The Expositor's Bible Part 40

How entirely the improvement of outward worship failed to improve men's hearts the prophet testifies.[717] "The sin of Judah," he says, "is written with a pen of iron, and with the point of a diamond: it is graven upon the tablets of their hearts, and upon the horns of their altars, and their Asherim by the green trees[718] upon the high hills. O My mountain in the field, I will cause thee to serve thine enemies in the land thou knowest not: for ye have kindled a fire in Mine eyes, which shall burn for ever." While Josiah lived this apostasy was secret; but as soon as he died the people "turned again to folly,"[719] and committed all the old idolatries except the worship of Moloch. There arose a danger lest even the moderate ritualism of Deuteronomy should be perverted and exaggerated into mere formality. In the energy of his indignation against this abuse, Jeremiah has to uplift his voice against any trust even in the most decided injunctions of this newly discovered law. He was "a second Amos upon a higher platform." The Deuteronomic Law did not as yet exhibit the concentrated sacerdotalism and ritualism which mark the Priestly Code, to which it is far superior in every way.

It is still prophetic in its tone. It places social interests above rubrics of worship. It expresses the fundamental religious thought "that Jehovah is in no sense inaccessible; that He can be approached immediately by all, and without sacerdotal intervention; that He asks nothing for Himself, but asks it as a religious duty that man should render unto man what is right; that His Will lies not in any known height, but in the moral sphere which is known and understood by all."[720] The book ordained certain sacrifices; yet Jeremiah says with startling emphasis, "To what purpose cometh there to Me frankincense from Sheba, and the sweet calamus from a far country? Your burnt-offerings are not acceptable, nor your sacrifices pleasant unto Me."[721] Therefore He bids them, "Put your burnt-offerings to your sacrifices, and eat them as flesh"--_i.e._, "Throw all your offerings into a ma.s.s, and eat them at your pleasure (regardless of sacerdotal rules): they have neither any inherent sanct.i.ty nor any secondary importance from the characters of the offerers."[722] And in a still more remarkable pa.s.sage, "_For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt-offerings and sacrifices_: but this thing I commanded them, saying, 'Obey My voice.'"[723]

Nay, in the most emphatic ordinances of Deuteronomy he found that the people had created a new peril. They were putting a particularistic trust in Jehovah, as though He were a respecter of persons, and they His favourites. They fancied, as in the days of Micah, that it was enough for them to claim His name, and bribe Him with sacrifices.[724]

Above all, they boasted of and relied upon the possession of His Temple, and placed their trust on the punctual observance of external ceremonies. All these sources of vain confidence it was the duty of Jeremiah rudely to shatter to pieces. Standing at the gates of the Lord's House, he cried: "Trust ye not in lying words, saying, 'The Temple of the Lord! the Temple of the Lord! the Temple of the Lord, are these!' Behold, ye trust in lying words, that cannot profit. Will ye steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, burn incense unto Baal, and walk after other G.o.ds; and come and stand before Me in this house, whereupon My name is called, and say, 'We are delivered,' that ye may do all these abominations? Is this house become a den of robbers in your eyes? But go ye now to My place which was in Shiloh, where I caused My name to dwell at the first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of My people. I will do unto this house as I have done to Shiloh; and I will cast you out of My sight, as I have cast out the whole house of Ephraim."[725]--Yet all hope was not extinguished for ever. The Scythian might disappear; the Babylonian might come in his place; but one day there should be a new covenant of pardon and rest.i.tution; and as had been promised in Deuteronomy, "_all_ should know Jehovah, from the least to the greatest."

