Jeremiah : Being The Baird Lecture for 1922 Part 19

x.x.xVIII. 1. And Shephatiah, Mattan's son, Gedaliah Pash?ur's son, Jucal Shelamiah's son, and Pash?ur Malchiah's son,(587) heard the words Jeremiah was speaking about the people:(588) [2] "Thus saith the Lord, He that abides in this city shall die by the sword, the famine or the pestilence, but he that goes forth to the Chaldeans shall live-his life shall be to him for a prey but he shall live."(589) 3. "Thus(590) saith the Lord: This city shall surely be given into the hand of the king of Babylon's host and they shall take it."

Verse 2 is rejected by Duhm and Cornill partly on the insufficient ground that verses 2 and 3 have separate introductions and therefore could have had originally no connection. But in quoting two utterances of the Prophet for their c.u.mulative effect it was natural to prefix to each his usual formula. Duhm's and Cornill's real motive, however, is their repugnance to admitting that Jeremiah could have advised desertion from the city. So Duhm equally rejects XXI. 9, of which x.x.xVIII. 2 is but an abbreviation; while Cornill seeks to save XXI. 9 by reading it as a summons to the _whole_ people to surrender and so distinguishes it from x.x.xVIII. 2, advice _to individuals_ to desert. I fail to follow this distinction. The terms used are as individual in the one verse as in the other; if the one goes the other must also. But need either go? Duhm's view is that both are from a later period, when there was no longer a native government in Judah, reverence for the monarchy was dead, and the common conscience of Jewry was not civic but ecclesiastical! This is ingenious, but far from convincing. There are no grounds either for denying these verses to Jeremiah, or for reading his advice _to go forth to the Chaldeans_ as meant otherwise than for the individual citizens.

Was such advice right or wrong? The question is much debated. The two German scholars just quoted find it so wrong that they cannot think of it as Jeremiah's. But in that situation and under the convictions which held him, the Prophet could not have spoken differently. He knew, and soundly knew, not only that the city was doomed and that her rulers who persisted in defending her were senseless, if gallant, fanatics, but also that they had forfeited their technical legitimacy. To talk to-day of duty, civil or military, to such a perjured Government does not even deserve to be called const.i.tutional pedantry, for it has not a splinter of const.i.tutionalism to support it. ?edekiah held his va.s.sal throne only by his oath to his suzerain of Babylon and when he broke that oath his legitimacy crumbled.(591) Of right Divine or human there was none in a government so forsworn and self-disent.i.tled, besides being so insane, as that of the feeble king and his frantic masters, the princes. For Jeremiah the only Divine right was Nebuchadrezzar's. But to the conviction that ?edekiah and the princes were not the lawful lords of Judah, we must add the pity of the Prophet as he foresaw the men, women and children of his people done to useless death by the cruel illusions of their illegitimate governors.

Calvin is right, when, after a careful reservation of the duties of private citizens to their government at war, he p.r.o.nounces that "Jeremiah could not have brought better counsel" to the civilians and soldiers of Jerusalem.(592) And it is no paradox to say that the Prophet's sincerity in giving such advice is sealed by his heroic refusal to accept it for himself and resolution to share to the end what sufferings the obstinacy of her lords was to bring on the city. Nor, be it observed, did he bribe his fellow citizens to desert to the enemy by any rich promise. He plainly told them that this would leave a man nothing but bare life-_his life for a prey_.

It would, however, be most irrelevant to deduce from so peculiar a situation, and from the Divine counsels applicable to this alone, any sanction for "pacificism" in general, or to set up Jeremiah as an example of the duty of deserting one's government when at war, in all circ.u.mstances and whatever were the issues at stake. We might as well affirm that the example of the man, who rouses his family to flee when he finds their home hopelessly on fire, is valid for him whose house is threatened by burglars. Isaiah inspired resistance to the a.s.syrian besiegers of Jerusalem in his day with as Divine authority as Jeremiah denounced resistance to the Chaldean besiegers in his. Nor can we doubt that our Prophet would have appreciated the just, the inevitable revolt of the Maccabees against their pagan tyrants, which is divinely praised in the Epistle to the Hebrews as a high example of faith. It is one thing to deny allegiance, as Jeremiah did, to a government that had broken the oath on which alone its rights were founded, and the keeping of which was the sole security for "the stability of the times." It is another and very different thing to refuse, on alleged grounds of conscience, to follow one's government when it lifts the sword against a people who have broken _their_ oath, and mobilises its subjects in defence of justice and of the freedom of weaker nations, imperilled by that perjury.

