The Expositor's Bible Part 39

[668] Zeph. ii. 4-7.

[669] Zeph. ii. 12-15.

[670] Jer. ii. 1-35. Considering the very great part played by Jeremiah for nearly half a century of the last history of Judah, the non-mention of his name in the Book of Kings is a circ.u.mstance far from easy to explain.

[671] Jer. iv. 6, A. V., "retire, stay not." Comp. Isa. x. 24-31.

[672] Jer. iv. 7-27.

[673] Jer. v. 15-17.

[674] Jer. vi. 1, 22, 23, 24.

[675] The almond tree (_shaqad_) "seems to be awake (_shaqad_), whatsoever trees are still sleeping in the torpor of winter" (Tristram _Nat. Hist. of the Bible_, 332; Jer. i. 11-14).

[676] The name Kimmerii (on the a.s.syrian inscriptions Gimirrai) is connected with Gomer. The Persians call them Sakai or Scyths. The nomad Scyths had driven the Kimmerii from the Dniester while Psammetichus was King of Egypt. For allusions to this see Jer. vi. 22 _seq._, viii. 16, ix. 10. The first notice of them is in an inscription of Esarhaddon, B.C. 677, who says that he defeated "Tiushpa, _the Gimirrai, a roving warrior_, whose own country was remote." Zephaniah and Jeremiah were certainly thinking of the Scythians (Eichhorn, Hitzig, Ewald; and more recently Kuenen, _Onderzoek_, ii. 123; Wellhausen, _Skizzen_, 150). In B.C. 626 they could not have consciously had the Chaldaeans in view, though, twenty-three years later, Jeremiah may have had.

[677] See Ezek. x.x.xviii., x.x.xix.

[678] Ezek. x.x.xviii. 2. So Gesenius, Havernick, etc., and R.V.

[679] The form in the Vulgate and the Alexandrian MS. of the LXX. is Mosech; in the a.s.syrian inscription, Muski. As far back as 1120 Tiglath-Pileser I. had overrun Tubal (the Tublai, Tabareni) and Moschi, between the Black Sea and the Taurus. They were neither Aryans nor Semites. In Gen. x. 2; 1 Chron. i. 5, Gog, Magog, Meshech, and Gomer are sons of j.a.pheth. They are referred to in Rev. xx. 8.

[680] Herod., i. 74, 103-106, iv. 1-22, vii. 64; Pliny, _H. N._, v.

16; Jos., _Antt._, I. vi. 1; Syncellus, _Chronogl._, i. 405.

[681] Sayce, _Ethnology of the Bible; Records of the Past_, ix. 40; Schrader, _K. A. T._, 159. Some identify Gog with Gyges, King of Lydia, who was killed in battle _against_ the Scythians, but whose name stood for a geographical symbol of Asia Minor, sometimes called Lud. It is said that in 665 Gyges (Gugu) sent two Scythian chiefs as a present to Nineveh.

[682] Hence, in 2 Macc. iv. 47, 3 Macc. vii. 5, Scythian is used with the modern connotation of "Barbarian."

[683] Ezek. x.x.xii. 26, 27; Cheyne, _Jeremiah_ ("Men of the Bible") p.

31.

[684] _Expositor_, 2nd series, iv. 263; Cheyne, _Jeremiah_, 31. Hitzig and Ewald (erroneously?) refer Psalms lv., lix., to these events, and it seems also to be an error to suppose that the later name of Bethshan--Scythopolis--has anything to do with this incursion. Like the names of Pella, Philadelphia, etc., it is later than the age of Alexander the Great. See 2 Macc. xii. 30; Jos., _B. J._, II. xviii., _Vit._ vi. Perhaps Scythopolis is a corruption of Sikytopolis, the city of Sikkuth; or Scythian may merely stand for "Barbarian," as in 3 Macc. vii. 5; Col. iii. 11 (Cheyne, _l.c._).

[685] Nah. i. 10, ii. 5, iii. 12; Diod. Sic., ii. 26.

[686] Nah. iii. 8-11.

[687] Strabo, xvi. 1, 3: ?fa??s?? pa?a???a.

