Part 11 (1/2)
Yet so great a discovery, so full a volume of truth poured forth in a style so original and compelling, cannot have left unmoved a young prophet of the conscience and heart of Jeremiah.(269) That he was in sympathy with the temper and the general truths of Deuteronomy we need not doubt. As for its ethics, its authors were of the same school as himself and among their teachers they had the same favourite, Hosea. In his earliest Oracles Jeremiah had expressed the same view as theirs of G.o.d's constant and clear guidance of Israel and of the nation's obstinacy in relapsing from this.
His heart, too, must have hailed the Book's august enforcement of that abolition of the high places and their pagan ritual, which he had ventured to urge from his obscure position in Anathoth. Nor did he ever throughout his ministry protest against the subst.i.tute which the Book prescribed for those-the concentration of the national wors.h.i.+p upon a single sanctuary.
On the contrary in a later Oracle he looks for the day when that shall be observed by all Israel and the watchmen on Mount Ephraim shall cry,
Rise, let us up to ?ion, To the Lord our G.o.d!(270)
On the other hand, the emphasis which Deuteronomy equally lays upon ethics and upon ritual, and its absolute doctrines of morality and Providence were bound to provoke questions in a mind so restlessly questioning as his. Then there was the movement of reform which followed upon the appeal of the Book to the whole nation. Jeremiah himself had called for a national repentance and here, in the people's acceptance of the Covenant and consent to the reforms it demanded, were the signs of such a repentance. No opposition appears to have been offered to those reforms.
The King who led them was sincere; a better monarch Judah never knew, and his reign was signalised by Jeremiah at its close as a reign of justice when _all was well_. Yet can we doubt that the Prophet, who had already preached so rigorous a repentance and had heard himself appointed by G.o.d as the tester of His people, would use that detached position jealously to watch the progress of the reforms which the nation had so hurriedly acclaimed and to test their moral value?
In modern opinion of Jeremiah's att.i.tude to the discovered Law-Book there are two extremes. One is of those who regard him as a legalist and throughout his career the strenuous advocate of the Book and the system it enforced. The other is of those who maintain that he had no sympathy with legal systems or official reforms, and that the pa.s.sages in the Book of Jeremiah which allege his a.s.sent to, and his proclamation of, the Deuteronomic Covenant, or represent him as using the language of Deuteronomy, are not worthy of credit.(271) Of these extremes we may say at once that if with both we neglect the twofold character of Deuteronomy-its emphasis now on ethics and now on ritual-and again, if with both we a.s.sume that Jeremiah's att.i.tude to the Law-Book and to the reforms it inspired never changed, then the evidences for that att.i.tude offered by the Book of Jeremiah are inconsistent and we may despair of a conclusion. But a more reasonable course is open to us. If we keep in mind the two faces of Deuteronomy as well as the doubtful progress for many years of the reforms started by it, and if we also remember that a prophet like all the works of G.o.d was subject to growth; if we allow to Jeremiah the same freedom to change his purpose in face of fresh developments of his people's character as in the Parable of the Potter he imputes to his G.o.d; if we recall how in 604 the new events in the history of Western Asia led him to adapt his earlier Oracles on the Scythians to the Chaldeans who had succeeded the Scythians as the expected Doom from the North-then our way through the evidence becomes tolerably clear, except for the difficulty of dating a number of his undated Oracles. What we must not forget is the double, divergent intention and influence of Deuteronomy, and the fact that Josiah's reformation, though divinely inspired, was in its progress an experiment upon the people, whose mind and conduct beneath it Jeremiah was appointed by G.o.d to watch and to test.
These considerations prepare us _first_ for the story in Ch. XI. 1-8 of Jeremiah's fervent a.s.sent to the ethical principles of Deuteronomy and of the charge to him to proclaim these throughout Judah; and _then_ for his later att.i.tude to the written Law, to the Temple and to sacrifices.
XI. 1. The Word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying: 2.
Hear thou(272) the words of this Covenant, and speak them to the men of Judah, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. 3. And thou shalt say to them, Thus saith the Lord, the G.o.d of Israel: 4.
