prophets and psalmists there is a remarkable body of historical evidence.
The sacrificial system of Israel is in its origins of far earlier date
than the days of Moses and the Exodus from Egypt. It has so much, both of
form and meaning, in common with the systems of kindred nations as to
prove it to be part of the heritage naturally derived by all of them from
their Semitic forefathers. And the new element brought into the
traditional religion of Israel at Sinai was just that on which Jeremiah
lays stress—the ethical, which in time purified the ritual of sacrifice
and burnt-offering but had nothing to do with the origins of this.
Therefore it is certain _first_ that Amos and Jeremiah meant literally
what they stated or implicitly led their hearers to infer—God gave no
commands at the Exodus concerning burnt-offerings and sacrifices—and
_second_ that historically they were correct. But, of course, their
interest in so saying was not historical but spiritual. Their aim was
practical—to destroy their generation’s materialist belief that animal
sacrifice was the indispensable part of religion and worship. Still his
way of putting it involves on the part of Jeremiah a repudiation of the
statements of Deuteronomy on the subject. So far, then, Jeremiah opposed
the new Book of the Law.(301)
But with all this do not let us forget something more. While thus
anticipating by more than six centuries the abolition of animal
sacrifices, Jeremiah, by his example of service and suffering, was
illustrating the substitute for them—the _human_ sacrifice, the surrender
by man himself of will and temper, and if need be of life, for the cause
of righteousness and the salvation of his fellow-men. The recognition of
this in Jeremiah by a later generation in Israel led to the conception of
the suffering Servant of the Lord, and of the power of His innocent
sufferings to atone for sinners and to redeem them.
* * * * *
This starts a kindred point—and the last—upon which Jeremiah offers, if
not a contradiction, at least a contrast and a supplement to the teaching
of Deuteronomy. We have noted the absoluteness—or idealism—of that Book’s
doctrines of Morality and Providence; they leave no room for certain
problems, raised by the facts of life. But Jeremiah had bitter experience
of those facts, and it moved him to state the problems to God Himself. He
owns the perfect justice of God; but this only makes his questioning more
urgent.
Too righteous art Thou O Lord, XII. 1
That with Thee I should argue,
Yet cases there are I must speak to Thee of:
The way of the wicked—why doth it prosper,
And the treacherous all be at ease?
Thou hast planted them, yea they take root, 2
They get on, yea they make fruit;
Near in their mouths art Thou,
But far from their hearts.
We shall have to deal with these questions and God’s answer to them, when
in a later lecture we analyse Jeremiah’s religious experience and
struggles. Here we only note the contrast which they present to
Deuteronomy—a contrast between the Man and the System, between Experience
and Dogma, between the Actual and the Ideal. And, as we now see, it was
the System and the Dogma that were defective and the Man and his
Experience of life that started, if not for himself yet for a later
generation, pondering his experience, the solution of those problems,
which against the deuteronomic teaching he raised in brave agony to God’s
own face.
Such serious differences between Jeremiah and Deuteronomy—upon the Law,
the Temple, the Sacrifices, and Doctrines of Providence and
Morality—suggest an important question with regard to the methods of
Divine Revelation under the Old Covenant. Do they not prove that among
those methods there were others than vision or intuition springing from
the direct action of the Spirit of God upon the spirits of individual men?
Are they not instances of the processes by which to this day in the
Providence of God truth is sifted and ultimately beaten out—namely debate
and controversy between different minds or different schools of thought,
between earnest supporters of various and often hostile opinions in
neither of which lies the whole of the truth? The evidence for Revelation
by Argument which the Book of Jeremiah affords is not the least of its
contributions to the history and philosophy of religion.
Lecture V.
UNDER JEHOIAKIM. 608-597-8 B.C.
1. From Megiddo to Carchemish, 608-605.
Josiah’s faithful reign, and with it all thorough efforts to fulfil the
National Covenant,(302) came to a tragic close on the field of Megiddo—the
Flodden of Judah.
