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The absence of Nebuchadnezzar in another quarter seemed to the king of Egypt a favourable opportunity of recovering his foreign conquests. He therefore undertook another expedition against Carchemish; and as Jehoiakim, in Judea, renounced, about the same time, his sworn allegiance to Nebuchadnezzar, there is much reason to conclude that he was encouraged to this step by the Egyptian king. This measure was earnestly but ineffectually reprobated by the prophet Jeremiah, who foretold the consequences which actually followed.

Nebuchadnezzar, who was certainly the greatest general of that age, did not allow the Egyptian king to surprise him. He met and defeated him at Carchemish, and then, pursuing his victory, stripped the Egyptian of all his northern possessions, from the river Euphrates to the Nile, and this by so strong an act of repression that he dared "come no more out of his own land."

The king of Judah now lay at the mercy of the hero whose anger he had so unadvisedly provoked. Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem, and took it. He committed no destructions but such as were the direct effect of his military operations; and with a leniency very rare in those days, he refrained from displacing Jehoiakim from his throne. He was content to indemnify himself by the spoils of the temple, part of the golden ornaments and vessels of which he took away; and with removing to Babylon some members of the royal family, and sons of the principal nobles. These would serve as hostages, and at the same time help to swell the pomp and ostentation of the Babylonian court. Among the persons thus removed was Daniel and his three friends, whose condition and conduct will soon engage our notice, as part of the history of the Captivity. It must be evident that the leniency exhibited on this occasion by Nebuchadnezzar, may be ascribed to his desire to maintain the kingdom of Judah as a barrier between his Syrian dominions and Egypt; for since Egypt had become aggressive, it was no longer his interest that this barrier should be destroyed.

The court at Jerusalem soon again fell into much disorder. The king turned a deaf ear to all wise counsel and all truth, as delivered by the prophet Jeremiah, and listened only to the false prophets who won his favour by the flattering prospects which they drew, and by the chimerical hopes which they created. The final result was, that this prince again had the temerity to renounce his allegiance to the Babylonian, to whose clemency he owed his life and throne.

This occurred in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, B.C. 604, which it is important to note, as it is from this date that the " seventy years" of the Babylonish captivity is with the greatest apparent propriety dated. This period of seventy years of exile was foretold by Jeremiah ;‡ and it is most remarkable that from whichever of the more marked points these seventy years be commenced, we are brought at the termination to some one equally marked point in the history of the restoration and re-settlement of the nation.

Jehoiakim was not at all reformed by the calamity which had befallen his house and country. It only served to increase the ferocity of his spirit. This reign therefore continued to be cruel, tyrannical, and oppressive, and still more and more," his eyes and his heart were intent on covetousness, oppression, and the shedding of innocent blood." Of this an instance is found in the case of the prophet Urijah, "whom he slew with the sword, and cast his dead body into the graves of the common people," because he prophesied of the impending calamities of Judah and Jerusalem.§ For these things the personal doom of Jehoiakim was thus pronounced by Jeremiah:

Jer. xlvi. 2.

"Thus saith JEHOVAH,

Concerning Jehoiakim, sou of Josiah, king of Israel,

Jer. xxv. 11; 2 Chron. xxxvi. 21-23.

Dated from this point, the seventy years expired in B.c. 536, the year that Cyrus took Babylon, and issued a decree for the return of such of the Jews as chose, throughout his dominions, to their own land (Ezra iii. 1, v. 13); and this agrees with the account of Josephus, in the first year of Cyrus, which was the seventieth (ro doμnxorrov) from the day of the removal of our people from their native land to Babylon," &c. (Ant. xi. 1, 1); for from B.c. 605 to B.C. 536 was sixty-nine years complete, or seventy years current. Hales, to whom we are indebted for this conclusion, thinks, that it affords a satisfactory adjustment of the chronology of this most intricate and disputed period of the Captivity, and that in it "all the varying reports of sacred and profane chronology are reconciled and brought into harmony with each other.

Jer. xxii. 13-16, xxvi. 20-23.

They shall not lament for him, saying,

Ah, my brother! nor [for the queen], Ah, sister!

They shall not lament for him, saying,

Ah, Lord! nor (for her], Ah, her glory!

With the burial of an ass shall he be buried,

Drawn forth and cast beyond the gates of Jerusalem.'

