will zealously believe and teach that even a small leaven
may leaven the whole mass. He will remember that ten righteous men
might have saved Sodom; that, so long as it is possible, God will work
by encouraging and rewarding willing obedience rather than by
chastising and coercing sin.
Thus Jeremiah, even when he teaches that the day of grace is over,
recurs wistfully to the possibilities of salvation once offered to
repentance.[314] Was not this the message of all the prophets: "Return
ye now every one from his evil way, and from the evil of your doings,
and dwell in the land that Jehovah hath given unto your fathers"?[315]
Even at the beginning of Jehoiakim's reign Jehovah entrusted Jeremiah
with a message of mercy, saying: "It may be they will hearken, and
turn every man from his evil way; that I may repent Me of the evil,
which I purpose to do unto them because of the evil of their
doings."[316] When the prophet multiplied the dark and lurid features
of his picture, he was not gloating with morbid enjoyment over the
national misery, but rather hoped that the awful vision of judgment
might lead them to pause, and reflect and repent. In his age history
had not accumulated her now abundant proofs that the guilty conscience
is panoplied in triple brass against most visions of judgment. The
sequel of Jeremiah's own mission was added evidence for this truth.
Yet it dawned but slowly on the prophet's mind. The covenant of
emancipation[317] in the last days of Zedekiah was doubtless proposed
by Jeremiah as a possible beginning of better things, an omen of
salvation, even at the eleventh hour. To the very last the prophet
offered the king his life and promised that Jerusalem should not be
burnt, if only he would submit to the Chaldeans, and thus accept the
Divine judgment and acknowledge its justice.
Faithful friends have sometimes stood by the drunkard or the gambler,
and striven for his deliverance through all the vicissitudes of his
downward career; to the very last they have hoped against hope, have
welcomed and encouraged every feeble stand against evil habit, every
transient flash of high resolve. But, long before the end, they have
owned, with sinking heart, that the only way to salvation lay through
the ruin of health, fortune, and reputation. So, when the edge of
youthful hopefulness had quickly worn itself away, Jeremiah knew in
his inmost heart that, in spite of prayers and promises and
exhortations, the fate of Judah was sealed. Let us therefore try to
reproduce the picture of coming ruin which Jeremiah kept persistently
before the eyes of his fellow-countrymen. The pith and power of his
prophecies lay in the prospect of their speedy fulfilment. With him,
as with Savonarola, a cardinal doctrine was that "before the
regeneration must come the scourge," and that "these things will come
quickly." Here again, Jeremiah took up the burden of Hosea's
utterances. The elder prophet said of Israel, "The days of visitation
are come";[318] and his successor announced to Judah the coming of
"the year of visitation."[319] The long-deferred assize was at hand,
when the Judge would reckon with Judah for her manifold infidelities,
would pronounce sentence and execute judgment.
If the hour of doom had struck, it was not difficult to surmise whence
destruction would come or the man who would prove its instrument. The
North (named in Hebrew the hidden quarter) was to the Jews the mother of
things unforeseen and terrible. Isaiah menaced the Philistines with "a
smoke out of the north,"[320] _i.e._ the Assyrians. Jeremiah and Ezekiel
both speak very frequently of the destroyers of Judah as coming from the
north. Probably the early references in our book to northern enemies
denote the Scythians, who invaded Syria towards the beginning of
Josiah's reign; but later on the danger from the north is the restored
Chaldean Empire, under its king Nebuchadnezzar. "North" is even less
accurate geographically for Chaldea than for Assyria. Probably it was
accepted in a somewhat symbolic sense for Assyria, and then transferred
to Chaldea as her successor in the hegemony of Western Asia.
Nebuchadnezzar is first[321] introduced in the fourth year of
Jehoiakim; after the decisive defeat of Pharaoh Necho by
Nebuchadnezzar at Carchemish, Jeremiah prophesied the devastation of
Judah by the victor; it is also prophesied that he is to carry
Jehoiachin away captive,[322] and similar prophecies were repeated
during the reign of Zedekiah.[323] Nebuchadnezzar and his Chaldeans
very closely resembled the Assyrians, with whose invasions the Jews
had long been only too familiar; indeed, as Chaldea had long been
tributary to Assyria, it is morally certain that Chaldean princes must
have been present with auxiliary forces at more than one of the many
Assyrian invasions of Palestine. Under Hezekiah, on the other hand,
Judah had been allied with Merodach-baladan of Babylon against his
Assyrian suzerain. So that the circumstances of Chaldean invasions and
conquests were familiar to the Jews before the forces of the restored
empire first attacked them; their imagination could readily picture
the horrors of such experiences.
