JEREMIAH'S ROLL BURNED.

285

Meshech, and Abednego, were amongst the favoured scholars.

These events occurred in the fourth year of Jehoiakim. The king being now a vassal to the crown of Babylon, his princes carried into slavery, his dominions under tribute, and other circumstances corresponding with Jeremiah's prediction of the seventy years' captivity of Judah, have decided some of our best chronologers to date its commencement from this first capture of the city by Nebuchadnezzar.

Catherine.

Did the prophet himself so explain these

events to the king?

Mother. It does not appear that he did; but he continued his entreaties with both people and prince, to "turn every one from his evil way," and avert the wrath of heaven from their afflicted country. And when we read over the eloquent pleadings of Jeremiah, to us they seem resist. less. But the corrupt habits of the Jews were too deeply rooted to be changed. They were willing, however, to pay a price for their darling indulgences, and accordingly ap pointed a solemn fast, to deplore their calamities. The indefatigable pastor, now liberated from his prison, took advantage of another season of apparent humiliation,—and when a great concourse of persons were assembled, he sent Baruch up to the temple to read a second time pub. licly, the awful judgments which threatened their devoted land, and the merciful invitations to return to their hea. venly Father. Neither the king nor his councillors were present, but they were speedily informed of what was passing in the court of the temple: the latter were alarmed, and, summoning the orator into their chamber, respectfully listened whilst he read the roll, and then advised him to conceal himself, together with the prophet, until they should try its effect upon the monarch.

It would seem hardly possible that Jehoiakim should yet be unmoved, by what had already come to pass, and the yet more frightful aspect of the future. But so it was;hastening on his own ruin, indignation alone was excited, and the sacred roll was committed to the flames by the hands of Jehoiakim himself, and an order immediately issued for the apprehension of Jeremiah and his secretary;

286 JEHOIAKIM SLAIN-ZEDEKIAH CROWNED.

but, already concealed by their friends, they escaped from his meditated violence.

The burning of the roll was but an aggravation of Jehoiakim's guilt. To us the loss is repaired by a second copy, dictated by the prophet and written by his secretary, containing the same words, and also much additional matter. This second roll was laid up with the national archives, and is that book of Jeremiah which has been handed down to us.

Notwithstanding all these convincing evidences of his impending fate, the king of Judah continued to harden himself in iniquity, and in three years provoked Nebuchadnezzar to send another army against Judea, which harassed him for three years. Jehoiakim, was at length slain, and his dead body contemptuously cast out of the city gates without burial, after a turbulent and inglorious reign of eleven years; thus fulfilling, literally, the prophecy of Jeremiah.*

Jehoiachin, his son, ascending the throne, and the city still more closely besieged, after having been three short months amused with the semblance of a crown, he was compelled to take leave of his palace and deliver himself up, with his mother, his princes, and his servants, to the conqueror, whence he was carried in chains to Babylon. On this second capture of Jerusalem, the palace and temple were despoiled of their treasures, many of the golden vessels were seized and cut in pieces, and all the nobility, the army, and artificers, to the number of eighteen thousand persons (three thousand having been sent out of the country before the fall of the city), were carried away, leaving only the meaner classes of the people. (B. C. 599.) Over this miserable remnant, Mattaniah, the uncle of the late king, was constituted a sort of chief, with the empty title of king, and his name was changed to Zedekiah. This name, signifying the justice of the Lord, was designed to keep him in mind of the vengeance that would

"In the last year of Jehoiakim's reign was born Cyrus, the fa. mous founder of the Persian monarchy, and the restorer of the Jews to their country, their temple, and their state."-Prideaux.

JEREMIAH-PROPHECIES.

297

follow his violation of the oath which had bound him a vassal to Babylon. Catherine. What became of the prophet Jeremiahwas he included in this sad deportation of the principal men of Jerusalem?

Mother. He was still left by Providence to serve an unworthy master. The Babylonians having left Jerusalem, a deputation came from several neighbouring kings, all tributaries of the great Nebuchadnezzar, to engage Zedekiah in a revolt from that monarch. Whereupon, Jeremiah was commanded to make "yokes and bands," and send them by the ambassadors, to their several masters, commanding them to say, when they delivered these expressive emblems, that "the Lord of the whole earth had given their dominions to the king of Babylon”—that submission would be beneficial to their people—but, on the contrary, revolt would involve them in utter ruin. And by the same arguments he persuaded the king of Judah not to listen to those who would but hasten his destruction.