But the princes seem to have honestly believed that Jeremiah was guilty of treason, and said to the king-

x.x.xVIII. 4. Let this man, we pray, be put to death forasmuch as he weakens the hands of the men of war left to the city and the hands of all the people by speaking such words to them, for this man is seeking not the welfare of this people but the hurt. 5. And the king said, Behold he is in your hand; for the king was not able to do anything against them.(593) 6. So they took Jeremiah and cast him into the cistern of Malchiah the king's son, in the Court of the Guard; and they let down Jeremiah with cords. In the cistern there was no water, only mire, and Jeremiah sank in the mire.

The story which follows is one of the fairest in the Old Testament, x.x.xVIII. 7-13.(594) When no others seem to have stirred to rescue the Prophet-unless Baruch had a hand in what he tells and is characteristically silent about it-Ebed-melech, a negro eunuch of the palace, sought the king where he then was(595) and charged the princes with starving Jeremiah to death.(596) The king at once ordered him to take three(597) men and rescue the Prophet. The thoughtful negro, perhaps prompted by the women of the palace, procured some rags and old clouts from a lumber room, told Jeremiah to put them under his arm-pits to soften the roughness of the ropes, and so drew him gently from the mire and he was restored to the Guard-Court. Ebed-melech had his reward in the Lord's promise to save him from the men whom he had made his foes by his brave rescue of their prey.(598)

Once more, as we might expect, the restless king sent for Jeremiah.(599) Shaken by his terrible experiences the Prophet, before he would answer, asked if the king would put him to death for his answer or act on his advice. The king swore not to hand him over to the princes; so Jeremiah promised that if ?edekiah would give himself up to the Chaldeans he and his house would be spared and the city saved. The king-it is another credible trait in this weak character-feared that the Chaldeans would deliver him to the mockery of those Jews who had already deserted to them.

Jeremiah sought to rea.s.sure him, again urged him to surrender, and then burst out with the vision-an extraordinarily interesting phase of prophetic ecstasy-of another mockery which the king would suffer from his own women if he did not yield but waited to be taken captive.

x.x.xVIII. 21. But if thou refuse to go forth this is the thing the Lord has given me to see: 22. Behold all the women, that are left in the king of Judah's house,(600) brought forth to the princes of the king of Babylon and saying,

They set thee on and compelled thee, The men of thy peace; Now they have plunged thy feet in the swam They turn back from thee!(601)

The verse is in Jeremiah's favourite measure, and its figures spring immediately from his experience. The mire can hardly have dried on him, into which he had been dropped, but at least his friends had pulled him out of it; the king had been forced into far deeper mire by his own counsellors, and they were leaving him in it!

The nervous king jibbed from the vision without remark and begged Jeremiah not to tell what had pa.s.sed between them, but, if asked, to say that he had been supplicating ?edekiah not to send him back to the house of Jonathan; which answer the Prophet obediently gave to the inquisitive princes and so quieted them: _the matter was not perceived_. He has been blamed for prevaricating. On this point Calvin is as usual candid and sane. "It was indeed not a falsehood, but this evasion cannot wholly be excused. The Prophet had an honest fear; he was perplexed and anxious-it would be better to die at once than be thus buried alive in the earth....

Yet it was a kind of falsehood. He confesses that he did as the king charged him and there is no doubt that he had before him the king's timidity.... He cannot be wholly exempted from blame. In short, we see how even the servants of G.o.d have spoken evasively when under extreme fear."

The prophets were _men of like pa.s.sions with ourselves_. By now Jeremiah had aged, and was strained by the flogging, the darkness, the filth and the hunger he had suffered. Can we wonder at or blame him? But with what authenticity does its frankness stamp the whole story!