The year was 608 B.C. Medes and Chaldeans together had either taken, or
were still besieging, Nineveh; and Pharaoh Nĕcoh,(303) eager to win for
Egypt a share of the crumbling Assyrian Empire, had started north with a
great army. Marching by the coast he first took Gaza, and crossing by one
of the usual passes from Sharon to Esdraelon,(304) found himself opposed
near Megiddo by a Jewish force led by its king in person. The Chronicler
tells us that Nĕcoh sought to turn Josiah from his desperate venture:
_What have I to do with thee? I am come not against thee but against the
House with which I am at war. God hath spoken to speed me; forbear from
God who is with me, lest He destroy thee._(305) But Josiah persisted. The
issue of so unequal a contest could not be doubtful. The Jewish army was
routed and Josiah himself immediately slain.(306)
At first sight, the courage of Josiah and his small people in facing the
full force of Egypt seems to deserve our admiration, as much as did the
courage of King Albert and his nation in opposing the faithless invasion
of Belgium by the Germans aiming at France. There was, however, a
difference. Nĕcoh was not invading Judah, but crossing Philistine
territory and a Galilee which had long ceased to be Israel’s. Some suppose
that since the Assyrian hold upon Palestine relaxed, Josiah had gradually
occupied all Samaria. If this be so, was he now stirred by a gallant sense
of duty to assert Israel’s ancient claim to Galilee as well? We cannot
tell.(307) But what we may confidently assume is that, having fulfilled by
thirteen years of honest reforms his own part of the terms of the
Covenant, Josiah believed that he could surely count on the Divine
fulfilment of the rest, and that some miracle would bring to a righteous
king and people victory over the heathen, however more powerful the
heathen might be. He was only thirty-nine years of age.
His servants carried his body from the field in a chariot to Jerusalem,
bringing him back, as we may realise, to a people stricken with
consternation. Their trust in the Temple was shaken—they were not
_delivered_!(308) In the circumstances they did their feeble best by
raising to the vacant throne Josiah’s son, Shallum, as Jehoahaz, _the Lord
hath taken hold_. But the new name proved no omen of good. In three months
Nĕcoh had the youth in bonds at Riblah, in the land of Hamath, _that he
might not reign in Jerusalem_, and afterwards took him to Egypt. Of this
fresh sorrow Jeremiah sang as if it had drowned out the sorrow of Megiddo—
Weep not for the dead, XXII. 10
Nor bemoan him,
But for him that goeth away weep sore,
For he cometh no more,
Nor seeth the land of his birth.
Jehoahaz died in Egypt.
The next King, Jehoiakim, another of Josiah’s sons, was set on the throne
by Nĕcoh, who also exacted a heavy tribute. What national disillusion! The
hopes falsely kindled upon the letter of Deuteronomy lay quenched on
Megiddo; and the faithful servant of the Covenant had, in spite of its
promises as men would argue, been defeated and slain in the flower of his
life. Judah had been released from the Assyrian yoke, only to fall into
the hands of another tyrant, her new king his creature, and her people
sorely burdened to pay him. The result was religious confusion. In at
least a formal obedience to the deuteronomic laws of worship, the people
of the land continued to resort to the Temple fasts and festivals.(309)
But resenting the failure of their God to grant victory numbers relapsed
into an idolatry as rank as that under Ahaz or Manasseh;(310) while
others, more thoughtful but not less bewildered, conceived doubts of the
worth of righteousness. And these tempers were embittered by the cruel
selfishness of the new monarch and his reckless injustice. To the taxes
required for the tribute to Egypt he added other exactions in order to
meet his extravagance in enlarging and adorning his palace. The crime,
with which Jeremiah charges him in the following lines, is one to which
small kings in the East have often been tempted by their contact with
civilisations richer than their own. On Judah Jehoiakim imposed the cruel
corvée, which in our day Ismail Pasha imposed upon Egypt.
Woe to who builds his house by injustice, XXII. 13
His storeys by wrong,
Who forces his fellows to serve for nothing,
And pays not their wage.
Who saith,(311) 14
I will build me an ampler house
And airier storeys,
Widen my windows, panel with cedar,
And paint with vermilion,
Wilt thou thus play the king, 15
Fussing with cedar?
Thy sire, did not he eat and drink,
And do justice and right,
And judge for the poor and the needy? 16
Then was it well!(312)
Was not this how to know Me?—
Rede of the Lord.
But thine eyes and thy heart are on nought 17
Save thine own spoil,
And on shedding of innocent blood,
Doing outrage and murder.
