Chapter 19: The Fall of Jerusalem
Chapter 19: The Fall of Jerusalem
(JEREMIAH 38, 39).
"Among the faithless faithful only he;
Among innumerable false, unmoved,
Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified,
His loyalty he kept, his love, his zeal;
Nor number, nor example with him wrought
To swerve from truth, or change his constant mind,
Though single. From amidst them forth he pass'd,
Long way through hostile scorn, which he sustain'd
Superior, nor of violence fear'd aught;
And with retorted scorn his back he turn'd
On those proud tow'rs to swift destruction doom'd.
MILTON.
DURING THOSE LONG dark months of siege, probably the only soul in all that crowded city which was in perfect peace, and free in its unrestrained liberty, was Jeremiah's. Tethered as he was by an iron chain to the wall of the court of the guard, he passed beyond the narrow confines of the enclosure to the great age that was to be, when Judah should be saved and Jerusalem should dwell safely, known by the name THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS. And amid the cries of assailants and defenders, unbroken by the thud of the battering-rams, deep as the blue Syrian sky that looked down upon him, was the peace of God that passed the understanding of those that thronged in and out, to and fro, between the city and the royal palace.
I. THE HORRORS OF THE SEIGE. – It lasted in all for about eighteen months, with the one brief respite caused by the approach of Pharaoh's army; and it is impossible for us to estimate the amount of human anguish which was crowded into that fateful space. Some conception of it may be gathered from the words with which Ezekiel anticipated it. As in a mirror, coming events were forecast. The caldron, full of the choicest flesh, hanging over the swift fire until it was consumed; the vision of the iron pan encircling the sun-burnt brick, as the iron legions of Chaldea would engirdle the beleaguered city; the meagre measure of wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentils, and millet, and spelt, dealt out by measure day by day, but barely sufficient for the prophet's sustenance; the barley cakes mingled with cow's dung, abhorrent to the taste, yet greedily devoured; the stealthy preparation of his household stuff for removal; and the stealing out at night from his house by a hole in the wall, with covered face and laden shoulder—all these spoke with a vividness which no words could equal of the horrors of that siege (Ezekiel iv.).
Imagine for a moment the overcrowded city, into which had gathered from all the country round the peasantry and villagers, who, with such of their valuables as they had been able hastily to collect and transport, had sought refuge within the gray old walls of Zion from the violence and outrage of the merciless troops. If wandering tribes, like the sons of Rechab, were induced for once to break the tradition of their nomad life, to shelter themselves within the city enclosure, how much more would the terrified populations, scattered in slight habitations over the hill country, count it politic to do the same This mass of fugitives would greatly add to the difficulties of the defence by their demands upon the provisions which were laid up in anticipation of the siege, by overcrowding the thoroughfares, and impeding the movements of the soldiery.
The incident referred to in our last chapter, of the demolition of a portion of the royal palace to provide materials for an inner line of defence, is a specimen of many another episode in that intense effort of Zedekiah and his people to hurl back the tide of merciless hate and thirst for blood that broke day after day around the battlements; much as the long ocean wave sends its surges up against a reef of rock, and casts its splintered forces high in air. Here there was a scaling party which must be flung back on their ladders; there, an attempt to run a mine which must be intercepted; and now tidings came that a portion of the wall, which had been long exposed to the battering-rams, showed signs of weakness, and must be built up from within; and yet again precautions must be taken against fire flung in missiles, or flights of arrows, or stones cast by catapults. For no single hour could the defenders relax their vigilance. A council of princes must have been in perpetual session, fertile in resource, swift to meet the craft or the courage of the foe. And all the time the stock of provisions was becoming less, and the store of water diminishing, as in the case of Malchiah's dungeon, leaving nothing but wet mud.
So much for the earlier months of the siege; but as the days passed on, darker shadows gathered. It was as though the very pit of hell added in human passion the last dread horrors of the scene. The precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold, lay by scores in the recesses of the houses, broken like earthen pitchers, the work of the hand of the potter. The women became cruel, and refused to spare from their breast for their young the nutriment they needed for themselves. The tongues of the sucking babes became so dry and parched, that they could no longer cry. Young children, whose weakness constituted a first claim, asked for bread, and asked in vain. Highly-nurtured maidens searched over the dung-heaps, in hope of finding something to stay the craving of hunger. The nobles lost their portly mien, and walked the streets like animated mummies. The sword of the invader without had fewer victims than that which hunger wielded within; and, as the climax of all, pitiful women murdered their own little babes, and soddened them to make a meal. Finally, pestilence began its ravages; and the foul stench of bodies that men had no time to bury, and that fell thick and fast each day in the streets of the city, like autumn leaves, caused death, which mowed down those that had escaped the foe and privation. Ah, Jerusalem! who stonest the prophets, and sheddest the blood of the just, this was the day of the overflowing wrath and fury of Jehovah! No human hand lit the flame; no mere human hate was accountable for sufferings so complex and so terrible. Thou, O God, hast slain priest and prophet in thy sanctuary; youth and age in the streets. Thou hast slain them in the day of thine anger; Thou hast slaughtered and not pitied.
