JEREMIAH AND THE FALL OF

JERUSALEM.

LECTURE XL.

SPECIAL AUTHORITIES FOR THIS PERIOD.

I. The Historical and Prophetical Books.

JOSIAH.

Jer. i.-v.; Zephaniah and Habakkuk; 2 Kings xxii.—xxiii. 30; 2 Chr. xxxiv., XXXV.

JEHOAHAZ.

2 Kings xxiii. 30-33 (Jer. xxii. 11); 2 Chr. xxxvi. 1—4.

JEHOIAKIM.

2 Kings xxiii. 34.-xxiv. 5; 2 Chr. xxxvi. 4-8. Jer. xxvi. (with vii.-x.) preaching in the Temple.—xviii., xix., xx., preaching in the Valley of Hinnom and the Temple.-xlvi. 1-12, battle of Carchemish. xlvii. Return of Necho through Philistia.—xlviii., xlix. Moab and Ammon.— -xxv. foreign Nations.-xxxv. the Rechabites. xxxvi. Baruch's Recitation.-xlv. Baruch's despair.

JEHOIACHIN.

Jer. xxii. the Three Kings.-xxiv. the Captives and the Remnant.— xxix. Letter to the Exiles.-xlix. 34–39, Elam.—li. 59-64, Babylon (perhaps also Jer. 1., li. 58).—Baruch i.—v.

ZEDEKIAH.

Jer. xxvii., xxviii. Beginning of Revolt.-Zech. xii.—xiii. 6, xiv. ; Jer. xxxvii., xxxiv. Raising the Siege.-Jer. xxi., xxxviii., xxxix. 15-18, the Prison.-Ezek. viii.-xxiii.; Jer. xxxii., xxxiii., xxxix. 1–14.—Ezek. xxiv. the Siege.-Jer. xl.-xliv. Escape.—Jer. xlvi. 13-28, Obadiah.-Ezek. xxv.-xxxiii. March on Egypt.

II. Jewish traditions in Josephus (Ant. x. 5–9).

III. Illustrations from the Assyrian and Egyptian inscriptions; collected in Rawlinson's Bampton Lectures, Lecture IV., and the notes thereon.

N.B. For the arrangement of the chapters of Jeremiah, see Ewald and other Commentators. They are here

placed in the order of the events to which they refer.

III. PARTY OF PRIESTS' AND PRINCES.'

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LECTURE XL.

JEREMIAH AND THE FALL OF JERUSALEM.

We are now approaching a great catastrophe, which has been twice over enacted in the history of the Jewish people.

Jerusalem.

Three other like events of parallel magnitude have been Fall of witnessed; the fall of Babylon, as the close of the primeval monarchies of the ancient world; the fall of Rome, as the close of the classical world; and, in a fainter degree, the fall of Constantinople, as the close of the first Christianized Empire. But, in the case of Jerusalem, both its first and second destruction have the peculiar interest of involving the dissolution of a religious dispensation, combined with the agony of an expiring nation, such as no other people or city has witnessed, such as no other people has survived, and, by surviving, carried on the living recollection, first of one and then of the other, for centuries after the first shock was over.

Of these two captures of Jerusalem, the second is still far in advance, and it is of the first only that we have here to speak. But it is by bearing both in mind that we can best appreciate the various feelings with which the approach of the first was regarded, and the bewilderment and confusion which, as the current of the history draws nearer and nearer to the fatal whirlpool, beset not merely the events themselves, but the textual structure of the various narratives and prophecies which record it.