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                             THE PROPHECIES

                                   OF

                               JEREMIAH.

                 =With a Sketch of His Life and Times.=





                              BY THE REV.
                           C. J. BALL, M.A.,
                      _Chaplain of Lincoln's Inn_;
             CONTRIBUTOR TO BISHOP ELLICOTT'S "COMMENTARY,"
                    "THE SPEAKER'S COMMENTARY," ETC.






                              =New York:=
                         A. C. ARMSTRONG & SON,
                             714 BROADWAY.
                                 1890.




                               CONTENTS.
                                                                  PAGE

  PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JEREMIAH                 1

                                   I.

  THE CALL AND CONSECRATION                                           58

                                  II.

  THE TRUST IN THE SHADOW OF EGYPT                                    74

                                  III.

  ISRAEL AND JUDAH--A CONTRAST                                       114

                                  IV.

  THE SCYTHIANS AS THE SCOURGE OF GOD                                134

                                   V.

  POPULAR AND TRUE RELIGION                                          149

                                  VI.

  THE IDOLS OF THE HEATHEN AND THE GOD OF ISRAEL                     215

                                  VII.

  THE BROKEN COVENANT                                                248

                                 VIII.

  THE FALL OF PRIDE                                                  280

                                  IX.

  THE DROUGHT AND ITS MORAL IMPLICATIONS                             300

                                   X.

  THE SABBATH--A WARNING                                             364

                                  XI.

  THE DIVINE POTTER                                                  377

                                  XII.

  THE BROKEN VESSEL--A SYMBOL OF JUDGMENT                            398

                                 XIII.

  JEREMIAH UNDER PERSECUTION                                         411




                   PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF THE LIFE AND
                           TIMES OF JEREMIAH.


A priest by birth, Jeremiah became a prophet by the special call
of God. His priestly origin implies a good literary training, in
times when literature was largely in the hands of the priests. The
priesthood, indeed, constituted a principal section of the Israelitish
nobility, as appears both from the history of those times, and from
the references in our prophet's writings, where kings and princes and
priests are often named together as the aristocracy of the land (i.
18, ii. 26, iv. 9); and this fact would ensure for the young prophet a
share in all the best learning of his age. The name of Jeremiah, like
other prophetic proper names, seems to have special significance in
connexion with the most illustrious of the persons recorded to have
borne it. It means _Iahvah foundeth_, and, as a proper name, The Man
that Iahvah foundeth; a designation which finds vivid illustration in
the words of Jeremiah's call: "Before I moulded thee in the belly, I
knew thee; and before thou camest forth from the womb, I consecrated
thee: a spokesman to the nations did I make thee" (i. 5). The not
uncommon name of Jeremiah--six other persons of the name are numbered
in the Old Testament--must have appeared to the prophet as invested
with new force and meaning, in the light of this revelation. Even
before his birth he had been "founded"[1] and predestined by God for
the work of his life.

The Hilkiah named as his father was not the high priest of that
name,[2] so famous in connexion with the reformation of king Josiah.
Interesting as such a relationship would be if established, the
following facts seem decisive against it. The prophet himself has
omitted to mention it, and no hint of it is to be found elsewhere. The
priestly family to which Jeremiah belonged was settled at Anathoth
(i. 1, xi. 21, xxix. 27). But Anathoth in Benjamin (xxxvii. 12), the
present _`Anata_, between two and three miles NNE. of Jerusalem,
belonged to the deposed line of Ithamar (1 Chron. xxiv. 3; comp.
with 1 Kings ii. 26, 35). After this it is needless to insist that
the prophet, and presumably his father, resided at Anathoth, whereas
Jerusalem was the usual residence of the high priest. Nor is the
identification of Jeremiah's family with that of the ruling high
priest helped by the observation that the father of the high priest
was named Shallum (1 Chron. v. 39), and that the prophet had an
uncle of this name (Jer. xxxii. 7). The names Hilkiah[3] and Shallum
are too common to justify any conclusions from such data. If the
prophet's father was head of one of the twenty-four classes or guilds
of the priests, that might explain the influence which Jeremiah
could exercise with some of the grandees of the court. But we are
not told more than that Jeremiah ben Hilkiah was a member of the
priestly community settled at Anathoth. It is, however, a gratuitous
disparagement of one of the greatest names in Israel's history, to
suggest that, had Jeremiah belonged to the highest ranks of his caste,
he would not have been equal to the self-renunciation involved in the
assumption of the unhonoured and thankless office of a prophet.[4]
Such a suggestion is certainly not warranted by the portraiture of the
man as delineated by himself, with all the distinctive marks of truth
and nature. From the moment that he became decisively convinced of his
mission, Jeremiah's career is marked by struggles and vicissitudes of
the most painful and perilous kind; his perseverance in his allotted
path was met by an ever increasing hardness on the part of the people;
opposition and ridicule became persecution, and the messenger of
Divine truth persisted in proclaiming his message at the risk of his
own life. That life may, in fact, be called a prolonged martyrdom;
and, if we may judge of the unknown by the known, the tradition that
the prophet was stoned to death by the Jewish refugees in Egypt is
only too probable an account of its final scene. If "the natural
shrinking of a somewhat feminine character" is traceable in his own
report of his conduct at particular junctures, does not the fact
shed an intenser glory upon the man, who overcame this instinctive
timidity, and persisted, in face of the most appalling dangers, in
the path of duty? Is not the victory of a constitutionally timid and
shrinking character a nobler moral triumph than that of the man who
never knew fear--who marches to the conflict with others, with a light
heart, simply because it is his nature to do so--because he has had
no experience of the agony of a previous conflict with self? It is
easy to sit in one's library and criticize the heroes of old; but
the modern censures of Jeremiah betray at once a want of historic
imagination, and a defect of sympathy with the sublime fortitude
of one who struggled on in a battle which he knew to be lost. In a
protracted contest such as that which Jeremiah was called upon to
maintain, what wonder if courage sometimes flags, and hopelessness
utters its forsaken cry? The moods of the saints are not always the
same; they vary, like those of common men, with the stress of the
hour. Even our Saviour could cry from the cross, "My God, My God, why
hast Thou forsaken Me?" It is not by passing expressions, wrung from
their torn hearts by the agony of the hour, that men are to be judged.
It is the issue of the crisis that is all-important; not the cries of
pain, which indicate its overwhelming pressure.

