But thine eyes and thine heart are not but for thy covetousness, and for to shed innocent blood, and for oppression, and for violence to do it.

Therefore thus saith the LORD concerning Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Judah; They shall not lament for him, saying, Ah my brother! or, Ah sister! they shall not lament for him, saying, Ah lord! or, Ah his glory!

He shall be buried with the burial of an ass, drawn and cast forth beyond the gates of Jerusalem.

As I live, saith the LORD, though Coniah the son of Jehoiakim king of Judah were the signet upon my right hand, yet would I pluck thee thence:

And I will give thee into the hand of them that seek thy life, and into the hand of them whose face thou fearest, even into the hand of Nebuchad rezzar king of Babylon, and into the hand of the Chaldeans.

And I will cast thee out, and thy mother that bare thee, into another country, where ye were not born; and there shall ye die.

But to the land whereunto they desire to return, thither shall they not

return.

Is this man Coniah a despised broken idol? is he a vessel wherein is no pleasure? wherefore are they cast out, he and his seed, and are cast into a land which they know not?

O earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the LORD.

Thus saith the LORD, Write ye this man childless, a man that shall not prosper in his days: for no man of his seed shall prosper, sitting upon the throne of David, and ruling any more in Judah.

COMMENT.-The history of Jehoiakim occupies only six verses in the Book of Kings, but from Jeremiah we learn that he was far from being untaught and unwarned, during the eleven years of his reign. The chapter here given seems to have been addressed to him by the prophet very soon after he was placed on the throne, while the grief for his father's death and his brother's captivity were still in everyone's mind.

To the reigning king Jeremiah first speaks, assuring him that if he would be a just and upright prince, and abstain from the cruelty that seems to have been Jehoiakim's especial vice, though there was a doom upon the family, they should recover, and kings of the house of David should yet ride in triumph through the gates of Jerusalem. The prophecy, taken up and dwelt on by Zechariah, was fulfilled by our Lord's triumphal entry. But if not? Then all should be desolate. Most touching, then, are the words in which Jeremiah bids no one weep for the dead Josiah, gathered to his grave, but weep sore for those who should have the sadder fate of being carried away, never to return nor see their native country

more.

So it was already with Shallum, or Jehoahaz (he is so called also in 1 Chron. iii. 15). He was a prisoner in Egypt, and there he should die without returning! But if Jehoiakim thought himself safe from his usurping brother, he had his warning. He as if he thought his line should never meet with a reverse, was building himself a royal palace in Assyrian fashion-lined with cedar, and with wall paintings in vermilion, and that at the cost of his people, whom his cruelty forced into service, and without payment. What a contrast to his father, who ate and drank (namely, held great sacrificial feasts), when all the people fed with him, and judged the house of the poor! "Was not this to know Me, saith the Lord?” Jehoiakim's fault does not seem to have been so much idolatry as savage, lawless cruelty and avarice, and he is told that no such laments shall bewail him as the weeping for his father, but that his corpse shall be buried with the burial of an ass, cast out at the gates of Jerusalem.

The prophecy passes on to the son of Jehoiakim-Jehoiachin, or Jeconiah, here called Coniah, with the syllable that dedicated him to the Lord left out because of his wickedness. He was but eighteen years younger than his father, and might already have shown his evil disposition, so as to deserve the sentence that he should fall into the hands of the Chaldeans, who had just taken Nineveh, and of Nebuchadrezzar, who was at this time prince and heir of Babylon. Coniah and his mother, Nehushta (who bore the same name as the broken Brazen Serpent), would both be carried away into a far country, and there die.

Then last comes a terrible assurance. Three times Jeremiah calls the Earth to hear the word of the Lord, that dooms Jeconiah to be written childless. Hitherto the line of David had gone on unbroken, son succeeding father with perfect regularity, the only break having been the usurpation of Athaliah, and more lately of Shallum. But Coniah's sons should never sit on the throne of David. It was his uncle who would reign in his place-then never another crowned king of Judah. He had forfeited all the blessings to David.

It is true that the name of Jeconiah is found in our Lord's genealogy in St. Matthew's Gospel, and this has made some think that his being written childless may only mean that his children

should not be kings. But when we turn to St. Luke, we find the line brought down not from Solomon, but Nathan, another son of David, and that both meet in Salathiel, who is in the one counted as the son of Jeconiah, in the other as son of Neri, and it is therefore concluded that Jeconiah was really childless, and the line of kings being extinct, the son of Neri, as the nearest of kin to the royal family, and being descended from David, was adopted and reckoned as son of Jeconiah.

LESSON XCVI.

THE DEATH OF URIJ A H.

B.C. 609.-JER. xxvi. 8—24.

Now it came to pass when Jeremiah had made an end of speaking all that the LORD had commanded him to speak unto all the people, that the priests and the prophets and all the people took him saying, Thou shalt surely die.

