and to dictate to Baruch the whole of the former writing, together B.C. 606. with many additional predictions, closing with a severe sentence against Jehoiakim, threatening him that he should be himself cut off, and deprived of burial; and that his posterity should be disinherited of the throne of David.

Rechabites.

At the close of these three years, Jehoiakim rebelled against his B.C. 605. formidable conqueror, who, when he spared him, had rendered him tributary; and the enraged king of Babylon returned with irresistible force against Jerusalem. The Rechabites, who had been bound The by their father Jonadab, the son of Rechab, to some singular observances—among which were these, that they should neither drink wine, nor dwell in houses, but in tents, to signify that they were but strangers in the land—were compelled, by the extremity of the circumstances, consequent upon this invasion, so far to relinquish this latter stipulation, as to retreat into the city, and dwell within the walls of Jerusalem, to escape the fury of the Chaldeans, who overspread the country. Jeremiah availed himself of this occurrence, which, from its singularity, could not but be generally known, once more to admonish the king and the people by the example of these Rechabites. In order to do this more effectually, he collected all the house of Rechab, and, in presence of many witnesses, in the house of the Lord, set before them wine, inviting them to drink; but they resolutely refused, assigning their father's injunction as a reason, and not deeming their constrained abandonment of one part of their vow a reason for the voluntary neglect of that which was within their power. The prophet took this occasion to reprove the Israelites for their breach of God's commandments, to whom they owed such infinite obligations, while these Rechabites held so sacred the precept of their father. To mark this admonition yet more strongly, while a wicked king was threatened with the extermination of his family, and a rebellious nation were about to be carried into captivity, the obedience of the Rechabites was rewarded with the promise-"Jonadab, the son of Rechab, shall not want a man to stand before me for ever. Immediately afterwards occurred the death of Jehoiakim, who was slain by the Death of Chaldeans, and his body cast into a common sewer. Jehoiachin, who is also called Jeconiah and Coniah, ascended the throne, but kept his seat only three months, at the close of which period he was taken away captive by the Chaldeans; and with him the princes, nobles, officers, and principal population of Jerusalem, besides its Jerusalem treasures—no mean spoil, frequently as it had been before plundered. plundered. The king of Babylon did not, however, utterly destroy the place, but thought proper to place Mattaniah, the uncle of the last monarch and brother of the preceding, by the more commonly-known name of Zedekiah, upon the throne, who was suffered to reign eleven years. Zedekiah, unmoved by the mingled judgment and severity of the B.C. 599. measures which resulted in this event, which plundered, without Zedekiah.

Jehoiakim.

again

B.C. 599. wholly impoverishing him, and, while it retrenched his resources, spared him his life and his royalty; unawed by all the predictions of impending indignation, which he had heard, and by the calamities which he had partially shared; continued the same ruinous career of evil which had distinguished and successively destroyed his predecessors. In the beginning of his reign, Jeremiah was shown two Type of figs. baskets of figs; the one ripe and good, the other utterly worthless. By the first were intended those of the captivity, whose heart should be softened by affliction, and to whom the promise of restoration to their country was given. By the latter the inhabitants of Jerusalem who remained; both the king, the princes, and the general population, who were unchanged and unaffected by the judgments which they had witnessed, and were threatened that by sword, and pestilence, and famine, they should be driven out, and "consumed from off the land." Soon afterwards he was instructed to make yokes and bonds, and, after putting them upon his own person, to send them to the respective sovereigns of Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre, and Zidon, by the hand of their ambassadors then at Jerusalem; and to tell them that, unless they submitted to the king of Babylon, they should be subdued by force. The same unwelcome message he himself carried to his own sovereign, assuring him that no way remained to save himself and his people but by submission. enforce th injunction more strongly, and to keep it in constant remembrance, the prophet continued to wear upon his own person Hananiah's those badges of slavery, until Hananiah, a false prophet, taking the tion, yoke from his neck, broke it in the temple, in the presence of the priests and of all the people, affirming, that within the space of two full years, the prisoners who had been carried into Babylon should be restored, together with their captive prince Jeconiah, and all the spoil. Jeremiah was, in consequence, commanded to say to Hananiah, that in place of the yoke of wood which he had broken, Nebuchadnezzar should impose upon the nations a yoke of iron: and that as a punishment for having deceived the people by a lying prophecy, he should die that very year, which happened accordingly, in the seventh month.

contradic

And sentence.

