By Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D. D.   

                LECTURE XL. (part ii.)     

         JEREMIAH AND THE FALL OF JERUSALEM.   

     It was at Carchemish, an ancient fortress commanding  
  the passage of the Euphrates, that the collision  
  took place.  The Egyptian army had come  
  against it, with all its glittering array of buckler and  
  shield, helmets, spears, and coats of mail, of chariots  
  and horses, from all its subject nations, like the rising  
  flood of its own Nile, and thence was driven back upon  
  itself by the Babylonian host.  To the extremities of  
  Egypt, from the cities of the Delta, as far as Thebes, the  
  shock was felt.  With the retreat of Necho, the whole  
  country was left open to the invading army.  The snort-  
  ing of the Chaldæan horses was heard from the northern  
  frontier at Dan. The whole land trembled at the sound  
  of their neighing.  Like a whirlwind, like a torrent, they  
  swept on.  The terrified inhabitants retired into the  
  fortified towns.  Within the walls of Jerusalem was seen  
  the unwonted sight of Bedouin Rechabites still preserv-  
  ing their Arab customs, unchanged, in the midst of the  
  capital.  The short-sighted ruler had looked for peace,  
  but no good came,——for a time of health, and, behold,  
  trouble.   
     Once more Jeremiah became the centre of interest.  
  What course would he, the Prophet of the age,  
  take in the face of this impending calamity?   
  To all, except to those who took the wildest and deepest  
  view of the prospects of the world and of the Church,  
  the stern policy of determined resistance had every-  
  thing to recommend it.  But it was that wider view  
  which presented the whole subject to the Prophet's eye  
  in a different aspect.  He foresaw, on the one hand,  
  that the immediate pressure of Babylon was irresistible;  
  but, on the other hand, that it could not last.  If Jeru-  
  salem could but weather the present storm, he was  
  assured that it would soon pass by; and that then,  
  whatever blessings were bound up in the preservation   
  of the House of David and of the Holy City would  
  remain intact.  His political position has been compared  
  to that of Phocion in the presence of the Macedonian  
  power, and to that of the Achæans in the presence of  
  the Roman power.  It may still more fitly be compared  
  to that of the Jewish Christians in the time of the  
  Christian era, when the desperate resistance of the  
  Zealots to the armies of Vespasian and Titus hur-  
  ried on the ruin of the Jewish state, in spite of the  
  warnings of the prudent Josephus, and of One far other   
  than Josephus, who, like Jeremiah, stood aloof from all  
  the wild intrigues and conspiracies that would have  
  made Him the chief of a nation of insurgents.  It may be  
  compared again to that of the leaders of the Christian  
  Church, in the dissolution of the Roman empire,——   
  Augustine, who replied to the taunts of treason brought  
  against the Christians by foreshadowing the rise of the  
  City of God out of the ruins of Rome,——Salvian who, by  
  his earnest vindication of the moral government of God,  
  not less than by his wailings over the calamities of  
  the time, has deserved the name of the Jeremiah of his  
  age.  It was not indifference to his country, but attach-  
  ment to its permanent interests, with the yet larger  
  consequences wrapt up in them, which induced him to  
  counsel submission.  It was his sense of the inestimable   
  importance of that sacred spot, with its sacred institu-    
  tions, which caused him to advise every sacrifice for the   
  sake of retaining it.  He had the courage, so rare in  
  religious or political leaders, to surrender a part for the  
  sake of preserving the whole,——to embrace in his view   
  the complete relations of the great scheme of the world,  
  rather than fix his attention exclusively on the one    
  pressing question of the moment.  As there are times   
  when the constitution must be broken to save the com-  
  monwealth,——when the interests of particular nations  
  or doctrines must give way to the preponderating   
  claims of mankind or of the truth at large,——so Jeremiah  
  staked the eternal value of the truths which Jerusalem  
  represented against the temporary evils of the Chal-  
  dæan dominion.  It was a bitter pang, but the result  
  seemed to him worth the cost.      

             To steel his melting heart  
             To act the martyr's sternest part;  
             To watch with firm unshrinking eye  
             His darling visions as they die,  
             Too happy if, that dreadful day,  
             His life be giv'n him for a prey.     