Why hast thou prophesied in the name of the LORD, saying, This house shall be like Shiloh, and this city shall be desolate without an inhabitant? And all the people were gathered against Jeremiah in the house of the LORD.

When the princes of Judah heard these things, then they came up from the king's house unto the house of the LORD, and sat down in the entry · the new gate of the LORD's house.

Then spake the priests and the prophets unto the princes and to all the people, saying, This man is worthy to die, for he hath prophesied against this city, as ye have heard with your ears.

Then spake Jeremiah unto all the princes and to all the people, saying, The LORD sent me to prophesy against this house and against this city all the words that ye have heard.

Therefore now amend your ways and your doings, and obey the voice of the LORD your God; and the Lord will repent him of the evil that he hath pronounced against you.

As for me, behold, I am in your hand : do with me as seemeth good and meet unto you.

But know ye for certain, that if ye put me to death, ye shall surely bring innocent blood upon yourselves, and upon this city, and upon the inhabitants thereof: for of a truth the LORD hath sent me unto you to speak all these words in your ears.

Then said the princes and all the people unto the priests and to the prophets; This man is not worthy to die : for he hath spoken to us in the name of the LORD our God.

Then rose up certain of the elders of the land, and spake to all the assembly of the people, saying,

Micah the Morasthite prophesied in the days of Hezekiah king of Judah, and spake to all the people of Judah, saying, Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Zion shall be plowed like a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of a forest.

Did Hezekiah king of Judah and all Judah put him at all to death? did he not fear the LORD, and besought the LORD, and the LORD repented him of the evil which he had pronounced against them? Thus might we procure great evil against our souls. And there was also a man that prophesied in the name of the LORD, Urijah the son of Shemaiah of Kirjathjearim, who prophesied against this city and against this land according to all the words of Jeremiah :

And when Jehoiakim the king, with all his mighty men, and all the princes, heard his words, the king sought to put him to death: but when Urijah heard it, he was afraid, and fled, and went into Egypt;

And Jehoiakim the king sent men into Egypt, namely, Elnathan the son of Achbor, and certain men with him into Egypt.

And they fetched forth Urijah out of Egypt, and brought him unto Jehoiakim the king; who slew him with the sword and cast his dead body into the graves of the common people.

Nevertheless the hand of Ahikam the son of Shaphan was with Jeremiah, that they should not give him into the hand of the people to put him to death.

COMMENT.—In the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim, at one of the three great festivals, Jeremiah was commanded to stand in the court of the Temple, and warn the people who assembled there that this place, Jerusalem, should be made like Shiloh, that first sanctuary, which for the sin of the tribes and of Eli's sons had been made utterly desolate. So in the same courts should stand another, a greater than Jeremiah, who in like manner should foretell that the Temple should become a desolation. And in like manner did the priests and the people threaten the stern Preacher with death. At first it seems there was a blind rage against him for thus speaking, but the princes of Judah came and sat in the deep porch of the eastern gate, and summoned him before them. The bold reply of the priestly prophet, calling on them to turn from their sins, in hope of the mercy that might yet be obtained, together with his assurance that he spoke in the name of the Lord, startled the princes. They saw that he was in truth a prophet of the Lord, and feared to put him to death, and some of the elders, the judges, namely, of the villages, who had come up from the country, reminded them of the prophet Micah, who under Hezekiah had foretold

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coming danger to Jerusalem, yet had not been accused of treason, and had suffered no persecution. The mention of Micah is remarkable as one of the instances of the testimony which one book of Scripture bears to another. The great deliverance under Hezekiah was recollected, and the princes hesitated. Thus we might procure great evil against our souls,” they said. Moreover, among them was Ahikam, the son of Josiah's good secretary Shaphan, and he was able to protect the prophet, whose priestly office probably shielded him in part, and for the present his prophecy was kept from the ears of the cruel and violent king Jehoiakim.

Another prophet, Urijah, who came from the forest village of Kirjath-jearim, where the Ark had so long been, likewise prophesied of the coming woe unto Judah. His predictions became known to Jehoiakim, and so enraged him that when the prophet fled into Egypt he caused him to be pursued thither, brought back, and slain with the sword-nay, his very corpse insulted. Urijah, though leaving no writings, is thus especially to be remembered among the prophets with whose death our Lord reproached the Jews-" O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets and stonest them that are sent unto thee."

It seems as if at this time the nation was still divided between an Egyptian and Babylonian party; the will of the Lord clearly was that Judah should submit patiently to the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar as a chastisement which, rightly accepted, would prevent further suffering. But Jehoiakim, who had been made king by Necho the Egyptian, and his hot-headed party chafed fiercely against this counsel, and the continual accusation against the prophets was that they were traitors to the cause of their country.

LESSON XCVII

THE SEVENTY YEARS.

B.C. 606.-JER. XXV. I—14.

The word that came to Jeremiah concerning all the people of Judah in the fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Judah, that was the first year of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon;