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now every thing seemed to conspire against the apostate kingdom of Judah. The Lord sent against it "bands of the Chaldees and bands of the Syrians, and bands of the Moabites, and bands of the children of Ammon, to destroy it." "Surely, at the commandment of the Lord came this upon Judah, to remove them out of his sight, for the sins of Manasseh, according to all that he did, and also for the innocent blood that he shed."

After reigning eleven years, Jehoiakim was succeeded by his son Jeconiah, who in three months was carried captive to Babylon. The money of the royal treasury and the golden utensils of the temple were also taken. The whole court, seven thousand soldiers, one thousand artificers, two thousand nobles and wealthy men, who, with their wives, children, and servants, amounted to forty thousand persons, were led captive to the river Chebar, in Mesopotamia. Among this number was the prophet Ezekiel, Ezek. 1: 23. The lower class of citizens and the people of the country only were left in the land. Nebuchadnezzar placed on the throne a brother of Jehoiakim, whom he called Zedekiah.

This prince, the third son of Josiah, was about ten years old at the death of his father. The reformation in Judah was completed, and the passover, so celebrated in Jewish history, observed, about three years before his birth. His childhood, therefore, was passed in circumstances fitted to bind him to

the service of Jehovah. He seems, indeed, to have been better disposed than some of the late kings; but misled by evil counsellors, he renounced his allegiance to Nebuchadnezzar in the ninth year of his reign, and entered into an alliance with Egypt. The Chaldean army immediately laid siege to Jerusalem, but withdrew on the approach of an army from Egypt, which came to the relief of the city. The Egyptians, however, retired without hazarding a battle; the siege was resumed, and the city taken five hundred and eighty-eight years before the Christian era. Zedekiah was made prisoner, his sons slain in his presence, his own eyes put out, and himself led to Babylon, whither Ezekiel had predicted that he would be brought, and where he would die without a sight of the city.

Thus one son of Josiah was dethroned in three months, and died an exile in Egypt; the dead body of another, after he had reigned eleven years, was cast forth without a burial by the victorious Chaldeans; while a third, bereaved of his children by the sword, sightless, throneless, far from his native land, wore out life in the solitude of a Babylonish dungeon. What a fate for the family of one of the best monarchs and best men that ever sat on the throne of Judah! Happy for the good king, when surrounded by the playful circle in his palace, that his own eyes were blind to their coming destiny.

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short time, took every thing of value out of the temple, set fire to it and to the city, threw down the fortifications, put to death its principal inhabitants, and compelled the rest to go into exile.

Of the few people left in the country, some soon went down into Egypt; others were removed to Babylon, and the land was stripped of its inhabitants. Desolation reigned everywhere. No voice of joy or of mirth, no voice of the bridegroom or voice of the bride, was heard in any habitation; the sound of the millstone greeted no passer-by at morning dawn; no light twinkling through the casement cheered the lone traveller in the evening gloom. The idol-altars were crumbling on the hilltops, and the groves of oak were no longer stained with the blood of human sacrifices. In this state, for the most part, the land remained, enjoying its Sabbaths as predicted by Moses, and waiting for the Hebrews who were one day to return.

Some, in the present age, speak slightingly of the Old Testament as a record of our race in its childhood. But men everywhere and in all circumstances have so much in common, that a divine sketch of the workings of the human mind at any period, even the rudest, must be of inestimable value. It stands out amid the speculations of philosophers and the dreams of moralists, as the brilliancy of the sun among the stars. God is always

the same; and whatever may be the peculiarity of

his dealings with the Jews, an apostle has decided that they contain warning and instruction pertinent to every period and every clime." Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples, and were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come." "For whatsoever things were written aforetime, were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope." Faithful to his ancient promises, we may rest satisfied that God will be faithful to his covenant in all coming time. And if he "spared not the old world," if he turned "the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, making them an ensample unto them that should after live ungodly," he "knoweth how to reserve the unjust to the day of judgment to be punished." The same justice, the same regard for his own honor and the good of his kingdom, which poured out the flood, cast down the fires of his wrath upon the guilty cities of the plain, and swept the Jews from their own land, make sure the infliction of vengeance on them who violate his law and despise his mercy. Indeed, all the principles of his government, all the claims of equity, the spontaneous feelings of the human mind, plead even louder for judgment against those who reject the clearer light and the stronger motives of the gospel, than against transgressors in the days of old. "The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away; but the word of the Lord endureth for ever."

LIFE OF JEREMIAH.

CHAPTER XXI.

HIS CALL TO BE A PROPHET.

We have already remarked, that for a long period during the reigns of Manasseh and Amon, as if the nation had been given over by heaven, the voice of prophecy was silent in Judah. At length, in the thirteenth year of the reign of Josiah, one year after he began to purge the land of its idols, the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah the son of Hilkiah, a priest of Anathoth. This was a small city four miles north-east of Jerusalem, allotted to the priests in the division of the country by Joshua. Some think this Hilkiah was the high-priest of that name who coöperated with the king in the reformation of Judah. We must suppose that Jeremiah, trained in a sacerdotal family and city, was early instructed concerning the peculiar institutions of the Jews, though it is not certain that he had access in childhood to the Scriptures. The Pentateuch in the temple was not discovered until about five years

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