At last he even prophesies the entire future annulment of the solemn covenant made on the basis of Deuteronomy, and says that Jehovah will make a new covenant with His people, not according to the covenant which He made with their fathers.[726] And in his final estimate of King Josiah after his death, he does not so much as mention his reformation, his iconoclasm, his sweeping zeal, or his enforcement of the Deuteronomic Law, but only says to Jehoiakim:--

"'Did not thy father eat and drink, and do judgment and justice?--then it was well with him. He judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well. _Was not this to know Me?' saith the Lord_."[727]

Whether because its methods were too violent, or because it only affected the surface of men's lives, or because the people were not really ripe for it, or because no reformation can ever succeed which is enforced by autocracy, not spread by persuasion and conviction, it is certain that the first glamour of Josiah's movement ended in disillusionment. A religion violently imposed from without as a state-religion naturally tends to hypocrisy and externalism. What Jehovah required was, not a changed method of worship, but a changed heart; and this the reformation of Josiah did not produce. It has often been so in human history. Failure seems to be written on many of the most laudable human efforts. Nevertheless, truth ultimately prevails. Isaiah was murdered, and Urijah, and Jeremiah. Savonarola was burnt, and Huss, and many a martyr more; but the might of priestcraft was at last crippled, to be revived, we hope, no more, either by open violence or secret apostasy.

"Then to side with Truth is n.o.ble, when we share her wretched crust, Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 'tis prosperous to be just; Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside, Doubting in his abject spirit till his Lord is crucified, And the mult.i.tude make virtue of the faith they have denied."

FOOTNOTES:

[692] 2 Kings xxiii. 4. We have here the first mention of "the second priest" (if, with Gratz, we read _Cohen mishneh_, as in 2 Kings xxv.

18; Jer. lii. 24). In later days he was called "the Sagan." At this time he probably acted as "Captain of the Temple" (Gratz, ii. 319).

[693] Comp. 2 Kings xii. 15, where we find the same remark.

[694] Exod. xv. 20; Judg. iv. 4; Isa. viii. 3. "The prophetess" seems to mean "prophet's wife." Noadiah was a false prophetess.

[695] Exod. xxviii. 2, etc.

[696] 2 Kings xxii. 14. Heb., _mishneh_, lit. "second"; A.V., "the college"; R.V., "the second quarter." Perhaps it means "the lower city" (Neh. xi. 9; Zeph. i. 10). It puzzled the LXX.: ?? t? ase??.

Vulg., _in secunda_. Jerome says, "_Haud dubium quin urbis partem significet quae interiori muro vallabatur_." Comp. Zeph. i. 10, "an howling from the _second_" (_i.e._, quarter of the city); Neh. xi. 9, where, for "_second over the city_" (A. and R.V.), read "over the second part of the city."

[697] Another reading is "in Jerusalem," which gets over an historic difficulty.

[698] Comp. 2 Kings xi. 14; LXX., ?p? t?? st????; Heb., _al-ha-ammud_; Vulg., _super gradum_.

[699] 2 Kings xxiii. 4; for "in the fields of Kedron" one version has ?? t? ?p???s? t?? ?e??????, "in the burning-place of the wady,"--perhaps reading _bemisrephoth_ for _bishedamoth_, and alluding to lime-kilns in the wady. It is surprising that they should carry the ashes "to Bethel." Thenius suggests the reading ?????????, "place of execution" (lit., "house of nothingness").

[700] Hos. x. 5; Zeph. i. 4 (the only other places where the word occurs). The _delevit_ of the Vulgate (2 Kings xxiii. 5) only means that he put them down, and the ?at??a?se of the LXX. should be ?at?pa?se.

[701] Comp. Jer. ii. 23, where the LXX. has ?? t? p???a?d???. In 2 Chron. x.x.xiv. 4, perhaps the true reading is, not _Beni-ha-'am_, but _Beni-hinnom_--which would mean that he scattered the dust in the gehenna of Jerusalem. Comp. 1 Kings xv. 13.

[702] For these Galli, see Seneca, _De Vit. Beat._, 27; Pliny, _H.

N._, xi. 49.

[703] Heb., _bathim_, lit. "tents" or "houses"; Vulg., _quasi domunculas_.

[704] In 2 Kings xxiii. 8, Geiger would read "the high places of the _satyrs_" (???????).

[705] Usually derived (as by Selden and Milton) from _toph_, "drum,"

but perhaps from _tuph_ (to _spit_ in sign of abhorrence).

