In such a sharp opposition of views, and in the strained position of affairs in which Judah found herself between Babylon and Egypt, it was impossible but that heavy accusations should be brought against Jeremiah, and a hot persecution set on foot against him. He complains bitterly how he was daily mocked and derided;[622] he is in despair and laments his destiny; he tells us how he had determined to speak no more in the name of Jehovah, but the inward voice compelled him; the fire was kindled in his heart: "I could not stay."[623] "Cursed be the day," he exclaims, "on which I was born! cursed be the man who brought glad tidings to my father, and said unto him, 'A son is born unto thee!' Why, Jehovah, didst thou not slay me in the womb, that I should see labour and sorrow, and consume my days with shame?"[624] These moods alternate with a fierce desire for vengeance on his opponents. He is guiltless. Jehovah has driven him forth to speak, and put his word in his mouth; he has often besought Jehovah to turn away from Judah the day of destruction: Jehovah, for whom he suffers, must avenge him on his enemies. He is so embittered and angry that he even calls down bloody destruction upon his enemies. "Look on me, Jehovah," he says, "and avenge me of my persecutors, and know that for thy sake I have suffered rebuke.[625] I have not desired the woful day, thou knowest: that which came out from my lips was before thee.[626] If thy words came to me, I took them eagerly, and they are the joy and rejoicing of my heart; I sat not in the assembly of the mockers, nor rejoiced. I sat alone, for thou hast filled me with indignation. I was like a lamb led to the slaughter, and knew not that they had devised devices against me.[627] Why is my pain perpetual, and my wound incurable?[628] Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper? Wherefore are they happy that deal very treacherously?[629] Pull them out like sheep for the slaughter, and prepare them for the day of destruction.[630] Consider how I stand before thee, to turn away thy wrath from them. Therefore give up their children to the famine, and deliver them to the sword. Let their men be the sacrifice of death, and their women bereaved and widows. Thou knowest all their counsel against me to slay me; forgive them not their iniquity, neither blot out their sin from thy sight."[631] Jeremiah then received the answer of Jehovah, who said to him: "Gird thy loins; speak to them all that I bid thee; be not afraid of them. I will make thee a fenced city, and an iron pillar, and brazen walls against the whole land; against the king, the priests, the elders, and the people. They shall fight against thee, but they shall not prevail against thee; I will save thee from the hand of the wicked, and deliver thee from the grasp of the furious."[632]
So Jeremiah prophesied again: "No doubt, their prophets say to them: Ye shall not see the sword nor shall ye have famine, but the Lord will give you happy days in this land. But Jehovah saith: I have not commanded them nor spoken to them; they prophesy a false vision, and the deceit of their heart, and divination. By the sword and famine shall they perish. The people to whom they prophesy shall be cast out in the streets of Jerusalem.[633] They will say: We acknowledge, O Jehovah, our iniquity, and the sin of our fathers, but do not abhor us, for thy name's sake; do not disgrace the throne of thy glory; break not thy covenant with us. But Jehovah saith to me: Pray not for this people; though Moses and Samuel stood before me, my mind could not be towards them.[634] Sorrow not with them. I have taken from them my salvation, my grace, and mercy. The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron, and graven with the point of a diamond upon the table of their hearts, and upon the horns of their altars."[635]
In such a contest of opposite views, in such an alternation of moods, four years had passed for the Jews after Zedekiah was placed by Nebuchadnezzar upon the throne, when the kings of Sidon and Tyre sent to Jerusalem to call on the Jews to revolt against Nebuchadnezzar, by whose attack they were threatened. Messengers also came from the Ammonites and the Moabites, who had been in subjection longer than the Jews, and from the Edomites (593 B.C.). If their forces were united there seemed to be a prospect of success in resistance and rebellion, and the reduction of the Phenician cities might be prevented. But Jeremiah spoke to the envoys in the name of Jehovah: "I have made the earth, the man and the beast, and I gave them to whom it seemed meet to me; and now I give all these lands into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, my servant, and I have given him the beasts of the field also to serve him. And the nation and the kingdom which will not serve Nebuchadnezzar,—that nation I will punish with the sword, and with the famine, and with the pestilence, until I have consumed them by his hand. If ye put your necks in the yoke of Babylon, ye shall live."[636] This time the view of the prophet prevailed; Zedekiah repaired in person to Babylon obviously to assure Nebuchadnezzar of his fidelity.[637] The Phenicians were left to their fate, and subjugated by Nebuchadnezzar.[638] Only Sidon seems to have made a vigorous resistance.[639] The island city of Tyre retained her independence.