And as Jeremiah waited day after day, powerless to do other than listen to tidings of woe that converged to him from every side, he resembled the physician, who, unable to stay the slow progress of some terrible form of paralysis in one he loves better than life, is compelled to listen to the tidings of its conquests, knowing surely that these are only stages in an assault which ultimately must capture the citadel of life—an assault which he can do nothing to stay.
II. THE PROPHET'S ADDED SORROWS.—In addition to the discomfort which he shared in common with the rest of the crowded populace, Jeremiah was exposed to aggravated sorrows. It would appear that he was constantly reiterating in the ears of all who passed through the court-house the message which he had previously delivered to the king, that to stay in the city was to incur death by sword, famine, or pestilence; whilst to go forth to the lines of the Chaldeans was the one condition of life. He lost no opportunity of asserting that Jerusalem should surely be given into the hands of the king of Babylon, and that he would take it. As these words passed from lip to lip, they carried dismay throughout the city. Men repeated them as they did duty on the walls, or met around the bivouac fires, or discussed the probable issues of the siege; and the fact that Jeremiah had so often spoken as the mouthpiece of Jehovah gave an added weight to his words.
It was quite natural, therefore, that the princes, who knew well enough the importance of keeping up the courage of the people, should demand the death of one who was not only weakening the hands of the people generally, but especially of the men of war. In some such way the drowsy sleeper, unwilling to be aroused by the barking of the watch-dog, catches up his revolver to shoot him; or the crew, eager for carouse, murders the watchman who warns them off the white surf breaking along a ragged rock-bound shore. The young king was weak rather than wicked, a puppet and toy in the hands of his princes and court. He therefore yielded to their demand, saying,
"Behold, he is in your hand; for the king is not he that can do anything against you."
Without delay Jeremiah was flung into one of those rock-hewn cisterns that abound in Jerusalem, and the bottom of which, the water having been exhausted during the extremities of the siege, consisted of a deep sediment of mud, into which he sank. There was not a moment to be lost. The life of the faithful servant of God was not to end amid the damp darkness of that hideous sepulchre, from which no cry could reach the upper air; and help was sent through a very unexpected channel. An Ethiopian eunuch—who is probably anonymous, since the name Ebed-melech simply means "the king's servant"—with a love to God's cause, which was sweetly prophetic of the way in which Gentile hearts would be opened to welcome and forward it throughout the world, hastened to the king, then sitting to administer justice at one of the gates of the city, remonstrated with him, and urged him to take immediate steps to save the prophet from imminent death.
Always swayed by the last strong influence brought to bear on him, the king yielded as easily to his faithful servant, who was probably the custodian of his harem, as he had done to his lords; and bade him take a sufficient number of men to secure him from interference, and at once extricate the prophet. There was great gentleness in the way this noble Ethiopian executed his purpose. He was not content with merely dragging him from the pit's bottom, but placed upon the ropes old cast clouts and rotten rags, fetched hurriedly from the house of the king; thus the tender flesh of the prophet was neither cut nor chafed. It was an act of womanly tenderness, which makes it as fragrant as the breaking of the box over the person of the Lord. It is not enough to serve and help those who need assistance; we should do it with the sweetness and gentleness of Christ. It is not only what we do, but the way in which we do it, which most quickly indicates our real selves. Many a man might have hurried to the pit's mouth with ropes; only one of God's own gentlemen would have thought of the rags and clouts. It is very quaint and beautiful, when so much is left untold, that a dozen lines in the Word of God should be given to this simple incident, and the hurried advice thrown into the darkness of the lonely prophet by his kind-hearted deliverer. "Then they drew up Jeremiah with the cords, and took him up out of the dungeon; and Jeremiah remained in the court of the guard."
From that moment till the city fell, the prophet remained in safe custody; and on one memorable occasion the king sought his counsel, though in strict secrecy. Once more and for the last time those two men stood face to face—king and prophet—weakness and strength—representatives, the one of the fading glories of David's race, and the other of the imperishable splendour of truth and righteousness. Once more Zedekiah asked what the issue would be: and once more received the alternatives that appeared so foolish to the eye of sense—Defeat and Death by remaining in the city; Liberty and Life by going forth.