The

For this prophecy the prophet was cast into prison, in the fourth year of Jehoiakim. following year, acted upon by that strong constraint to deliver the word entrusted to him, which he himself so forcibly describes,† Jeremiah dictated to his friend and follower, the scribe Baruch, another prophecy, to the same effect as the former, but couched in stronger language, declaring the ruin which impended, through the Babylonian king, unless speedy and strong repentance intervened to avert the doom. The roll, thus written, Baruch was sent to read publicly to the people assembled from all the country on account of a solemn fast for which public opinion had called. Baruch accordingly read it in the court of the temple, in the audience of all the people assembled there. He afterwards, at their request, read it more privately to the princes. They heard it with consternation, and determined to make its contents known to the king. Baruch was directed to go and conceal himself, and the roll was taken and read to the king, who was then sitting in his winter apartment, with a brazier of burning charcoal before him. When he had heard three or four sections, the king, kindled into rage, and taking the roll from the reader, he cut it with the scribe's knife, and threw it into the fire, where it was consumed. He also ordered the prophet and his friend to be put to death; but this was averted by the kind providence of the Almighty Master whom they served.

The undaunted prophet directed Baruch to re-write the prophecy which had been burnt, with additional matter of the same purport; while to Jehoiakim himself the terrible message

was sent :

-Thus saith JEHOVAH,

Concerning Jehoiakim, king of Judah,—

He shall have none to sit upon the throne of David;

And his dead body shall be cast out,

In the day to the heat, and in the night to the frost."-Jer. xxxvi. 30.

The end of this miserable man doubtless corresponded with these predictions, although the historical narrative of that event is involved in some obscurity and apparent contradiction. The statement we shall now give appears to be the only one by which, as it appears to us, all these difficulties can be reconciled. It is evident that if Jehoiakim did not again revolt, his conduct was at least so unsatisfactory to the king of Babylon, that he sent an army against Jerusalem, containing some Chaldean troops, but composed chiefly from the surrounding subject nations, as the Syrians, Moabites, and Ammonites. In what manner they performed their mission we know not, but according to the figurative description which Ezekiel gives of Jehoiakim as a rapacious "lion's whelp," we learn that "the nations from the provinces set about him on every side, and spread their net over him, and he was taken in their pit; and they secured him with chains, and brought him to the king of Babylon." Nebuchadnezzar was then probably at Riblah, at which place the eastern conquerors appear to have usually held their court when in Syria. He bound the captive king "with fetters [intending] to carry him to Babylon ;"§ but took him first to Jerusalem, where he appears to have died before this intention could be executed; and the prophecies require us to conclude that his body was cast forth with indignity, and lay exposed to the elements and beasts of prey, which is what is intended by "the burial of an ass.'

Jer xxii. 18, 19.

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"Thou didst persuade me, JEHOVAH, and I was persuaded; Thou wast stronger than I, and didst prevail.

I am every day the object of laughter;

Every one of them holdeth me in derision.

For whensoever I speak,

If I cry out of violence, and proclaim devastation,
The word of Jehovah is turned against me,
Ezek. ix. 5-9

Into reproach and disgrace continually.
But when I say, I will not make mention of it,
Neither will I speak any more in his name;
Then it becomes in my heart as a burning fire,
Being pent up in my bones:

I am weary with refraining, and CANNOT (be silent],"
Jer. xx. 7-9.

§ 2 Chron. xxxvi. 6.

The preceding invaders appear to have been contented with securing the person of Jehoiakim, and taking him to Nebuchadnezzar; for when they had departed with their royal captive; the people made his son JECONIAH (otherwise Jehoiachim and Coniah) king in the room of his father. He was then (B.c. 597) eighteen years of age, and had barely time to manifest his bad disposition, when Nebuchadnezzar himself, who was displeased at this appointment, appeared before Jerusalem. It would seem that he was admitted without opposition; but Jeconiah was, nevertheless, held a close prisoner. The money which remained in the royal treasury, and the golden utensils of the temple, were collected and sent as spoil to Babylon; and the deposed king, and his whole court, seven thousand soldiers, one thousand artisans, and two thousand nobles and men of wealth, altogether, with wives and children, amounting probably to 40,000 persons, were sent away into captivity to the river Chebar (Chaboras) in Mesopotamia. Thus only the lower class of citizens and peasantry were left behind. The future prophet, Ezekiel, was among the captives; and Mattaniah, the remaining son of Josiah, and brother of Jehoiakim, was made king of the impoverished land by Nebuchadnezzar, who, according to the custom in such cases, changed his name to ZEDEKIAH, and bound him by strong and solemn oaths of allegiance.

The Hebrews who remained in Judah continued however to cherish dreams of independence from the Chaldeans-impossible under the circumstances in which Western Asia was then placed, or possible only through such special interventions of Providence as had glorified their early history, but all further claim to which they had long since forfeited. Even the captives in Mesopotamia and Chaldea were looking forward to a speedy return to their own land. These extravagant expectations were strongly discouraged by Jeremiah in Jerusalem, and by Ezekiel in Mesopotamia; but their reproofs were not heeded, nor their prophecies believed. Accordingly, Zedekiah, who seems not to have been ill-disposed, otherwise than as influenced by evil counsellors, was led openly to renounce his allegiance, in the ninth year of his reign. The temerity of this act would be astonishing and unaccountable, were it not that, as usual, the renunciation was attended by an alliance with the king of Egypt, Pharaoh-Hophra―the Apries and Vaphres of profane authors-who indeed had acquired a prominence in this quarter which might make the preference of his alliance seem a comparatively safe speculation. Apries in the early part of his reign was a very prosperous king. He sent an expedition against the Isle of Cyprus; besieged and took Gaza,* and the city of Sidon; engaged and vanquished the king of Tyre; and, being uniformly successful, he made himself master of Phoenicia, and part of Palestine; thus recovering much of that influence in Syria which had been taken from Egypt by the Assyrians and Babylonians.