Josiah had enjoyed what was enough for him in sober, seemly parallel to
his faithful discharge of duty; his son was luxurious, unscrupulous,
bloody, and withal petty—_fussing with cedar_, and cutting up the
Prophet’s roll piece by piece with a pen-knife! Jeremiah and Baruch’s
sarcastic notes on Jehoiakim find parallels in Victor Hugo’s “Châtiments”
of Napoleon III.: “l’infiniment petit, monstreux et feroce;” “Voici de
l’or, viens pille et vole ... voici du sang, accours, viens boire, petit,
petit!”
XXII. 18. Therefore, thus saith the Lord of Jehoiakim, son of
Josiah, King of Judah.
Mourn him they shall not, “Woe brother!”
“Woe sister!”
Nor beweep him, “Woe Lord!”
Or “Woe Highness!”
With the burial of an ass shall they bury him, 19
Dragged and flung out—
Out from the gates of Jerusalem.
Such a prophet to such a king must have been intolerable, and through the
following years Jeremiah was pursued by the royal hatred. There were other
and more poisonous enemies. We have found him, from the first, steadily
seeing through, and stoutly denouncing the great religious orders—the
priests, natural believers in the Temple, with a belief, since Deuteronomy
came into their hands, more dogmatic and arrogant than ever; and the
professional prophets with their shallow optimism that all was well for
Judah, and that her God could never bring upon her the doom which Jeremiah
threatened in His Name. _Not He!_ was their answer to him. These two
classes were in conspiracy, deluding themselves and the people; in their
trust upon the letter of the Law, they had no sense, as he told them, of
_The Living God_.(313) Roused by his scorn they watched for an occasion to
convict and destroy him.(314)
This he bravely gave by making, in obedience to God’s call, public
prediction of the ruin of the Temple. It is uncertain whether Jeremiah did
so only once, as many think who read in Chs. VII and XXVI reports of the
same address, or whether, as I am inclined to believe, the former chapter
reports an address delivered under Josiah, and the latter the repetition
of its substance in the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim.(315) However
this be, Ch. XXVI alone relates the consequences of his outspoken courage.
It represents the priests and the prophets as quoting his sentence upon
the Temple in absolute terms; though both reports, in the form in which
they have reached us, render his own delivery of it as conditional upon
the nation’s refusal to repent and to better their ways.(316) This, of
course, was ever their way; they were ready distorters.
XXVI. 1. In the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim, son of
Josiah, came this word from the Lord. 2. Thus saith the Lord,
Stand in the court of the Lord’s House and speak unto all Judah,
all who come in to worship in the Lord’s House, all the words that
I have charged thee to speak to them; keep back not a word. 3.
Peradventure they will hearken and turn every man from his evil
way, and I shall relent of the evil which I am purposing to do to
them because of the evil of their doings. 4. And thou shalt say,
Thus saith the Lord: If ye will not obey Me to walk in My Law,
which I have set before you, [5] to hearken to the words of My
servants, the prophets whom I am sending to you, rising early and
sending—but ye have not hearkened—[6] then shall I render this
House like Shiloh and this City a thing to be cursed of all
nations of the earth. 7. And the priests and the prophets and all
the people heard Jeremiah speaking these words in the House of the
Lord. 8. And it was, when Jeremiah finished speaking all that the
Lord had charged him to speak to all the people, that the priests
and the prophets(317) laid hold on him saying, Thou shalt surely
die! 9. Because thou hast prophesied in the Name of the Lord
saying, As Shiloh this House shall be, and this City shall be laid
waste without a dweller. And all the people were gathered to
Jeremiah in the House of the Lord. 10. When the princes of Judah
heard of these things they came up from the king’s house to the
House of the Lord and took their seats in the opening of the New
Gate of the Lord’s House.(318) 11. Then said the priests and the
prophets to the princes and to all the people—Sentence of death
for this man! For he hath prophesied against this City as ye have
heard with your ears. 12. And Jeremiah said to the princes and to
all the people, The Lord hath sent me to prophesy against this
House and against this City all the words which ye have heard. 13.