In the year 589 B.C., Hophrah, the grandson of Necho, ascended the throne of Egypt. Zedekiah soon directed his eyes to the new ruler of the valley of the Nile. He showed himself ready to venture on the struggle with Nebuchadnezzar. Jeremiah dissuaded them: "Egypt is a very fair heifer," he exclaims, "but destruction cometh from the North. O thou daughter, dwelling in Egypt, furnish thyself to go into captivity; for Noph (Memphis) shall be waste, and burnt, and desolate without an inhabitant. The hired men in the midst of her are like fatted bullocks, for they also are turned back and are fled away together; they did not stand because the day of their calamity was come upon them, the time of their visitation. The daughter of Egypt shall be confounded. Thus saith Jehovah of Hosts: Behold, I will punish Ammon of No (Thebes), and Pharaoh and Egypt, with their gods and their kings, even Pharaoh and all them that trust in him. And I will deliver them into the hand of those that seek their lives, and into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, and into the hand of his servants."[640]
But the prince and people of Judah were not to be restrained. Building on the help of Egypt, Zedekiah, in the year 588 B.C., took up arms against Babylonia.[641] But before Hophrah had finished his preparations Nebuchadnezzar was in Judah with a powerful army.[642] The strong places were invested: one city after another surrendered, only Lachish and Aseka resisted for any length of time.[643] "At the meeting of the ways," says the prophet Ezekiel, "the king of Babylon halts to make divination; he shakes his arrows, consults with the teraphim, looks in the liver of the victim. In his right hand is the divination for Jerusalem, to throw up a wall against Jerusalem, to build towers, to appoint battering-rams against the gates, to lift up the voice with shouting. The head-band will be taken, and the crown removed from the prince of Israel."[644]
The siege of Jerusalem commenced. If in former times, when the Assyrians were encamped before Jerusalem, Isaiah had urged the nation and king to a courageous endurance though arms had been taken up against his advice, the absoluteness of his deep conviction, the certainty which he had received from above, did not permit Jeremiah to take up the attitude of his great predecessor; on the contrary, he did not cease even now to condemn the resistance in the strongest terms. In his eyes it was a rebellion against the counsels of God, against the divine order of the world. When Zedekiah sent to him, to bid him inquire of Jehovah about the issue of the siege, Jeremiah answered: "I will turn back the weapons of war that are in your hands, wherewith ye fight against the king of Babylon, and I will bring the Chaldæans into the city. I will fight against you with an outstretched arm, and will deliver the city into the hands of the king of Babylon, that he may burn it, and I will visit your inhabitants with famine, sword, and pestilence, and those that are left I will give into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar, that he may smite them with the edge of the sword. I set before you the way of life and the way of death; he that abideth in the city shall fall by the sword; but he that goeth out and falleth to the Chaldæans he shall live."[645] Though these announcements were adapted to undermine the courage and strength of the resistance, and heavy as was the weight given to them by the position which Jeremiah held among the prophets, they did not discourage the king and the population of the metropolis. The debtors and all slaves of Hebrew birth were set at liberty in order to strengthen the numbers for the defence.