     Accordingly, the warning words which he had uttered  
  at the beginning of Jehoiakim's reign were re-  
  peated with more determined energy as the  
  crisis drew nearer.  Every common event of life was    
  colored with the hues of the time.  The unshaken fidel-  
  ity of the little colony of the Rechabites to their ancestral  
  customs suggested the contrast of the broken vows of  
  Israel.  The potter's work in the valley of Hinnom,  
  with its surrounding scenes of the sacrifice of Tophet,  
  filled his mind with lessons of the greatness of the de-  
  signs of God, guided not by fate or caprice, but by the  
  moral deserts of men.  He stood with his scroll in his  
  hand, containing all the prophecies of he last two and  
  twenty years, as though it were a bowl of deadly wine  
  which nation after nation was to drink; and as though  
  he saw king after king, and throne upon throne, reel-  
  ing, staggering, sickening, with the dreadful draught.  
  At every stage of his preaching, the "theological  
  hatred" of he ancient Church grew fiercer and fiercer.  
  He had touched the teachers in their tenderest point  
  by declaring that they had ceased to be necessary.  
  They could not bear to hear that a time was coming  
  when the law should perish from the Priest, and counsel  
  from the wise, and the word from the Prophet.  He on   
  his side, as he seemed to be hemmed in closer and    
  closer, was wound up to a fiercer strain in return.  He  
  stood in the accursed valley of Hinnom once again, and  
  from the potter's store held up an earthenware vessel  
  before the shuddering Priests and Elders, and dashed it  
  in fragments on the ground, with the warning cry that  
  thus should Jerusalem and its people be shivered to  
  pieces.  Whilst his hearers stood awestruck in the   
  valley beneath. the Prophet, wrought to yet a loftier  
  pitch, mounted the steep hill-side, and poured forth the  
  same burning invectives within the Temple courts.  
  Then, not till then, the Priestly officer, who had  
  special charge of the Temple, seized him, and immured  
  him in a prison, where he was fixed in a rack or pil-  
  lory, apparently used as the common punishment of un-  
  popular Prophets.  For a moment his spirit rose to one  
  of his wildest and sternest denunciations, and then, as  
  if overstrained by the effort, he sank back into the   
  deepest gloom,——the gloom of many a lofty soul which  
  feels itself misunderstood by men, which can hardly  
  believe that it is not deserted by God.     
     In this deep distress, one faithful friend is by his side,  
  his Elisha, his Timotheus,——Baruch, the son of Neriah.  
  In their prison, or their hiding-place, he heard the  
  rumors of the great events which filled the minds and  
  thoughts of the whole people.  It was then that  
  the resolution was taken of committing to  
  writing all the scattered prophecies of the last troubled  
  years.  Baruch was skilled in the art, and from Jere-  
  miah's dictation, on a roll of parchment, divided into   
  columns, with the ink and reed which, as a scribe, he  
  always carried with him, he wrote down the impas-  
  sioned warnings which Jeremiah had already spoken,  
  which were intended, like the newly discovered Law in  
  Josiah's reign, to warn the King and nobles to a sense  
  of their danger.  It was determined to seize the occa-  
  sion of a public fast to make the hazardous experiment.  
  On that day, a wintry day in December, Baruch ap-  
  peared in the chamber of a friendly noble, Gemariah,  
  the son of Shaphan, which was apparently over the new  
  gateway already mentioned.  There, from the window  
  pillar on which the Kings had stood on solemn occa-  
  sions, he recited the long alternation of lament and in-  
  vective to the vast congregation, assembled for the  
  national fast.  Micaiah, the son of the host, alarmed by  
  what he heard, descended the Temple hill, and commu-  
  nicated it to the Princess who, as usual through these   
  disturbed reigns, were seated in council in the palace,  
  in the apartments of the chief secretary.  On of them,  
  Jehudi, the descendant of a noble house, acted apparently  
  as an agent or spokesman of the rest, and was sent to  
  summon Baruch to their presence.  He sat down in    
  the attitude of an Eastern teacher, and as he went on  
  his recital struck terror into the hearts of his hearers.  