But Jeremiah does not leave them to their unaided imagination, which
they might preferably have employed upon more agreeable subjects. He
makes them see the future reign of terror, as Jehovah had revealed it
to his shuddering and reluctant vision. With his usual frequency of
iteration, he keeps the phrase "the sword, the famine, and the
pestilence" ringing in their ears. The sword was the symbol of the
invading hosts, "the splendid and awful military parade" of the
"bitter and hasty nation" that were "dreadful and terrible."[324] "The
famine" inevitably followed from the ravages of the invaders, and the
impossibility of ploughing, sowing, and reaping. It became most
gruesome in the last desperate agonies of besieged garrisons, when, as
in Elisha's time and the last siege of Jerusalem, "men ate the flesh
of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and ate every one the
flesh of his friend."[325] Among such miseries and horrors, the stench
of unburied corpses naturally bred a pestilence, which raged amongst
the multitudes of refugees huddled together in Jerusalem and the
fortified towns. We are reminded how the great plague of Athens struck
down its victims from among the crowds driven within its walls during
the long siege of the Peloponnesian war.
An ordinary Englishman can scarcely do justice to such prophecies; his
comprehension is limited by a happy inexperience. The constant
repetition of general phrases seems meagre and cold, because they carry
few associations and awaken no memories. Those who have studied French
and Russian realistic art, and have read Erckmann-Chatrain, Zola, and
Tolstoï, may be stirred somewhat more by Jeremiah's grim rhetoric. It
will not be wanting in suggestiveness to those who have known battles
and sieges. For students of missionary literature we may roughly
compare the Jews, when exposed to the full fury of a Chaldean attack, to
the inhabitants of African villages raided by slave-hunters.
The Jews, therefore, with their extensive, first-hand knowledge of the
miseries denounced against them, could not help filling in for
themselves the rough outline drawn by Jeremiah. Very probably, too,
his speeches were more detailed and realistic than the written
reports. As time went on, the inroads of the Chaldeans and their
allies provided graphic and ghastly illustrations of the prophecies
that Jeremiah still reiterated. In a prophecy, possibly originally
referring to the Scythian inroads and afterwards adapted to the
Chaldean invasions, Jeremiah speaks of himself: "I am pained at my
very heart; my heart is disquieted in me; I cannot hold my peace; for
my soul heareth[326] the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war....
How long shall I see the standard, and hear the sound of the
trumpet?"[327] Here, for once, Jeremiah expressed emotions that
throbbed in every heart. There was "terror on every hand"; men seemed
to be walking "through slippery places in darkness,"[328] or to
stumble along rough paths in a dreary twilight. Wormwood was their
daily food, and their drink maddening draughts of poison.[329]
Jeremiah and his prophecies were no mean part of the terror. To the
devotees of Baal and Moloch Jeremiah must have appeared in much the
same light as the fanatic whose ravings added to the horrors of the
Plague of London, while the very sanity and sobriety of his utterances
carried a conviction of their fatal truth.
When the people and their leaders succeeded in collecting any force of
soldiers or store of military equipment, and ventured on a sally,
Jeremiah was at once at hand to quench any reviving hope of effective
resistance. How could soldiers and weapons preserve the city which
Jehovah had abandoned to its fate? "Thus saith Jehovah, the God of
Israel: Behold, I will turn back the weapons in your hands, with which
ye fight without the walls against your besiegers, the king of Babylon
and the Chaldeans, and will gather them into the midst of this city. I
Myself will fight against you in furious anger and in great wrath, with
outstretched hand and strong arm. I will smite the inhabitants of this
city, both man and beast: they shall die of a great pestilence."[330]
When Jerusalem was relieved for a time by the advance of an Egyptian
army, and the people allowed themselves to dream of another
deliverance like that from Sennacherib, the relentless prophet only
turned upon them with renewed scorn: "Though ye had smitten the whole
hostile army of the Chaldeans, and all that were left of them were
desperately wounded, yet should they rise up every man in his tent and
burn this city."[331] Not even the most complete victory could avail
to save the city.
