of States and Churches that he who has been denounced as a deserter and traitor, becomes in the last extremity the best comforter and counsellor. Demosthenes, 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 siege. the day on which the armies of Chaldæa finally B. c. 587. 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 conducted 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 for pleasant retreats were swept away. The vassal kings of Babylon had their thrones planted in view of each of the gates. Famine and its 8 accompanying visitation of pestilence crowded population within the walls. ravaged the The store of bread was gradually exhausted. It was only by a 1 Ezek. xxiv. 1-27. 2 Jer. xxxii. 24; lii. 4; Ezek. iv. 2. 3 Jer. xxxiii. 4. 4 Ibid. i. 15. 5 Josephus, Ant. x. 7, § 4; 8, § 1 Baruch ii. 25; Ezek. v. 12. 6 Jer. lii. 6. 66 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 starvation. 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, crying 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 the 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 1 Jer. xxxvii. 21; xxxviii. 9; Ezek. iv. 16; v. 16; xii. 19. 2 Lam. iv. 7, 8; v. 10 (Heb. and Ewald). 3 Ibid. iv. 5; Ezek. iv. 12, 15. 4 Lam ii. 11, 12, 19; iv. 4. 6 Ezek. v. 10; Baruch ii. 3. H Chaldæan camp.1 Against the huge engines of Asiatic warfare, the besieged citizens constructed counter-engines, 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 Babylon and Jerusalem.2 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 forward, 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 exultation.5 "An evil, an only But the end was now indeed near. ❝evil, behold it is come." "An end is come, the end is "come: it watcheth for thee; behold, it is come. The 1 Lam. v. 9. 2 Joseph. Ant. x. 8, § 1. 3 Ezek. vii. 18, 19. 4 Ezek. viii. 8, 11, 14, 16; xi. 1–4 5 Ibid. xi. 13. "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. -- It was at midnight, on the ninth day of the fourth month, answering to July, still kept as a The assault. fast by the Jewish nation, that the breach was made in the walls. By that time the famine had so exhausted the inhabitants, that there was no further power of resistance. The entrance was effected by the northern gate. Through the darkness of the night, lit up, if at all, only by the nine days' moon, the Chaldæan guards silently made their way from street to street, till they suddenly appeared in the centre of the Temple court, in the middle gateway which opened directly on the great brazen altar. Never before had such a inviolable sanctuary of titles, of the chiefs who spectacle been seen in the Jerusalem. The number, the took the chief places were all recorded. They were six. Two of them bore a name famous in the Babylonian annals, - Nergal-Sharezer, or Neriglissar; two were known only by their official designation, — the Chief of the Eunuchs and the Chief of the Magicians; the other two were Samgar-nebo and Sarsechim.* These sate like kings in the lofty archway. Round them were the lesser princes of the Chaldæan court. By their side stood, or seemed to stand, one clothed in a long 1 Ezek. vii. 2-12. 2 Josephus, Ant. x. 8, § 2. 3 Ezek. ix. 2. 4 Jer. xxxix. 3. It can hardly be doubted that "the six" of Ezek. ix. white .inen robe, with the inkhorn of an Eastern scribe in his girdle.1 Was it the invisible messenger thus made visible for a moment in the Prophetic vision? or was it the Royal Recorder, always attendant on the great King, and thus used as a symbol of the Recording and Protecting Angel? Then the sleeping city woke. It might well seem as if from the desecrated Temple was heard the rushing wings of the departing cherubs, as if Jehovah had indeed cast off the altar,3 round which these savage warriors stood, the sanctuary, which they had made their own. A clang and cry resounded through the silent precincts at that dead hour of night, as if with the tumult of the great festivals. The first victims were those who, whether from religious or superstitious feelings and duties, were habitual occupants of the sacred buildings; the princes who there pursued their idolatrous rites; the Prophets who crowded there in the vain hope that the Temple was impregnable; the young Levites and Priests who were bound to defend the sacred shrine with their swords and lives. The virgin marble of the courts ran red with blood, like a rocky winepress in the vintage.5 The alarm soon spread to the palace. In the twilight" of the early summer dawn, these dreadful scenes were dimly discerned from the palace below; and before the sun had risen, the King, with his wives and The flight children, and the royal guard, escaped, not of Zedekiah. by any of the regular gates, but by a passage broken through a narrow alley, confined between two walls, at the southeastern corner of the city, which the Chaldæan 1 Ezek. ix. 2, 11; x. 2. 2 Ibid. x. 18. 3 Lam. ii. 7. 5 Lam. i. 15. 6 Ezek. xii. 6, 12. 7 Jer. xxxix. 4; Kings xxv. 4 2 Chr. xxxvi. 17; Lam. ii. 21 Joseph. Ant. x. 8, § 2. i. 15. |