managed it by his lieutenants and governours of the neighbouring provinces of his empire. In the fourth year he came himself in person, and put an end to it in the captivity of Jehoiachin, and the taking of Jerusalem. What hindered him from coming sooner is not said; only it appears, that in the tenth year of Jehoiakim, he was engaged in an arbitration between the Medes and Lydians. The occasion was this. After the Medes had recovered all the Upper Asia out of the hand of the Scythians, and again extended their borders to the river Halys, which was the common boundary between them and the Lydians, it was not long before there happened a war between these two nations, which was managed for five years together with various success. In the sixth year they engaged each other with the utmost of their strength, intending to make that battle decisive of the quarrel, that was between them. But, in the midst of it, while the fortune of the day seemed to hang in an equal balance between them, there happened an eclipse, which overspread both armies, with darkness; whereon, being frightened with what had happened, they both desisted from fighting any longer, and agreed to refer the controversy to the arbitration of two neighbouring princes. The Lydians chose Siennesis king of Cilicia, and the Medes, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, who agreed a peace between them on the terms, that Astyages, son to Cyaxares, king of Media, should take to wife Arienna, the daughter of Halyattis, king of the Lydians; of which marriage, within a year after, was born Cyaxares, who is called Darius the Median in the book of Daniel. This eclipse was foretold by Thales the Milesian; and it happened on the twentieth of September, according to the Julian account, in the hundred and forty-seventh year of Nabonassar, and in the ninth of the reign of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, which was the year before Christ 601. The same year that Cyaxares was born to Astyages, he gave his daughter Mandana, whom he had by a former wife, in marriage to Cambyses, king of Persia; of whom the next year after (which was the last year p Herodotus, lib. 2. q He is by Herodotus, lib. 1, called Labynetus. of Jehoiakim,) was born Cyrus, the famous founder of the Persian monarchy, and the restorer of the Jews to their country, their temple, and their former state. Jehoiachin being thus carried into captivity, and Zedekiah settled in the throne, Jeremiah had, in a vision, under the type of two baskets of figs, foreshewn unto him the restoration which God would again give to them who were carried into captivity, and the misery and desolation which should befall them, with their king, that were still in the land; that the captivity of the former should become a means of preservation unto them, while the liberty which the others were left in should serve only to lead them to their utter ruin; as accordingly it befell them in the destruction of Jerusalem, and the utter devastation of the land, which happened a few years afterwards. S The same year God also foreshewed to Jeremiah the confusion which he would bring upon Elam, (a kingdom lying upon the river Ulai, eastward beyond the Tigris,) and the restoration which he would afterwards give thereto; which accordingly come to pass: for it was conquered by Nebuchadnezzar, and subjected to him, in the same manner as Judah was. But afterwards, joining with Cyrus, it helped to conquer and subdue the Babylonians, who had before conquered them; and " Shushan, which was the chief city of that province, was thenceforth made the metropolis of the Persian empire, and had the throne of the kingdom placed in it. u After the departure of Nebuchadnezzar out of Judea and Syria, Zedekiah having settled himself in the kingdom, the kings of the Ammonites, and of the Moabites, and of the Edomites, and of the Zidonians, and of the Tyrians, and of the other neighbouring nations, sent their ambassadors to Jerusalem, to congratulate Zedekiah on his accession to the throne, and then proposed to him a league against the king of Babylon, for the shaking off his yoke, and the hindering of him from any more returning into those parts. Whereon Jeremiah, by the command of God, t Xen. Cyropæd. lib. 6. u Strabo, lib. 15, p. 727. r Jer. xxiv. 26 x Jer. xxvii. made him yokes and bonds, and sent them by the said ambassadors to their respective masters, with this message from God, That God 'had given all their countries unto the king of Babylon, and that they should serve him, and his son, and his son's son, and that, if they would submit to his yoke, and become obedient to him, it should be well with them, and their land; but, if otherwise, they should be consumed and destroyed before him. And he spake also to king Zedekiah according to the same words; which had that influence on him, that he did not then enter into the league that was proposed to him by the ambassadors of those princes. But afterwards, when it was farther strengthened, by the joining of the Egyptians and other nations in it, and he and his people began to be tired with the heavy burden and oppression of the Babylonish domination over them, he also was drawn into this confederacy; which ended in the absolute ruin both of him and his kingdom, as will be hereafter related. Zedekiah, about the second year of his reign, y sent Elasah, the son of Shaphan, and Gemariah, the An. 597. son of Hilkiah, to Babylon, on an embassy to Zedek. 