of Hermon, from the top of Mizar, it is no improbable conjecture that the departing King poured forth that exquisitely plaintive song, in which, from the deep disquietude of his heart, he longs after the presence of God in the Temple, and pleads his cause against the impious nation, the treacherous and unjust man, who, in spite of 'plighted faith, had torn him away from his beloved home. With straining eyes, the Jewish people and Prophets still hung on the hope that their last prince would be speedily restored to them. The gate through which he left the city was walled up, like that by which the last Moorish king left Granada, and was long known as the Gate of Jeconiah. From his captivity, as from a decisive era, the subsequent years of the history were 2 reckoned. The tidings were treasured up with a mournful pleasure, that, in the distant Babylon, where, with his 3 royal mother, he was to end his days, after many years of imprisonment, the curse of childlessness, pronounced upon him by the Prophet, was removed; and that, as he grew to man's estate, a race of no less than eight sons were born to him, by whom the royal race of Judah was carried on; and yet more, that he had been kindly treated by the successor of his captor; that he took precedence of all of the subject Kings at the table of the Babylonian monarch; that his prison garments and his prison fare were changed to something like his former royal state. With this tender recollection of the unfortunate Prince, the historical records, not only of himself but of the monarchy, abruptly come to an end. 5 6 4 31-34. There was a Rabbinical tradition that Evilmerodach's kindness arose from his acquaintance with Jehoiachin, in the prison into which he had himself been thrown by an expression of pleasure at Nebuchadnezzar's illness. It probably was really an act of grace on his accession. (Thenius on 2 Kings xxv. 27.) But the traditions of him still linger in the close,' and more than one sacred legend-enshrined in the Sacred Books of many an ancient Christian church-tells how he, with the other captives, sate on the banks' of the Euphrates, and shed bitter tears, as they heard the messages of their brethren in Palestine; or how he dwelt in a sumptuous house and fair gardens, with his beautiful wife Susannah, 'more honourable than all others." The feeling of sympathy with Jehoiachin extended itself, not only to the King but to his companions in exile. In a homely but expressive figure the contrast is represented to Jeremiah between the miserable dregs that were left, and the promise of those that were taken. Two baskets of figs were placed before him-the one containing figs 'good, very good, and the evil, very evil, that cannot be eaten, they are 'so evil.' 3 With the exiles there were indeed some of the choicest spirits of the nation: Ezekiel; second only to Jeremiah himself in the Prophets of this epoch; and, it may be added with some hesitation, Kish, the ancestor of Mordecai; and Daniel with his three companions." To these fellowcountrymen Jeremiah addressed his consolations in a letter," which may have first suggested the epistolary form as a model of Prophetic communications, to be afterwards adopted by the Christian Apostles. On the new commonwealth then rising up a new hope might be founded. Two generations were to pass away, and then a joyful return might be expected. It might have seemed that the mere fragment that re 1 Baruch i. 3, 4. The 'Sud' appears to be a corruption of the Arabic name for the Euphrates. 2 Susanna 1-4. See Africanus, ad Orig. (Routh, Rel. Sacr. ii. 113), who identifies Joachim with Jehoiachin. Jer. xxiv. 3. Esther ii. 5, 6. 3 In Dan. i. 1, Daniel's captivity is assigned to Jehoiakim, in part confirmed by 2 Chr. xxxvi. 7. Josephus (Ant. x. 6, §3) refers Ezekiel to this period, and (Ant. x. 10, §1) Daniel to Zedekiah's exile. Jer. xxix. 1-14. 6 B. C. 598-587. mained in Palestine was hardly worth preserving. But so long as the Holy City and the Temple stood, so long as the torch of David's house was not utterly extinguished, there was still the chance that, even under the shelter of Babylon, the essential conditions of the True Religion might be maintained. One son of Josiah was still left, Mattaniah, the Zedekiah. father of Jehoahaz, and uncle of the late King Jehoiachin.' As the last notes of Jeremiah's dirge over Jehoiachin died away, he had burst forth into one of those strains of hope, in which he represented the future Ruler of Israel as the Righteousness or Justice of Jehovah.' It may be that, in allusion to this, the new King assumed that name, Zedek-Jah, on his accession to the throne. He was a mere youth, but not without noble feelings, which, in a less critical moment, might have saved the state. Like some of his predecessors he endeavoured, by a solemn sacrificial league with his people, to secure a reformation which ordinary motives would have failed to