Chapter 5: At the Temple Gates
Chapter 5: At the Temple Gates
(JEREMIAH 7-10)
"Bewildered in its search, bewildered with the cry,
'Lo here! lo there, the Church!' poor sad humanity
Through all the dust and heat turns back, with bleeding feet,
By the weary road it came
Unto the simple thought, by the Great Master taught,
And that remaineth still:
Not he that repeateth the Name,
But he that doeth the will."
LONGFELLOW.
WE MUST READ the records given in the Books of the Kings and Chronicles, to understand the remarkable movement which was on foot during the time covered by the first twelve chapters of the Book of Jeremiah.
In his collected words he scarcely refers to the great reforms being introduced by his friend, the king Josiah; and he is scarcely mentioned in the historical records. But there is no doubt that he was in constant and close communication with the king and the little group of earnest reformers that clustered round his person, and which included Shaphan, Hilkiah, the prophet Zephaniah, the prophetess Huldah, and his own friend, Baruch.
Josiah promoted measures of reform from the earliest years of his reign; but at first he was opposed by the dead weight of national apathy to the cause he espoused. The worship of idols—for which there are twenty different terms in the Hebrew language—had so many fascinations from the use of the peoples around, and from its appeals to sensual passion, that the mass of the people had no desire to revert to the more austere and purer worship of their forefathers. Besides, had not Solomon the magnificent, four hundred years before, erected on the southern slopes of Olivet shrines to Ashtoreth, the goddess of Sidon; to Chemosh and Milcom, the national gods of Moab and Ammon? The rites of heathen superstition were also maintained by a vast herd of false prophets and priests, who, like parasites, throve in the corruption of their time. There was a fatal compact and collusion between the two bodies which boded no good for the efforts of the zealous band of reformers who gathered round the king, because they appeared to give a Divine sanction to the abominations that were being perpetrated. A wonderful and horrible thing had come to pass in the land: the prophets prophesied falsely, and the priests bare rule by their means; and the people loved to have it so.
The co-operation of Zephaniah and Jeremiah was therefore exceedingly valuable. Whilst Josiah wrought from without, pursuing a career of uncompromising iconoclasm, they wrought from within, appealing to the conscience and heart - here pleading the claims of Jehovah on the thoughtless crowds; there taunting the idol-worshippers with the futility of their reliance on the creations of their fancy; and again announcing the swift descent of national judgments on the national sins which were desolating the country.
But, notwithstanding their united efforts, the cause of reform moved slowly, or might even have come to a standstill—as an express train when buried in an avalanche of soft snow—had not the discovery, made in the eighteenth year of Josiah's reign, given a new and unexpected impetus to the ancient religion of Israel. And though it is not exactly an incident in the life of Jeremiah, he was so closely associated with the men who were principally concerned, and his third discourse is so evidently suggested by the reforms to which it led, that we must briefly touch on it.
I. THE FINDING OF THE LAW.-At the time to which this incident must be referred, the Temple was under repair. It sadly needed it; for the lewd emblems of idolatry had been erected within its sacred precincts, and beside them the dwellings of the wretched men and women associated with the impious rites permitted on the site where David worshipped, and Solomon spread his hands in solemn dedicatory prayer. Probably also the fabric was showing signs of dilapidation and age, for two and a half centuries had elapsed since it had been completely restored by Joash.
The work was entrusted to the superintendence of Hilkiah, the high priest, who was assisted by a little group of Levites; and the cost was contributed by the people who passed through the Temple gates. On one occasion, the king sent Shaphan, his secretary and chancellor, who was the father of Gemariah and a good man—who after wards defended Jeremiah (xxxvi. 10-19, 25)—to take an account with Hilkiah of the money which had been gathered by the doorkeepers. When they had attended to this important business, and delivered the money into the hands of the workmen that had the oversight of the work, Hilkiah, the high priest, said unto Shaphan, the scribe, "I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord."