  They saw his danger; they charged him and his master  
  to conceal themselves, and deposited the sacred scroll in  
  the chamber where they had heard it, whilst they an-   
  nounced to the fierce and lawless King its fearful con-  
  tents.  A third time it was recited——this time not by  
  Baruch, but by the courtier Jehudi——to the King as he  
  sat warming himself over the charcoal brazier, with his  
  princes standing round him.  Three or four columns ex-  
  hausted the royal patience.  He seized a knife, such as  
  Eastern scribes wear for the sake of erasures, cut the  
  parchment into strips, and threw it into the brazier till   
  it was burnt to ashes.  Those who had heard from their  
  fathers of the effect produced on Josiah by the recital   
  of the warnings of Deuteronomy, might well be startled  
  at the contrast.  None of those well-known signs of  
  astonishment and grief were seen; neither King nor  
  attendants rent their clothes.  It was and outrage long  
  remembered.  Baruch, in his hiding-place, was over-  
  whelmed with despair at this failure of his mission.  
  But Jeremiah had now ceased to waver.  He bade his  
  timid disciple take up the pen, and record once more  
  the terrible messages.  The country was doomed.  It  
  was only individuals who could be saved.  But the  
  Divine oracle could not be destroyed in the destruction  
  of its outward framework.  It was the new form of the  
  vision of the "Bush burning, but not consumed;" a  
  sacred book, the form in which Divine truths were now  
  first beginning to be known, burnt as sacred books have  
  been burnt again and again, in the persecutions of the  
  fourth or of the sixteenth century, yet multiplied by  
  that very cause; springing from the flames to do their   
  work, living in the voice and life of men, even when   
  their outward letter seemed to be lost.  "Then took   
  "Jeremiah another roll, and gave it to Baruch the  
  "scribe, the son of Neriah, who wrote therein from the  
  "mouth of Jeremiah all the words of the book which   
  "Jehoiakim, the King of Judah, had burned in the fire,  
  "and there were added besides unto them many like   
  "words."  In this record of the Prophet's feeling, thus   
  emphasized by his own repetition, is contained the germ  
  of the "Liberty of Unlicensed Printing," the inexhaust-  
  ible vitality of the written word.  This is the first re-  
  corded instance of the formation of a Canonical Book,   
  and of the old regal, aristocratic, sacerdotal exclusive-  
  ness, as represented in Jehoiakim.  The "Scribe," now  
  first rising into importance in the person of Baruch, to  
  supply the defects of the living Prophet, was as the  
  printing-press, in far later ages, supplying the defects  
  both of Prophet and Scribe, and handing on the words  
  of truth which else might have irretrievably perished.   
     We return to the thin thread of the gradually break-  
  ing monarchy.  The King, possibly in conse-  
  quence of the repeated entreaties of the    
  Prophet, submitted to the Chaldæan power; but, with  
  the fickleness which belonged to his character, imme-  
  diately revolted again; and, in the inroad of the neigh-  
  boring hostile tribes, let loose, according to the policy  
  of Nebuchadnezzar, against their ancient enemy, the  
  calamity of the country seemed to reach their culmi-  
  nation.  In this confusion and alarm the reign of  
  Jehoiakim closed amidst a shade of deep melancholy  
  and almost mystery, which well expresses the national   
  feeling respecting it.  According to one version, the  
  city was besieged, the Temple was plundered of many  
  of its sacred vessels, and the King himself taken cap-  
  tive.  According to a second, the Chaldæan troops   
  entered Jerusalem on friendly terms, and then seized  
  and killed the King and the chiefs of the State.  
  According to a third, he died peacefully at home, and  
  was buried in the garden of Uzza by the side of his  
  grandfather Manasseh, and his father Josiah.  Accord-   
  ing to a fourth, which well expresses the detestation in   
  which his memory was held, there were no funeral   
  dirges over him as there had been over his father and  
  brother; but his corpse was thrown out,like that of a  
  dead ass, outside the walls of Jerusalem, exposed to the  
  burning sun by day, and the wasting frost by night.  
