Jeremiah : Being The Baird Lecture for 1922 Part 10

Pack off, O Benjamin's sons, VI. 1 Out of Jerusalem!

Strike up the trump in Tekoa,(239) O'er Beth-hakkerem lift up the signal!

For evil glowers out of the North, And ruin immense.

O the charming (?) the pampered height(240) 2 Of the daughter of ?ion!

Unto her shepherds are coming, 3 With their flocks around,(241) They pitch against her their tents, Each crops at his hand.

"Hallow(242) the battle against her, Up, let us on by noon."

"Woe unto us! The day is turning, 4 The shadows of evening stretch."

"Up then and on by night, 5 That we ruin her palaces!"

For thus said the Lord of Hosts: 6 Hew down her(243) trees and heap Against Jerusalem a mound; Woe to the City of Falsehood,(244) Nought but oppression within her!

As a well keeps its waters fresh 7 She keeps fresh her evil; Violence and spoil are heard throughout her, Ever before Me sickness and wounds.

Jerusalem, be thou corrected, 8 Lest from thee My soul doth break, Lest I lay thee a desolate waste, Uninhabited land.

Here follows another and separately introduced Oracle:-

Thus hath the Lord(245) said: 9 Glean, let them glean as a vine Israel's remnant; Like the grape-gleaner turn thy hand Again to its(246) tendrils.

"To whom shall I utter myself, 10 And witness that they may hear?

"Lo, uncirc.u.mcised is their ear, They cannot give heed.

"The Word of the Lord is their scorn, No pleasure have they therein.

"I am full of the rage of the Lord, 11 "Weary with holding it back!

Pour(247) it out on the child in the street, On the youths where they gather; Both husband and wife shall be taken, The old with the full of days.

Their homes shall be turned to others, 12 Their fields and wives together, When I stretch forth My Hand On those that dwell in this(248) land.

[Rede of the Lord.]

Because from the least to the greatest 13 All are greedy of gain, Right on from prophet to priest Every one worketh lies.

They would heal the breach of My people, 14 As though it were trifling, Saying, "It is well, it is well"- When-where(249) is it well?

Were they shamed of their loathsome deeds? 15 Nay, not at all ashamed!

They know not even to blush!

So they with the fallen shall fall, And shall reel in the time that I visit, Rede of the Lord.

Still another Oracle which gives no glimpse of the Scythians, but threatens a vague disaster and once more states the moral reasons for Judah's doom. Its allusion to incense and sacrifices is no reason for dating it after the discovery of Deuteronomy.(250)

Thus hath the Lord said- 16 Halt on the ways and look, And ask for the ancient paths: Where is(251) the way that is good?

Go ye in that, And rest shall ye find to your soul, But they-"We go not!"

I raised up sentinels for you- 17 Heed the sound of the trump!(252) But they-"We heed not!"

Therefore, O nations, hearken, 18 And own My record against them (?)(253) Hear thou, O Earth, 19 Lo, evil I bring to this people, The fruit of their own devices,(254) Since they have not heeded My Word, And My Law have despised.

To Me what is incense that cometh from Sheba, 20 Sweet-cane from a far-off land?

Your holocausts are not acceptable, Nor your sacrifice pleasing.

Therefore thus hath the Lord said: 21 Behold I set for this people Blocks upon which to stumble; Fathers and children together, Neighbour and friend shall perish.

None of the foregoing brief and separate Oracles diverts from the moral theme of all these earlier utterances of the Prophet, that Judah's afflictions, whether from Nature or from invaders, are due to her own wickedness. And this record even the foreign peoples are called to witness-another proof that from the first Jeremiah had a sense of a mission to _the nations_ as well as to his own countrymen.

7. There follows the Seventh, the last of the Songs which may be referred to the Scythian invasion, Ch. VI. 22-26. It repeats the distance from which, in the fateful North, those hordes have been _stirred_ to their work of judgment, their ruthlessness and terrific tumult, the panic they produce, and bitter mourning. The usual formula introduces the verses.

22. Thus hath the Lord said:

Lo, a people comes out of the North, A nation(255) astir from the ends of the earth, The bow and the javelin they grasp, 23 Cruel and ruthless, The noise of them booms like the sea, On horses they ride- Arrayed as one man for the battle On thee, O Daughter of ?ion!