From the result it is evident that, on receiving the news of this revolt of one who owed his throne to him, and whose fidelity to him had been pledged by the most solemn vows, Nebuchadnezzar resolved no longer to attempt to maintain the separate existence of Judah as a royal state, but to incorporate it absolutely, as a province, with his empire. An army was, with little delay, marched into Judea, and laid immediate siege to Jerusalem. Jeremiah continued to counsel the king to save the city and temple by unreserved submission to the Chaldeans, and abandonment of the Egyptian alliance; but his auditors, trusting that the Egyptians would march to the relief of the place, determined to protract the defence of the city to the utmost. The Egyptians did, in fact, march to their assistance; but when Nebuchadnezzar raised the siege of Jerusalem and advanced to meet them, they retreated before him into Egypt, without hazarding a battle.

The withdrawal of the Chaldean forces from Jerusalem, with the confident expectation that they would be defeated by the Egyptians, filled the inhabitants with the most extravagant joy, and quite reversed—and so evinced the hollowness of the slight acts of repentance and reformation which the apparent urgency of danger had produced. Their short-lived joy was terminated by the re-appearance of the Chaldeans before the city. They prepared, however, to make a vigorous, or at least a protracted, defence, for they well knew that, after so many provocations,

Jer. xlvii. 1.

little mercy was to be expected from Nebuchadnezzar, and they were probably acquainted with the fell purpose which that great monarch appears to have formed.

In the account of this siege much notice is taken of the respective works, the forts, the towers, etc. of the besiegers and the besieged. This may throw some light on the state to which the art of attacking and defending towns had then attained. The subject has some degree of interest; and some notice of it will be taken at the end of this chapter. (3)

The siege was continued until the eleventh year of Zedekiah (B.c. 586), eighteen months from the beginning, when the Chaldeans stormed the city about midnight, and put the inhabitants to the sword, young and old, many of them in the very courts of the temple. The king himself, with his sons, his officers, and the remnant of the army, escaped from the city, but were pursued by the Chaldeans, and overtaken in the plain of Jericho, and carried as prisoners to Nebuchadnezzar, who was then at Riblah in the province of Hamah. The Babylonian king upbraided Zedekiah for his ingratitude and breach of faith, and ordered a terrible punishment to be inflicted on him. To cut off all future hope of reigning in his race, he ordered his sons to be slain before his eyes; and then, to exclude him from all hope of ever again reigning in his own person, he ordered that the last throes of his murdered children should be his last sight in this world. His eyes were put out—a barbarous mode of disqualifying a man for political good or evil, with which the governments of the East still continue to visit those whose offences excite displeasure, or whose pretensions create fear. The blind king was then led in fetters of brass to Babylon, where he died. Thus were fulfilled two prophecies, by different and distant prophets, which by their apparent dissonance had created mirth and derision in Jerusalem. Jeremiah had told the king, after the return of the Chaldean army to the siege, that he should surely be taken prisoner; that his eyes should see the king of Babylon, and that he should be carried captive to Babylon, and that he should die there, not by the sword, but in peace, and with the same honourable "burnings" with which his fathers had been interred;* while Ezekiel had predicted that he should be brought captive to Babylon, yet should never see that city, although he should die therein.†

Nebuchadnezzar appears to have been dissatisfied at the only partial manner in which his purposes against Judah had been executed. He therefore sent Nebuzaradan, the captain of his guard, with an army of Chaldeans to Jerusalem. The temple and the city were then burnt to the ground, and all the walls demolished, while all the vessels of brass, silver, and gold, which had been left before, and all the treasure of the temple, the palace, and the houses of the nobles, were taken for spoil; and of the people none were left but the poor of the land to be vine-dressers and husbandmen. This was about a month after the city was first taken.

Thus was the land made desolate, that "she might enjoy her sabbaths," or the arrearage of sabbatic years, of which she had been defrauded by the avarice and disobedience of the people. That these sabbatic years, being the celebration of every seventh year as a season of rest, even to the soil which then lay fallow, amounted to not less than seventy, shows how soon, and how long, that important and faith-testing institution had been neglected by the nation. The early predictions of Moses, and the later one of Jeremiah,§ that the land should enjoy the rest of which it had been defrauded, is very remarkable, when we consider that, as exemplified in Israel, it was not the general policy of the conquerors to leave the conquered country in desolation, but to replenish it by foreign colonists, by whom it might be cultivated.

