Jeremiah survived to behold the sad accomplishment of all his darkest predictions. He witnessed all the horrors of the famine, and, when that had done its work, the triumph of the enemy. He saw the strong holds of the city cast down, the palace of Solomon, the temple of God, with all its courts, its roofs of cedar and of gold, levelled to the earth, or committed to the flames; the sacred vessels, the ark of the covenant itself, with the cherubim, pillaged by profane hands. What were the feelings of a patriotic and religious Jew at this tremendous crisis, he has left on record in his unrivalled elegies. Never did city suffer a more miserable fate, never was ruined city lamented in language so exquisitely pathetic. Jerusalem is, as it were, personified, and bewailed with the passionate sorrow of private and domestic attachment; while the more general pictures of the famine, the common misery of every rank, and age, and sex, all the desolation, the carnage, the violation, the dragging away into captivity, the remembrance of former glories, of the gorgeous ceremonies and the glad festivals, the awful sense of the divine wrath heightening the present calamities, are successively drawn with all the life and reality of an eye-witness. They combine the truth of history with the deepest pathos of poetry.

JERICHO was a city of Benjamin, about seven leagues from Jerusalem, and two from the Jordan, Joshua xviii, 21. Moses calls it the city of palm trees, Deut. xxxiv, 3, because of palm trees growing in the plain of Jericho. Josephus says, that in the territory of this city were not only many palm trees, but also the balsam tree. The valley of Jericho was watered by a rivulet which had been formerly salt and bitter, but was sweetened by the Prophet Elisha, 2 Kings ii, 19. Jericho was the first city in Canaan taken by Joshua, ii, 1, 2, &c. He sent thither spies, who were received by Rahab, lodged in her house, and preserved from the king of Jericho. Joshua received orders to besiege Jericho, soon after his passage over Jordan, Joshua vi, 1–3, &c. God commanded the Hebrews to march round the city once a day for seven days together. The soldiers marched first, probably out of the reach of the enemies’ arrows, and after them the priests, the ark, &c. On the seventh day, they marched seven times round the city; and at the seventh, while the trumpets were sounding, and all the people shouting, the walls fell down. The rabbins say, that the first day was our Sunday, and the seventh the Sabbath day. During the first six days, the people continued in profound silence; but on the seventh Joshua commanded them to shout. Accordingly they all exerted their voices, and the walls being overthrown, they entered the city, every man in the place opposite to him. Jericho being devoted by God, they set fire to the city, and consecrated all the gold, silver, and brass. Then Joshua said, “Cursed be the man before the Lord who shall rebuild Jericho.” About five hundred and thirty years after this, Hiel, of Bethel, undertook to rebuild it; but he lost his eldest son, Abiram, at laying the foundations, and his youngest son, Segub, when he hung up the gates. However, we are not to imagine that there was no city of Jericho till the time of Hiel. There was a city of palm trees, probably the same as Jericho, under the Judges, Judges iii, 13. David’s ambassadors, who had been insulted by the Ammonites, resided at Jericho till their beards were grown, 2 Sam. x, 4. There was, therefore, a city of Jericho which stood in the neighbourhood of the original Jericho. These two places are distinguished by Josephus. After Hiel of Bethel had rebuilt old Jericho, no one scrupled to dwell there. Our Saviour wrought miracles at Jericho.

According to Pococke, the mountains to which the absurd name of Quarantania has been arbitrarily given, are the highest in all Judea; and he is probably correct; they form part of a chain extending from Scythopolis into Idumea. The fountain of Elisha he states to be a soft water, rather warm; he found in it some small shell fish of the turbinated kind. Close by the ruined aqueduct are the remains of a fine paved way, with a fallen column, supposed to be a Roman milestone. The hills nearest to Jerusalem consist, according to Hasselquist, of a very hard limestone; and different sorts of plants are found on them, in particular the myrtle, the carob tree, and the turpentine tree; but farther toward Jericho they are bare and barren, the hard limestone giving way to a looser kind, sometimes white and sometimes grayish, with interjacent layers of a reddish micaceous stone, saxum purum micaceum. The vales, though now bare and uncultivated, and full of pebbles, contain good red mould, which would amply reward the husbandman’s toil. Nothing can be more savage than the present aspect of these wild and gloomy solitudes, through which runs the very road where is laid the scene of that exquisite parable, the good Samaritan, and from that time to the present, it has been the haunt of the most desperate bandits, being one of the most dangerous in Palestine. Sometimes the track leads along the edges of cliffs and precipices, which threaten destruction on the slightest false step; at other times it winds through craggy passes, overshadowed by projecting or perpendicular rocks. At one place the road has been cut through the very apex of a hill, the rocks overhanging it on either side. Here, in 1820, an English traveller, Sir Frederick Henniker, was attacked by the Arabs with fire-arms, who stripped him naked, and left him severely wounded: “It was past mid-day, and burning hot,” says Sir Frederick; “I bled profusely; and two vultures, whose business it is to consume corpses, were hovering over me. I should scarcely have had strength to resist, had they chosen to attack me.”