We have heard their fame, 24 Limp are our hands; Anguish hath gripped us, Pangs as of travail.

Fare not forth to the field, 25 Nor walk on the way, For the sword of a foe, Terror all round!

Daughter of My people, gird on thee sackcloth 26 And wallow in ashes!

Mourn as for an only-begotten, Wail of the bitterest!

For of a sudden there cometh The spoiler upon us.(256)

This is the last of Jeremiah's Oracles on the Scythians. There is little or no doubt of their date-before 621-20. What knowledge of this new people and their warfare the Prophet displays! What conscience of the ethical purpose of the Lord of Hosts in threatening Judah with them! Yet some still refuse to credit the story of his Call, that from the first he heard himself appointed as a prophet _to the nations_.(257)

This section of Jeremiah's earlier Oracles concludes with one addressed to himself, Ch. VI. 27-30. It describes the task a.s.signed him during the most of his time under Josiah, whether before the discovery and promulgation of the Book of the Law in 621-20, or subsequently to this while he watched the nation's new endeavour to repent and reform. During the years from 621-20 till 608 when Josiah was defeated and slain at Megiddo, there can have been but little for him to do except to follow, as his searching eyes and detached mind alone in Israel could follow, the great venture of Judah in obedience to the Book of the Law. For this interval the outside world had ceased to threaten Israel. The a.s.syrian control of her was relaxed: the people of G.o.d were free, and had their first opportunity for over a century to work out their own salvation.

a.s.sayer among My people I set thee,(258) 27 To know and a.s.say their ways, All of them utterly recreant, 28 Gadding about to slander.

Bra.s.s and iron are all of them(?), Wasters they be!

Fiercely blow the bellows, 29 The lead is consumed of the fire(?) In vain does the smelter smelt, Their dross(259) is not drawn.

"Refuse silver" men call them, For the Lord hath refused them.(260)

To take these lines as subsequent to the inst.i.tution of Deuteronomy and expressive of the judgment of the Prophet upon the failure of the reformation under Josiah to reach the depth of a real repentance,(261) is unnecessary. The young Jeremiah had already tested his people and in his earliest Oracles reached conclusions as hopeless as that here. At least he had already been called to test the people; and in next section we shall see how he continued to fulfil his duty after the discovery of Deuteronomy, and onwards through the attempts at reformation which it inspired.

3. Jeremiah and Deuteronomy. (Chs. VII, VIII. 8, XI.)

We are not told when or why Jeremiah left Anathoth for Jerusalem. His early poem denouncing the citizens(262) reveals a close observation of their morals but no trace of the reforms begun by Josiah soon after 621 B.C. Some therefore hold that he had settled in the City before that year.(263) Anathoth, however, lay so near Jerusalem that even from his boyhood Jeremiah must have been familiar with the life and trade of the capital; and as his name is not mentioned in connection with the discovery of the Law-Book on which the reforms were based, and neither he nor his biographer speaks of that discovery, it is probable that as yet he had not entered upon residence in the Temple-precincts. A natural occasion for the migration of his family and himself would be upon Josiah's disestablishment of the rural sanctuaries and provision for their priests beside the priests of the Temple.(264) In any case we find Jeremiah henceforth in Jerusalem, delivering his Words in the gateways or courts of the Temple to all cla.s.ses of the citizens as well as to the country-folk, who under the new laws of worship thronged more than ever the City and her great Shrine.

There is general agreement that _the Book of the Law_ discovered by the Temple-priests in 621-20 was our Book of Deuteronomy in whole or in part-more probably in part, for Deuteronomy has been compiled from at least two editions of the same original, and the compilation may not have been made till some time later. Many of its laws, including some peculiar to itself, have been woven out of more than one form, and there are two Introductions to the Book, each hortatory and historical and each covering to some extent the same ground as the other. We cannot tell how much of this compilation was contained in the discovered Book of the Law. But this Book included certainly _first_ the laws of worship peculiar to Deuteronomy, because the reforms which it inspired carried out these laws, and probably _second_ some of the denunciations which precede or follow the laws, for such would explain the consternation of the King when the Book was read to him.(265)

Deuteronomy is fairly described as a fresh codification of the ancient laws of Israel in the spirit of the Prophets of the Eighth Century. The Book is not only Law but Prophecy, in the proper sense of this word, and a prophetic interpretation of Israel's history. It not only restates old and adds new laws but enforces the basal truths of the prophets, and in this enforcement breathes the ethical fervour of Amos and Isaiah as well as Hosea's tenderness and his zeal for education.

