Imagini ale paginilor
PDF
ePub

S

XXXI.

JEREMIAH.

CARCELY can a greater contrast be imagined than that existing between the two prophets, Isaiah and Jeremiah. The one, vigorous, lofty and animated in his style of writing; the other, pathetic, elegant and mournful. There was probably something in the original cast of mind in these two prophets, respectively, which caused so wide a difference. The Spirit of God, however, can employ all the gifts of his servants, however widely they may be varied, and turn every kind of talent and temper to a sanctified use. Persons of the most timid and shrinking nature may render services not less important than the bold and ardent.

Very different feelings were experienced, moreover, by the two prophets at the time of their special call to the prophetic office. Isaiah was overpowered by a sense of his unworthiness: "Woe is me," he cries, "for I am undone !" Jeremiah, on the other hand, was depressed by the feeling of his unfitness; he said, "Ah, Lord God, behold I cannot speak, for I am a child." We see, in truth, throughout the whole course of Jeremiah, a general air of melancholy and dejection. His natural temperament, and the circumstances in which he was placed, both combined to lower the tone of his spirits.

Yet he had a high charge committed to him. He relates: "The Lord said unto me, Say not, I am a child: for thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command thee

thou shalt speak. Be not afraid of their faces: for I am with thee to deliver thee, saith the Lord. Then the Lord put forth his hand, and touched my mouth. And the Lord said unto me, Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth. See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to plant." There are several circumstances to be noticed, some of them of a friendly, others of an unfriendly, nature in the treatment which Jeremiah experienced.

The unfriendliness-and that of the worst sort-which Jere-. miah suffered was from the people and their rulers.

In the ears of the people he was continually sounding the alarm and rousing them to conviction of sin: "Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this, and be horribly afraid, be ye very desolate, saith the Lord. For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water." "A wonderful and horrible thing is committed in the land; the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and my people love to have it so: and what will ye do in the end thereof?"

The requital, moreover, which he had from the people of Judah, was such as might be expected from inveterate and hardened sinners. They mocked and defied him, saying, "Where is the word of the Lord? let it come now." He with tenderness of spirit appeals to God, saying, "As for me, I have not hastened from being a pastor to follow thee: neither have I desired the woeful day; thou knowest: that which came out of my lips was right before thee." Then they plotted against him; they said, "Come, and let us devise devices against Jeremiah; for the law shall not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophet. Come, and let us smite him with the tongue, and let us not give heed to any of his words." Even his fellow-townsmen, the villagers of "poor Anathoth," with

subtlety conspired against his life. "But I was," says Jeremiah, "like a lamb or an ox that is brought to the slaughter; and I knew not that they had devised devices against me, saying, Let us destroy the tree with the fruit thereof, and let us cut him off from the land of the living, that his name may be no more remembered." When on one occasion he was put into the stocks, there was a remarkable conflict in the mind of Jeremiah between principle and feeling. He felt that he was in derision daily, and he was almost tempted to throw up his commission and quit God's service. He exclaimed, "I will not make mention of him, nor speak any more in his name;" but he adds, "His word was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay. For I heard the defaming of many, fear on every side. Report, say they, and we will report it. All my familiars watched for my halting, saying, Peradventure he will be enticed, and we shall prevail against him, and we shall take our revenge on him." Thus did he strengthen himself in God; for he says, "Unto thee have I opened my cause." And then he adds, triumphantly, as one who had overcome a severe temptation, "Sing unto the Lord; praise ye the Lord: for he hath delivered the soul of the poor from the hand of evil doers."

But this persecution was carried to a far more dangerous extremity when at length the king and the court took part against the prophet. At a later period (for Jeremiah prophesied not less than forty years) the king and his princes began to suspect him of treasonable practices against his country. Nor was the suspicion altogether unnatural; for, by the word of the Lord, Jeremiah declared that those Jews should be safe, and those only, who should quit the city and go over to the army of their enemies the Chaldeans: "Therefore the princes said unto the king, We beseech thee, let this man be put to death: for thus he weakeneth the hands of the men of war that remain in this city, and the hands of all the people, in speaking such words unto them: for

this man seeketh not the welfare of this people, but the hurt. Then Zedekiah the king said, Behold, he is in your hand: for the king is not he that can do anything against you. Then took they Jeremiah, and cast him into the dungeon of Malchiah the son of Hammelech, that was in the court of the prison: and they let down Jeremiah with cords. And in the dungeon there was no water, but mire: so Jeremiah sunk in the mire." It is in reference to this event in his life that the following words seem to have been penned: "They have cut off my life in the dungeon, and cast a stone upon me. Waters flowed over mine head; then I said, I am cut off. I called upon thy name, O Lord, out of the low dungeon. Thou hast heard my voice: hide not thine ear at my breathing, at my cry. Thou drewest near in the day that I called upon thee: thou saidst, Fear not. O Lord, thou hast pleaded the causes of my soul; thou hast redeemed my life." Lam. iii. 53-58.

Such, generally speaking, were the adverse and afflictive circumstances attendant on Jeremiah's ministry. He lived also to witness and most pathetically to lament over the destruction of the holy city and the captivity of the people of the Lord. A more touching composition exists not in the Old Testament (a few, perhaps, of the Psalms excepted) than the book of the Lamentations of Jeremiah. In the third chapter of it we seem to behold the very picture of the prophet sitting amidst the ruins of Jerusalem, his countenance furrowed with grief, his eyes streaming with tears, and yet his heart meekly bowing beneath the just judgments of the Lord: "I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath." Yet he submissively and thankfully adds, "It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness." "It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord. It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth." Never did any one more need that truth, which after

ward was spoken by our Lord to his disciples-"Blessed are they that mourn; for they shall be comforted."

Happily, there were alleviating circumstances in the prophet's lot. A spirit of friendliness existed toward him, even in quarters where it was least to be expected.

First, we find that Zedekiah the king-the very person who gave him up to death-had at different times many relentings of heart. He ordered that the prophet should be supplied with bread daily, until all the bread in the city was spent. He also sent for him secretly, more than once, to inquire, "Is there any word from the Lord ?" Thus he showed that even wicked men have conscience enough to trouble them; while God often works by means of their fears, their scruples and their natural feelings of humanity, to protect his faithful servants.

But the chief friend of Jeremiah, in the crisis of his peril, was Ebed-melech, an attendant on the king's household-an Ethiopian, not a Jew-who most unexpectedly interested himself to save the life of the prophet. He went in boldly to Zedekiah, and said, "My lord the king, these men have done evil in all that they have done to Jeremiah the prophet, whom they have cast into the dungeon; and he is like to die for hunger in the place where he is: for there is no more bread in the city." Such interference, and from such a man, might have given mortal offence; but God overruled it for good, and the pious humanity of this stranger was afterward well recompensed. The king, who seems to have been an irresolute man, and easily led right or wrong, immediately yielded to this request, which had both justice and mercy to recommend it: "Then the king commanded Ebed-melech the Ethiopian, saying, Take from hence thirty men with thee, and take up Jeremiah the prophet out of the dungeon, before he die. So Ebed-melech took the men with him, and went into the house of the king under the treasury, and took thence the old cast clouts and old rotten rags, and let them down by cords into the dungeon to Jeremiah. And Ebed-melech the

« ÎnapoiContinuă »