Nebuchadnezzar made Gedaliah, a Hebrew of distinction, governor of the poor remnant which was left in the land. Gedaliah was a well-disposed man, of a generous and unsuspecting nature, who was anxious to promote the well-being of the people by reconciling them to the Babylonian government. In this design he was assisted by Jeremiah, who had been released from prison when the city was taken, and was treated with much consideration by the Babylonian general, to whose care he had been recommended by Nebuchadnezzar himself. Nebuzaradan indeed offered to take him to Babylon and provide for him there; but the prophet chose rather to remain with his friend Gedaliah, who fixed his residence at Mizpeh beyond Jordan.

* Jer. xxxii. 4,5; xxxiv. 3, 5.

+ Ezek. xii. 13.

Lev. xxvi. 34.

§ 2 Chron. xxxvi. 31.

As soon as the Babylonian army had withdrawn, those nobles and warriors returned who had saved themselves by flight in the first instance. Among these was Ishmael, a prince of the royal family, who, jealous of the possession by Gedaliah of the government to which he considered that his birth gave him the best right, formed a conspiracy to take away his life. This was intimated to the governor, but he treated it as an infamous calumny upon Ishmael, which generous confidence was rewarded by his being murdered, with all the Hebrews and Chaldeans at Mizpeh who were attached to him, by that bad man and his dependants. The vengeance of the Chaldeans was now to be dreaded, and therefore Ishmael and all his followers fled towards the country of the Ammonites (who had promoted the designs of Ishmael). They attempted to take with them the king's daughter and the residue of the people; but these were recovered by Johanan and other officers, who pursued them, so that Ishmael escaped with only eight men to the Ammonites. Johanan and the others were fearful of the effects of the resentment of the Chaldeans for the massacre of which Ishmael had been guilty. They therefore determined to take refuge in Egypt with all the people. This intention was earnestly opposed by Jeremiah, who, in the name of Jehovah, promised them peace and safety if they remained; but threatened death by pestilence, famine, and sword, if they went down to Egypt. They went, however, and compelled Jeremiah himself to go with them; and it is alleged by tradition that they put him to death in that country for the ominous prophecies he continued to utter there.

Nebuzaradan soon after arrived in the country with the view of avenging the murder of Gedaliah and the massacre of the Chaldeans who were with him but the country was so thin of inhabitants, in consequence of the secession to Egypt, that he could find no more than 745 persons in the land, whom he sent into captivity beyond the Euphrates. Thus signally was the long predicted depopulation of the land completed; and although nomadic tribes wandered through the country, and the Edomites settled in some of its southern parts, yet the land remained, on the whole, uninhabited, and ready for the Hebrews, whose return had as much been the subject of prophecy as their captivity had been.

For the clearer apprehension of the facts which have been stated, it will be desirable to trace the further operations of the Babylonians in those quarters.

The year after the conquest of Judea, Nebuchadnezzar resolved to take a severe revenge upon all the surrounding nations which had solicited the Judahites to a confederacy against him, or had encouraged them to rebel, although they now, for the most part, rejoiced in their destruction. These were the Ammonites, Moabites, Edomites, Arabians, the Sidonians, Tyrians, and Philistines; nor did he forget the Egyptians, who had taken a foremost part in action or intrigue against him. This had been foretold by the prophets. It had been foretold that all these nations were to be subdued by Nebuchadnezzar, and were assigned to share with the Hebrews the bondage of seventy years to that power. Some of them were conquered sooner and some later; but the end of this period was the common term for the deliverance of them all from their bondage to Babylon.

After Nebuchadnezzar had subdued the eastern and western states in his first campaign, he commenced the siege of the strong city of Old Tyre, on the continent, in the year 584 B.C., being two years after the destruction of Jerusalem. This siege occupied thirteen years, a fact which illustrates, perhaps, not so much the strength of the place as the vitality of a commercial state. This is, however, only to intimate that during this period the city was invested by a Chaldean army; for many other important enterprises were undertaken and accomplished during the same period. It was during the siege that Nebuzaradan marched into Judea to avenge the murder of Gedaliah and the Chaldeans, as was just related.

Before Tyre was taken, the inhabitants, having the command of the sea, fled with all their effects to the insular Tyre in its neighbourhood; so that the Chaldean army found but little spoil to reward their long toil and patience in the siege. This had been foretold by the prophet Ezekiel;* but although Nebuchadnezzar and his army were to obtain "no wages for the great service they had served against Tyre," in the long course of which " every head was

VOL. I.

Ezek. xxix. 18-20.

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