Deuteronomy has three cardinal doctrines: The One G.o.d, The One Altar, and The One People.

_First_, The One G.o.d. Though slightly tinged with popular conceptions of the existence of other G.o.ds,(266) the monotheism of the Book is strenuously moral and warmly spiritual. The G.o.d of Israel is to be served and loved because He is Love-the One and Only G.o.d not more by His Righteousness and His Power than by His Grace, manifest as all three have been throughout His dealings with Israel. The worship of other G.o.ds is forbidden and so is every attempt to represent Himself in a material form.

His ritual is purged of foolish, unclean and cruel elements. Witchcraft and necromancy are utterly condemned.

_Second_-and this is original to Deuteronomy-The One Altar, at that time an inevitable corollary both to the need for purity in the worship of G.o.d and to the truth of His Unity. The long license of sacrifices at a mult.i.tude of shrines had resulted not only in the debas.e.m.e.nt of His worship, but in the popular confusion of Himself with a number of local deities.(267) The removal of the high-places, the concentration of sacrifice upon One Altar had, by the bitter experience of centuries, become a religious and an ethical necessity.

_Third_, The One People. Save for possible proselytes from the neighbouring heathen, Israel is alone legislated for-a free nation owning no foreign king as it bows to no foreign deity, but governing itself in obedience to the revealed Will of its own G.o.d. This Will is applied to every detail of its life in as comprehensive a system of national religion as the world has known. And thus next to devotion to the Deity comes pride in the nation. Because of their possession of the Divine Law Israel are _the_ righteous people and wise above all others. The patriotism of the Book must have been one cause of its immediate acceptance by the people, when Josiah brought it before them and upon it they made Covenant with their G.o.d. Throughout the Book treats the nation as a moral unit. It enforces indeed justice as between man and man. It gives woman a higher position than is a.s.sumed for her by other Hebrew codes. It cares for the individual poor, stranger, debtor and dependent priest with a humanity all its own, and it exhorts to the education of children. Above all it forbids base thoughts as well as base deeds. Yet, while thus enforcing the elements of a searching personal morality, Deuteronomy deals with the individual only through his relations to the nation and the national worship. The Book has no promise for the individual beyond the grave. Nor is there pity nor charity for other peoples nor any sense of a place for them in the Divine Providence. There is no missionary spirit nor hope for mankind outside of Israel.

Further it is due to the almost exclusively national outlook and interest of the Book that it has no guidance or comfort to offer for another element of personal experience-question and doubt. While it ill.u.s.trates from the nation's history the purifying discipline of suffering because of sin it says nothing of the sufferings of righteous individuals, but by the absoluteness of its doctrines of morality and Providence suggests, if indeed it does not inculcate, the dogma that right-doing will always meet with prosperity and wrong-doing with pain and disaster-a dogma which provoked the thoughtful to scepticism, as we shall see with Jeremiah himself.

Again, the fact that the Book, while superbly insistent upon justice, holiness and humanity, lays equal emphasis on a definite ritual, with One Altar and an exclusive system of sacrifices, tempted the popular mind to a superst.i.tious confidence in these inst.i.tutions. And while it was of practical advantage to have the principles of the prophets reduced to a written system, which could be enforced as public law and taught to the young-two ends on which the authors of Deuteronomy are earnestly bent-there was danger of the people coming thereby to trust rather in the letter than in the spirit of the new revelation. Both these dangers were soon realised. As Dr. A. B. Davidson has said, "Pharisaeism and Deuteronomy came into the world on the same day."

Such was the Book discovered in the Temple in 621-20 and accepted as Divine by King and Nation. Modern efforts to connect Jeremiah with its discovery and introduction to the Monarch, and even with its composition, may be ignored. Had there been a particle of evidence for this, it would have been seized and magnified by the legalists in Israel, not to speak of those apocryphal writers who foist so much else on Jeremiah and Baruch.(268) That they have not even attempted this is proof-if proof were needed-that Jeremiah, the youthful son of a rural family, and probably still unknown to the authorities in the Capital, had nothing whatever to do either with the origins, or with the discovery, of the Book of the Law or with its presentation to the King by the priests of the Temple.