"Go forth?" said Zedekiah, in effect; "never! It would be unworthy of one in whose veins flows the blood of kings. I shall expose myself to the ridicule of all that have fled across the Chaldean lines; and the Chaldeans themselves would deliver me into their hands."
"They shall not deliver thee," said Jeremiah; and then began to plead with him, as a man might plead for himself. "Obey, I beseech thee, the voice of the Lord, in that which I speak unto thee; so it shall be well with thee, and thy soul shall live." Finally, in graphic words he painted the picture of the certain doom the king would incur if he tarried until the city fell into the captor's hands. For the derision of the few Jews that had fallen away, he would then be exposed to the taunts of his wives and children, who would by that time have become allotted to their captors, and would seek to win the smiles of their new lords, by taunting the fallen monarch in whose smiles they had been wont to bask.
In this advice of Jeremiah we are reminded of words repeated by our Lord on five different occasions, and in which He tells us that those who keep their lives lose them, and that those who lose their lives find and keep them. Not in husbanding our strength, but in yielding it in service; not in burying our talents, but in administering them; not in hoarding our seed in the barn, but in scattering it; not in following an earthly human policy, but in surrendering ourselves to the will of God—do we find the safe and blessed path. The man of faith judges not after the sight of his eyes, or the judgment of sense; he strikes currents flowing unseen by the world, and acts on suggestions received by direct communication from the Spirit of God, though always through the Word of God, and consistent with the loftiest dictates of sanctified common-sense.
The weakness which was the ruin of Zedekiah came out in his request that Jeremiah would not inform the princes of the nature of their communications, and would hide the truth beneath the semblance of truth. It is difficult to pronounce a judgment on the way in which the prophet veiled the purport of his conversation with Zedekiah from the inquisitive questions of the princes. There is an appearance of evasion in his reply, which seems a little inconsistent with the character of the prophet of Jehovah. At the same time, the princes had no right to catechise him; and he was not obliged by his duty to them to tell the entire truth. We are under no obligation to gratify an impertinent curiosity; but we must be very careful to be transparent in speech and in act, and to be utterly true when we profess to be telling the whole truth to those that have a right to know. In the present case, the prophet shielded the king with a touch of chivalrous devotion and loyalty which was probably the last act of devotion to the royal house, to save which he had poured out his heart's blood in tears and entreaties and sacrifices for nearly forty years.
III. THE FATE OF THE CITY.-At last a breach was made in the old fortifications, and the troops began to rush in, like an angry sea which, after long chafing, has made for itself an entrance in the sea-wall, and pours in turbulent fury to carry desolation in its course. The kings of the earth, and all the inhabitants of the world, could never have believed that the adversary and the enemy should enter into the gates of Jerusalem; yet so it befell. Then the terrified people fled from the lower into the upper city; and as they did so, their homes were filled with the desolating terror of the merciless soldiery.
A hundred different forms of anguish gathered in that devoted city, like vultures to the dead camel of the desert. Woe, then, to the men who had fought for their very life! but woe more utter and agonizing to the women and maidens, to the children and little babes! War is always terrible; but no hand of historian dare lift the veil, and tell in unvarnished words all the horror of the sack of a city by such soldiery as Nebuchadnezzar and his generals led to war. The wolves of the Siberian forest are more merciful than they. "All the princes of the king of Babylon came in, and sat in the middle gate," from which they gave directions for the immediate prosecution of their success upon the terrified people, who now crowded the upper city, prepared to make the last desperate stand.
Late that afternoon the old palace of David was filled with eager consultation. Everything must be done to preserve the royal house, "the breath of our nostrils, the anointed of the Lord." It was, therefore, arranged that, as soon as night fell, Zedekiah and his harem should go forth under the protection of all the men of war, through a breach to be made in the walls of the city to the south: and exactly as Ezekiel had foretold, so it came pass. "The prince that is among them shall bear upon his shoulder in the dark, and shall go forth: they shall dig through the wall to carry out thereby, he shall cover his face" (Ezekiel 12:12).
A long line of fugitives, each carrying property or necessaries, stole silently through the king's private garden, and so towards the breach; and, like shadows of the night, passed forth into the darkness between long lines of armed men, who held their breath. If only by the dawn they could gain the plains of Jericho, they might hope to elude the fury of their pursuers. But all night Zedekiah must have remembered those last words of Jeremiah: "Thou shalt not escape; but shalt be taken by the hand of the king of Babylon." "Woe to him that striveth with his Maker. Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth." This was not the first time, nor the last, that man has thought to elude the close meshes of the Word of God.