[688] Xen., _Anab._, III. iv. 7.

[689] Chaldees, Kardim, Kasdim, Kurds.

[690] Nabu-pal-ussur, "Nebo protect the son" B.C. 625-7. Jos., _Antt._ X. xi. 1: comp. _Ap._, i. 19.

[691] Newman, _Hebrew Monarchy_, p. 315.

CHAPTER x.x.xI

_JOSIAH'S REFORMATION_

2 KINGS xxii. 8-20, xxiii. 1-25

"And the works of Josias were upright before his Lord with a heart full of G.o.dliness."--1 ESDRAS i. 23.

"From Zion shall go forth the Law, and the Word of the Lord from Jerusalem."--ISA. ii. 3.

It is from the Prophets--Zephaniah, Jeremiah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Ezekiel--that we catch almost our sole glimpses of the vast world-movements of the nations which must have loomed large on the minds of the King of Judah and of all earnest politicians in that day.

As they did not directly affect the destiny of Judah till the end of the reign, they do not interest the historian of the Kings or the later Chronicler. The things which rendered the reign memorable in their eyes were chiefly two--the finding of "the Book of the Law" in the House of the Lord, and the consequent religious reformation.

It is with the first of these two events that we must deal in the present chapter.

Josiah began to reign as a child of eight, and it may be that the emphatic and honourable mention of his mother--Jedidah ("Beloved"), daughter of Adaiah of Boscath--may be due to the fact that he owed to her training that early proclivity to faithfulness which earns for him the unique testimony, that he not only "walked in the way of David his father," but that "he turned not aside to the right hand or to the left."

At first, of course, as a mere child, he could take no very active steps. The Chronicler says that at sixteen he began to show his devotion, and at twenty set himself the task of purging Judah and Jerusalem from the taint of idols. Things were in a bad condition, as we see from the bitter complaints and denunciations of Zephaniah and Jeremiah. Idolatry of the worst description was still openly tolerated.

But Josiah was supported by a band of able and faithful advisers.

Shaphan, grandfather of the unhappy Gedaliah--afterwards the Chaldaean viceroy over conquered Judah--was scribe; Hilkiah, the son of Shallum and the ancestor of Ezra, was the high priest.[692] By them the king was a.s.sisted, fist in the obliteration of the prevalent emblems of idolatry, and then in the purification of the Temple. Two centuries and a half had elapsed since it had been last repaired by Joash, and it must have needed serious restoration during long years of neglect in the reigns of Ahaz, of Mana.s.seh, and of Amon. Subscriptions were collected from the people by "the keepers of the door," and were freely entrusted to the workmen and their overseers, who employed them faithfully in the objects for which they were designed.[693]

The repairs led to an event of momentous influence on all future time.

During the cleansing of the Temple Hilkiah came to Shaphan, and said, "I have found the Book of the Law in the House of the Lord." Perhaps the copy of the book had been placed by some priest's hand beside the Ark, and had been discovered during the removal of the rubbish which neglect had there acc.u.mulated. Shaphan read the book; and when next he had to see the king to tell him about the progress of the repairs, he said to him, "Hilkiah the priest hath handed me a book." Josiah bade him read some of it aloud. It is evident that he read the curses contained in Deut. xxviii. They horrified the pious monarch; for all that they contained, and the laws to which they were appended, were wholly new to him. He might well be amazed that a code so solemn, and purporting to have emanated from Moses, should, in spite of maledictions so fearful, have become an absolute dead letter. In deep alarm he sent the priest, the scribe Shaphan, with his son Ahikam, and Abdon, the son of Micaiah, and Asahiah, a court official, to inquire of Jehovah, whose great anger could not but be kindled against king and people by the obliteration and nullity of His law. They consulted Huldah, the only prophetess mentioned in the Old Testament, except Miriam and Deborah.[694] She was the wife of Shallum and keeper of the priests' robes,[695] and she lived in the suburbs of the city.[696] Her answer was an uncompromising menace. All the curses which the king had heard against the place and people should be pitilessly fulfilled,--only, as the king had showed a tender heart, and had humbled himself before Jehovah, he should go to his own grave in peace.[697]

Thereupon the king summoned to the Temple a great a.s.sembly of priests, prophets, and all the people, and, standing by the pillar (or "on the platform")[698] in the entrance of the inner court, read "all the words of the Book of the Covenant which had been found in the House of the Lord" in their ears, and joined with them in "the covenant" to obey the hitherto unknown or totally forgotten laws which were inculcated in the newly discovered volume.

