Part 18 (2/2)
3. The Siege. (XXI, x.x.xII-x.x.xIV, x.x.xVII, x.x.xVIII.)
History has no harder test for the character and doctrine of a great teacher than the siege of his city. Instances beyond the Bible are those of Archimedes in the siege of Syracuse, 212 B.C., Pope Innocent the First in that of Rome by Alaric, 417 A.D., and John Knox in that of St. Andrews by the French, 1547. A siege brings the prophet's feet as low as the feet of the crowd. He shares the dangers, the duties of defence, the last crusts. His hunger, and, what is still keener, his pity for those who suffer it with him, may break his faith into cowardice and superst.i.tion.
But if faith stands, and common-sense with it, his opportunities are high.
His powers of spiritual vision may prove to be also those of political and even of military foresight, and either inspire the besieged to a victorious resistance, or compel himself, alone in a cityful of fanatics, to counsel surrender. A siege can turn a prophet or quiet thinker into a hero.
The Old Testament gives us three instances-Elisha's brave visions during the Syrian blockade of Dothan and siege of Samaria; Isaiah, upon the solitary strength of his faith, carrying Jerusalem inviolate through her siege by the a.s.syrians; and now a century later Jeremiah, with a more costly courage, counselling her surrender to the Babylonians.
The records of the Prophet's activity and sufferings during the siege are so curiously scattered through the Book and furnished with such headlines as to leave it clear that they were added at different times and possibly from different sources. Some of them raise the question whether or not they are doublets.
Three, XXI. 1-10, x.x.xIV. 1-7, x.x.xVII. 3-10, bear p.r.o.nouncements by Jeremiah that the city must surrender or be stormed and burned. Of these the first and third each gives as the occasion of the p.r.o.nouncement it quotes, ?edekiah's mission of two men to the Prophet. Several critics regard these missions as identical. But can we doubt that during that crisis of two years the distracted king would send more than once for a Divine word? And for this what moments were so natural as when the Chaldeans were beginning the siege, XXI. 4, and when they raised it, x.x.xVII. 5? That one of the two messengers is on each occasion the same affords an inadequate reason-and no other exists-for arguing that both pa.s.sages are but differently telling the same story.(569) Nor have any grounds been offered for identifying the occasion of either pa.s.sage with that of x.x.xIV. 1-7. Thus we have three separate deliverances from Jeremiah to the king, each with its own vivid phrases and distinctive edge.
The first, XXI 1-10, was given as the Chaldeans closed upon Jerusalem but the Jews were not yet driven within the walls.(570) ?edekiah sent Pash?ur and ?ephaniah to inquire if by a miracle the Lord would raise the siege.
The grim answer came that the Lord Himself would fight the besieged, till they died of pestilence and the survivors were slaughtered by Nebuchadrezzar-_I_(_571_)_ shall not spare nor pity them_-which is proof that this Oracle was uttered before the end of the siege, when the survivors were not slain but deported. The people are advised to desert to the enemy-counsel which we shall consider later.
The second, x.x.xIV. 1-7, records a p.r.o.nouncement unsought by the king but evoked from Jeremiah by the progress of the Chaldean arms, which had overrun all Judah save the fortresses of Jerusalem, Lachish and Azekah.
Its vivid genuineness is further certified by its unfulfilled promise of a peaceful death for ?edekiah. The following is mainly after the Greek.
x.x.xIV. 2_b_. Thus saith the Lord: This city shall certainly be given into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall take it and burn it with fire. 3. And thou shalt not escape but surely be taken and delivered into his hand; and thine eyes shall look into his eyes, and his mouth speak with thy mouth,(572) and to Babylon shalt thou come. 4. Yet hear the Lord's Word, O ?edekiah, king of Judah! 5. Thus saith the Lord,(573) In peace shalt thou die, and as the burnings(574) for thy fathers who reigned before thee so shall they burn for thee, and with ”Ah lord!” lament thee. I have spoken the Word-Rede of the Lord.
The miserable king, how much worse was in store for him than even Jeremiah was given to foresee! Duhm (to our surprise, as Cornill remarks) agrees that the pa.s.sage is from Baruch; but only in order to support the precarious thesis that Baruch knew nothing of ?edekiah's being afterwards blinded and that the reports of this(575) sprang from unfounded rumour.
The third p.r.o.nouncement to ?edekiah, x.x.xVII. 3-10,(576) was made when the king sent Jehucal and ?ephaniah to seek the Prophet's prayers, after the Chaldeans had raised the siege in order to meet the reported Egyptian advance to the relief of Jerusalem.
x.x.xVII. 7. Thus saith the Lord: Thus say ye to the king of Judah who sent you to inquire of Me,(577) Behold, Pharaoh's army, which is coming forth to help you, shall return to the land of Egypt. 8.
And the Chaldeans shall come back and fight against this city and take it and burn it with fire. 9. For(578) thus saith the Lord: Deceive not yourselves saying, The Chaldeans shall surely go off from us; they shall not go. 10. Even though ye smote the whole host of the Chaldeans that are fighting with you, and but wounded men were left, yet should these rise, each in his tent,(579) and burn this city with fire.