The modern village of Jericho is described by Mr. Buckingham as a settlement of about fifty dwellings, all very mean in their appearance, and fenced in front with thorny bushes, while a barrier of the same kind, the most effectual that could be raised against mounted Arabs, encircles the town. A fine brook flows by it, which empties itself into the Jordan; the nearest point of that river is about three miles distant. The grounds in the immediate vicinity of the village, being fertilized by this stream, bear crops of dourra, Indian corn, rice, and onions. The population is entirely Mohammedan, and is governed by a sheikh: their habits are those of Bedouins, and robbery and plunder form their chief and most gainful occupation. The whole of the road from Jerusalem to the Jordan, is held to be the most dangerous in Palestine; and indeed, in this portion of it, the very aspect of the scenery is sufficient, on the one hand, to tempt to robbery and murder, and, on the other, to occasion a dread of it in those who pass that way. One must be amid these wild and gloomy solitudes, surrounded by an armed band, and feel the impatience of the traveller who rushes on to catch a new view at every pass and turn; one must be alarmed at the very tramp of the horses’ hoofs rebounding through the caverned rocks, and at the savage shouts of the footmen, scarcely less loud than the echoing thunder produced by the discharge of their pieces in the valleys; one must witness all this upon the spot, before the full force and beauty of the admirable story of the good Samaritan can be perceived. Here, pillage, wounds, and death would be accompanied with double terror, from the frightful aspect of every thing around. Here, the unfeeling act of passing by a fellow creature in distress, as the priest and Levite are said to have done, strikes one with horror, as an act almost more than inhuman. And here, too, the compassion of the good Samaritan is doubly virtuous, from the purity of the motive which must have led to it, in a spot where no eyes were fixed on him to draw forth the performance of any duty, and from the bravery which was necessary to admit of a man’s exposing himself, by such delay, to the risk of a similar fate to that from which he was endeavouring to rescue his fellow creature.

JEROBOAM, the son of Nebat and Zeruah, was born at Zereda, in the tribe of Ephraim, 1 Kings xi, 26. He is the subject of frequent mention in Scripture, as having been the cause of the ten tribes revolting from the dominion of Rehoboam, and also of his having “made Israel to sin,” by instituting the idolatrous worship of the golden calves at Dan and Bethel, 1 Kings xii, 26–33. He seems to have been a bold, unprincipled, and enterprising man, with much of the address of a deep politician about him; qualities which probably pointed him out to King Solomon as a proper person to be entrusted with the obnoxious commission of levying certain taxes throughout the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh. On a certain day, as Jeroboam was going out of Jerusalem into the country, having a new cloak wrapped about his shoulders, the Prophet Ahijah met him in a field where they were alone, and seizing the cloak of Jeroboam, he cut it into twelve pieces, and then addressing him, said, “Take ten of them to thyself; for thus saith the Lord, I will divide and rend the kingdom of Solomon, and will give ten tribes to thee. If, therefore, thou obeyest my word and walkest in my ways as David my servant has done, I will be with thee, and will establish thy house for ever, and put thee in possession of the kingdom of Israel,” 1 Kings xi, 14–39. Whether it were that the promises thus made by Ahijah prompted Jeroboam to aim at taking their accomplishment into his own hands, and, with a view to that, began to solicit the subjects of Solomon to revolt; or whether the bare information of what had passed between the prophet and Jeroboam, excited his fear and jealousy, it appears evident that the aged monarch took the alarm, and attempted to apprehend Jeroboam, who, getting notice of what was intended him, made a precipitate retreat into Egypt, where he remained till the death of Solomon. He then returned, and found that Rehoboam, who had succeeded his father Solomon in the throne of David, had already excited the disgust of ten of the tribes by some arbitrary proceedings, in consequence of which they had withdrawn their allegiance from the new monarch. These tribes no sooner heard of his return than they invited him to appear among them in a general assembly, in which they elected him to be king over Israel. Jeroboam fixed his residence at Shechem, and there fortified himself; he also rebuilt Penuel, a city beyond Jordan, putting it into a state of defence, in order to keep the tribes quiet which were on that side Jordan, 1 Kings xii, 1–25.