Success seemed to come to the aid of their endurance and courage. The Egyptian army advanced and compelled the Chaldæans to raise the siege of Jerusalem (587 B.C.).[646] There was time to recover breath. Had not Jehovah again delivered Jerusalem as in the day when Sennacherib oppressed the city? Jeremiah's dreary proclamations seemed contradicted. But he persisted in his position and announced: "Pharaoh's army which is come forth to help you shall return into Egypt, and the Chaldæans shall come again before the city, and shall take it. And though ye had smitten the whole army of the Chaldæans and there remained but wounded men in their tents, they would rise up and burn Jerusalem with fire."[647] It was natural that Jeremiah, in consequence of these speeches and predictions, should appear a traitor in the eyes of the nation, who were struggling for freedom and existence. When, availing himself of the raising of the siege, he wished to go to his plot of ground at Anathoth, he was seized in the gate as a deserter to the Chaldæans and thrown into prison. Yet the king allowed him to be kept in less severe custody, and soon set him at liberty.[648]
The prophecy of Jeremiah was fulfilled. The Egyptians were defeated. Invested once more, Jerusalem was pressed more severely than ever.[649] The lines of the Chaldæans ran even to the walls of the city,[650] but the defenders were unwearied. The houses and even the buildings of the palaces were in part pulled down in order to strengthen the shattered walls, or build new portions.[651] That Jeremiah under such circumstances continued to preach the abandonment of the siege, and subjection to the Chaldæans, roused at length the captains. They demanded his death from the king: "He weakeneth the hands of the men of war that remain, and the hands of the people: he seeketh not the welfare of the Jews, but the hurt."[652] As Zedekiah allowed them to do with Jeremiah according to their pleasure, they seized him, brought him for custody to the hill of Zion, and there caused him to be thrown into the well of the prison. But there was only mud in the well, and when an Ethiopian eunuch of the king interceded with him for the prophet, Zedekiah gave command that Jeremiah should be taken out of the well, and confined in the court of the prison.[653]
Meantime "the famine prevailed in the city;" the distress rose to the highest pitch. "The priests and the elders," so we are told in the Lamentations, "sought food in vain: the sword destroys without, the famine within. The people sought food with sighs, and whatsoever a man had of price he gave for food. The children and the sucklings swooned; they cried to their mothers, where is corn and wine, when they swooned as the wounded in the streets of the city, when their soul was poured out into their mothers' bosoms. Better was it for those who were slain with the sword than for those who were slain with hunger; the hands of pitiful women have sodden their children for food."[654] At length the Chaldæans, whose attack was directed to the most accessible part, the north side of the city, succeeded in taking the suburb surrounded by the outer wall.[655] Having gained possession of this, they directed their efforts against the middle gate, which guarded the entrance into the city beside the fortress of Millo (p. 128). Led by Nergal Sarezer, and Sarsechim, the captain of the eunuchs, the Babylonians took the middle gate in the night by storm, and firmly established themselves there. Zedekiah despaired of being able to maintain the city any longer, with the motley crowd of soldiers weakened by hunger, and the inhabitants who doubtless suffered still more in numbers and strength. He attempted to break through with his army. He succeeded in passing the lines and gaining the open country, but the Chaldæans in pursuit came up with the troop which had so boldly broken out in the plain of Jericho. The troop was dispersed; a part, including Zedekiah, was captured, the rest escaped. The inhabitants, even after the king and army had left the city, stubbornly defended themselves in the various parts—in the citadel and the temple—so that some weeks elapsed before the city was completely in the hands of the Babylonians (July, 586 B.C.). The siege had lasted one year five months and seven days.[656]
The first rebellion of the Jews had been punished by Nebuchadnezzar by the dethronement and abduction of the king, by carrying away the influential people and the army of Jerusalem, and by disarming the city. These arrangements had not been sufficient to secure the obedience of the little country. For the future Egypt was no longer to find confederates in Southern Syria, and support in Jerusalem. The stubborn resistance of the Jews was to be broken; an end must be put for ever to their intrigues with Egypt. Zedekiah, who was placed on the throne by Nebuchadnezzar himself, and swore obedience to him, was not to escape the punishment of this breach of faith. Nebuchadnezzar was not with the besieging army; he was at Riblah, on the Orontes, the grassy plain where Necho had pitched his camp after the battle of Megiddo. Thither Zedekiah was brought. In his presence were first executed the captive leaders of the Jews, and among them his own sons. Then his eyes were put out; he was laden with chains, and carried away to Babylon. There he died in prison.[657] The punishment of Jerusalem was carried out by Nebusaradan, the chief of the body-guard of Nebuchadnezzar. The high priest, Seraiah, together with the second priest, Zephaniah, the overseers of the temple, a number of public officers, and sixty of the most distinguished men in the city, were also taken to Riblah, and put to death, seventy-two in number.[658] The brazen pillars at the entrance to the temple, and the brazen sea (II. 182, 184), all the vessels and furniture of the temple which still remained, and everything that was to be found of value in the palace, was carried off to Babylon.[659] The Chaldæan army levelled the walls; city, palace, and temple were burned to the ground. The inhabitants who survived were carried away, "except the poor people who had nothing;" even from the country the richer men were carried away with their wives and children, and only the common people left behind.[660] Over the remnant of the population a Jew, Gedaliah, the son of Ahikam (p. 317), who must previously have given proof of his Chaldæan sentiments, was placed as viceroy. He took up his abode in Mizpeh, where a Babylonian garrison remained.[661]