2 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 Queenmother. 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 Jerusalem, 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 number, variously stated, of soldiers, artificers, and smiths. 8 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,1o 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 1 2 Chr. xxxvi. 9. 2 2 Kings xxiv. 8. 3 Ibid. xxiv. 9; Ezek. xix. 6. 4 Joseph. Ant. x. 7, § 1. 5 Ezek. xix. 6. 6 Jer. xxii. 30. Ibid xiii. 18 (Heb.); xxii. 26; Σχίν. 12. 8 2 Kings xxiv. 13 (Heb. and Thenius). 9 More than 10,000 in 2 King xxiv. 14, 15; 3023 in all in Jer. lii. 28. 10 Jer. xxii. 24, 28. From far away in the merchant-city of the Euphrates. the top of Lebanon, from the heights 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.2 From the heights of Hermon, from the top of Mizar, it is no improbable conjecture that the departing King poured forth that exquisitely plaintive song, in which, from the deep disquietude of his heart, he longs after the presence 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 distant 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 1 Ezek. xvii. 4. Jer. xxii. 20 (Heb.) 23. 3. Ps. xlii. 1, 2; xliii. 1, 2 (Ewald). Sce Lecture IX. 4 Ezek. i. 2; viii. 1; xxiv. 1; xxvi. 1; xxix. 1; xxxi. 1. 5 Jer. xxii. 26; 2 Kings xxiv. 15. 6 Jer. xxii. 30. 7 1 Chr. iii. 17, 18; comp. Sus 1-4. 82 Kings xxv. 27-30; Jer. lii. 3134. There was a Rabbinical tradition of the subject Kings at the table of the Babylonian monarch; that his prison garments and his prison fare were changed to something like his former royal state. With this 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 their brethren in Palestine; or how he dwelt in a sumptuous house and fair gardens, with his beautiful wife Susannah, "more honorable than all others." 2 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 the 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."a 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 Mordecai; and Daniel with his three companions.5 To that Evilmerodach's kindness arose from his acquaintance with Jehoiachin, in the prison into which he had himself been thrown by an expression of pleasure at Nebuchadnezzar's illness. It probably was really an act of grace on his accession. (Thenius ɔn 2 Kings xxv. 27.) 1 Baruch i. 3, 4. The "Sud" ap pears to be a corruption of the Arabic name for the Euphrates. 2 Susanna 1-4. See Africanus, ad Orig. (Routh, Rel. Sacr. ii. 113), who identifies Joachim with Jehoiachin. 3 Jer. xxiv. 3. 4 Esther ii. 5, 6. 5 In Dan i. 1, Daniel's captivity is these fellow-countrymen Jeremiah addressed his consolations in a letter, which may have first suggested the epistolary form as a model of Prophetic communications, 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 expected. Zedekiah. B. C. 598-587. As 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 extinguished, 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.2 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 his 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 assigned to Jehoiakim, in part confirmed by 2 Chr. xxxvi. 7. Josephus (Ant. x. 6, § 3) refers Ezekiel to this period, and (Ant. x. 10, § 1) Daniel to Zedekiah's exile. 1 Jer. xxix. 1-14. 2 In 2 Chr. xxxvi. 10, he is the brother of Jehoiachin. Comp. 1 Chr iii. 16. 3 Jer. xxiii. 5-7. As in the old the high moral teaching of Jeremiah. 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.1 gle of Jere In foreign matters also the policy of Jeremiah for a time prevailed. The King sent an embassy to Babylon by two of the 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 Last strugof this oath, and, as would appear, immediately miah. 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 the 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 wild hopes and dark intrigues, excited by the revolt, Jeremiah appeared once 1 Jer. xxxiv. 8, 9, 19; comp. Gen. XV. 10, 17. 2 Elasah and Gemariah, Jer. xxix. 25. 3 Seraiah, Jer. li. 59. 4 Ezek. xvii. 14, 18; xv 8; xxi 3. |