With most commentators I have treated Ch. x.x.xVIII as the account of a fresh arrest of Jeremiah and a fresh interview between him and ?edekiah. I see, however, that Dr. Skinner takes the whole chapter to be "a duplication."(602) He considers it a general improbability that two such interviews, as x.x.xVII. 17-21 and x.x.xVIII. 14-27 relate, "should have taken place in similar circ.u.mstances within so short a time." Yet the king was just the man to appeal to the Prophet time after time during the siege.

The similarities in the two stories are natural because circ.u.mstances were more or less similar at the various stages of such a siege; but the differences are more significant. The vivid details of x.x.xVIII attest it as the account of an event and of sayings subsequent to those related in x.x.xVII. The Prophet's precaution, before he would answer, in getting a pledge that he would not be put to death nor handed over to the princes, as he had already been, and his consent for ?edekiah's sake, as well as for his own, to prevaricate to the princes are features not found in the other reports of such interviews, but intelligible and natural after the terrible treatment he had suffered. Dr. Skinner, too, admits that the two accounts may be read as of different experiences of the Prophet, "if we can suppose that the offence with which he is charged in x.x.xVIII. 1 ff.

could have been committed while he was a prisoner in the court of the guard;" but this appears to Dr. Skinner as "hardly credible." Yet the incidents related in x.x.xII. 6-15 show not only that it is credible but that it actually happened. In the East such imprisonment does not prevent a prisoner, though shackled, from communicating with his friends and even with the gaping crowd outside his bars, as I have seen more than once.

In the Court of the Guard Jeremiah remained till the city was taken.(603) He regained communication with his friends; and it is not surprising to have as from this time several sayings by him, or to discover from them that his heart, no longer confined to reiterating the certain doom of the city, was once more released to the hope of a future for his people, hope across which the shadow of doubt appears to have fallen but once. His guard-court prophecies form part of that separate collection, Chs.

x.x.x-x.x.xIII, to which the name The Book of Hope has been fitly given. Of these chapters x.x.x and x.x.xI, without date, imply that the city has already fallen and the exile of her people is complete. But x.x.xII and x.x.xIII are a.s.signed to the last year of the siege and to the Prophet's confinement to the guard-court. There is now general agreement that x.x.xII. 1-5 (or at least 3-5) are from a later hand, which correctly dates the story it introduces but attributes Jeremiah's imprisonment to ?edekiah instead of to the princes, and even seems to confound ?edekiah with Jehoiachin; and _second_ that the story itself, of a transaction between Jeremiah and his cousin regarding some family property, is genuine, dictated by the Prophet to Baruch before or after the end of the siege. Some reject as later all the rest of the chapter: a long prayer by Jeremiah and the Lord's answer to it, both of which are full of deuteronomic phrases. Yet that an editor should have made so large an addition to the book without genuine material to work from is hardly credible; while it is characteristic of Jeremiah to have fallen into the doubt his prayer reveals, and this doubt would naturally be followed by a Divine answer. But such original elements it is not possible to discriminate exactly from the expansions by which they have been overlaid.(604)

x.x.xII. 6. And Jeremiah said, The Word of the Lord came to me saying, [7] Behold, Hanamel son of Shallum thine uncle is coming to thee to say, Buy thee my field in Anathoth, for thine is the right of redemption to buy it. 8. And Hanamel son of my uncle came to me in the guard-court and said, Buy my field that is Anathoth, for the right of inheritance is thine and thine the redemption; buy it for thyself. Then I knew that it was the Lord's Word. 9. So I bought the field from Hanamel mine uncle's son and weighed to him seventeen silver shekels. 10. And I subscribed the deed and sealed it and took witnesses, weighing the money in the balances.

11. And I took the deed of sale, both that which was sealed and that which was open,(605) [12] and I gave it to Baruch son of Neriah, son of Ma?seiah, in the sight of Hanamel mine uncle's son, and in sight of the Jews sitting in the guard-court. 13. And in their sight I charged Baruch, saying, [14] Thus saith the Lord of Hosts: Take this deed of sale which is sealed, and this deed which is open, and put them in an earthen vessel that they may last many days. 15. For thus saith the Lord, Houses and fields and vineyards shall yet again be bought in this land. 16. Now after I had given the deed of sale to Baruch, Neriah's son, I prayed to the Lord saying, Ah Lord ... (?) [24] behold the mounts; they are come to the city to take it, and the city shall be given into the hands of the Chaldeans who are fighting against it, because of the sword and the famine and the pestilence; and what Thou hast spoken is come to pa.s.s, and, lo, Thou art seeing it. 25. Yet Thou saidst to me, Buy thee the field for money, so I wrote the deed and sealed it and took witnesses-whereas the city is to be given into the hands of the Chaldeans!

