Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/655

JEREMIAH 627 Phocion of Judaea) saw this, and at once foretold the vast extension of Nebuchadnezzar s power. For the most part, his ministry was exercised in the capital, though from xi. 21 it may perhaps be inferred that he prophesied for some little time in his native place. It was during the reign of Jehoiakim that he went through that baptism of complicated suffering which has made him in a very high and true sense a type of One greater than he. King and people, priests and (official) prophets, were all against him, or at least the number of his supporters was too small to counterbalance the opposition. Only on one occasion, when accused of a capital crime as having " pro phesied against this city," the " princes," supported by " certain of the elders" and "the people," were successful in quashing the accusation, and setting the prophet free. At a later time Jeremiah incurred a still greater danger, though he was providentially saved from the hands of his persecutors. In the fourth year of Jehoiakim (which, it is important to remember, was the first of Nebuchadnezzar) Jeremiah was commanded to write down " all the words that I have spoken unto thee against Israel, and against Judah/ and against all the nations . . . from the days of Josiah even unto this day " (xxxvi. 2). The interpretation of this passage, clear as it seems at first sight, is by no means easy. "First of all, an historically accurate reproduction of the pro phecies would not have suited Jeremiah s object, which was not historical but practical ; he desired to give a salutary shock to the people, by bringing before them the fatal consequences of their evil deeds. And next, it appears from ver. 29 that the purport of the roll which the king burned was that the king of Babylon should come and destroy this land, whereas it is clear that Jeremiah had uttered many other important declarations in the course of his already long ministry." The most probable view is that of Gratz, viz., that the roll simply contained chap, xxv., which is in fact (omitting the interpolations in vers. 12, 26) entirely concerned with the invasion of Nebuchad nezzar and its consequences, and which expressly claims to have been written in the fourth year of Jehoiakim. " Is not this the prophesy which Jeremiah dictated to Baruch, and is not ver. 2 a loose, inaccurate statement due to a later editor 1 That the prophetic as well as the historical books have passed through various phases (without detri ment to their religious value) is becoming more and more evident. The 7th and 8th chapters of Isaiah, and the 37th and 38th of the same book, have demonstrably been brought into their present shape by an editor ; is it not highly reasonable to conjecture that these narrative chapters of Jeremiah have, to a greater or less extent, passed through a similar process ? " The " princes," on this as on the former occasion (chap, xxvi.), were disposed to be friendly to Jeremiah and his secretary ; but for some reason they felt themselves bound (as they did not feel themselves bound before) to refer the matter to the king. Jehoiakim was enraged at the contents of the prophetic roll, cut it in pieces, and threw them into the fire. This time Jeremiah escaped; but under the weak-minded Zedekiah he was more than once imprisoned (chaps, xxxii., xxxiii., xxxvii., xxxviii.). It is remarkable that, in the tension of feeling, the " princes," who were formerly friendly to Jeremiah, now took up an attitude of decided hostility to him. At last they had him consigned to a miry dungeon, and it was the king who interfered for his relief, though he remained a prisoner till the fall of Jerusalem. Nebuchad nezzar, who had doubtless heard of Jeremiah s constant recommendations of submission, gave him the choice cither of going to Babylon or of remaining in the country (chaps, xxxviii., xxxix.). He chose the latter, and resided with Gedaliah, the native governor, at Mizpah. On the murder of Gedaliah he was carried to Egypt against his will (chaps. xl.-xliii.), where he predicted the approaching conquest and desolation of the Nile valley. A legendary tradition states that he suffered death by stoning. 2. Character and Literary Style. It is interesting to compare Jeremiah with Isaiah. The earlier prophet had advantages which were denied to the latter ; he lived at a period of comparative national prosperity, and his moral and intellectual gifts were of a stronger and more striking order. But Jeremiah has this noteworthy point in his favour that he overcame the natural shrinking of a some what feminine character, and showed himself able, in a strength not his own, to resist impediments which even Isaiah would have found terribly great. " When," as Ewald says, " the truth and the spirit of Jehovah call him or the resisting world provokes him to the contest, he then knows nothing of diffidence and fear, nothing of tenderness and pliability, he contends before the eyes of all with the most decisive energy against every false prophet who mis leads the people (xxviii. G sq., xxix. 15 sq., 24 sq.) ; if the truth has not been proclaimed with due faithfulness to the king, he goes still, as Isaiah did in his day, without hesitancy, to the royal palace (xxii. 1-19, xxxiv. 2-7); and, although himself of a priestly family, he speaks from the very first with special emphasis against the growing degeneracy of the priests (i. 18, ii. 26, iv. 9), and is never weary of speaking against every kind of arbitrariness wherever and in whatever form it is found (xxxiv. 8-22, xxxvii. 14 sq.)." Another point of contrast is well worth noticing. Only five years after Jeremiah s first appearance as a prophet that great reform took place which was associated with the " discovery " of the Deuteronomic Torah. It is a highly probable conjecture (comp. chap, xi.) that Jeremiah was at the outset an ardent preacher of the contents of this great book ; at any rate, his memory became surcharged with the ideas and even the phrases of Deuteronomy. The consequences of the reforming endea vours of what may be called the Deuteronomic party were both good and evil. The centralization of religion, and the emphasis laid on the moral duties, were steps of the highest importance. " But inasmuch as a sacred book was as such for the first time looked upon with greater reverence as a state authority, there arose thus early a kind of book-science with its pedantic pride and erroneous learned endeavours to interpret and apply the Scriptures ; whilst at the same time there arose also a new kind of hypocrisy and idolatry of the letter, through the new pro tection which the state gave to the religion of the book acknowledged by the law. Thus scholastic wisdom came into conflict with genuine prophecy " (Ewald, The Prophets, iii. 63, 64). But something more than this was the result, "Hear ye the words of this covenant," was the address with which Jeremiah began his Deuteronomic preaching ; but, as time went on, a deeper view of the covenant forced itself upon his mature mind, and the expression which it has found in xxxi. 31-34 is one of the passages which best deserve to be called "the gospel before Christ." It is sad that Jeremiah could not always keep his spirit under the calming influence of these high thoughts. No book of the Old Testament, except the Book of Job and the Psalms, contains so much which is difficult to reconcile with the character of a self-denying servant of Jehovah. Such expressions as those in xi. 20, xv. 15, and especially xviii. 21-23, contrast powerfully with Luke xxiii. 34, and show that the typical character of Jeremiah is not absolutely complete. No wonder if Jeremiah s style is feeble compared with that of the " royal prophet" Isaiah, if he gladly leans on older prophets, and copies or imitates more than a bolder genius would have permitted. His utterance is interrupted by sobs, and he is without the energy to soar to poetic