The final result of invasions and sieges was to be the overthrow of
the Jewish state, the capture and destruction of Jerusalem, and the
captivity of the people. This unhappy generation were to reap the
harvest of centuries of sin and failure. As in the last siege of
Jerusalem there came upon the Jews "all the righteous blood shed on
the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of
Zachariah son of Barachiah,"[332] so now Jehovah was about to bring
upon His Chosen People all the evil that He had spoken against
them[333]--all that had been threatened by Isaiah and his
brother-prophets, all the curses written in Deuteronomy. But these
threats were to be fully carried out, not because predictions must be
fulfilled, nor even merely because Jehovah had spoken and His word
must not return to Him void, but because the people had not hearkened
and obeyed. His threats were never meant to exclude the penitent from
the possibility of pardon.
As Jeremiah had insisted upon the guilt of every class of the community,
so he is also careful to enumerate all the classes as about to suffer
from the coming judgment: "Zedekiah king of Judah and his princes";[334]
"the people, the prophet, and the priest."[335] This Last Judgment of
Judah, as it took the form of the complete overthrow of the State,
necessarily included all under its sentence of doom. One of the
mysteries of Providence is that those who are most responsible for
national sins seem to suffer least by public misfortunes. Ambitious
statesmen and bellicose journalists do not generally fall in battle and
leave destitute widows and children. When the captains of commerce and
manufacture err in their industrial policy, one great result is the
pauperism of hundreds of families who had no voice in the matter. A
spendthrift landlord may cripple the agriculture of half a county. And
yet, when factories are closed and farmers ruined, the manufacturer and
the landlord are the last to see want. In former invasions of Judah,
the princes and priests had some share of suffering; but wealthy nobles
might incur losses and yet weather the storm by which poorer men were
overwhelmed. Fines and tribute levied by the invaders would, after the
manner of the East, be wrung from the weak and helpless. But now ruin
was to fall on all alike. The nobles had been flagrant in sin, they were
now to be marked out for most condign punishment--"To whomsoever much is
given, of him shall much be required."
Part of the burden of Jeremiah's prophecy, one of the sayings constantly
on his lips, was that the city would be taken and destroyed by
fire.[336] The Temple would be laid in ruins like the ancient sanctuary
of Israel at Shiloh.[337] The palaces[338] of the king and princes would
be special marks for the destructive fury of the enemy, and their
treasures and all the wealth of the city would be for a spoil; those who
survived the sack of the city would be carried captive to Babylon.[339]
In this general ruin the miseries of the people would not end with
death. All nations have attached much importance to the burial of the
dead and the due performance of funeral rites. In the touching Greek
story Antigone sacrificed her life in order to bury the remains of her
brother. Later Judaism attached exceptional importance to the burial
of the dead, and the Book of Tobit lays great stress on this sacred
duty. The angel Raphael declares that one special reason why the Lord
had been merciful to Tobias was that he had buried dead bodies, and
had not delayed to rise up and leave his meal to go and bury the
corpse of a murdered Jew, at the risk of his own life.[340]
Jeremiah prophesied of the slain in this last overthrow: "They shall
not be lamented, neither shall they be buried; they shall be as dung
on the face of the ground; ... their carcases shall be meat for the
fowls of the heaven, and for the beasts of the earth."
When these last had done their ghastly work, the site of the Temple, the
city, the whole land would be left silent and desolate. The stranger,
wandering amidst the ruins, would hear no cheerful domestic sounds; when
night fell, no light gleaming through chink or lattice would give the
sense of human neighbourhood. Jehovah "would take away the sound of the
millstones and the light of the candle."[341] The only sign of life
amidst the desolate ruins of Jerusalem and the cities of Judah would be
the melancholy cry of the jackals round the traveller's tent.[342]
The Hebrew prophets and our Lord Himself often borrowed their symbols
from the scenes of common life, as they passed before their eyes. As
in the days of Noah, as in the days of Lot, as in the days of the Son
of Man, so in the last agony of Judah there was marrying and giving in
marriage. Some such festive occasion suggested to Jeremiah one of his
favourite formulæ; it occurs four times in the Book of Jeremiah, and
was probably uttered much oftener. Again and again it may have
happened that, as a marriage procession passed through the streets,
the gay company were startled by the grim presence of the prophet, and
shrank back in dismay as they found themselves made the text for a
stern homily of ruin: "Thus saith Jehovah Sabaoth, I will take away
from them the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of
the bridegroom and the voice of the bride." At any rate, however, and
whenever used, the figure could not fail to arrest attention, and to
serve as an emphatic declaration that the ordinary social routine
would be broken up and lost in the coming calamity.
