"Therefore thus saith Jehovah:
Ye have not hearkened unto Me to proclaim a release every one to his brother and his neighbour:
Behold, I proclaim a release for you—it is the utterance of Jehovah—unto the sword, the pestilence, and the famine;
And I will make you a terror among all the kingdoms of the earth."
The prophet plays upon the word "release" with grim irony. The Jews had repudiated the "release" which they had promised under solemn oath to their brethren, but Jehovah would not allow them to be so easily quit of their covenant. There should be a "release" after all, and they themselves should have the benefit of it—a "release" from happiness and prosperity, from the sacred bounds of the Temple, the Holy City, and the Land of Promise—a "release" unto "the sword, the pestilence, and the famine."
"I will give the men that have transgressed My covenant into the hands of their enemies....
Their dead bodies shall be meat for the fowls of heaven and for the beasts of the earth.
Zedekiah king of Judah and his princes will I give into the hand of ... the host of the king of Babylon, which are gone up from you.
Behold, I will command—it is the utterance of Jehovah—and will bring them back unto this city:
They shall fight against it, and take it, and burn it with fire.
I will lay the cities of Judah waste, without inhabitant."
Another broken covenant was added to the list of Judah's sins, another promise of amendment speedily lost in disappointment and condemnation. Jeremiah might well say with his favourite Hosea:—
"O Judah, what shall I do unto thee?
Your goodness is as a morning cloud,
And as the dew that goeth early away."[147]
This incident has many morals; one of the most obvious is the futility of the most stringent oaths and the most solemn symbolic ritual. Whatever influence oaths may have in causing a would-be liar to speak the truth, they are very poor guarantees for the performance of contracts. William the Conqueror profited little by Harold's oath to help him to the crown of England, though it was sworn over the relics of holy saints. Wulfnoth's whisper in Tennyson's drama—
"Swear thou to-day, to-morrow is thine own"—
states the principle on which many oaths have been taken. The famous "blush of Sigismund" over the violation of his safe-conduct to Huss was rather a token of unusual sensitiveness than a confession of exceptional guilt. The Christian Church has exalted perfidy into a sacred obligation. As Milman says[148]:—
"The fatal doctrine, confirmed by long usage, by the decrees of Pontiffs, by the assent of all ecclesiastics, and the acquiescence of the Christian world, that no promise, no oath, was binding to a heretic, had hardly been questioned, never repudiated."
At first sight an oath seems to give firm assurance to a promise; what was merely a promise to man is made into a promise to God. What can be more binding upon the conscience than a promise to God? True; but He to whom the promise is made may always release from its performance. To persist in what God neither requires nor desires because of a promise to God seems absurd and even wicked. It has been said that men "have a way of calling everything they want to do a dispensation of Providence." Similarly, there are many ways by which a man may persuade himself that God has cancelled his vows, especially if he belongs to an infallible Church with a Divine commission to grant dispensations. No doubt these Jewish slaveholders had full sacerdotal absolution from their pledge. The priests had slaves of their own. Failing ecclesiastical aid, Satan himself will play the casuist—it is one of his favourite parts—and will find the traitor full justification for breaking the most solemn contract with Heaven. If a man's whole soul and purpose go with his promise, oaths are superfluous; otherwise, they are useless.