So now better your ways and your doings, and hearken to the Voice
of the Lord, that the Lord may relent of the evil which He hath
spoken against you. 14. But as for me, here am I in your hand! Do
to me as is good and right in your eyes. 15. Only know for sure
that if ye put me to death ye will be bringing innocent blood upon
yourselves, and upon this City and upon her inhabitants; for in
truth the Lord did send me unto you to speak in your ears all
these words. 16. And the princes and all the people said to the
priests and the prophets, Not for this man be sentence of death,
because in the Name of the Lord our God hath he spoken to us. 17.
Then arose some of the elders of the land and said to all the
assembly of the people. 18. There was Micaiah the Morasthite in
the days of Hezekiah, king of Judah, and he said to all the people
of Judah, Thus saith the Lord: Ṣion like a field shall be
ploughed, And Jerusalem be heaps, And the mount of the House a
mound of the jungle. 19. Did Hezekiah and all Judah put him to
death? Did they not fear the Lord and soothe the Lord’s face, and
the Lord relented of the evil He had uttered against them. Yet we
are about to do a great wrong upon our own lives.
Several of its features lift this story to a place among the most
impressive in the Old Testament. The priests and prophets on the one side
and the princes on the other both use the phrase, that Jeremiah _spoke in
the Name of the Lord_. But the former quote it ironically, or in
indignation at the Prophet’s claim, while the princes are obviously
impressed by his sincerity and apparently their impression is shared by
the people. There could be no firmer measure of the pitch of personal
power to which Jeremiah has at last braced himself.
The promise of his Call is fulfilled. Sceptical, fluid and shrinking as he
is by nature, he stands for this hour at least, _a strong wall and a
fortress_, by his clear conscience, his simple courage, and his full
surrender to whatever be in store for him. How bravely he refuses to
conciliate them!—_I am in your hand, do to me as is right in your eyes._
Again, there is proof of a popular tradition and conscience in Israel more
sound than those of the religious authorities of the nation. The people
remembered what their priests and prophets forgot or ignored, and through
their elders gave utterance to it on the side of justice. In agreement
with them were the princes, the lay leaders of the nation. To
ecclesiastics of every age and race this is a lesson, to give heed to “the
common sense” and to the public instinct for justice. And on that day in
Jerusalem these were called forth by the ability of the people, commoners
and nobles alike, to recognise a real Prophet, an authentic
Speaker-for-God at once when they heard him.
The danger that Jeremiah faced and the source from which it sprang are
revealed by the fate which befell another denouncer of the land in the
Name of the Lord. Of him, the narrator uses a form of the verb _to
prophesy_ different from that which he uses of Jeremiah, thus guarding
himself from expressing an opinion as to whether the man was a genuine
prophet. This is a further tribute to the moral effect of Jeremiah’s
person and word.
XXVI. 20. There was also a man who took upon him to prophesy in
the Name of the Lord, Urijahu, son of Shemajahu, from
Kiriath-jearim, and he prophesied(319) against this land,
according to all the words of Jeremiah. 21. And king
Jehoiakim(320) and all the princes heard of his words and they
sought(321) to put him to death; and Urijahu heard and fearing
fled and went into Egypt. 22. And the king sent men to Egypt.(322)
23. And they took forth Urijah thence and brought him to the king,
and slew him with the sword, and cast his corpse into the graves
of the sons of the people. 24. But the hand of Ahikam, the son of
Shaphan, was with Jeremiah so as not to give him into the hand of
the people to put him to death.
The one shall be taken and the other left! We are not told why, after the
verdict of the princes and the people, Ahikam’s intervention was needed.
Yet the people were always fickle, and the king who is not mentioned in
connection with Jeremiah’s case, but as we see from Urijah’s watched
cruelly from the background, was not the man to be turned by a popular
verdict from taking vengeance on the Prophet who had attacked him. Ahikam,
however, had influence at court, and proved friendly to Jeremiah on other
occasions.(323)
All this was _in the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim_. Before we
follow Jeremiah himself through the rest of that malignant and disastrous
reign, during which the steadfastness that his personality had achieved
was again to be shaken, we must understand the progress of the great
events which directed his own conduct and gradually determined the fate of
his people.