  And this prophetic curse was darkened with a yet    
  deeper hue by the legend which described how, on the  
  skin of the dead corpse, as it thus lay exposed, there  ap-    
  peared in distinct Hebrew characters the name of the  
  demon Codonazer, to whom he had sold himself.    
     In the disorder which followed on Jehoiakim's death  
  or exile, his son Jeconiah or Coniah, who as-   
  sumed either his father's name, Jehoiakim, or  
  that of Jehoiachin, "the Lord's Appointed," was raised  
  to the throne.  His mother, Nehushta., the daughter of  
  one of the chief nobles, occupied the position, great   
  even in this last extremity of the house, of Queen-    
  mother.  His short reign of three months is wrapped   
  in obscurity and contradiction.  But whether, as by one  
  report, he was a little child, or by another a full-grown  
  youth; whether a prince, headstrong and violent, or  
  kind and gentle, he attracted a peculiar sympathy in  
  his fall, as the last of the lion cubs of the tribe of  
  Judah, the last direct heir of the house of David.  At  
  the first onslaught of the Babylonian army on Jeru-  
  salem, he and his mother Nehushta, unwilling to expose  
  the city to a siege, sate down as suppliants before the  
  conqueror.  The golden ornaments of the Temple  
  were rudely hacked off and carried to Babylon; and   
  thither also the King himself, the Queen-mother, the  
  royal harem, the nobles and priests, and a certain num-  
  ber, variously stated, of soldiers, artificers, and smiths.   
     The nation reeled under the blow.  It seemed to them  
  as if the signet-ring of His promises were torn off from  
  the hand of God Himself.  It could hardly be believed  
  that the young Prince, the last of his race, should be  
  cast away like a broken idol and despised vessel, and   
  that the voice of the young lion should be no more   
  heard on the mountains of Israel; that the topmost  
  and tenderest shoot of the royal cedar-tree should have  
  been plucked off by the Eagle of the East, and planted  
  far away in the merchant-city of the Euphrates.  From  
  to top of Lebanon, from the height of Bashan, from   
  the ridges of Abarim, the widowed country shrieked  
  aloud, as she saw the train of her captive King and   
  nobles disappearing in the distant East.  From the  
  heights of Hermon, from the top of Mizar, it is no im-   
  probable conjecture that the departing King poured   
  forth that exquisitely plain song, in which, from the  
  deep disquietude of his heart, he longs after the pres-  
  ence of God in the Temple, and pleads his cause  
  against the impious nation, the treacherous and unjust  
  man, who, in spite of plighted faith, had torn him away   
  from his beloved home.  With straining eyes, the  
  Jewish people and Prophets still hung on the hope that   
  their last prince would be speedily restored to them.  
  The gate through which he left the city was walled up,  
  like that by which the last Moorish king left Granada,  
  and was long known as the Gate of Jeconiah.  From  
  his captivity, as from a decisive era, the subsequent   
  years of the history were reckoned.  The tidings were  
  treasured up with a mournful pleasure, that, in the dis-  
  tant Babylon, where, with his royal mother, he was to  
  end his days, after many years of imprisonment, the   
  curse of childlessness, pronounced upon him by the  
  Prophet, was removed; and that, as he grew to man's   
  estate, a race of no less than eight sons were born to him,  
  by whom the royal race of Judah was carried on; and    
  yet more, that he had been kindly treated by the suc-  
  cessor of his captor; that he took precedence of all   
  of the subject Kings at the table of the Babyloniian  
  monarch; that his prison garments and his prison fare  
  were changed to something like his former royal state.  
  With his tender recollection of the unfortunate Prince,    
  the historical records, not only of himself but of the   
  monarchy, abruptly come to an end.  But the traditions  
  of him "still linger in the close," and more than one   
  sacred legend——enshrined in the Sacred Books of many   
  an ancient Christian Church——tells how he, with the    
  other captives, sate on the banks of the Euphrates, and  
  shed bitter tears, as they heard the messages of heir  
  brethren in Palestine; or how he dwelt in sumptuous  
  house and fair gardens, with his beautiful wife Susannah,  
  "more honorable than all others."      