Cursed be the man who hears not the words of this Covenant, which I commanded your fathers in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, out of the iron-furnace, saying, Hearken to My Voice and do(273) according to all that I command you, and ye shall be to Me a people, and I will be G.o.d to you; [5] in order to establish the oath which I sware unto your fathers, to give them a land flowing with milk and honey, as at this day. 6. And I answered and said, Amen, O Lord! 7. And the Lord said unto me, Proclaim(274) these words in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, saying, [8] Hear ye the words of this Covenant and do them, but they did them not.(275)
The story has its difficulties. It is undated; it is followed by verses 9-17, apparently from the reign of Jehoiakim; what the Prophet is called to hear and gives his solemn a.s.sent to is generally described as _this Covenant_; and in verses 7 and 8 there is what may be a mere editorial addition since the Greek Version omits it, which has led some to a.s.sert the editorial character of the whole. But for the reasons given above, there is no cause to doubt the substantial truthfulness of the story, unless with Duhm we were capable of believing that Jeremiah never spoke in prose, nor can be conceived as, at any time in his life the advocate of what was a legal as well as a prophetic book. Of the first of these a.s.sertions we have already disposed;(276) the second is met by the fact that what Jeremiah was called to a.s.sent to was not a legal programme but a spiritual covenant, of which ethical obedience alone was stated as the condition. In Josiah's reign what else could _this Covenant_ mean than the Covenant set forth in the recently discovered Book of the Law and solemnly avouched by the whole people?(277) That its essence was spiritual and ethical is expressed in the Deuteronomic phrases which follow, and the quotation of these is most relevant to the occasion. Nor do the recollections, the command and the promise which they convey go beyond what Jeremiah had already enforced in his earlier Oracles.(278)
Therefore we may believe that, as recorded, Jeremiah heard in the heart of Deuteronomy the call of G.o.d, that he uttered his Amen to it; and that, from his experience of the evils of the high-places, he felt obliged, as he also records, to proclaim _this Covenant_ throughout Judah.(279)
In the same chapter as the charge to the Prophet concerning _this Covenant_ there is mention of a conspiracy against his life by the men of Anathoth, XI. 21. Some suppose that these were enraged by his support of reforms which abolished rural sanctuaries like their own. But his earlier denunciations of such shrines, delivered independently of Deuteronomy, had been enough to rouse his fellow-villagers against him as a traitor to their local interests and pieties.
Another address, VII. 1-15, said to have been delivered to all Judah, rebukes the people for their false confidence in the Temple and their abuse of it, and threatens its destruction. Editorial additions may exist in both the Hebrew and Greek texts of this address, but it contains phrases non-deuteronomic and peculiar to Jeremiah, while its echoes of Deuteronomy were natural to the occasion. Except for a formula or two, I take the address to be his own. Nor am I persuaded by the majority of modern critics that it is a mere variant of the Temple address reported in Ch. XXVI as given _in the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim_. Why may Jeremiah not have spoken more than once on the same theme to the same, or a similar effect? Moreover, the phrase _We are delivered!_ VII. 10, which does not recur in XXVI, suits the conditions before, rather than those after, the Battle of Megiddo. For parallel with the increased faith in the Temple, due mainly to the people's consciousness of their obedience to the Law-Book, was their experience of deliverance from the a.s.syrian yoke. I am inclined, therefore, to refer VII. 1-15 to the reign of Josiah, rather than with XXVI to that of Jehoiakim.(280) But, whatever be its date, VII.
1-15 is relevant to our present discussion.
VII. 2, 3. Hear ye the Word of the Lord, all Judah!(281) Thus saith the Lord, the G.o.d of Israel-Better your ways and your doings that I may leave you to dwell in this Place. 4. Put not your trust on lying words,(282) saying to yourselves,(283) ”The Temple of the Lord, The Temple of the Lord, The Temple of the Lord-[5] are those!”(284) But if ye thoroughly better your ways and your doings, if ye indeed do justice between a man and his fellow, [6]
and oppress not the sojourner, the orphan, and the widow, and shed not innocent blood [in this Place], nor go after other G.o.ds to your hurt, [7] then I shall leave you to abide in this Place [in the land which I gave to your fathers from of old for ever]. 8.