obtain. In this instance he acted apparently under the high moral teaching of Jeremiah. As in the old patriarchal times, a calf was killed and cut in two; and between the divided parts the nobles, the court, and the Priesthood of Judah passed, to pledge themselves to the abolition of at least one long-standing grievance, and to cause a general emancipation of the Jews and Jewesses who, by neglect of the Mosaic ordinances, had become slaves.3 In foreign matters also the policy of Jeremiah for a time prevailed. The King sent an embassy to Babylon by two of the nobles who had most heartily befriended the Prophet, and at last, accompanied by a 5 third of the same group, himself made the journey, and there took a solemn oath of allegiance to Nebuchadnezzar, sworn by the sacred name of In 2 Chr. xxxvi. 10, he is the brother of Jehoiachin. Comp. 1 Chr. iii. 16. 2 Jer. xxiii. 5-7. Jer. xxxiv. 8, 9, 19; comp. Gen. xv. 10, 17. Elasah and Gemariah, Jer. xxix. 3. Elohim, which both Israelite and Babylonian alike acknowLast ledged. In defiance of this oath, and, as would appear, imstruggle of Jeremiah. mediately after he had made it, Zedekiah put himself at the head of a league of the neighbouring kings against the Chaldæan power. It is characteristic of the high standard of Prophetic morality, that the violation of this oath, though made to a heathen sovereign, was regarded as the crowning vice of the weak King of Judah. Shall he prosper? Shall ' he escape that doeth such things? Shall he break the ' covenant? In the place where the king dwelleth that 'made him king, whose oath he despised, and whose cove'nant he despised, with him in the midst of Babylon shall he die.' In the midst of wild hopes and dark intrigues, excited by the revolt, Jeremiah appeared once more in the streets of Jerusalem, with a wooden collar round his neck, such as those by which the chains of prisoners were fastened, -a living personification of the coming captivity. In this strange guise he went round to the ambassadors from Phonicia and the trans-Jordanic nations, to the King himself, and finally to the Priests in the Temple. He was treated alternately as a traitor and a madman.3 Louder and louder round him rose the cry of the Prophets on all sides, in behalf of a determined resistance to the national enemy. At the head of this Prophetic band was Hananiah, from the priestly city of Gibeon, and therefore probably, like Jeremiah, a Priest. The two Prophets stood confronted in the Temple court. On the one side was the watchword, 4 5 2 Ye ⚫ shall not serve the King of Babylon;' on the other side, Serve the King of Babylon and live.' The controversy between them, taking its form from the scene and the audience, turned, as often happens, not on the main principles at issue, but on the comparatively trivial question of the 1 Ezek. xvii. 14, 18, xv. 8, xxi. 25. 2 Jer xxvii. 1-22. Joseph. Ant. x. 7, §4. Jer. xxvii. 9, 14. 5 Ibid. xxviii. 1-17. sacred vessels of the Temple; Hananiah maintaining that those which were already gone would, in two years, entirely return; Jeremiah, with the sadder and larger view, maintaining that to recall the past was impossible, and that the last hope now was to do the best for the retention of those that remained to them—not, however, without a pathetic wish that his rival's more hopeful prediction might be fulfilled. For the moment, Hananiah seemed to triumph in the superior confidence of his cause. He tore the wooden collar from Jeremiah's neck, and snapped it asunder, as a sign that in two years the deliverance would come. In this conflict of mixed emotions, Jeremiah left the Temple courts, never to return to them. Only to Hananiah he appeared, with the dark warning that, for the broken yoke of wood he had, by his false encouragements, forged a still harder yoke of iron, and that within that year he himself should die.' He died, in fact, within two months from the time, Death of and in him passed away the last echo of the ancient invincible strain of the age of Isaiah. Han aniah. invasion. The controversy respecting the sacred vessels seems to Chaldæan have been solved by the King's ordering a silver set to be made instead of the golden service which had been lost." But the intended revolt still continued, and in direct violation of the treaty with Babylon, the King formed an alliance with Egypt, against which Jeremiah in Jerusalem, and Ezekiel from the far East, protested in vain. The Chaldæan forces poured into the country. With bitter sighs, with melting hearts, with feeble hands, with fainting spirits, with failing knees, the dreadful tidings were announced. A sword, furbished, and sharpened, and glittering, seemed to leap from 6 the Divine scabbard, like that which in the siege of Titus was believed to flame across the heavens. There was a doubt 1 Jer. xxvii. 16-22, xxviii. 2, 3. 2 Ibid. xxviii. 12-17. Baruch i. 8. II. N N Joseph. Ant. x. 7, §1. • Ibid. 9-11. |