Thammuz; and in the subterranean chambers might be seen seventy elders throwing up their clouds of incense before the monstrous shapes of Egyptian idolatry; or, in the sacred space in front of the Temple, another band, prostrate before the rising sun. They could not believe that the end was near. They still looked forward, with that passion for architecture which seems to have possessed this last period of the monarchy, to building new houses, and to enjoying new luxuries. One of these chiefs dropped dead, it may be, from famine or fever, in the very moment of his selfish exultation.2 But the end was now indeed near. An evil, an only evil, behold it is come.' 'An end is come, the end is come: it watcheth for thee; behold, it is come. The dawn of the ' dreadful day is come: the time is come; the day of trouble is near; not now the mere echo of the mountains. 6 The day is come; the dawn is past; the time is come; the day 'draweth near.' So with a reiteration which recalls the like cry of the Apocalyptic seer at Patmos, the Prophet saw the gradual approach of the catastrophe. 5 assault. It was at midnight, on the ninth day of the fourth month The answering to July - still kept as a fast by the Jewish nation, that the breach was made in the walls. By that time the famine had so exhausted the inhabitants, that there was no further power of resistance. The entrance was effected by the northern gate. Through the darkness of the night, lit up, if at all, only by the nine days' moon, the Chaldæan guards silently made their way from street to street, till they suddenly appeared in the centre of the Temple court, in the middle gateway which opened directly on the great brazen altar. Never before had such a spectacle been seen in the inviolable sanctuary of Jerusalem. The number, the Ezek. viii. 8, 11, 14, 16, xi. 1–4. 2 Ibid. xi. 13. Ibid. vii. 2-12. Josephus, Ant. x. 8, §2. Round them were the Was B.C. 587. titles, of the chiefs who took the chief places were all recorded. They were six. Two of them bore a name famous in the Babylonian annals-Nergal-Sharezer, or Neriglissar; two were known only by their official designation—the Chief of the Eunuchs and the Chief of the Magicians; the other two were Samgar-nebo and Sarsechim.' These sate like kings in the lofty archway. lesser princes of the Chaldæan court. By their side stood, or seemed to stand, one clothed in a long white linen robe, with the inkhorn of an Eastern scribe in his girdle. it the invisible messenger thus made visible for a moment in the Prophetic vision? or was it the Royal Recorder, always attendant on the great King, and thus used as a symbol of the Recording and Protecting Angel? Then the sleeping city woke. It might well seem as if from the desecrated Temple was heard the rushing wings of the departing 3 cherubs, as if Jehovah had indeed cast off the altar, round which these savage warriors stood, the sanctuary, which they had made their own. A clang and cry resounded through the silent precincts at that dead hour of night, as if with the tumult of the great festivals. The first victims were those who, whether from religious or superstitious feelings and duties, were habitual occupants of the sacred buildings; the princes who there pursued their idolatrous rites; the Prophets who crowded there in the vain hope that the Temple was impregnable; the young Levites and Priests who were bound to defend the sacred shrine with their 5 swords and lives. The virgin marble of the courts ran red with blood, like a rocky winepress in the vintage. 6 The alarm soon spread to the palace. In the 'twilight of the early summer dawn, these dreadful scenes were dimly discerned from the palace below; and before the sun had risen, the King, with his wives and children, and the royal guard, The flight of escaped, not by any of the regular gates, but by a pas- Zedekiah. sage broken through a narrow alley, confined between two 2 4 3 walls, at the south-eastern corner of the city, which the Chaldæan army had not been able completely to invest. They passed out with their heads muffled, either for disguise, or to express their sense of the greatness of the calamity, and bearing on their shoulders such articles of value as they hoped to save. As in the case of David, the object of the King was to escape to the east of the Jordan. He and his companions descended, unobserved, by the royal gardens, and down the steep descent to Jericho. There he was overtaken by the Chaldæan soldiers, who had received intelligence of his flight from deserters; and in that wide plain, the scene of the first triumph of Joshua, was fought the last fight of the expiring monarchy. His troops fled, and were scattered to the winds. 