But Jeroboam soon forgot the duty which he owed to God, who had given him the kingdom; and thought of nothing but how to maintain himself in the possession of it, though he discarded the worship of the true God. The first suggestion of his unbelieving heart was, that if the tribes over whom he reigned were to go up to Jerusalem to sacrifice and keep the annual festivals, they would be under continual temptations to return to the house of David. To counteract this, he caused two golden calves to be made as objects of religious worship, one of which he placed at Dan, and the other at Bethel, the two extremities of his dominions; and caused a proclamation to be made throughout all his territories, that in future none of his subjects should go up to Jerusalem to worship; and, directing them to the two calves which had been recently erected, he cried out, “Behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of Egypt!” He also caused idolatrous temples to be built, and priests to be ordained of the lowest of the people, who were neither of the family of Aaron nor of the tribe of Levi, 1 Kings xii, 26–33. Having appointed a solemn public festival to be observed on the fifteenth day of the eighth month, in order to dedicate his new altar and consecrate his golden calves, he assembled the people at Bethel, and himself went up to the altar for the purpose of offering incense and sacrifices. At that instant a prophet, who had come, divinely directed, from Judah to Bethel, accosted Jeroboam, and said, “O altar, altar, thus saith the Lord, A child shall be born to the house of David, Josiah by name; and upon thee shall he sacrifice the priests of the high places who now burn incense upon thee: he shall burn men’s bones upon thee.” To confirm the truth of this threatening, the prophet also added a sign, namely, that the altar should immediately be rent asunder, and the ashes and every thing upon it poured upon the earth. Jeroboam, incensed at this interference of the prophet, stretched out his hand and commanded him to be seized; but the hand which he had stretched out was instantly paralyzed, and he was unable to draw it back again. The altar, too, was broken, and the ashes upon it fell to the ground according to the prediction of the prophet. Jeroboam now solicited his prayers that his hand might be restored to him. The man of God interposed his supplication to Heaven, and the king’s hand was restored to him sound as before. Jeroboam then entreated him that he would accompany him to his own house, and accept a reward; but he answered, “Though thou shouldst give me the half of thine house, I would not go with thee, nor will I taste any thing in this place, for the Lord hath expressly forbidden me to do so,” 1 Kings xiii, 1–10. But notwithstanding this manifest indication of the displeasure of Heaven, it failed of recovering Jeroboam from his impious procedure. He continued to encourage his subjects in idolatry, by appointing priests of the high places, and engaging them in such worship as was contrary to the divine law. This was the sin of Jeroboam’s family, and it was the cause of its utter extirpation. Some time after his accession to the throne of Israel, his favourite son Abijah fell sick, and, to relieve his parental solicitude, Jeroboam instructed his wife to disguise herself, and in that state to go and consult the Prophet Ahijah concerning his recovery. This was the same prophet who had foretold to Jeroboam that he should be king of Israel. He was now blind through old age; but the prophet was warned of her approach, and, before she entered his threshold, he called her by name, told her that her son should die, and then, in appalling terms, denounced the impending ruin of Jeroboam’s whole family, which shortly after came to pass. After a reign of two-and-twenty years, Jeroboam died, and Nadab, his son, succeeded to the crown, 1 Kings xiii, 33, 34; xiv, 1–20.

2. Jeroboam, the second of that name, was the son of Jehoash, king of Israel. He succeeded to his father’s royal dignity, A. M. 3179, and reigned forty-one years. Though much addicted to the idolatrous practices of the son of Nebat, yet the Lord was pleased so far to prosper his reign, that by his means, according to the predictions of the Prophet Jonah, the kingdom of the ten tribes was restored from a state of great decay, into which it had fallen, and was even raised to a pitch of extraordinary splendour. The Prophets Amos and Hosea, as well as Jonah, lived during this reign.

