people who deserved nothing of him, but cruelly entreated him, and who
themselves were so manifestly doomed. Once at least he confesses this.
O that I had in the wilderness IX. 2
A wayfarers’ lodge!
Then would I leave my people,
And get away from them;
For adulterers all of them be,
A bundle of traitors.
They stretch their tongues 3
Like a falsing bow,
And never for truth
Use their power in the land.
But from evil to evil go forth
And Me they know not!(739)
Well might the Prophet wish to escape from such a people—worn out with
their falsehood, their impurity, and their senseless optimism. Yet it is
not solitude for which he prays but some inn or caravanserai where he
would have been less lonely than in his unshared house in Jerusalem,
_sitting alone because of the wrath of the Lord_. His desire is to be set
where a man may see all the interest of passing life without any
responsibility for it, where men are wayfarers only and come and go like a
river on whose bank you lie, and help you to muse and perhaps to sing but
never touch the heart or the conscience of you. It is the prayer of a poet
sick of being a prophet and a tester. Jeremiah was weary of having to look
below the surface of life, to know people long enough to judge them with a
keener conscience than their own and to love them with a hopeless and
breaking heart that never got an answer to its love or to its calls for
repentance—wearied with watching habit slowly grow from ill to ill, old
truths become lies or at the best mere formalities, prophets who only
flattered, priests to bless them, and the people loving to have it
so.(740) O to have no other task in life than to watch the street from the
balcony!
But our prayers often outrun themselves in the utterance and Jeremiah’s
too carried with it its denial. _My people—that I might leave my
people_—this, it is clear from all that we have heard from him, his heart
would never suffer him to do. And so gradually we find him turning with
deeper devotion to the forlorn hope of his ministry, his fate to feel his
judgment of his people grow ever more despairing, but his love for them
deeper and more yearning.
From the year of Carchemish onward he appears not again to have tried or
prayed to escape. Through the rest of the reign of Jehoiakim they
persecuted him to the edge of death. Prophets and priests called for his
execution. He was stoned, beaten and thrust into the stocks. The king
scornfully cut up the roll of his prophecies; and the people following
their formalist leaders rejected his word. With the first captivity under
Jehoiakim all the better classes left Jerusalem, but he elected to remain
with the refuse. When in the reign of Ṣedekiah the Chaldeans came down on
the city and Jeremiah counselled its surrender he was again beaten and was
flung into a pit to starve to death. When he was freed and the besiegers
gave him the opportunity, he would not go over to them. Even when the city
had fallen and her captors hearing of his counsel offered him security and
a position in Babylonia, he chose instead to share the fortunes of the
little remnant left in their ruined land. When they broke up it was the
worst of them who took possession of his person and disregarding his
appeals hurried him down to Egypt. There, on alien soil and among
countrymen who had given themselves to an alien religion, the one great
personality of his time, who had served the highest interests of his
nation for forty years, reluctant but unfaltering, and whose scorned
words, every one, had been vindicated by events, is with the dregs of his
people swept from our sight. _He had given his back to the smiters and his
cheeks to them who plucked out the hair; he had not hidden his face from
the shame and the spitting. He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with
grief. He was taken from prison and from judgment and cut off from the
land of the living; and they made his grave with the wicked, though he had
done no violence neither was deceit in his mouth._ It is the second
greatest sacrifice that Israel has offered for mankind.
If Jeremiah thus of his own will suffered _with_ his people, and to the
bitter end with the worst of them, was he also conscious of suffering
_for_ them? After his death, when the full tragedy of his life came home
to his people’s heart, the sense of the few suffering for the many, the
righteous for the sinners, began to be articulate in Israel—remarkably
enough, let us remember, in the very period when owing to the break-up of
the nation the single soul came to its own and belief in the
responsibility of every man for his own sins also emerged and prevailed.
Of the influence of the example of Jeremiah’s spiritual loneliness,
combined with his devotion to his sinful people, in developing these
doctrines of individualism and self-sacrifice for others there can be no
doubt. The stamp of his sufferings is on every passage in that exilic work
“Isaiah” XL-LXVI, which presents the Suffering Servant of the Lord and
declares the atoning virtues of His Agonies and Death.