The tone of the expostulating Jeremiah is here unmistakable; and (as I have said) a Divine answer to his expostulations must have been given him, though now perhaps irrecoverable from among the expansions which it has undergone, verses 26-44. Two things are of interest: the practical carefulness of this great idealist, and the fact that the material basis of his hope for his country's freedom and prosperity was his own right to a bit of property in land. Let those observe, who deny to such individual rights any communal interest or advantage. Jeremiah at least proves how a small property of his own may help a prophet in his hope for his country and people.

All this is followed in Ch. x.x.xIII by a series of oracles under the heading _The Word of the Lord came to Jeremiah a second time while he was still shut up in the guard-court_. Because verses 14-26 are lacking in the Greek and could not have been omitted by the translator had they been in the original text, and because they are composed partly of mere echoes of Jeremiah and partly of promises for the Monarchy and Priesthood not consonant with his views of the inst.i.tutions of Israel, they are very generally rejected. So are 2 and 3 because of their doubtful relevance and their style, that of the great prophet of the end of the Exile. The originality of 1 and 4-13 has also been denied. The question is difficult.

But there is no reason to doubt that the editor had good material for the data in 1, or that under the Hebrew text, which as it stands in 4, 5 is impossible(606) and throughout 6-13 has been much expanded, there is something of Jeremiah's own. Verses 4 and 5 reflect the siege in progress, though if the date in verse 1 be correct we must take _torn down_ as future. In 6-13 are promises of the restoration of the ruined city, of peace and stability, of the return of the exiles both of Judah and Israel and of their forgiveness; Jerusalem shall again be a joy, and the voices of joy, of the bridegroom and bride, and of wors.h.i.+p in the Temple, shall again be heard; shepherds and their flocks shall be restored throughout Judah and the Negeb. It would be daring to deny to the Prophet the whole of this prospect. The city was about to be ruined, its houses filled with dead; the land had already been ravaged. His office of doom was discharged; it is not unnatural to believe that his great soul broke out with a vision of the hope beyond for which he had taken so practical a pledge. That is all we can say; some of the details of the prospect can hardly be his.(607)

Jerusalem fell at last in 586 and Jeremiah's imprisonment in the guard-court was over.(608)

4. And After. (x.x.x, x.x.xI, x.x.xIX-XLIV.)

There are two separated accounts of what befel Jeremiah when the city was taken. Ch. x.x.xIX. 3, 14 tells us that he was fetched from the guard-court by Babylonian officers,(609) and given to Gedaliah, the son of his old befriender Ahikam, _to be taken home_.(610) At last!-but for only a brief interval in the life of this homeless and harried man. When a few months later Nebu?aradan arrived on his mission to burn the city and deport the inhabitants Jeremiah is said by Ch. XL to have been carried off in chains with the rest of the captivity as far as Ramah, where, probably on Gedaliah's motion, Nebu?aradan released him and he joined Gedaliah at Mi?pah.(611)

It is unfortunate that we take our impressions of Nebuchadrezzar from the late Book of Daniel instead of from the contemporary accounts of his policy by Jeremiah, Baruch and Ezekiel. A proof of his wisdom and clemency is here. While deporting a second mult.i.tude to Babylonia in the interests of peace and order, he placed Judah under a native governor and chose for the post a Jew of high family traditions and personal character. All honour to Gedaliah for accepting so difficult and dangerous a task! He attracted those Jewish captains and their bands who during the siege had maintained themselves in the country,(612) and advised them to acknowledge the Chaldean power and to cultivate their lands, which that year fortunately produced excellent crops. At last there was peace, and the like-minded Governor and Prophet must together have looked forward to organising in Judah the nucleus at least of a restored Israel.