JERUSALEM, formerly called Jebus, or Salem, Joshua xviii, 28; Heb. vii, 2, the capital of Judea, situated partly in the tribe of Benjamin, and partly in that of Judah. It was not completely reduced by the Israelites till the reign of David, 2 Sam. v, 6–9. As Jerusalem was the centre of the true worship, Psalm cxxii, 4, and the place where God did in a peculiar manner dwell, first in the tabernacle, 2 Sam. vi, 7, 12; 1 Chron. xv, 1; xvi, 1; Psalm cxxxii, 13; cxxxv, 2, and afterward in the temple, 1 Kings vi, 13; so it is used figuratively to denote the church, or the celestial society, to which all that believe, both Jews and Gentiles, are come, and in which they are initiated, Gal. iv, 26; Heb. xii, 22; Rev. iii, 12; xxi, 2, 10. Jerusalem was situated in a stony and barren soil, and was about sixty furlongs in length, according to Strabo. The territory and places adjacent were well watered, having the fountains of Gihon and Siloam, and the brook Kidron, at the foot of its walls; and, beside these, there were the waters of Ethan, which Pilate had conveyed through aqueducts into the city. The ancient city of Jerusalem, or Jebus, which David took from the Jebusites, was not very large. It was seated upon a mountain southward of the temple. The opposite mountain, situated to the north, is Sion, where David built a new city, which he called the city of David, wherein was the royal palace, and the temple of the Lord. The temple was built upon Mount Moriah, which was one of the little hills belonging to Mount Sion.

Through the reigns of David and Solomon, Jerusalem was the metropolis of the whole Jewish kingdom, and continued to increase in wealth and splendour. It was resorted to at the festivals by the whole population of the country; and the power and commercial spirit of Solomon, improving the advantages acquired by his father David, centred in it most of the eastern trade, both by sea, through the ports of Elath and Ezion-Geber, and over land, by the way of Tadmor or Palmyra. Or, at least, though Jerusalem might not have been made a depot of merchandise, the quantity of precious metals flowing into it by direct importation, and by duties imposed on goods passing to the ports of the Mediterranean, and in other directions, was unbounded. Some idea of the prodigious wealth of Jerusalem at this time may be formed by stating, that the quantity of gold left by David for the use of the temple amounted to £21,600,000 sterling, beside £3,150,000 in silver; and Solomon obtained £3,240,000 in gold by one voyage to Ophir, while silver was so abundant, “that it was not any thing accounted of.” These were the days of Jerusalem’s glory. Universal peace, unmeasured wealth, the wisdom and clemency of the prince, and the worship of the true God, marked Jerusalem, above every city, as enjoying the presence and the especial favour of the Almighty. But these days were not to last long: intestine divisions and foreign wars, wicked and tyrannical princes, and, last of all, the crime most offensive to Heaven, and the one least to be expected among so favoured a people, led to a series of calamities, through the long period of nine hundred years, with which no other city or nation can furnish a parallel. After the death of Solomon, ten of the twelve tribes revolted from his successor Rehoboam, and, under Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, established a separate kingdom: so that Jerusalem, no longer the capital of the whole empire, and its temple frequented only by the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, must have experienced a mournful declension. Four years after this, the city and temple were taken and plundered by Shishak, king of Egypt, 1 Kings xiv, 26, 27; 2 Chron. xii, 2–9. One hundred and forty-five years after, under Amaziah, they sustained the same fate from Joash, king of Israel, 2 Kings xiv; 2 Chron. xxv. One hundred and sixty years from this period, the city was again taken, by Esarhaddon, king of Assyria; and Manasseh, the king, carried a prisoner to Babylon, 2 Chron. xxxiii. Within the space of sixty-six years more it was taken by Pharaoh-Necho, king of Egypt, whom Josiah, king of Judah, had opposed in his expedition to Carchemish; and who, in consequence, was killed at the battle of Megiddo, and his son Eliakim placed on the throne in his stead by Necho, who changed his name to Jehoiakim, and imposed a heavy tribute upon him, having sent his elder brother, Jehoahaz, who had been proclaimed king at Jerusalem, a prisoner to Egypt, where he died, 2 Kings xxiii; 2 Chron. xxxv. Jerusalem was three times besieged and taken by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, within a very few years. The first, in the reign of the last mentioned king, Jehoiakim, who was sent a prisoner to Babylon, and the vessels of the temple transported to the same city, 2 Chron. xxxvi. The second, in that of his son Jehoiachin; when all the treasures of the palace and the temple, and the remainder of the vessels of the latter which had been hidden or spared in the first capture, were carried away or destroyed, and the best of the inhabitants, with the king, led into captivity, 2 Kings xxiv; 2 Chron. xxxvi. And the third, in the reign of Zedekiah, the successor of Jehoiachin; in whose ninth year the most formidable siege which this ill fated city ever sustained, except that of Titus, was commenced. It continued two years; during a great part of which the inhabitants suffered all the horrors of famine: when, on the ninth day of the fourth month, in the eleventh year of Zedekiah, which answers to July in the year B. C. 588, the garrison, with the king, endeavoured to make their escape from the city, but were pursued and defeated by the Chaldeans in the plains of Jericho; Zedekiah taken prisoner; his sons killed before his face at Riblah, whither he was taken to the king of Babylon; and he himself, after his eyes were put out, was bound with fetters of brass, and carried prisoner to Babylon, where he died: thus fulfilling the prophecy of Ezekiel, which declared that he should be carried to Babylon, but should not see the place, though he should die there, Ezekiel xii, 13. In the following month, the Chaldean army, under their general, Nebuzaradan, entered the city, took away every thing that was valuable, and then burned and utterly destroyed it, with its temple and walls, and left the whole razed to the ground. The entire population of the city and country, with the exception of a few husbandmen, were then carried captive to Babylon.