But it is not clear that Jeremiah ever felt anything of this about
himself; if he did so he has refrained from uttering it. Yet he must have
been very near so high a consciousness. His love and his pity for his
sinful people were full. He can hardly have failed to descry that his own
spiritual agonies which brought him into so close a personal communion
with God would show to every other man the way for his approach also to
the Most High and Holy and his reconciliation with his God. Again he was
weighed down with his people’s sins; he bore on his heart the full burden
of them. He confessed them. The shame which the people did not feel for
them, he felt; and he painted the curse upon them in words which prove how
deeply the iron had entered his own soul. He had a profound sense of the
engrained quality of evil,(741) the deep saturation of sin, the enormity
of the guilt of those who sinned against the light and love of God.(742) A
fallacy of his day was that God could easily and would readily forgive
sin, that the standard ritual might at once atone for it and comfortable
preaching bring the assurance of its removal. He denied this, and affirmed
that such things do not change character; that no wash of words can
cleanse from sin, no sacraments, however ancient, can absolve from
guilt.(743) That way only strict and painful repentance can work;
repentance following the deep searching of the heart by the Word and the
Judgments of God and the agony of learning and doing His Will.(744) To its
last dregs he drank the cup of the Lord’s wrath upon His false and wilful
nation; he suffered with them every pang of the slow death their sins had
brought upon them. And yet he was most conscious of his own innocence when
most certain of his fate. The more he loyally gave himself to his mission
the more he suffered and the nearer was he brought to death. The tragedy
perplexed him,
Why is my pain perpetual,
My wound past healing?(745)
The only reply he heard from heaven was the order to stand fast, for God
was with him to deliver—but that more troubles awaited him. And beyond
this what is there to answer the staggering Prophet save that if a man
have the Divine gifts of a keener conscience and a more loving heart than
his fellows, there inevitably comes with such gifts the obligation of
suffering for them. Every degree in which love stands above her brethren
means pain and shame to love though as yet she bear no thorn or nail in
her flesh. This spiritual distress Jeremiah felt for the people long
before he shared with them the physical penalties of their sins. Just
there—in his keener conscience, in his hot shame for sins not his as if
they were his, in his agony for his people’s estrangement from God and in
his own constantly wounded love—lay his real substitution, his vicarious
offering for his people.
Did Jeremiah ever conceive the far-off fulness of the travail thus laid
upon his soul, the truth that this vicarious agony of a righteous man for
the sins of others is borne by God Himself? To that question we have only
fragments of an answer. In his discourses, both earlier and later, when he
talks directly in the Name of the Deity—when the Deity speaks in the first
person—the words breathe as much effort and passion as when Jeremiah
speaks in his own person. The Prophet is very sure that his God is Love,
and he hears that love utter itself in tones of yearning for the love of
men, and even of agony for their sin and misery. There is, too, a singular
prayer of his which is tense with the instinct, that God would surely be
to Israel what Jeremiah had resolved and striven to be—not a far-off God
who occasionally visited or passed through His people, but One in their
midst sharing their pain; not indifferent, as he fears in another
place,(746) to the shame that is upon them, but bearing even this. The
prayer which I mean is the one in XIV. 8, 9, which recalls not only the
terms but the essence of Jeremiah’s longing to escape from his people, and
lodge afar with wayfaring men, aloof and irresponsible.
O Hope of Israel, His Saviour
In time of trouble.
Why be like a passenger through the land,
Or the wayfaring guest of a night?
Yet Lord Thou art in our midst,
Do not forsake us.(747)
I may be going too far in interpreting the longing and faith that lie
behind these words. But they come out very fully in later prophets who
explicitly assert that the Divine Nature does dwell with men, shares their
ethical warfare and bears the shame of their sins. And the truth of it all
was manifested past doubt in the Incarnation, the Passion and the Cross of
the Son of God.
But whether Jeremiah had instinct of it, as I have ventured to think from
his prayer, or had not, he foreshadowed, as far as mere man can, the
sufferings of Jesus Christ for men—and this is his greatest glory as a
prophet.