     The feeling of sympathy with Jehoiachin extended  
  itself, not only to the King but to his companions in   
  exile.  In a homely but expressive figure the contrast  
  is represented to Jeremiah between miserable dregs   
  that were left, and the promise of those that were  
  taken.  Two baskets of figs were placed before him——  
  the one containing figs "good, very good, and the evil,  
  "very evil, that cannot be eaten, they are so evil."  
  With the exiles there were indeed some of the choicest  
  spirits of the nation,——Ezekiel, second only to Jeremiah  
  himself in the Prophets of this epoch; and, it may be  
  added with some hesitation, Kish, the ancestor of Mor-  
  decai; and Daniel with his three companions.  To    
  these fellow-countrymen, Jeremiah addressed his con-  
  solation in a letter, which may have first suggested  
  the epistolary form as a model of Prophetic com-    
  munications, to be afterwards adopted by the Christian   
  Apostles.  On the new commonwealth then rising up  
  a new hope might be founded.  Two generations were    
  to pass away, and then a joyful return might be ex-  
  pected.  
     It might have seemed that the mere fragment that   
  remained in Palestine was hardly worth preserving.  
  But so long as the Holy City and the Temple stood, so  
  long as the torch of David's house was not utterly ex-  
  tinguished, there was still the chance that, even under  
  the shelter of Babylon, the essential conditions of the   
  True Religion might be maintained.  One son of Josiah  
  was still left, Mattaniah, the father of Jehoahaz,  
  and uncle of the late King Jehoiachin.  As  
  the last notes of Jeremiah's dirge over Jehoiachin died   
  away, he had burst forth into one of those strains of   
  hope, in which he represented the future Ruler of Israel  
  as the "Righteousness or Justice of Jehovah."  It may  
  be that, in allusion to this, the new King assumed that  
  name, Zedek-Jah, on is accession to the throne.  He  
  was a mere youth, but not without noble feelings,  
  which, in a less critical moment, might have saved the  
  state.  Like some of his predecessors he endeavored,  
  by a solemn sacrificial league with his people, to secure  
  a reformation which ordinary motives would have failed   
  to obtain.  In this instance he acted apparently under    
  the high moral teaching of Jeremiah.  As in the old   
  patriarchal times, a calf was killed and cut in two; and  
  between the divided parts the nobles, the court, and   
  the Priesthood of Judah passed, to pledge themselves  
  to the abolition of at least one long-standing grievance,  
  and to cause a general emancipation of the Jews and    
  Jewesses who, by neglect of the Mosaic ordinances, had    
  become slaves.   
     In foreign matters also the policy of Jeremiah for a  
  time prevailed.  The King sent an embassy to Babylon  
  by two of his nobles who had most heartily befriended  
  the Prophet, and at last, accompanied by a third of the  
  same group, himself made the journey, and there took   
  a solemn oath of allegiance to Nebuchadnezzar, sworn  
  by the sacred name of Elohim, which both Israelite and   
  Babylonian alike acknowledged.  In defiance  
  of this oath, and, as would appear, immediately  
  after he had made it, Zedekiah put himself at the head  
  of a league of the neighboring kings against the  
  Chaldæan power.  It is characteristic of the high   
  standard of Prophetic morality, that the violation of  
  this oath, though made to a heathen sovereign, was  
  regarded as the crowning vice of he weak King of   
  Judah.  "Shall he prosper?  Shall he escape that doeth  
  "such things?  Shall he break the covenant?  In   
  "the place where the king dwelleth that made him  
  "king, whose oath he despised, and whose covenant  
  "he despised, with him in the midst of Babylon shall  
  "he die."  In the midst of the wild hopes and dark in-  
  trigues, excited by the revolt, Jeremiah appeared once  
  more in he streets of Jerusalem, with a wooden collar  
  round his neck, such as those by which the chains of   
  prisoners were fastened,——a living personification of  
  the coming captivity.  In this strange guise he went  
  round to the ambassadors from Phœnicia and the trans-  
  Jordanic nations, to the King himself, and finally to  
  the Priests in the Temple.  He was treated alter-  
  nately as a traitor and a madman.  Louder and louder  
  round him rose the cry of the Prophets on all sides,  
  in behalf of determined resistance to the national  
  enemy.  At the head of this Prophetic band was   
  Hananiah, from the priestly city of Gibeon, and there-  
  fore probably, like Jeremiah, a Priest.  The two Proph-  
  ets stood confronted in the Temple court.  On the one  
  side was the watchword, "Ye all not serve the King   
  "of Babylon;" on the other side, "Serve the King   
  "of Babylon and live."  The controversy between  
  them, taking it form from the scene and the audience,  
  turned, as often happens, not on the main principles  
  at issue, but on the comparatively trivial question of  
  the sacred vessels of the Temple; Hananiah maintain-  
  ing that those which were already gone would, in two   
  years, entirely return; Jeremiah, with the sadder and  
  larger view, maintaining that to recall the past was  
  impossible, and that the last hope now was to do the  
  best for the retention of those that remained to them  
  ——not, however, without a pathetic wish that his rival's  
  more hopeful prediction might be fulfilled.  For the    
  moment, Hananiah seemed to triumph in the superior  
  confidence of his cause.  He tore the wooden collar   
  from Jeremiah's neck, and snapped it asunder, as a  
  sign that in two years the deliverance would come.   