Immediate action followed. The priests were ordered to bring out of the Temple all the vessels made for Baal, for the Asherah, and for the host of heaven; they were burnt outside Jerusalem in the Valley of Kedron, and their ashes taken to Bethel.[699] The _chemarim_ of the high places were suppressed, as well as all other idolatrous priests who burnt incense to the signs of the Zodiac, the Hyades, and the heavenly bodies.[700] The Asherah itself was taken out of the Temple, and it is truly amazing that we should find it there so late in Josiah's reign. He burnt it in the Kedron, stamped it to powder, and scattered the powder "on the graves of the common people." The Chronicler says "on the graves of them that had sacrificed" to the idols[701];--but this is an inexplicable statement, since it is (as Professor Lumby says) very improbable that idolaters had a separate burial-place. It is equally shocking, and to us incomprehensible, to read that the houses of the degraded _Qedeshim_ still stood, not "by the Temple" (A.V.), but "_in_ the Temple,"[702] and that in these houses, or chambers, the women still "wove embroideries[703] for the Asherah." What was Hilkiah doing? If the priests of the _high places_ were so guilty from Geba to Beersheba, did no responsibility attach to the high priest and other priests of the Temple who permitted the existence of these enormities, not only in the _bamoth_ at the city gates,[704] but in the very courts of the mountain of the Lord's House? If the priests of the immemorial shrines were degraded from their prerogatives, and were not allowed to come up to the altar of Jehovah in Jerusalem, by what law of justice were they to be regarded as so immeasurably inferior to the highest members of their own order, who, for years together, had permitted the worship of a wooden phallic emblem, and the existence of the worst heathen abominations within the very Temple of the Lord? Every honest reader must admit that there are inexplicable difficulties and uncertainties in these ancient histories, and that our knowledge of the exact circ.u.mstances--especially in all that regards the priests and Levites, who, in the Chronicles, are their own ecclesiastical historians--must remain extremely imperfect.

And what can be meant by the clause that the degraded priests of the old high places, though they were not allowed to serve at the great altar, yet "did eat of the _unleavened bread_ among their brethren"?

Unleavened bread was only eaten at the Pa.s.sover; and when there _was_ a Pa.s.sover, was eaten by all alike. Perhaps the reading for "unleavened bread" should be (priestly) "portions"--a reading found by Geiger in an old ma.n.u.script.

Continuing his work, Josiah defiled Tophet;[705] took away the horses given by the kings of Judah to the sun, which were stabled beside the chamber of the eunuch Nathan-Melech in the precincts;[706] and burnt the sun-chariots in the fire. He removed the altars to the stars on the roof of the upper chamber of Ahaz,[707] and ground them to powder.

He also destroyed those of his grandfather Mana.s.seh in the two Temple courts--which we supposed to have been removed by Mana.s.seh in his repentance--and threw the dust into the Kedron. He defiled the idolatrous shrines reared by Solomon to the deities of Sidon, Ammon, and Moloch, broke the pillars, cut down the Asherim, and filled their places with dead men's bones.[708] Travelling northwards, he burnt, destroyed, and stamped to powder the altars and the Asherim at Bethel, and burnt upon the altars the remains found in the sepulchres,[709]

only leaving undisturbed the remains of the old prophet from Judah, and of the prophet of Samaria.[710] He then destroyed the other Samaritan shrines, exercising an undisputed authority over the Northern Kingdom. The mixed inhabitants did not interfere with his proceedings; and in the declining fortunes of Nineveh, the a.s.syrian viceroy--if there was one--did not dispute his authority. Lastly, in accordance with the fierce injunction of Deut. xvii. 2-5, "he slew all the priests of the high places" on their own altars, burnt men's bones upon them, and returned to Jerusalem.