"It is sad," says a well known writer, with reference to the noble
passage, xxxi. 31-34, which he justly characterizes as "one of those
which best deserve to be called the Gospel before Christ," "It is
sad that Jeremiah could not always keep his spirit under the calming
influence of these high thoughts. No book of the Old Testament, except
the book of Job and the Psalms, contains so much which is difficult
to reconcile with the character of a self-denying servant of Jehovah.
Such expressions as those in xi. 20, xv. 15, and especially xviii.
21-23, contrast powerfully with Luke xxiii. 34, and show that the
typical character of Jeremiah is not absolutely complete." Probably
not. The writer in question is honourably distinguished from a crowd
of French and German critics, whose attainments are not superior to
his own, by his deep sense of the inestimable value to mankind of
those beliefs which animated the prophet, and by the sincerity of
his manifest endeavours to judge fairly between Jeremiah and his
detractors. He has already remarked truly enough that "the baptism
of complicated suffering," which the prophet was called upon to pass
through in the reign of Jehoiakim, "has made him, in a very high
and true sense, a type of One greater than he." It is impossible to
avoid such an impression, if we study the records of his life with
any insight or sympathy. And the impression thus created is deepened,
when we turn to that prophetic page which may be called the most
_appealing_ in the entire range of the Old Testament. In the 53rd of
Isaiah the martyrdom of Jeremiah becomes the living image of that
other martyrdom, which in the fulness of time was to redeem the
world. After this, to say that "the typical character of Jeremiah is
not absolutely complete," is no more than the assertion of a truism;
for what Old Testament character, what character in the annals of
collective humanity, can be brought forward as a perfect type of the
Christ, the Man whom, in His sinlessness and His power, unbiassed
human reason and conscience instinctively suspect to have been also
God? To deplore the fact that this illustrious prophet "could not
always keep his spirit under the calming influence of his highest
thoughts," is simply to deplore the infirmity that besets all human
nature, to regret that natural imperfection which clings to a finite
and fallen creature, even when endowed with the most splendid gifts
of the spirit. For the rest, a certain degree of exaggeration is
noticeable in founding upon three brief passages of so large a work
as the collected prophecies of Jeremiah the serious charge that "no
book of the Old Testament, except the book of Job and the Psalms,
contains so much which is difficult to reconcile with the character
of a self-denying servant of Jehovah." The charge appears to me both
ill-grounded and misleading. But I reserve the further consideration
of these obnoxious passages for the time when I come to discuss their
context, as I wish now to complete my sketch of the prophet's life. He
has himself recorded the date of his call to the prophetic office. It
was in the thirteenth year of the good king Josiah, that the young[5]
priest was summoned to a higher vocation by an inward Voice whose
urgency he could not resist.[6] The year has been variously identified
with 629, 627, and 626 B.C. The place has been supposed to have been
Jerusalem, the capital, which was so near the prophet's home, and
which, as Hitzig observes, offered the amplest scope and numberless
occasions for the exercise of prophetic activity. But there appears
no good reason why Jeremiah should not have become known locally as
one whom God had specially chosen, before he abandoned his native
place for the wider sphere of the capital. This, in truth, seems to
be the likelier supposition, considering that his reluctance to take
the first decisive step in his career excused itself on the ground of
youthful inexperience: "Alas, my Lord Iahvah! behold, I know not (how)
to speak; for I am but a youth."[7] The Hebrew term may imply that