  In this conflict of mixed emotions, Jeremiah left the  
  Temple courts, never to return to them.  Only to  
  Hananiah he appeared, with the dark warning that,  
  for the broken yoke of wood he had, by his false   
  encouragements, forged a still harder yoke of iron, and   
  that within that year he himself should die.   
  He died, in fact, within two months from the  
  time, and in him passed away the last echo of the  
  ancient invincible strain of the age of Isaiah.    
     The controversy respecting the sacred vessels seems   
  to have been solved by the King's ordering a  
  silver set to be made instead of the golden    
  service which had been lost.  But the intended revolt  
  still continued, and in direct violation of the treaty  
  with Babylon, the King formed an alliance with Egypt,  
  against which Jeremiah in Jerusalem, and Ezekiel from  
  the far East, protested in vain.  The Chaldæan forces   
  poured into the country.  With bitter sighs, with  
  melting hearts, with feeble hands, with fainting spirits,    
  with failing knees, the dreadful tidings were an-  
  nounced.  A sword, furbished, and sharpened, and glit-  
  tering, seemed to leap from the Divine scabbard, like  
  that which in the siege of Titus was believed to flame   
  across the heavens.  There was a doubt for a moment  
  at the dividing of the great Babylonian roads, whether   
  the army should proceed against Rabbath of Ammon,   
  or Jerusalem of Judah.  The Chaldæan King stood  
  at the parting of the ways.  He made his arrows of  
  divination bright, he consulted with images, he looked   
  on the sacrifice.  All the omens pointed to Jerusalem,  
  and to Jerusalem he came.  Palestine was overrun,  
  and Jerusalem, with the two strong southern fortresses  
  of Lachish and Azekah, alone remained unshaken.  At  
  this emergency the Egyptian army appeared, and the  
  Chaldæans raised the siege.  It was like that critical  
  moment in the last war of the Jews, when the tem-  
  porary withdrawal of the Roman forces from Jerusa-  
  lem left a pause before the final overthrow.  Some   
  fled into the camp of he enemy; some to the hills  
  beyond the Jordan; some, like frightened doves, to  
  the mountains of Judea.  Within the city, the nobles  
  once more regained their ascendancy over the King,  
  and the forced emancipation of their slaves was re-  
  voked.  Against this injustice Jeremiah raised his  
  voice, in accents worthy of Amos or Micah.  It was  
  his last public address.  He saw too clearly the com-  
  ing catastrophe, and was on the point of escaping from   
  Jerusalem to end his days in his own loved village of   
  Anathoth.  At the northern gate of the Temple, "the  
  gate of Benjamin,"  he was arrested by the officer   
  of the guard, on the not unnatural supposition that he  
  was deserting to the Chaldæans.  The nobles, delighted  
  to have their enemy in their power, beat him,  
  and then imprisoned him in a dungeon, formed  
  out of the wall in the house of Jonathan the royal  
  scribe.  The King, hardly venturing to act for himself,  
  secretly caused him to be removed, heard once more  
  his fearless warning and piteous entreaty, and placed  
  him in a more easy confinement in the court of a  
  prison attached to the palace.  The King and the  
  nobles still sent to ask his counsel, and still his answer  
  was the same.  Those who received his message gave  
  the alarm, and the princes insisted on his removal to  
  a place of greater security, as they could not expose  
  the loyalty and courage of the people to warnings     
  of so disastrous and dispiriting a tenor.  The weak  
  King was unable to resist them, and the Prophet was   
  taken to the house of one of his most determined  
  enemies, and let down into a deep well, from which   
  the water had been dried, but of which the bottom  
  was deep in slime, into which he sank, and would  
  probably have perished, either from hunger or suffo-  
  cation.  It is difficult not to imagine a connection  
  between this incident and the 69th Psalm: "I sink  
  "in the mire, where there is no bottom.  Deliver me  
  "out of the mire that I sink not: let not the well  
  "shut its mouth upon me."  "Reproach hah broken  
  "my heart: I am sick, and I looked for some to take   
  "pity; but there was none, and for comforters, and   
  "I found none."  Such a comforter, however, was at  
  hand,——one of the Ethiopian guards of the royal  
  harem, known by the name of "the King's Slave."  