It was a very startling discovery. The Rabbinical tradition states that it was discovered inside a heap of stones, where it was hidden when Ahaz destroyed all the other copies of the holy books. Or it may have been hidden away in the Ark, which Ahaz may have removed to one of the rooms of the Temple, where dust and lumber concealed it. There has been much discussion as to what that roll of ancient MSS. contained; some holding that it was the entire Pentateuch, others that it was the Book of Deuteronomy. It has even been asserted by some that a pious fraud was perpetrated on Josiah and his times by some well-meaning individual, who had just written the Book of Deuteronomy with his own hand, and now foisted it on Hilkiah and the rest, as a venerable production, dating from the days of Moses! To what miserable straits they are reduced who would have us accept such wanton speculations! Let the critics betake themselves to the examination of the ancient MSS., if they will. We thank them for the facts they bring to light; in their own province we give them credit for painstaking and erudition, but we refuse to accept their theories. Let them give us the facts, and we can formulate the theories for ourselves. Even if it could be shown—which we hold it cannot—that Moses was not the author of the Book of Deuteronomy, it is surely utterly inconceivable that the mind through which that sublime treatise was given to the world could have been a party to a fraud so unblushing and scandalous as to palm off its own offspring under the august sanction of the name of Moses!
After careful thought, we are disposed to think that the Book of Deuteronomy is specially referred to here, though not to the exclusion of the other books of Moses. It seems unquestionable that this portion alone of the Pentateuch was ordained to be written out by each king on his accession, and was read before the assembled congregation once in each seven years. The terms of the covenant made afterwards by Josiah and his people are precisely those with which the Book of Deuteronomy abounds; and the phrases which characterize it are perpetually recurring in the addresses and appeals of Jeremiah. This book dyed his speech, as it had done that of Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Micah.
Its discovery by Hilkiah made as great a sensation as that of the Latin Bible by Luther in the library of the old Augustinian monastery at Erfurt. Shaphan read parts of it before the king, amongst them probably chapter xxviii. "And it came to pass, when the king had heard the words of the book of the law, that he rent his clothes." In hot haste he sent a deputation of his most trusty friends to one of the suburbs of the city, where the prophetess Huldah dwelt. Jeremiah may have been at this time at Anathoth; or he may have been too young in his work to be recognised as an authority in so grave a crisis. The question to be asked was, whether the nation must expect to suffer all the awful curses which those words predicted; and the answer was an uncompromising "Yes," though their infliction might be for a brief space postponed.
Forthwith the king summoned a mighty convocation of all the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and the priests and the prophets, and the people, both small and great; and from a platform erected in the entrance of the inner court, he read aloud all the words of the book of the covenant, which had been found in the house of the Lord. And further, he solemnly renewed the covenant between Jehovah and the people, that they would walk after the Lord, and keep his commandments, testimonies, and statutes. Perhaps, as one commentator suggests, an ox was slain, and the king and people passed between the severed halves in witness of their solemn resolve.
Then the work of reform broke out afresh. The tide of popular feeling rose high, and the reformers took it at its flow. The black-robed priests were suppressed; the emblems of idolatry were cast out of the Temple, and burnt without the city; the dwellings of the miserable votaries of lust were destroyed, Tophet was defiled, and the high places levelled to the ground. Thus, outwardly at least, Israel became again true to its allegiance to the God of their fathers, and free from the taint of idolatry.
II. THE DIVORCE BETWEEN RELIGION AND MORALITY.-The influence of the court; the finding and reading of the law; the splendid success of the great Passover which Josiah instituted; the glow of the crusade against the old idolatries—sufficed for a time to effect widespread reform, and the fickle populace gave an outward adhesion at least to the service of Jehovah. The Temple courts were thronged; the rites and forms of the Levitical code were rigorously maintained; every point of ceremonial allegiance to the institutions of Moses was punctiliously observed. But there was no real change in disposition. The reformation was entirely superficial. Beneath the fair exterior the grossest forms of evil were seething in hideous corruption; now and again breaking forth into the light of day, but awaiting the death of Josiah, when they once more asserted themselves.
Jeremiah was profoundly disappointed at the result of a movement which had promised so well. He detected its true character, and sought an opportunity of showing its insufficiency to avert the wrath of God, which was gathering like a thunder-cloud upon the horizon. Taking up his position in the gate of the Temple, on the occasion of some great festival when the people of Judah were gathered with the citizens of Jerusalem to worship Jehovah, he poured forth a torrent of remonstrance and appeal.
He was not unaware of the attention paid by the nation to outward ritual, which they mistook for religion. The incense of Sheba, and the costly fine-scented cane fetched from Arabia or India, and burnt for the sake of its rich perfume, stole through the Temple precincts (vi. 20). They took care to speak of the Temple as the House of God and to stand before Him as his people (vii. 10). The burnt-offering and other sacrifices were rigorously distinguished from one another, the priests and people feeding on those parts alone permitted by the Mosaic ritual (vii. 21). It was the boast of the people that the law of the Lord had been committed to their charge, and that they had therefore special claim upon his forbearance (viii. 8). And against every accusation which the prophet laid at the nation's door, they pointed to the order and beauty of the restored ritual; of their splendid Temple; of their privileged condition as the chosen of God; and cried, "The Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord, are these!"