'Swifter than the eagles ' of heaven they pursued' the fugitives down the moun'tains' of the pass of Adummim, 'and laid wait for him ' in the wilderness' of the Jordan valley. In him and his royal house the spirit of David held out to the last, and when he was ensnared, like a lion in the hunter's net, the weakness of his character was forgotten in the greatness of his fall, and a long sigh was heaved in remembrance of the opportunity that had still been open to him. 'The breath ' of our nostrils, the 9 Anointed of the Lord, is taken in their 'pits, of whom we said, Under his shadow we shall live 1 Ezek. xii. 6, 12. 2 Jer. xxxix. 4; Kings xxv. 4; Jo seph. Ant. x. 8, §2. Ezek. xii. 6, 12. 4 See Lecture XXIV. Joseph. Ant. x. 8, §2. 7 6 Joseph. Ibid.; Jer. lii. 8; Ezek. xii. 14. Lam. iv. 19. Ezek. xii. 13, xvii. 20. Lam. iv. 20. B. C. 587. among the heathen.' He and his family were carried off in chains to Riblah, where Nebuchadnezzar was encamped awaiting the double result of the sieges of Jerusalem and of Tyre. Even at this final moment it was the vengeance of his broken oath that pursued the unfortunate Prince, alike from the exiled 2 Prophet and from the conquering King. The exile of A solemn judgment was pronounced upon him. His Zedekiah. courtiers and his sons were executed in his sight; and then, according to the barbarous usage of the East, his eyes were put out, and he was taken to Babylon, where, according to later traditions, he worked like a slave in a mill-a fate the more tragical, because contrasted with the comparative ease of his nephew Jehoiachin. The singularity of his fate is made by Josephus the chief argument for the predictive power of the ancient Prophets, as reconciling, in this unexpected manner, the apparent discrepancy between Jeremiah and Ezekiel.3 The destruction It was not till There was a long suspense at Jerusalem. of the city. nearly a month had elapsed, the tenth day of the fifth month, a day again memorable in Jewish annals, as a 'day ' of misery,' when the siege of Titus closed in like manner— a day tragical as the 10th of August in European historythat Nebuzaradan, captain of the royal guard, came with orders from Nebuchadnezzar to put the finishing stroke to the work of destruction. The Temple, the palace, the houses of the nobles, were deliberately set on fire. The very bones and framework of Jerusalem appeared to be wrapped in flames. The walls and gates seemed to lament and cry, as they sunk into the earth. The sepulchres, even the consecrated catacombs of the Kings, were opened, and the bodies thrown out to the vultures and beasts of prey, which flocked to their frightful feast outside the walls.* Jackals wandered 1 Joseph. Ant. x. 8, §2. 2 Ezek. xvii. 20. Joseph. Ant. x. 8, §2, 3. 4 Jer. viii. 1; Ps. lxxix. 2, 3. even over the sacred 1 hill of Zion. Some of the princes were hung up by their hands on the Temple walls; others were carried off to execution at Riblah, including the two Chief Priests and other great officers of the court and camp that were found in the city. The havoc and carnage in the streets was such that passers-by avoided every one they met, lest they should be 3 defiled by their bloody touch. Age and youth, men and women, alike fell victims to the passion or cruelty of the conqueror. The spoils of the Temple, those sacred vessels whose fate had been so furiously contested by the Prophets of the contending factions, were swept away to adorn the temples or tables of the Babylonian court; and there is a pathetic earnestness in the tone of the historian, as he tells how even the brazen laver, even those two beautiful pillars, which had remained uninjured through so many devastations, which had seemed the pledges of durability and stability, at last, with all their prized and delicate ornaments, were broken to pieces, and carried off as mere fragments of 5 metal to Babylon, never to return. In the remains of the population of the Samaritan kingdom it is affecting to see that all sense of ancient rivalry was lost in the grief of the common calamity. Pilgrims from the ancient capitals of Ephraim, Samaria, Shechem, and Shiloh came flocking with shorn beards, gashed faces, torn clothes, and loud wailings, to offer incense on the ruined Temple, which was not their own.6 But in the neighbouring heathen tribes there was a savage exultation-more bitter to the heart of Judah than the calamity itself-in the thought that the Divine Inheritance had now passed into their hands. There was the fierce Ammonite clapping his hands and stamping with his feet, and the cold-blooded Moabite calmly reviewing the descent of the 1 Lam. v. 18. 22 Kings xxv. 18-20. Lam. iv. 14, 15. ♦ Ibid. v. 11-13; 2 Chr. xxxvi. 17. 2 Kings xxv. 16, 17. • Jer. xli. 5. Ps. lxxix. 1. |