It is very difficult, with the milder notions which we have learnt from the spirit of the Gospel, to look with approval on the recrudescence of the Elijah-spirit displayed by the last proceeding.

But many centuries were to elapse, even under the Gospel Dispensation, before men learnt the sacred principle of the early Christians that "violence is hateful to G.o.d." Josiah must be judged by a more lenient judgment, and he was obeying a mandate found in the new Book of the Law. But the question arises whether the fierce commands of Deuteronomy were ever intended to be taken _au pied de la lettre_. May not Deut. xiii. 6-18 have been intended to express in a concrete but ideal form the spirit of execration to be entertained towards idolatry? Perhaps in thinking so we are only guilty of an anachronism, and are applying to the seventh century before Christ the feelings of the nineteenth century after Christ.

After this Josiah ordered the people to keep a Deuteronomic Pa.s.sover, such as we are told--and as all the circ.u.mstances prove--had not been kept from the days of the Judges. The Chronicler revels in the details of this Pa.s.sover, and tells us that Josiah gave the people thirty thousand lambs and kids, and three thousand bullocks; and his priests gave two thousand six hundred small cattle, and three hundred oxen; and the chief of the Levites gave the Levites five thousand small cattle, and five hundred oxen. He goes on to describe the slaying, sprinkling of blood, flaying, roasting, boiling in pots, pans, and caldrons, and attention paid to the burnt-offerings and the fat;[711]

but neither the historians nor the chroniclers, either here or anywhere else, say one word about the Day of Atonement, or seem aware of its existence. It belongs to the Post-Exilic Priestly Code, and is not alluded to in the Book of Deuteronomy.

Continuing his task, he put away them that had familiar spirits (_oboth_), and the wizards, and the _teraphim_, with a zeal shown by no king before or after him; but Jehovah "turned not from the fierceness of His anger, because of all the provocations which Mana.s.seh had provoked Him withal." Evil, alas! is more diffusive, and in some senses more permanent, than good, because of the perverted bias of human nature. Judah and Jerusalem had been radically corrupted by the apostate son of Hezekiah, and it may be that the sudden and high-handed reformation enforced by his grandson depended too exclusively on the external impulse given to it by the king to produce deep effects in the hearts of the people. Certain it is that even Jeremiah--though he was closely connected with the finders of the book, had perhaps been present when the solemn league and covenant was taken in the Temple, and lived through the reformation in which he probably took a considerable part--was profoundly dissatisfied with the results. It is sad and singular that such should have been the case; for in the first flush of the new enthusiasm he had written, "Cursed be the man that heareth not the words of this covenant, which I commanded your fathers in the day that I brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, saying, 'Obey My voice.'"[712] Nay, it has been inferred that he was even an itinerant preacher of the newly found law; for he writes: "And the Lord said unto me, 'Proclaim all these words in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem, saying, Hear ye the words of this covenant, and do them.'"[713]

The style of Deuteronomy, as is well known, shows remarkable affinities with the style of Jeremiah. Yet it is clear that after the death of Josiah the prophet became utterly disillusioned with the outcome of the whole movement. It proved itself to be at once evanescent and unreal. The people would not give up their beloved local shrines.[714] The law, as Habakkuk says (i. 4), became torpid; judgment went not forth to victory; the wicked compa.s.sed about the righteous, and judgment was perverted. It was easy to obey the external regulations of Deuteronomy; it was far more difficult to be true to its n.o.ble moral precepts. The reformation of Josiah, so violent and radical, proved to be only skin-deep; and Jeremiah, with bitter disappointment, found it to be so. External decency might be improved, but rites and forms are nothing to Him who searcheth the heart.[715] There was, in fact, an inherent danger in the place a.s.sumed by the newly discovered book. "Since it was regarded as a State authority, there early arose a kind of book-science, with its pedantic pride and erroneous learned endeavours to interpret and apply the Scriptures. At the same time there arose also a new kind of hypocrisy and idolatry of the letter, through the new protection which the State gave to the religion of the book acknowledged by the law.

Thus scholastic wisdom came into conflict with genuine prophecy."[716]