But alongside of this outward decorum, the grossest sins were permitted with unblushing shame. One of the charges which Jeremiah brings against his people is, that they had lost the power of blushing (viii. 12). The shamefulness of their sin was apparent in their shamelessness. They oppressed the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow. Theft, murder, and adultery, showed themselves in open day. So frequent and atrocious were their crimes of violence, that they seemed transformed into a horde of robbers—the Temple their den; lies flew from their tongues like arrows from a bow; and whilst men spake peaceably to their neighbours in their ears, they were lying in wait to betray them. Though idolatry had been overthrown in the high places of the land, it lingered in the houses of the great, who squandered their silver and their gold, their blue and purple, on the wood which they had shaped into the fashion of a god.
There was an evident divorce between religion and morals; and whenever that comes into the life of a nation or an individual, it is fatal! Satan himself has no objection to a religion which consists in postures, and ceremonies, and rites. Indeed, he fosters it; for the soul of man demands God, and craves religion; and it is the art of the great enemy of souls to substitute the counterfeit for the reality, to quiet the religious appetite with the shows and effigies of the eternal and Divine—much as a man might satisfy his hunger with food that lacked the elements of nutrition, whilst his strength and vigour were slowly ebbing away. It can never be too strongly emphasized that the soul of man cannot rest or be content without God; but it is too apt to be cajoled with that which is not bread, and which satisfieth not.
III. THE EXCUSES BENEATH WHICH THE SOUL OF MAN SHELTERS ITSELF.-
(I) Ritualism.—It was the old belief that God was bound to help a nation or person that steadfastly complied with the outward forms of religion; as if He had no alternative but to help his devoted worshipper. In one form or another this conception has appeared in every nation and age. "What more can God want," the heathen cries, "than that I should give burnt-offerings and calves of a year old, thousands of rams, and ten thousands of rivers of oil; my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?" "What more can God want?" cries the formalist of our time. "I was received into the visible church as soon as I was born; I have complied with all her regulations; I do my best to maintain her institutions and services; in all weathers I am present when her doors are open; and there is no demand made by her representatives, to which I do not comply to the best of my ability. What lack I yet?"
The incessant remonstrance of the Bible is against such protestations—whether expressed or understood—as these. "What doth the Lord require of thee," says Micah, "but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" (Micah 6:8). "To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto Me?" saith the Lord, in one of Isaiah's earliest sentences; and he added, still speaking in the name of God, "Incense is an abomination to Me." And here Jeremiah takes up the same strain. He says, in effect, "Put all your offerings together; abolish the sacerdotal distinctions which Moses bade you observe; relinquish all ritual; end festival and fast alike." These things are comparatively indifferent to God, when substituted for obedience and a holy walk (vii. 22).
Where the heart is right with God, it will find fit and proper expression in the well-ordered worship of the sanctuary. It will find the outward ordinance a means of quickening the soul by the laws of association and expression; but the outward can never be a substitute for the inward. The soul must know God, and worship Him as a Spirit. There must be faith, repentance, inward grace.
"God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth." Throughout the ages He has been seeking such to worship Him.
(2) Destiny.—Men often say, as the Jews did, "We are delivered to do all these abominations; we were made so we are swept forward by an irresistible current, which we cannot control" (vii. 10). How many a man lays the blame of his sin upon his Creator, alleging that it is only the outworking of the natural tendencies with which he was endowed! How many a woman has laid the blame of her unutterable fall upon the force of circumstances, which held her in their grip! And there are some religious fatalists who have gone so far as to trace their sins to the elective decrees of the Almighty! Whatever truth there may be in the doctrine of Predestination, it will not absolve you from sin in the sight of God and his angels. There is more than enough grace in God to counteract the drift of the current and the strength of passion.
(3) Special Privilege.—Many a soul has presumed on being a favourite of heaven. "I am wise; the law of the Lord is with me. He needs me, for the preservation of his truth, the elaboration of his scheme. His cause is too deeply involved with me for Him to allow me to be a castaway. I may do as I will, He will deliver." Ah, soul, beware! thou art not indispensable to God. Before thou wert, He was well served; and if thou fail Him, He will call others to minister to Him. See what He did to Shiloh (vii. 14) and to Jerusalem How bare the site; how woeful the overthrow! "If God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest He also spare not thee!" Take heed lest the kingdom of God be taken from you, and be given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.