Catherine. Of what use was the advice of Jeremiah to idolators unacquainted with the Supreme Being in whose name he addressed them?

Mother. It did not, indeed, produce obedience to his commands; but these divine messages, together with their continual intercourse with the Jews, were calculated to show them the difference between their graven images and the supreme Jehovah, and left them without excuse when the predictions were fulfilled.

A messenger from Zedekiah to the king of Babylon, in the second year of his reign, afforded an opportunity to the active and benevolent Jeremiah to write to his unhappy countrymen, expostulating with them on the folly with which they had listened to those who falsely prophesied a speedy restoration to their own land; assuring them, the appointed seventy years would not be diminished, and advising them to consider themselves as settled inhabitants in the dominions of the conqueror, and ameliorate their deplorable misfortune as well as they could, by application to business and obedience to the laws.

288

DECEIT OF THE ISRAELITES.

And farther to console them in their present sufferings, and give them confidence in his advice, in the fourth year of Zedekiah, he wrote that ample prediction of the fall of their oppressors by the Medes and Persians, which we have in the fifty-first chapter of Jeremiah; and sent it into Babylon, with a charge to the messenger to read it publicly, on the bank of the Euphrates, and then binding it to a stone, to cast it into the river,—denoting by this sig nificant action, that so Babylon should sink, to rise no

more.

In the fifth year of Zedekiah, the miserable captives were comforted by an eminent prophet amongst themselves, EZEKIEL, who had been carried from Jerusalem with king Jehoiachin. He was this year commissioned to preach resignation to his countrymen-and to promise to the penitent, a return to their own land. The subsequent fall of Jerusalem, the dreadful end of Zedekiah, and the utter desolation of the whole land of Israel, were revealed to Ezekiel, about this time.

The utter ruin of Judah being the determined object of the insatiable Nebuchadnezzar, in the ninth year of Zedekiah's reign, Jerusalem was again menaced by another Babylonish army. The inhabitants, in great consternation, made a show of repentance by a partial reformation of the abuses in which they had long indulged.

The near prospect of servitude to themselves, now brought them to reflect on the injustice they had exercised towards their servants, whom they had detained beyond the seventh year, the time of release prescribed by the Mosaic Law. In a moment of terror, these injured persons obtained the liberty to which they were entitled, and both the king and the people entered into a formal covenant* to revive the neglected institutions of their still venerated Legislator. But the apprehended siege being suspended awhile by the march of Nebuchadnezzar against the neighbouring princes, who, together with Zedekiah, had manifested a disposition to rebel against their tyrant, -no sooner was the pressure removed, than the liberated

A covenant was made by dividing an animal in two parts, and the covenanting parties passing between the separated parts.

JEREMIAH IMPRISONED.

289 servants were again brought into bondage by their late

masters.

Once more the intrepid Jeremiah was commissioned by the Moral Governor of the world, to tell the hypocritical king, that for this gross act of perjury and oppression, in refusing liberty to their brethren" liberty was proclaimed to the sword, to the pestilence, and to famine,”—" that the king of Babylon should return, Zedekiah and his people be given into his hand, and their cities be burnt with fire, and remain without an inhabitant."

Disheartened, at length, by the total insensibility of both king and people, and knowing that the evils he had been threatening for more than forty years, were now fast approaching, the prophet determined to abandon them to their fate, and provide for his own safety by retiring to Anathoth, his native city. But, always obnoxious to the resentment of the people by the faithful discharge of his duty, his quiet departure was now made the pretext for seizing him as a deserter to the Chaldeans; insulting him even with blows, and confining him in the house of one Jonathan, a scribe-which was at that time the common jail of Jerusalem.

Charles. What do you mean by a scribe?

Mother. A scribe, in the commonwealth of Israel, was equivalent to a lawyer with us. They were the expounders of the law, and writers, as we see in the instance of Baruch, who wrote the prophecies from the dictation of Jeremiah.

Before the conclusion of this ninth year of Zedekiah, the appearance of a Chaldean army before the walls of Jerusalem, convinced him of the wickedness and folly of wasting that time in the persecution of the prophet, which ought to have been employed in providing against an enemy whose perseverance and power he had already experienced. The city was rigorously besieged-provisions soon became scarce and the terrified king, whom no argument could move, whilst he wickedly believed himself secure, had Jeremiah brought from the prison, to try whe ther he would yet soothe his apprehensions by prophesying "smooth things."