In 625 B.C. the successor of Asshurbanipal upon the tottering throne of
Assyria had found himself compelled to acknowledge Nabopolassar the
Chaldean as nominally viceroy, but virtually king, of Babylon.(324) The
able chief of a vigorous race, Nabopolassar bided his time for a vaster
sovereignty, and steadily this came to him. The Medes, twice baffled in
their attempts on Nineveh,(325) made terms with him for a united assault
on the Assyrian capital and for the division of its empire. To that
assault Nineveh fell in 612 or 606,(326) and with her fall Assyria
disappeared from among the Northern Powers. Whatever part of the derelict
empire the Medes may have secured, Mesopotamia remained with the Chaldeans
who doubtless claimed as well all its provinces south of the Euphrates.
But, as we have seen, Nĕcoh of Egypt had already overrun these and battle
between him and the Chaldeans became imminent. Their armies met in 605-4
at Carchemish on The River. Nĕcoh was defeated by Nebuchadrezzar, son of
Nabopolassar, and driven south to his own land. Egypt had failed; and the
northern caldrons, as Jeremiah from the first predicted, again boiled with
the fate of Judah and her neighbours. _The Foe_, though no longer the
Scythian of his early expectations, was still _out of the North_.
By 602, if not before, Nebuchadrezzar, having succeeded his father as King
of Babylon, carried his power to the coasts of the Levant and the Egyptian
border. Judah was his vassal, and for three years Jehoiakim paid him
tribute, but then defaulted, probably because of promises from Egypt after
the fashion of that restless power. As if not yet ready to invade Judah in
force, Nebuchadrezzar let loose upon her, along with some of his own
Chaldeans, troops of Moabites, Ammonites and Arameans. Soon afterwards
Jehoiakim died and was succeeded by his son Jehoiachin, a youth of
eighteen, who appears to have maintained his father’s policy; for in 598,
if not 597, Nebuchadrezzar came up against Jerusalem, which forthwith
surrendered, and the king, his mother and wives, his courtiers and
statesmen were carried into exile, with the craftsmen and smiths and all
who were _apt for war; none remained save the poorest of the people of the
land_.(327)
Throughout these convulsions of her world, this crisis in the history of
Judah herself, Jeremiah remains the one constant, rational, and far-seeing
power in the national life. But at what terrible cost to himself! His
experience is a throng of tragic paradoxes. Faithful to his mission, every
effort he makes to rouse his people to its meaning is baffled. His word is
signally vindicated by the great events of the time, yet each of these but
tears his heart the more as he feels it bringing nearer the ruin of his
people. His word is confirmed, but he is shaken by doubts of himself, his
utterance of which is in poignant contrast to his steadfast delivery of
his messages of judgment. No prophet was at once more sure of his word and
less sure of himself; none save Christ more sternly denounced his people
or upon the edge of their doom more closely knit himself to them.
It is a staggering world, and the one man who has its secret is shaken to
despair about himself. Yet the Word with which he is charged not only
fulfils itself in event after event but holds its distracted prophet fast
to the end of his abhorred task of proclaiming it.
The cardinal event was Nebuchadrezzar’s victory over Nĕcoh at Carchemish
in 605 or 604 with its assurance of Babylonian, not Egyptian, supremacy
throughout Western Asia. Such confirmation of the substance of Jeremiah’s
prophecies of the past twenty-three years was that Divine signal which
flashed on him to reduce those prophecies to writing and have them recited
to the people by Baruch. We have already followed the story in Ch. XXXVI
of how this was done(328) and of the consequences—the communication of the
Roll to the princes and by them to the king, the king’s burning of the
Roll piece by piece as he heard it read, his order for the arrest of
Jeremiah and Baruch, their escape into hiding, and their preparation of a
Second Roll containing all the words of the First with many others like
them. We may now, in addition, note the following.
First there is the Divine Peradventure at the beginning of the story.(329)
_It may be_, God says, that the people will hear and turn from their evil
ways that I may forgive their iniquity—a very significant _perhaps_ when
taken with the Parable of the Potter to which we are coming. Again, the
king at least understands the evil predicted by Jeremiah to be the
destruction of his land and people by the King of Babylon.(330) And again,
though some of the princes encourage the Prophet’s escape, and urge the
king not to burn the Roll, none are shocked by the burning.(331) Evidently
in 605-4 they were not so impressed with the divinity of Jeremiah’s word
as they had been in 608. Then they did not speak of telling the king; now
they say that they _must tell_(332) him. Jehoiakim’s malignant influence
has grown, and Jeremiah discovers the inconstancy of the princes, even of
some friendly to himself.