Henceforth the land would be as some guilty habitation of sinners,
devoted to eternal destruction, an astonishment and a hissing and a
perpetual desolation.[343] When the heathen sought some curse to
express the extreme of malignant hatred, they would use the formula,
"God make thee like Jerusalem."[344] Jehovah's Chosen People would
become an everlasting reproach, a perpetual shame, which should not be
forgotten.[345] The wrath of Jehovah pursued even captives and
fugitives. In chapter xxix. Jeremiah predicts the punishment of the
Jewish prophets at Babylon. When we last hear of him, in Egypt, he is
denouncing ruin against "the remnant of Judah that have set their
faces to go into the land of Egypt to sojourn there." He still
reiterates the same familiar phrases: "Ye shall die by the sword, by
the famine, and by the pestilence"; they shall be "an execration, and
an astonishment, and a curse, and a reproach."
We have now traced the details of the prophet's message of doom.
Fulfilment followed fast upon the heels of prediction, till Jeremiah
rather interpreted than foretold the thick-coming disasters. When his
book was compiled, the prophecies were already, as they are now, part
of the history of the last days of Judah. The book became the record
of this great tragedy, in which these prophecies take the place of the
choric odes in a Greek drama.
FOOTNOTES:
[306] Characteristic Expressions, p. 269.
[307] i. 10.
[308] i. 15.
[309] i. 7. The word for "child" (na'ar) is an elastic term, equalling
"boy" or "young man," with all the range of meaning possible in
English to the latter phrase.
[310] Cf. the Book of Jonah.
[311] xv. 1.
[312] Driver, _Introduction_, p. 242.
[313] "Church" is used, in the true Catholic sense, to embrace all
Christians.
[314] xxvii. 18.
[315] xxv. 5, xxxv. 15.
[316] xxvi. 3, xxxvi. 2.
[317] Chap. XI.
[318] Hosea ix. 7.
[319] xxiii. 12.
[320] Isa. xiv. 31.
[321] xxv. 1-14: "first," _i.e._, in time, not in the order of
chapters in our Book of Jeremiah.
[322] xxii. 25. Jehoiachin (Kings, Chronicles, and Jer. lii. 31) is
also called Coniah (Jer. xxii. 24, 28, xxxvii. 1) and Jeconiah
(Chronicles, Esther, Jer. xxiv. 1, xxvii. 20, xxviii. 4, xxix. 2).
They are virtually forms of the same name, the "Yah" of the Divine
Name being prefixed in the first and affixed in the last two.
[323] xxi. 7, xxviii. 14.
[324] Habakkuk i. 6, 7.
[325] xix. 9.
[326] R.V. margin.
[327] iv. 21.
[328] xxiii. 12.
[329] xxiii. 15.
[330] xxi. 3-6.
[331] xxxvii. 10.
[332] Matt. xxiii. 35.
[333] xxxv. 17: cf. xix. 15, xxxvi. 31.
[334] xxxiv. 21.
[335] xxiii. 33, 34.
[336] xxxiv. 2, 22, xxxvii. 8.
[337] vii. and xxvi.
[338] vi. 5.
[339] xx. 5.
[340] Tobit xii. 13: cf. ii.
[341] xxv. 10.
[342] ix. 11, x. 22.
[343] xxv. 9, 10.
[344] xxvi. 6.
[345] xxiii. 40.
CHAPTER XXX
_RESTORATION--I. THE SYMBOL_
xxxii
"And I bought the field of Hanameel."--JER. xxxii. 9.
When Jeremiah was first called to his prophetic mission, after the
charge "to pluck up and to break down, and to destroy and to
overthrow," there were added--almost as if they were an
afterthought--the words "to build and to plant."[346] Throughout a
large part of the book little or nothing is said about building and
planting; but, at last, four consecutive chapters, xxx.-xxxiii., are
almost entirely devoted to this subject. Jeremiah's characteristic
phrases are not all denunciatory; we owe to him the description of
Jehovah as "the Hope of Israel."[347] Sin and ruin, guilt and
punishment, could not quench the hope that centred in Him. Though the
day of Jehovah might be darkness and not light,[348] yet, through the
blackness of this day turned into night, the prophets beheld a radiant
dawn. When all other building and planting were over for Jeremiah,
when it might seem that much that he had planted was being rooted up
again in the overthrow of Judah, he was yet permitted to plant shoots
in the garden of the Lord, which have since become trees whose leaves
are for the healing of the nations.