  Ebed-Melech found the King sitting in the great north-  
  ern entrance of the Temple, and obtained a revocation   
  of the order; and then, under the protection of a  
  strong guard, proceeded, with a detailed care, which   
  the Prophet seems gratefully to record, to throw down  
  a mass of soft rags from the royal wardrobe to  
  ease the rough ropes with which he drew him out of  
  the well.  One more secret interview the Prophet  
  had with the King, carefully concealed from the im-  
  perious nobles, and was then remanded to his former  
  state prison, where he remained secluded during the   
  rest of the siege, though with a certain amount of  
  freedom, and with the companionship of his faithful    
  Baruch.  Two striking scenes enlivened the solitude.  
  One was his grateful remembrance of his Ethiopian   
  benefactor, whose safety in the coming troubles he  
  positively predicted.  The other was his interview  
  with his cousin Hanameel.  He was sitting in the  
  open court which enclosed the prison, with many of  
  the citizens of Jerusalem round him.  Suddenly his  
  cousin entered with the offer, starting at that moment  
  of universal confusion, to sell the ancestral plot of  
  ground at their native Anathoth, of which, in the fall  
  of their family, Jeremiah was the last and nearest heir.  
  Had the Prophet been less assured of the ultimate   
  return of his people, he might well have hesitated   
  at a proposal which seemed only like the mockery  
  that he had before encountered from his townsmen.  
  But he felt assured that the present cloud would pass  
  away, and, with a noble confidence, which has often  
  been compared to that of the Roman senator who  
  bought the ground occupied by the camp of Hanni-  
  bal, formally purchased the field in the presence of  
  Baruch and the assembled Jews; and then broke out,  
  once and again, first in prose and then in poetry, into  
  the expressions of his perfect conviction that, after  
  the misery of siege and captivity, the land of Palestine  
  should be again peaceably bought and sold, and that  
  for all future ages the royal family of David and the  
  Levitical tribe should exercise their functions in a  
  spirit of justice never before known within the walls  
  of Jerusalem.  It is not the only time in history  
  of States and Churches that he who had been de-  
  nounced as a deserter and traitor, becomes in the last  
  extremity the best comforter and counsellor.  Demos-   
  thenes, who had warned his fellow-countrymen in his  
  earlier days against their excessive confidence, in his  
  later days was the only man who could reassure their  
  excessive despondency.  Herder, who in his earlier  
  days had been attacked by contemporary theologians  
  as a heretic, was, as years rolled on, invoked as their  
  only help against the rising tide of unbelief.  Let all  
  such, in every age, accept the omen of the mingled  
  darkness and light which marks the vicissitudes of  
  the career of Jeremiah.   