Lecture VIII.
GOD, MAN AND THE NEW COVENANT.
We have followed the career of Jeremiah from his call onwards to the end,
and we have traced his religious experience with its doubts, struggles,
crises, and settlement at last upon the things that are sure: his debates
with God and strifes with men, which while they roused him to outbursts of
passion also braced his will, and stilled the wilder storms of his heart.
There remains the duty of gathering the results of this broken and gusty,
yet growing and fruitful experience: the truths which came forth of its
travail, about God and Man and their relations. And in particular we have
still to study the ideal form which Jeremiah, or (as some questionably
argue) one of his disciples, gave to these relations: the New Covenant,
new in contrast to God’s ancient Covenant with Israel as recorded and
enforced in the Book of Deuteronomy.
1. God.
Among the surprises which Jeremiah’s own Oracles have for the student is
the discovery of how little they dwell upon the transcendent and infinite
aspects of the Divine Nature. On these Jeremiah adds almost nothing to
what his predecessors or contemporaries revealed. Return to his original
visions and contrast them with those, for example, of Isaiah and Ezekiel.
Isaiah’s vision was of the Lord upon a Throne, high and lifted up,
surrounded by Seraphim crying to one another, _Holy, Holy, Holy is the
Lord of Hosts! the whole earth is full of His Glory!_ And their voices
rocked the Temple and filled it with smoke. Here are a Presence, Awful
Majesty, Infinite Holiness and Glory, blinding the seer and crushing his
heart contrite. Or take the inaugural vision of Ezekiel—the storm-wind out
of the North, the vast cloud, the fire infolding itself, the brightness
round about and out of the midst thereof as the colour of amber; the rush
and whirl of life that followed, wheels and wings and rings full of eyes;
and over this the likeness of a firmament of the colour of the terrible
ice and the sound of wings like the noise of many waters, as the Voice of
the Almighty and above the firmament a Throne and on the Throne the
Appearance of a Man, the Appearance of the likeness of the Glory of the
Lord. _And I, when I saw it, fell upon my face._
In the inaugural visions of Jeremiah there is none of this Awfulness—only
_What art thou seeing Jeremiah? the branch of an almond tree ... a caldron
boiling._ That was characteristic of his encounters and intercourse with
the Deity throughout. They were constant and close, but in them all we are
aware only of a Voice and an Argument. There is no Throne, no Appearance,
no Majesty, no overwhelming sense of Holiness and Glory, no rush of wings
nor floods of colour or of song.(748) Jeremiah takes for granted what
other prophets have said of God. But the Deity whose Power and Glory they
revealed is his Familiar. The Lord talks with Jeremiah as a man with his
fellow.
For this there were several reasons, and first the particular quality of
the Prophet’s imagination. His native powers of vision were not such as
soar, or at any rate easily soar, to the sublime. He was a lyric poet and
his revelations of God are subjective and given to us by glimpses in
scattered verses, which, however intimate and exquisite, have not the
adoring wonder of his prophetic peers.
Again there were the startled recoil of his nature from the terrible
office of a prophet in such times, and those born gifts of questioning and
searching which fitted him for his allotted duty as Tester of his
people,(749) but which he also turned upon the Providence and Judgments of
the Lord Himself.(750) His religious experience, as we have seen, was
largely a struggle with the Divine Will, and it left him not adoring but
amazed and perplexed. Such wrestling man’s spirit has to encounter like
Jacob of old in the dark, and if like the Patriarch it craves the Name,
which is the Nature, of That with which it struggles, all the answer it
may get is another question, _Wherefore askest thou after My Name?_
Morning may break, as it broke on Jacob by Jabbok with the assurance of
blessing or as on Jeremiah with a firmer impression of the Will not his
own; but no strength is left to glory in the Nature behind the Will. There
is a horrified breathlessness about his lines—
Thou wast stronger than I and hast conquered,
The Lord is with me as a Mighty and Terrible.(751)
From his struggles he indeed issues more sure of God and finally more
trustful in Him, as is testified by his fair song on the beauty and
fruitfulness of faith, beginning
Blessed the wight that trusts in the Lord,
And the Lord is his trust.(752)
But even here is none of the awe and high wonder which fall upon Israel
through other prophets. Lyrist as he is and subjective, Jeremiah dwells
not so much upon the attributes of God on which faith rests as upon the
effects of faith in man.