During seventy years, the city and temple lay in ruins: when those Jews who chose to take immediate advantage of the proclamation of Cyrus, under the conduct of Zerubbabel, returned to Jerusalem, and began to build the temple; all the vessels of gold and silver belonging to which, that had been taken away by Nebuchadnezzar, being restored by Cyrus. Their work, however, did not proceed far without opposition; for in the reign of Cambyses, the son of Cyrus, who in Scripture is called Ahasuerus, the Samaritans presented a petition to that monarch to put a stop to the building, Ezra iv, 6. Cambyses appears to have been too busily engaged in his Egyptian expedition to pay any attention to this malicious request. His successor, Smerdis, the Magian, however, who in Scripture is called Artaxerxes, to whom a similar petition was sent, representing the Jews as a factious and dangerous people, listened to it, and, in the true spirit of a usurper, issued a decree putting a stop to the farther building of the temple, Ezra iv, 7, &c; which, in consequence, remained in an unfinished state till the second year, according to the Jewish, and third, according to the Babylonian and Persian account, of Darius Hystaspes, who is called simply Darius in Scripture. To him also a representation hostile to the Jews was made by their inveterate enemies, the Samaritans; but this noble prince refused to listen to it, and having searched the rolls of the kingdom, and found in the palace at Acmetha the decree of Cyrus, issued a similar one, which reached Jerusalem in the subsequent year, and even ordered these very Samaritans to assist the Jews in their work; so that it was completed in the sixth year of the same reign, Ezra iv, 24; v; vi, 1–15. But the city and walls remained in a ruinous condition until the twentieth year of Artaxerxes, the Artaxerxes Longimanus of profane history; by whom Nehemiah was sent to Jerusalem, with a power granted to him to rebuild them. Accordingly, under the direction of this zealous servant of God, the walls were speedily raised, but not without the accustomed opposition on the part of the Samaritans; who, despairing of the success of an application to the court of Persia, openly attacked the Jews with arms. But the building, notwithstanding, went steadily on; the men working with an implement of work in one hand, and a weapon of war in the other; and the wall, with incredible labour, was finished in fifty-two days, in the year B. C. 445; after which, the city itself was gradually rebuilt, Neh. ii, iv, vi. From this time Jerusalem remained attached to the Persian empire, but under the local jurisdiction of the high priests, until the subversion of that empire by Alexander, fourteen years after. See [Alexander].