2. king Nebuchadnezzar. By them Jeremiah wrote a letter to the Jews of the captivity in Babylon. The occasion of which was, Ahab the son of Kilaiah, and Zedekiah the son of Maaseiah, two of the captivity among the Jews at Babylon, taking upon them to be prophets sent to them from God, fed them with lying prophecies, and false promises of a speedy restoration, whereon they neglected to make any settlements in the places assigned them for their habitation, either by building of houses, cultivating their land, marrying of wives, or doing any thing else for their own interest and welfare in the country, where they were carried, out of a vain expectation of a speedy return. To remedy this evil, Jeremiah wrote to them to let them know, that they were deceived by those who made them entertain such false hopes: that, by the appointment of God, their captivity at Babylon was to last seventy years; and those who remained in Ju y Jer. xxix. dah and Jerusalem should be so far from being able to affect any restoration for them, that God would speedily send against them the sword, the famine, and the pestilence, for the consuming of the greatest part of them, and scatter the rest over the face of the earth, to be a curse, and an astonishment, and an hissing, and a reproach, among the nations, whither he would drive them. And therefore he exhorts them to provide for themselves in the country whither they are carried, as settled inhabitants of the same, and comport themselves there, according to all the duties which belong to them as such, without expecting any return till the time that God had appointed, And as to their false prophets, who had prophesied a lie unto them, he denounced God's curse against them in a speedy and fearful destruction; which accordingly was soon after executed upon them for Nebuchadnezzar finding that they disturbed the people by their vain prophecies, and hindered them from making settlements for themselves in the places where he had planted them, caused them to be seized, and roasted to death in the fire. The latter Jews say, that these two men were the two elders who would have corrupted Susannah, and that Nebuchadnezzar commanded them to be burned for this reason. The whole foundation of this conceit is, that Jeremiah in the twenty-third verse of the chapter where he writes hereof, accuseth them for committing adultery with their neighbour's wives; from whence they conjecture all the rest. These letters being read to the people of the captivity at Babylon, such as were loath to be dispossessed of their vain hopes, were much offended at them; and therefore Semaiah, the Nehelemite, another false pretender to prophecy among them, writing their as well as his own sentiments hereof, sent back letters by the same ambassadors, directing them to Zephaniah, the son of Maaseiah, the second priest, and to all the priests, and people at Jerusalem, wherein he complained of Jeremiah for writing the said letters, and required them to rebuke him for the same; which letters being read to Jeremiah, the word of God came z Vide Gemaram in Sanhedrin. unto him, which denounced a very severe punishment upon Semaiah for the same. Zedek. 4. In the fourth year of Zedekiah, and the fifth month of that year, Hananiah, the son of Azur of An 595. Gibeon, took upon him to prophesy falsely in the name of the Lord, that within two full years God would bring back all the vessels of the house of the Lord; and king Jeconiah, and all the captives again to Jerusalem; whereon, the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah concerning Hananiah, that seeing he had spoken to the people of Judah in the name of the Lord, who sent him not, and had made them thereby to trust in a lie, he should be smitten of God, and die before the year should expire; and accordingly, he died the same year, in the seventh month, which was within two months after. The same year Jeremiah had revealed unto him the prophecies, which we have in the fiftieth and fiftyfirst chapters of Jeremiah, concerning God's judgments that were to be executed upon Chaldea and Babylon, by the Medes and Persians. All which Jeremiah wrote in a book, and delivered it to Seraiah, the son of Neriah, and brother of Baruch, who was then sent to Babylon by Zedekiah, commanding him, that, when he should come to Babylon, he should there read the same upon the banks of Euphrates; and that, when he should have there made an end of reading it, he should bind a stone to it, and cast it into the midst of the river, to denote thereby, that, as that should sink, so should Babylon also sink, and never rise any more; which hath since been fully verified, about two thousand years having now passed since Babylon hath been wholly desolated, and without an inhabitant. Baruch seemeth to have gone with his brother in this journey to Babylon; for he is said, in the apocryphal book that bears his name, to have read that book at Babylon, in the hearing of king Jeconiah, or Jehoiachin, and of the elders and people of the Jews then at Babylon, on the fifth year after the taking of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans; which can be understood of no other taking of it, than that wherein Jehoiachin a Jer. xxviii. b Jer. 11, 59-64. c Baruch i, 1-4. |