B.C. 596.

Jeremiah

sends his

Το

In the fourth year of Zedekiah, Seraiah having been sent to Babylon on the part of that prince, or having accompanied him, to negotiate some political measure with Nebuchadnezzar, Jeremiah wrote his prophecies against Babylon, which form a considerable prophecies part of the book bearing his name, and which testified that the cup to Babylon. of blood which that empire had put into the hands of all other nations, she should herself drink in turn, even to its dregs. These he now gave to Seraiah, charging him first to read them to the captive Jews, to animate them with the prospect, although distant, of their restoration to their country, and then to bind them to a stone, and sink them in the river Euphrates; at the same time apprising them, that by this act was typified the fall of Babylon,

66

However

the captives.

never to rise again. It is possible that besides the sanguine tem- B.C. 596. perament of man, which induces him, unless hope be wholly extinguished, to antedate the termination of his calamities, that these predictions operated powerfully upon the minds of those Israelites to induce them to expect a speedier deliverance than was intended; especially as these anticipations were encouraged and strengthened by the false prophets, who, like Hananiah, flattered their wishes, and who had been carried away with them into captivity. this might be, Jeremiah found it necessary to write to them a letter His letter to by the hands of Elasah and Gemariah, sent by the king of Judah on some mission to Nebuchadnezzar, to show them that they must not cherish the hope of a speedy deliverance, and that the vials of wrath upon his devoted country were not all yet emptied. He advised them to marry and settle in the land of their captivity, that they might be increased, and not diminished" in the interval that must elapse before their restoration. He had before declared that their state of subjection should last during the reign of "Nebuchadnezzar, of his son, and of his son's son," and he now precisely fixes the term seventy years. Of the two false prophets, "Ahab, His sentence the son of Kolaiah, and Zedekiah, the son of Maasseiah," he pre- Zedekiah dicted that they should be the victims of their own deception, and and Ahab, that it would become a proverbial form of malediction, "The Lord make thee like Zedekiah, and like Ahab, whom the king of Babylon roasted in the fire.' In answer to this letter, Shemaiah, who was at Babylon, wrote to Zephaniah, who was the chief priest remaining at Jerusalem, reproving him for suffering Jeremiah to proceed without punishment, and this letter the priest read to the prophet. In consequence, he was ordered again to send to them of the captivity, and to pronounce sentence against Shemaiah, that And against neither he, nor any of his family, should be restored to their native country.

against

Shemaiah.

besieged.

Thus Jeremiah continued to prophesy, with inflexible fidelity, in B.C. 590. defiance of dangers and privations, sometimes announcing the Jerusalem approaching completion of the woes of his country, and at others its again eventual deliverance, until the ninth year of Zedekiah, in the tenth month of which Nebuchadnezzar came up against Jerusalem to besiege it. Struck by a momentary remorse, the king of Judah sent to entreat the prophet to pray for them. This emotion did not long continue; and Zedekiah having found means to prevail upon the king of Egypt to make a diversion in his favour, the Chaldeans drew off from the siege of Jerusalem to attack the Egyptians. The prophet was enjoined to represent to Zedekiah and his countrymen, that this stroke of policy would prove no more than a temporary expedient, and the message was delivered in the characteristic language of prophecy. "Deceive not yourselves, saying the Chaldeans shall surely depart from us, for they shall not depart for though ye had smitten the whole army of the Chal

B.C. 590

Jeremiah

attempts to

flee;

Is arrested

and confined.

the king.

deans that fight against you, and there remained but wounded men among them, yet should they rise up every man in his tent, and burn this city with fire." Yet wearied of always prophesying, without his report being believed," and feeling his own exposure to the calamities which hung over his devoted country, he availed himself of the temporary absence of the Chaldeans, when they marched against the king of Egypt, and attempted to withdraw from the city, and to retire to Anathoth, the place of his nativity. He was arrested, however, by Irijah, a captain of the guard, at the gate of Benjamin, as a deserter to the Chaldeans, and brought as such before the princes, who struck him, and, after treating him with great indignity, imprisoned him "in the house of Jonathan Sent for by the scribe." After a considerable time, the king sent for him privately, to inquire if there were any prophecy touching him; when Jeremiah, answering in the affirmative, assured him that he should be certainly" delivered into the hands of the king of Babylon." He availed himself of this opportunity to point out to Zedekiah the falsehood of those prophets who had prophesied that the Chaldeans should not come against the city, implying, from this failure of their predictions, the truth of his own, which had always pointed to this event; he complained of the injustice and cruelty of the treatment which he had received; he pleaded his perfect innocence of any crime against the monarch or the state, and entreated that he might not be remanded to his former prison, stating that it would be at the peril of his life to continue there. The king was so far either touched with remorse for the oppression which he had permitted, or melted by the affecting representation of the prophet, that, although he did not think proper to give him his liberty, he softened the rigour of his confinement, and commanded "that they should commit him into the court of the prison," and afford him a daily allowance of food until the bread in the city failed.