To this quiet interval, brief as it tragically proved, we may reasonably a.s.sign those Oracles of Hope which it is possible to recognise as Jeremiah's among the series attributed to him in Chs. x.x.x, x.x.xI. No chapters of the book have been more keenly discussed or variously estimated.(613) Yet at least there is agreement that their compilation is due to a late editor who has arranged his materials progressively so that the whole is a unity;(614) that many of these materials are obviously from the end of the exile in the style then prevailing; but that among them are genuine Oracles of Jeremiah recognisable by their style. These are admitted as his by the most drastic of critics. It is indeed incredible that after such a crisis as the destruction of the Holy City and the exile of her people, and with the new situation and prospect of Israel before him, the Prophet should have had nothing to say. And the most probable date for such utterances of hope as we have now to consider is not that of his imprisonment but the breathing-s.p.a.ce given him after 586, when the Jewish community left in Judah made such a promising start.(615)

From its measure and vivid vision the first piece might well be Jeremiah's; but it uses Jacob, the later literature's favourite name for Israel, which Jeremiah does not use, and (in the last two verses) some phrases with an outlook reminiscent of the Second Isaiah. The verses describe a day when the world shall again be shaken, but out of the shaking Israel's deliverance shall come.

[The sound of trembling we hear, x.x.x. 5 Dread without peace.

Enquire now and look ye, 6 If men be bearing?

Why then do I see every man(616) With his hands on his loins?

All faces are changed, and Livid become.(617) For great is that day, 7 None is there like it, With a time of trouble for Jacob.

Yet out of it saved shall he be.

It shall come to pa.s.s on that day- 8 Rede of the Lord- I will break their(618) yoke from their(619) neck, Their(620) thongs I will burst; And strangers no more shall they serve,(621) But serve the Lord their G.o.d, 9 And David their king, Whom I will raise up for them.]

The next piece is more probably Jeremiah's, as even Duhm admits; verses 10 and 11 which precede it are not given in the Greek.

Healless to me is thy ruin, 12 Sick is thy wound, Not for thy sore is remede, 13 No closing (of wounds) for thee!

Forgot thee have all thy lovers, 14 Thee they seek not.

With the stroke of a foe I have struck thee, A cruel correction.

Why criest thou over thy ruin, 15 Thy healless pain?

For the ma.s.s of thy guilt, thy sins profuse Have I done to thee these.

If these Qinah quatrains are not Jeremiah's, some one else could match him to the letter and the very breath. They would fall fitly from his lips immediately upon the fulfilment of his people's doom. Less probably his are the verses which follow and abruptly add to his stern rehearsal of judgment on Judah the promise of her deliverance, even introducing this with a _therefore_ as if deliverance were the certain corollary of judgment-a conclusion not to be grudged by us to the faith of a later believer; for it is not untrue that the sinner's extremest need is the occasion for G.o.d's salvation.(622) Yet the sudden transition feels artificial, and lacks, be it observed, what we should expect from Jeremiah himself, a call to the doomed people to repent. Note, too, the breakdown of the metre under a certain redundancy, which is not characteristic of Jeremiah.

[Therefore thy devourers shall all be devoured, 16 And all thine oppressors.

All shall go off to captivity; Thy spoilers for spoil shall be And all that upon thee do prey, I give for prey.

For new flesh I shall bring up upon thee, 17 From thy wounds I shall heal thee;(623) Outcast they called thee, O ?ion, Whom none seeketh after.]

The rest of the chapter is even less capable of being a.s.signed to Jeremiah.

More of Jeremiah's own Oracles are readily recognised in Ch. x.x.xI. I leave to a later lecture the question of the authenticity of that on The New Covenant and of the immediately preceding verses;(624) while the verses which close the chapter are certainly not the Prophet's. But I take now the rest of the chapter, verses 1-28. The first of these may be editorial, the link by which the compiler has connected Chs. x.x.x and x.x.xI; yet there is nothing to prevent us from hearing in it Jeremiah himself.

x.x.xI. 1. At that time-Rede of the Lord-I shall be G.o.d to all the families(625) of Israel, and they shall be a people to Me.