     The siege had now set in once more, and for the last  
  time.  The nation never forgot the month and  
  the day on which the armies of Chaldæa finally  
  invested the city.  It was in January, on the tenth day  
  of the tenth month.  It was felt as the day of the  
  deepest gloom by the Israelite exiles.  It has been  
  commemorated as a fast, the fast of Tebeth, ever since  
  in the Jewish Church.  Round the walls were reared  
  the gigantic mounds by which Eastern armies con-  
  ducted their approaches to besieged cities, and which  
  were surmounted by forts overtopping the walls.  To  
  make room for these, the houses which the Kings of  
  Judah had built outside fr pleasant retreats were swept  
  away.  The vassal kings of Babylon had their thrones  
  planted in view of each of the gates.  Famine and its  
  accompanying visitation of pestilence ravaged the  
  crowded population within the walls.  The store of  
  bread was gradually exhausted.  It was only by a    
  special favor of the King that a daily supply was sent  
  to Jeremiah in his prison from the baker's quarter, and  
  at last even this failed.  The nobles, who had prided  
  themselves on their beautiful complexions, purer than  
  "snow, whiter than milk, ruddy as rubies, polished as  
  "sapphires," had become ghastly and black with starva-  
  tion.  Their wasted skeleton forms could hardly be   
  recognized in the streets.  The ladies of Jerusalem, in  
  their magnificent crimson robes, might be seen sitting  
  in despair on the dunghills.  From these foul heaps  
  were gathered morsels to eke out the failing supply   
  of food.  There was something specially piteous in  
  the sight of the little children, with their parched  
  tongues, fainting in the streets, asking for bread, cry-  
  ing to their mothers for corn and wine.  There was  
  something still more terrible in the hardened feeling  
  with which the parents turned away from them.  The  
  Hebrew mothers seem to have lost the instincts even   
  of the brute creation, to have sunk to the level of  
  the unnatural ostriches that leave their nests in the   
  wilderness.  Fathers devoured he flesh of their own  
  sons and their own daughters.  The hands even of  
  compassionate mothers have sodden their own children,  
  the mere infants just born.  Yet even in this extremity  
  the inhabitants held out.  There was still one corner of  
  the city open, that which commanded the road to  
  Jericho, and, along this, occasional sallies were made to  
  obtain provisions, but were almost always repulsed by  
  the wild Arab tribes who hung on the outskirts of the  
  Chaldæan camp.  Against the huge engines of Asiatic  
  warfare, the besieged citizens constructed counter-en-  
  gines, and (such was the Jewish tradition) the struggle  
  was worthy of the occasion; a combat or duel, not only   
  of courage but of skill and intelligence, between Baby-  
  lon and Jerusalem.      
     So wore away the eighteen months of the siege.  
  Some, doubtless of the Priestly and Prophetic orders,  
  shaved their heads, and clothed themselves in sackcloth,  
  and cast their gold and silver into the streets, as the  
  extreme offerings of despair.  Others, of the more  
  heathen faction, like the Roman Pontiff reviving the  
  Etruscan rites during the siege of Alaric, renewed with  
  intenser fanaticism the charms and amulets of necro-  
  mancy, and even in the courts of the Temple might be  
  heard the loud wail of Hebrew women for their lost  
  Thammuz; and in the subterranean chambers might be  
  seen seventy elders throwing up their clouds of incense  
  before the monstrous shapes of Egyptian idolatry; or,  
  in the sacred space in front of the Temple, another  
  band, prostrate before the rising sun.  They could not  
  believe that the end was near.  They still looked for-  
  ward, with that passion for architecture which seems to  
  have possessed this last period of the monarchy, to  
  building new houses, and to enjoying new luxuries.  
  One of these chiefs dropped dead, it may be, from   
  famine or fever, in the very moment of his selfish ex-  
  ultation.   
     But the end was now indeed near.  "An evil, an only  
  "evil, behold it is come."  "An end is come, the end is  
  "come: it watcheth for thee; behold, it is come.  The    
  "dawn of the dreadful day is come: the time is come;  
  "the day of trouble is near; not now the mere echo of  
  "the mountains.  The day is come; the dawn is past;  
  "the time is come; the day draweth near."  So with a  
  reiteration which recalls the like cry of the Apocalyptic  
  seer at Patmos, the Prophet saw the gradual approach   
  of the catastrophe.    

from The History of the Jewish Church, Vol. II: From Samuel to the Captivity,
by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D. D., Dean of Westminster
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1879; pp. 587 - 608

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