The symbolic act dealt with in this chapter is a convenient
introduction to the prophecies of restoration, especially as chapters
xxx., xxxi., have no title and are of uncertain date.
The incident of the purchase of Hanameel's field is referred by the
title to the year 587 B.C., when Jeremiah was in prison and the
capture of the city was imminent. Verses 2-6 are an introduction by
some editor, who was anxious that his readers should fully understand
the narrative that follows. They are compiled from the rest of the
book, and contain nothing that need detain us.
When Jeremiah was arrested and thrown into prison, he was on his way
to Anathoth "to receive his portion there,"[349] _i.e._, as we gather
from this chapter, to take possession of an inheritance that devolved
upon him. As he was now unable to attend to this business at Anathoth,
his cousin Hanameel came to him in the prison, to give him the
opportunity of observing the necessary formalities. In his enforced
leisure Jeremiah would often recur to the matter on which he had been
engaged when he was arrested. An interrupted piece of work is apt to
intrude itself upon the mind with tiresome importunity; moreover his
dismal surroundings would remind him of his business--it had been the
cause of his imprisonment. The bond between an Israelite and the
family inheritance was almost as close and sacred as that between
Jehovah and the Land of Promise. Naboth had died a martyr to the duty
he owed to the land. "Jehovah forbid that I should give thee the
inheritance of my fathers,"[350] said he to Ahab. And now, in the
final crisis of the fortunes of Judah, the prophet whose heart was
crushed by the awful task laid upon him had done what he could to
secure the rights of his family in the "field" at Anathoth.
Apparently he had failed. The oppression of his spirits would suggest
that Jehovah had disapproved and frustrated his purpose. His failure
was another sign of the utter ruin of the nation. The solemn grant of
the Land of Promise to the Chosen People was finally revoked; and
Jehovah no longer sanctioned the ancient ceremonies which bound the
households and clans of Israel to the soil of their inheritance.
In some such mood, Jeremiah received the intimation that his cousin
Hanameel was on his way to see him about this very business. "The word
of Jehovah came unto him: Behold, thine uncle Shallum's son Hanameel
is coming to thee, to say unto thee, Buy my field in Anathoth, for it
is thy duty to buy it by way of redemption." The prophet was roused to
fresh perplexity. The opportunity might be a Divine command to proceed
with the redemption. And yet he was a childless man doomed to die in
exile. What had he to do with a field at Anathoth in that great and
terrible day of the Lord? Death or captivity was staring every one in
the face; land was worthless. The transaction would put money into
Hanameel's pocket. The eagerness of a Jew to make sure of a good
bargain seemed no very safe indication of the will of Jehovah.
In this uncertain frame of mind Hanameel found his cousin, when he
came to demand that Jeremiah should buy his field. Perhaps the
prisoner found his kinsman's presence a temporary mitigation of his
gloomy surroundings, and was inspired with more cheerful and kindly
feelings. The solemn and formal appeal to fulfil a kinsman's duty
towards the family inheritance came to him as a Divine command: "I
knew that this was the word of Jehovah."
The cousins proceeded with their business, which was in no way
hindered by the arrangements of the prison. We must be careful to
dismiss from our minds all the associations of the routine and
discipline of a modern English gaol. The "court of the guard" in which
they were was not properly a prison; it was a place of detention, not
of punishment. The prisoners may have been fettered, but they were
together and could communicate with each other and with their friends.
The conditions were not unlike those of a debtors' prison such as the
old Marshalsea, as described in _Little Dorrit_.
Our information as to this right or duty of the next-of-kin to buy or
buy back land is of the scantiest.[351] The leading case is that in
the Book of Ruth, where, however, the purchase of land is altogether
secondary to the levirate marriage. The land custom assumes that an
Israelite will only part with his land in case of absolute necessity,
and it was evidently supposed that some member of the clan would feel
bound to purchase. On the other hand, in Ruth, the next-of-kin is
readily allowed to transfer the obligation to Boaz. Why Hanameel sold
his field we cannot tell; in these days of constant invasion, most of
the small landowners must have been reduced to great distress, and
would gladly have found purchasers for their property. The kinsman to
whom land was offered would pretty generally refuse to pay anything
but a nominal price. Formerly the demand that the next-of-kin should
buy an inheritance was seldom made, but the exceptional feature in
this case was Jeremiah's willingness to conform to ancient custom.