Again by the desperate character of the times he was starved of hope, the
hope by which the Apostle says _we are saved_, which not only braces the
will but clears the inner eyes of men and liberates the imagination. As
the years went on he was ever more closely bound to the prediction of his
people’s ruin, and, when this came, to the sober counsel to accept their
fate and settle down to a long exile in patience for the Lord’s time of
deliverance. As we have seen, his intervals of release from so grim a
ministry were brief, and his Oracles of a bright future but few. Even in
these he does not rise, like the Evangelist of the Exile whom he inspired,
to exultation in the Almighty Power of God or to visions of vast spaces of
the Divine Providence, or of Israel’s service wide as the world. His happy
peasant-heart is content to foresee his restored people tending their
vineyards again, enjoying their village dances and festivals, and sharing
with their long divided tribes the common national worship upon Ṣion.(753)
Like those of all the prophets Jeremiah’s most immediate convictions of
God are that He has done, and is always doing or about to do, things.(754)
From the first Yahweh of Israel had been to the faith of his people a God
of Deeds. He delivered them from Egypt, led them through the desert, ever
ready to avenge them on any who molested them, and He had brought them to
a land of delight.(755) By his creative and guiding Word, always clear and
potential,(756) He had planted them and built them up to be a nation.
These were the proofs of Him—ever operative, effective and victorious both
over their foes and over every natural obstacle which their life
encountered. And being _the Living God_ He still works and is ready to
work, would His people only seek where!(757) He is awake, watching over
His Word _to perform it_ and controlling the nations.(758) It is He who
has made the earth and gives it to whom He will,(759) who prepares the
destroyers of His people, who calls for the kingdoms of the North, even
for the far Scythians beyond the edge of the world, to execute His
purposes.(760) He brings the King of Babylon against Jerusalem, and
recalls the Chaldeans to their interrupted siege of the city, gives it
into their hands and Himself banishes its people.(761) He moulds the
nations for his own ends, and if they fail Him, decrees their
destruction.(762) His Word builds and plants but also pulls up and tears
down.(763) He is always near to guide or to argue with nations and
individuals, and to give directions and suggestions of practical detail to
His servants for the interpretation and fulfilment of His purposes.(764)
It was all this activity and effectiveness, with their sure results in
history, which distinguished Him from other gods, the gods of the nations,
who were ineffective, or as Jeremiah puts it _unprofitable—no-gods,
nothings_ and _do-nothings, the work of men’s hands, lies_ or _frauds_,
and mere _bubbles_.(765) On this line Jeremiah’s monotheism marks a
notable advance; for alongside of faith in the Divine Unity and
Sovereignty there had lingered even in Deuteronomy a belief in the
existence of other gods.(766) With Jeremiah every vestige of this
superstition is gone, and other gods consigned to limbo once and for all.
Yet Jeremiah’s monotheism, like that of all the Hebrew prophets, is even
more due to convictions of the character of the God of Israel. We have
seen how he dwells on the Divine Love, faithful and yearning for love in
return, pleading and patient even with its delinquent sons and
daughters;(767) but equal to this is his emphasis on the righteousness of
the Most High, by all His deeds _working troth, justice, and judgment on
the earth_, which are His delight and the knowledge of which is man’s only
glory.(768) He demands from His people not sacrifices, which He never
commanded to their fathers, nor vows but a better life, justice between
man and man, and care for the weak and the innocent.(769) To know Him is
to do justice and right.(770) Because the present generation have fallen
away from these, and practise and love falsehood, slander, impurity,
treacherous and greedy violence, therefore God, being justice and truth,
must judge and condemn them: _What else can I do?_(771) The ethical
necessity of the doom of the people is clear to the Prophet from a very
early stage of his ministry,(772) and throughout, though his heart
struggles against it. But, if possible, even more abhorrent to God than
these sins against domestic and civic piety in themselves, is the fact
that they are committed in the very face of His Love and despite all its
pleading. With Jeremiah as with Hosea the sin against love is the most
hopeless and unpardonable, and this people have sinned it to the utmost.