Somehow the tidings of the flight reached the Chaldeans. The whole army arose to pursue. "Our pursuers were swifter than the eagles of the heaven; they chased us upon the mountains, they laid wait for us in the wilderness, the anointed of the Lord was taken in their pits." That is the lament of Jeremiah; but Ezekiel gives an even deeper insight into the events of that memorable and terrible night. "My net also will I spread upon him, and he shall be taken in my snare; and I will scatter toward every wind all that are round about him to help him, and all his bands" (Lam. 4:19, 20; Ezekiel 12:13, 14).
What happened the next morning in Jerusalem, and what befell her a month after, when the upper city also fell into the hands of the conqueror, is told in the Book of Lamentations. The streets and houses were filled with the bodies of the slain, after having been outraged with nameless atrocities; but happier they who perished then than the thousands who were led off into exile, or sold into slavery, to suffer in life the horrors of death. Then the wild fury of fire engulfed Temple and palace, public building and dwelling-house, and blackened ruins covered the site of the holy and beautiful city which had been the joy of the whole earth; and the ear of the prophet heard the spirit of the fallen city crying,
"Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by?
Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow which is done unto me,
Wherewith the Lord hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger!"
All that passed by clapped their hands at her; they hissed and wagged their heads at the daughter of Jerusalem, saying, Is this the city that men called the perfection of beauty, the joy of the whole earth? All her enemies opened their mouths wide against her; they hissed and gnashed their teeth; they said, We have swallowed her up. Certainly, this is the day that we looked for, we have found it, we have seen it. The Lord did that which He devised, He fulfilled his word, He threw down and did not pity, He caused the enemy to rejoice. Foxes walked upon the desolate mountain of Zion (Lam. ii., v.).
As for Zedekiah, he was taken to Riblah, where Nebuchadnezzar was at this time, perhaps not expecting so speedy a downfall of the city. With barbarous cruelty he slew the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes that the last sight he beheld might be of their dying agony. He was also compelled to witness the slaughter of all his nobles. Then as a coup de grace, with his own hand probably, Nebuchadnezzar struck out Zedekiah's two eyes with his spear.
It were indeed a subject for an artist to depict, the long march of the exiles on the way to their distant home. It has been compared to the long lines of exiles which are constantly passing from Russia to the steppes of Central Asia, and to the barren wastes of Siberia. Delicate women and little children forced to travel day after day, irrespective of fatigue and suffering; prophets and priests mingled together in the overthrow they had done so much to bring about; rich and poor marching side by side, manacled, and urged forward by the spear-point or scourge. All along the valley of the Jordan, past Damascus, and then for thirty days through the inhospitable wilderness, retraversing the route trodden in the dawn of history by Abraham, their great progenitor, the Friend of God, whilst all the nations round clapped their hands. In after years, the bitterest recollection of those days was in the exultation of the Edomites in the fall of their rival city. "Remember, O Lord, against the children of Edom, the day of Jerusalem!" "And the one warlike strain of the evangelical prophet is inspired by the hope that the Divine Conqueror should come knee-deep in Idumean blood."
Thus God brought upon his people the king of the Chaldeans, who slew their young men with the sword in the house of their sanctuary, and had no compassion upon young man or maiden, old man or ancient, but gave them all into his hand. And all the vessels of the house of God, great and small, and the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king and his princes, all these he brought to Babylon. And they burnt the house of God, and brake down the wall of Jerusalem, and burnt all the palaces thereof with fire, and destroyed all the goodly vessels thereof. And them that had escaped from the sword carried he away to Babylon, and they were servants to him and his sons.
Years before, in the fourth year of the reign of Jehoiakim, as his friend and amanuensis, Baruch, was lamenting the sore tribulation that befell him in executing Jehovah's commissions, Jeremiah had assured him that at least his life would be preserved in the midst of the final catastrophe. "Thus saith the Lord: Behold, that which I have built will I break down, and that which I have planted I will pluck up; and this in the whole land. And seekest thou great things for thyself? seek them not: for, behold, I will bring evil upon all flesh, saith the Lord! but thy life will I give unto thee for a prey in all places whither thou goest." As Noah was saved from the waters of the flood, and Lot from the overthrow of Sodom, and the early Christians by their flight to Pella from the horrors of the last Fall of Jerusalem, so did the faithful Baruch pass unscathed through those awful scenes. The man with the ink-horn had marked him, and the six men with their slaughter weapons touched him not (xlv.; Ezekiel ix.).