The price paid for the field was seventeen shekels of silver, but,
however precise this information may seem, it really tells us very
little. A curious illustration is furnished by modern currency
difficulties. The shekel, in the time of the Maccabees, when we are
first able to determine its value with some certainty, contained about
half an ounce of silver, _i.e._ about the amount of metal in an
English half-crown. The commentaries accordingly continue to reckon
the shekel as worth half-a-crown, whereas its value by weight
according to the present price of silver would be about fourteenpence.
Probably the purchasing power of silver was not more stable in ancient
Palestine than it is now. Fifty shekels seemed to David and Araunah a
liberal price for a threshing-floor and its oxen, but the Chronicler
thought it quite inadequate.[352] We know neither the size of
Hanameel's field nor the quality of the land, nor yet the value of the
shekels;[353] but the symbolic use made of the incident implies that
Jeremiah paid a fair and not a panic price.
The silver was duly weighed in the presence of witnesses and of all
the Jews that were in the court of the guard, apparently including the
prisoners; their position as respectable members of society was not
affected by their imprisonment. A deed or deeds were drawn up, signed
by Jeremiah and the witnesses, and publicly delivered to Baruch to be
kept safely in an earthen vessel. The legal formalities are described
with some detail; possibly they were observed with exceptional
punctiliousness; at any rate, great stress is laid upon the exact
fulfilment of all that law and custom demanded. Unfortunately, in the
course of so many centuries, much of the detail has become
unintelligible. For instance, Jeremiah the purchaser signs the record
of the purchase, but nothing is said about Hanameel signing. When
Abraham bought the field of Machpelah of Ephron the Hittite there was
no written deed, the land was simply transferred in public at the gate
of the city.[354] Here the written record becomes valid by being
publicly delivered to Baruch in the presence of Hanameel and the
witnesses. The details with regard to the deeds are very obscure, and
the text is doubtful. The Hebrew apparently refers to two deeds, but
the Septuagint for the most part to one only. The R.V. of verse 11
runs: "So I took the deed of the purchase, both that which was sealed,
according to the law and the custom, and that which was open." The
Septuagint omits everything after "that which was sealed"; and, in any
case, the words "the law and the custom"--better, as R.V. margin,
"_containing_ the terms and the conditions"--are a gloss. In verse 14
the R.V. has: "Take these deeds, this deed of the purchase, both that
which is sealed, and this deed which is open, and put _them_ in an
earthen vessel." The Septuagint reads: "Take this book of the purchase
and this book that has been read,[355] and thou shalt put _it_ in an
earthen vessel."[356] It is possible that, as has been suggested, the
reference to two deeds has arisen out of a misunderstanding of the
description of a single deed. Scribes may have altered or added to the
text in order to make it state explicitly what they supposed to be
implied. No reason is given for having two deeds. We could have
understood the double record if each party had retained one of the
documents, or if one had been buried in the earthen vessel and the
other kept for reference, but both are put into the earthen vessel.
The terms "that which is sealed" and "that which is open" may,
however, be explained of either of one or two documents[357] somewhat
as follows: the record was written, signed, and witnessed; it was then
folded up and sealed; part or the whole of the contents of this
sealed-up record was then written again on the outside or on a
separate parchment, so that the purport of the deed could easily be
ascertained without exposing the original record. The Assyrian and
Chaldean contract-tablets were constructed on this principle; the
contract was first written on a clay tablet, which was further
enclosed in an envelope of clay, and on the outside was engraved an
exact copy of the writing within. If the outer writing became
indistinct or was tampered with, the envelope could be broken and the
exact terms of the contract ascertained from the first tablet.
Numerous examples of this method can be seen in the British Museum.
The Jews had been vassals of Assyria and Babylon for about a century,
and thus must have had ample opportunity to become acquainted with
their legal procedure; and, in this instance, Jeremiah and his
friends may have imitated the Chaldeans. Such an imitation would be
specially significant in what was intended to symbolise the
transitoriness of the Chaldean conquest.