As a woman is false to her fere,
Have ye been false to me.(773)
Hence most deeply springs the Wrath of the Lord, a Wrath on which Jeremiah
broods and explodes more frequently and fiercely than any other prophet:
_I am full of the rage of the Lord; the glow of His wrath; take the cup of
the wine of this fury at My hand and give all nations to whom I send thee
to drink of it; the fierce anger of the Lord shall not turn until He have
executed it._(774) And He does execute it. God’s Wrath breaks out in His
_spurning_ of His nation, in the hot names He calls it, _adulteress_ and
_harlot_, and in _hating_ it.(775) He will not relent nor pardon it, nor
listen to prayer for it.(776) He says, _I must myself take vengeance upon
them. I shall not spare nor pity them._(777) They will reel in the day of
their visitation. He will feed them with wormwood and drug them with
poison; He will suddenly let fall on them anguish and terrors; He will
take His fan and winnow them out in the gates of the land and as the
passing chaff strew them on the wind of the desert; the garden-land
withers to wilderness and its cities break down at His presence and before
His fierce anger; He will make Jerusalem heaps and cast out the people
before His face. He will give them to be tossed among the nations for a
consternation, a reproach and a proverb, for a taunt and a curse, in all
places whither He drives them: and will send after them the sword, the
famine, and the pestilence till they be consumed.(778)
The modern mind deems arbitrary such immediate linking of physical and
political disasters with the Wrath of God against sin. But we have to
ponder the following. The Prophet was convinced of the ethical necessity
of that Wrath and of its judgments on Judah—he was convinced before they
came to pass and he predicted them accurately, from close observation of
the political conditions of his world and the character of his people.
Granted these and God’s essential and operative justice, the connection
was natural: _What else can I do?_ It was clear that Judah both deserved
and needed punishment and equally clear that the boiling North held the
potentialities of this, which were gradually shaping and irresistibly
approaching. Moreover, as Jeremiah insists, and as the history both of
nations and individuals has frequently illustrated, there is a natural
sequence of disaster upon wrong-doing. _Be thy scourge thine own sin! Thy
ways and thy deeds have done to thee __ these things. Is it Me they
provoke, saith the Lord, Is it not themselves to the confusion of their
faces? Wherefore have these things come upon thee?—for the mass of thy
wickedness._(779) As St. Paul says _the wages of sin_, not the judge’s
penalty on sin but the thing it naturally earns, _is death_. Now one of
Jeremiah’s most acute and convincing experiences as the _Tester_ of his
people,(780) is his observation of how all this worked out upon his own
generation. Not only were the war, the pestilence, and the captivity,
which were about to fall upon Jerusalem, directly and obviously due to the
perjury and stupid pride of her rulers; but, as he more subtly saw, the
immorality of the whole people had been disabling them, for years before,
from meeting these or any disasters except as sheer punishment without
place for repentance. Their previous troubles had failed to sober or
humble them or rouse them. _They would not accept correction_, he says of
them more than once.(781) To the Prophet’s warnings that God will judge
them, they answer carelessly or defiantly _Not He!_ Instead of yielding to
the power which lies in all adversity to cleanse the heart and brace the
will they became incapable of shame, indifferent to consequences, and so
past praying for.(782) And in this they were fortified by the specious
dreams and lies of their false prophets, continued to sin, and so fell to
their doom, abashed at last but unassoilable.(783) If at any time they
were startled by disaster, this found them too enfeebled even for
repentance by their habitual insincerity or self-indulgence; which made
them incapable of truth even under pain, and of a real conversion to
God.(784) All this is discovered to us by the eyes and the mouth of
Jeremiah. What in it is arbitrary? The record is awful, nothing like it in
literature. Yet every step is real. We follow a master of observation.