Behold, you put your trust on lying words that cannot profit. 9.
What? Steal, murder, fornicate, swear falsely, and burn(285) to Baal, and go after other G.o.ds whom ye knew not, [10] yet come and stand before Me in this House upon which My Name has been called and say ”We are delivered”-in order to work all these abominations! 11. Is it a robbers' den that My(286) House [upon which My Name has been called] has become in your eyes? I also, behold I have seen it-Rede of the Lord. 12. For go now to My Place which was in s.h.i.+loh, where at first I caused My Name to dwell, and see what I did to it because of the wickedness of My people Israel. 13. And now because of your doing of all these deeds [Rede of the Lord, though I spake unto you rising early and speaking, but ye hearkened not, and I called you, but ye did not answer],(287) [14] I shall do to the House [on which My Name has been called] in which you are trusting, and to the Place which I gave to you and to your fathers, as I did to s.h.i.+loh. 15. And I shall cast you out from before My Face as I cast out(288) your brethren, all the seed of Ephraim.
In this address there is nothing that contradicts Deuteronomy. The sacredness with which the Book had invested the One Sanctuary is acknowledged. But the people have no moral sense of that sacredness. Their confidence in the Temple is material and superst.i.tious, fostered, we may believe, by the peace they were enjoying and their relief from a foreign sovereignty, as well as by their formal observance of the inst.i.tutions which the Book prescribed. What had been founded to rally and to guide a spiritual faith they turned into a fetish and even to an ”indulgence” for their wickedness. The House, in which Isaiah had bent beneath the seraphs'
adoration of the Divine Holiness, and, confessing his own and his people's sin, had received from its altar the sacrament of pardon and of cleansing, was by this generation not only debased to a mere pledge of their political security but debauched into a shelter for sins as gross as ever polluted their wors.h.i.+p upon the high places. So ready, as in all other ages, were formality and vice to conspire with each other! Jeremiah scorns the people's _trust_ in the Temple as utterly as he had scorned their _trust_ (it is the same word) in the Baals or in Egypt and a.s.syria. The change in the pivot of their false confidence is to be marked. So much at least had Deuteronomy effected-s.h.i.+fting their trust from foreign G.o.ds and states to something founded by their own G.o.d, yet leaving it material, and unable to restrain them from bringing along with it their old obdurate vices.
Whether, then, this address was delivered in Josiah's reign or early in Jehoiakim's it affords no reason for our denying it to Jeremiah. As G.o.d's tester of the people he has been watching their response to the Revelation they had accepted, and has proved that their obedience was to the letter of this and not to its spirit, that while they superst.i.tiously revered its inst.i.tutions they shamelessly ignored its ethics. For just such vices as they still practised G.o.d Himself must take vengeance. As those had deranged the very seasons and were leading to the overthrow of the state,(289) no one could hope that the Temple would escape their consequences. And there was that precedent of the destruction of Israel's first sanctuary in s.h.i.+loh, the ruins of which, as we have seen, lay not far from Jeremiah's home at Anathoth.(290)
Another Oracle, XI. 15, 16, also undated, seems, like the last pa.s.sage, best explained as delivered by Jeremiah while he watched during the close of Josiah's reign the hardening of the people's trust in their religious inst.i.tutions and felt its futility; or alternatively when that futility was exposed by the defeat at Megiddo. It has, however, been woven by some hand or other into a pa.s.sage reflecting the revival of the Baal-wors.h.i.+p under Jehoiakim (verse 17; its connection with the prose sentence preceding is also doubtful). Copyists have wrought havoc with the Hebrew text, but as the marginal note of our Revisers indicates, the sense may be restored from the Greek. _My Beloved_ is, of course, Israel.
What has My Beloved to do in My house, XI. 15 Working out mischief?
Vows, holy fles.h.!.+ Can such things turn Calamity from thee; Or by these thou escape?(291) Flouris.h.i.+ng olive, fair with fruit, 16 G.o.d called thy name.