Pleads his innocence.

Is confined

in the court

of the prison.

While he was thus incarcerated, a legal occurrence demanded his attention, and his conduct in it marked the implicit confidence which he himself placed in the revelations made to him respecting the restoration of the Jews to their own land. His cousin Hanameel visited him, apprizing him that he wished to sell his field, and that, according to the provisions of the Mosaic law in similar cases, the right of redemption and of inheritance was with the prophet; who did not scruple, notwithstanding the unpromising aspect of public affairs, and his own predictions of the entire subjugation of the country to the Chaldeans, to purchase this land, fully assured the field of that the inheritance should return to himself or his family, in the restoration of his people to their rights after the Babylonish captivity: but he took the precaution to have witnesses of the whole transaction, and to deliver the writings, properly signed and sealed, to Baruch, charging him to envelope them in an earthen vessel, which might preserve them from injury, and to keep them carefully,

Purchases

Hanameel.

until the time of restitution should arrive, when they would be B.C. 590. evidence of the right of his family to the possession.

violated.

A transaction had also occurred during the siege, which marks Sabbatical strongly the character of the people with whom he had to do, year evincing their total dereliction of principle, and which called forth the severest censures of the faithful and unintimidated prophet. The sabbatical year having arrived, at the instance of Jeremiah, who urged upon them the command of God in the law, the king, princes, nobles, and people, liberated their slaves: but in this interval, while the Chaldeans were withdrawn, and pursuing the Egyptians, they recalled their emancipated brethren, and reduced them to their former state of servitude.

nezzar

Nebuchadnezzar, having shut up the Egyptians within their own Nebuchadboundaries, and rendered them tributary, returned to the investment returns. of Jerusalem; and Jeremiah, continuing his prophecies against his countrymen, was demanded of the king by the princes, as a seditious man, and a traitor to the state, who discouraged the people by his predictions, and merited death. Zedekiah gave him over to their

a dungeon.

to the king.

power, to dispose of him as they thought proper; and, in virtue of this authority, they cast him into a dungeon, or well, without water, Jeremiah but the bottom of which was mire, in which he must have been consigned to suffocated but for the good offices of Ebed-melech, one of the king's attendants, who apprized him of the perilous situation of the prophet: the monarch authorized him to draw him out of this pit, and Released, remanded him to the court of the prison-house. After this deliver- and brought ance, Zedekiah sent again for him, to a private audience; when Jeremiah urged the necessity of his appeasing the wrath of Nebuchadnezzar by an unqualified submission, in order to the preservation of himself and his country from the destruction which awaited both, in terms so solemn and so convincing, that the king confessed himself almost persuaded to do as he recommended, but expressed his apprehensions both of his nobles and of the people, and strictly enjoined Jeremiah, in the event of their interrogating him, not to reveal the subject of this interview.

The time now came when repentance on the part of the nation and of the monarch was as unavailing as the remonstrances of the prophet had hitherto been. Jerusalem was taken on the 9th day of the Jerusalem fourth month of the eleventh year of the reign of Zedekiah; and taken. with it that miserable monarch, who was first permitted to witness the slaughter of his children, and then deprived of sight, bound in fetters, and carried into Babylon. Amidst the dreadful slaughter that ensued, Nebuchadnezzar gave particular charge that no injury should be inflicted upon Jeremiah; and the day of the slavery of his country, was that of his personal deliverance. He was carried, with Jeremiah other captives, to Ramath; but when he arrived at that place, he and carried had his choice given him, whether he would go into Babylon, or to Ramath. return to his native land, or prefer any other place, since he was at

released