[706] _Parvar_--perhaps "open portico." Renan connects the word with the Greek pe??????. On horses dedicated to the sun, see Xen.

_Cyrop._, viii. 3, 5, 12; _Anab._, iv. 5.

[707] See Zeph. i. 5; Jer. xix. 13, x.x.xii. 29.

[708] 2 Kings xxiii. 13: "The Mount of Corruption"; Vulg., _Mons offensionis_; LXX., t?? ????? t?? ??s???. Some conjecture that _Maschith_ may be a derisive change for some word which meant "anointing" (from being the _Oil_ Mountain, _Har ham-mischchah_).

[709] In burning the bones of the dead, he violated all Jewish feeling.

Amos (ii. 1) had severely rebuked this form of revenge and insult even in the case of the heathen King of Moab. Bones defiled the touch (Num.

xix. 16; Herod., iv. 73). Josiah's question at Bethel was, "What _pillar_ is that?" (_tsiyun_). LXX., s??pe???. Comp. Gen. x.x.xv. 20.

[710] 1 Kings xiii. 29-31.

[711] 2 Chron. x.x.xv. 1-19.

[712] Jer. xi. 3, 4. Since, in this part of my subject, I make frequent reference to the prophecies of Jeremiah which are indispensable to the right understanding of the history, I may here say that modern critics (Cheyne and others) arrange them as follows:--

In the reign of _Josiah_, Jer. ii. 1-iii. 5, iii. 6-vi. 30, vii. 1-ix.

25, xi. 1-17.

In the reign of _Jehoiakim_, xxvi. 2-6, xlvi. 2-12, xxv., x.x.xv., and possibly xvi. 1, xviii. 19-27, xiv., xv., xviii., xi. 18-xii. 17.

In the reign of _Jehoiachin_, x. 17-23, xiii.

In the reign of _Zedekiah_, xxii.-xxiv., xxvii.-xxix. 1-11 (?), lii.

In the _Exile_, x.x.xix.-xliv.

[713] See Cheyne, _Jeremiah_, p. 56, _id._ 6.

[714] Canon Cheyne shows that even Mohammed could not persuade the Quras.h.i.tes wholly to give up their black stone at the Kaaba, and their dolmens and sacred trees (_id._ 103). He left the _aucab_, or sacrificial stones (_matstseboth_), though he warns his followers against them (_Quran_, v. 92).

[715] Jer. xvii. 9-11.

[716] Ewald, _The Prophets_, iii. 63, 64.

[717] Jer. xvii. 1-4.

[718] The Quras.h.i.tes and other heathen Arabs accounted holy a large green tree, and every year had a sacrifice in its honour. "On the way to Hunain we called to G.o.d's Messenger (Mohammed) that he should appoint for us such trees. But he was terrified, and said, 'Lord G.o.d, Lord G.o.d!

Ye speak even as the Israelites ... ye are still in ignorance,--thus are heathen enslaved'" (Vakdi, _Book of the Campaigns of G.o.d's Messenger_, quoted by Cheyne, _Jeremiah_, p. 103, from Wellhausen).

[719] Psalm lx.x.xv. 8.

[720] Deut. x.x.x. 11-14. See Wellhausen, p. 165.

[721] Jer. vi. 20. The pa.s.sages of Jeremiah which seem of a different spirit may have been added by later hands--_e.g._, x.x.xiii. 18, which is not in the LXX.

[722] Jer. vii. 21; Ewald; and Cheyne, _l.c._ 120. So the Jews seem to have understood it, for they appoint this pa.s.sage to be read on the _Haphtara_ after the _Parashah_ about sacrifices from Leviticus.

[723] Jer, vii. 22, 23. This alone would show that Jeremiah did not (as earlier critics thought) _write_ "Deuteronomy," in spite of the numerous close resemblances in phraseology. Thus, Jeremiah often denounces the priests (i. 18, ii. 8-26, iv. 9, v. 31, viii. 1, xiii.

13, x.x.xii. 32). Cheyne, p. 82.