It is very remarkable how the spiritual powers of the Prophet endowed him with these sound views of the facts of his time, and of their eventualities whether in the political or in the military sphere. For nearly forty years he had foretold judgment on his people out of the North: for eighteen at least he had been sure that its instrument would be Nebuchadrezzar and he had foreseen the first deportation of the Jews to Babylonia. Now step by step through the siege he is clear as to what must happen-clear that the Chaldeans will invest the city, clear when they raise the investment that they will beat off the Egyptian army of relief and return, clear that resistance to them is hopeless, and will but add thousands of deaths by famine and pestilence before the city is taken and burned and its survivors carried into exile-all of which comes to pa.s.s.
But this political sagacity and military foresight have their source in moral and spiritual convictions-the Prophet's a.s.surance of the character and will of G.o.d, his faith in the Divine Government not of a single nation but of all the powers of the world, and his belief that a people is saved and will endure for the service of mankind, neither because of past privileges nor by the traditions in which it trusts, nor by adherence to dogmas however vital these have been to its fathers, nor even by its pa.s.sionate patriotism and its stubborn gallantry in defence of land and homes, but only by its justice, its purity, and its obedience to G.o.d's will. These are the spiritual convictions which alone keep the Prophet's eyes open and his heart steadfast through the fluctuations of policy and of military fortune that shake his world, and under the agony of appearing to be a traitor to his country and of preaching the doom of a people whom he loves with all his soul.
The case of John Knox affords a parallel to that of the Hebrew prophet. He told the garrison and citizens of St. Andrews, when besieged by the French, that ”their corrupt life could not escape punishment of G.o.d and that was his continued advertis.e.m.e.nt from the time he was called to preach” among them. ”When they triumphed of their victory (the first twenty days they had many prosperous chances) he lamented and ever said 'They saw not what he saw!' When they bragged of the force and thickness of their walls, he said, 'They should be but egg-sh.e.l.ls!' When they vaunted 'England will rescue us!' he said, 'Ye shall not see them, but ye shall be delivered into your enemies' hands and shall be carried to a strange country!' ” that is France. All of which came to pa.s.s, as with Jeremiah's main predictions.(580)
The second of Jeremiah's p.r.o.nouncements given above is followed by the story of the besieged's despicable treatment of their slaves, x.x.xIV. 8-22; based on a memoir by Baruch, but expanded. Both the Hebrew and the shorter Greek offer in parts an uncertain text, and add this problem that their story begins with a covenant to _proclaim a Liberty_(581) for the Hebrew slaves in general, while the words which they attribute to Jeremiah limit it to the emanc.i.p.ation, in terms of a particular law, of those slaves who had completed six years of service (verse 14).(582) But neither this nor the other and smaller uncertainties touch the substance of the story.(583) As the siege began the king and other masters of slaves in Jerusalem entered into solemn covenant to free their Hebrew slaves, obviously in order to propitiate their G.o.d, and also some would a.s.sert (though unsupported by the text) in order to increase their fighting ranks; but when the siege was raised they forced their freedmen back to bondage: ”a deathbed repentance with the usual sequel on recovery.”(584) This is the barest exposure among many we have of the character of the people with whom Jeremiah had to deal, and justifies the hardest he has said of their shamelessness.
x.x.xIV. 17. Therefore thus saith the Lord: Ye have not obeyed Me by proclaiming a Liberty each for his countryman. Behold I am about to proclaim for you a Liberty-to the sword, to the famine and to the pestilence, and I will set you a consternation to all kingdoms of the earth.... 21. And ?edekiah, king of Judah, and his princes will I give into the hands of their foes, the king of Babylon's host that are gone up from you. 22. Behold, I am about to command-Rede of the Lord-and bring them back to this city and they shall storm and take it and burn it with fire, and the towns.h.i.+ps of Judah will I make desolate and tenantless.
Are we not in danger of the guilt of a similar perjury to the men who fought for us in the Great War, and for whom we have not yet fulfilled all the promises made to them by our governors?
About this time the ill-treatment of Jeremiah, which had ceased on ?edekiah's accession, was resumed. The narrative, or succession of narratives, of this begins at x.x.xVII. 11, and continues to x.x.xIX. 14, with interruptions in x.x.xIX. 1, 2, 4-13. Save for a few expansions, the whole must have been taken from Baruch's memoirs. Except for the omission of x.x.xIX. 4-13, the differences of the Greek from the Hebrew are unimportant, consisting in the usual absence of repet.i.tions of t.i.tles, epithets and names.
The siege being raised, Jeremiah was going out by the North gate of the city to Anathoth to claim or to manage(585) some property there, when he was arrested by the captain of the watch, and charged with deserting. He denied this, but was taken to the princes, who flogged him and flung him into a vault in the house of Jonathan, the Secretary. After many days he was sent for by the king who asked, _Is there Word from the Lord?_ _There is_, he replied, and, as if drumming a lesson into a stupid child's head, repeated his message, _Thou shalt be delivered into the hand of the King of Babylon_. He asked what he had done to be treated as he had been, and, by contrast, where were the prophets who had said that the Babylonians would not come to Judah-his irony was not yet starved out of him!-and begged not to be sent back to the vault. The king committed him to the Court of the Guard, where at least he was above ground, could receive visitors, and was granted daily a loaf from the Bakers' Bazaar while bread lasted in the city.(586)
Yet through his bars he still defied his foes and they were at him again, quoting to the king two Oracles which he had uttered before and apparently was repeating to those who resorted to him in the Guard-Court.
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