And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. of them, saith the LORD; For I will forgive their iniquity, And I will remember their sin no more." (31-34.) The second part of the book of Jeremiah, from chap. xlvi., relates to foreign nations; being intitled, "The word of the LORD which came to Jeremiah the prophet concerning the Gentiles," or other nations. The nations concerned are: (1.) The Egyptians, in reference to the recovery of Carchemish by Nebuchadnezzar, and his invasion of Egypt; (2.) The Philistines, to be devastated by him on his way; (3.) The Moabites, in which prophecy Jeremiah has many parts of the old burden already mentioned as preserved by Isaiah; (4.) The Ammonites, then possessing the transjordanic provinces; (5.) The Edomites, against whom he has passages in common with Obadiah; (6.) Damascus ; (7.) Kedar and Hazor in Arabia, in danger from Nebuchadnezzar; (8.) Elam (the country at the head of the Persian Gulf, sometimes taken to mean Persia generally); (9.) and last, the great Babylon herself, which is to be destroyed by the Medes, mentioned by name, and the Jewish people to be restored. This prediction extends over chapters 1. and li. It was written, as the postscript tells us, on the captivity of Zedekiah, and 476 THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH. was sent to Babylon by the hand of Seraiah, the king's chief chamberlain, whom Jeremiah enjoined to read it to the exiles in Babylon. Hopeful and brave words of comfort for them and their families! "Thus far are the words of Jeremiah," marks the original ending of the book at the end of chap. li. The added chapter, as already observed, is a later appendage, chiefly repetitional. THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH Are, properly speaking, a continuation of his prophesyings, probably written by him during his retirement in Egypt. They are what the title expresses, a kind of elegy on the fallen Jerusalem, with a part (chap. iii.) devoted more particularly to the prophet's personal sor rows. The composition of this book is somewhat elaborate and artificial. With the exception of the last chapter, its verses are acrostic or alphabetical, in the style already mentioned as belonging to some of the Psalms, probably of a comparatively recent date. Each of the five chapters of the Lamentations consists of twenty-two verses, or a multiple of twenty-two, that being the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet. The first, second and fourth chapters are simply acrostic, with a few irregularities which probably did not exist originally. The first and second have usually, but not quite uniformly, three versicles to each letter; the fourth has two. The third, consisting of sixty-six verses, is acrostic in triplets, haying three A lines, then three B, and so on. The fifth has twenty-two verses, but they are destitute of this device. This structure, which is totally disguised in the common version, is well shewn in Noyes's translation, except, of course, the acrosticism, which cannot be imitated, and could only be marked by placing the Hebrew letters at the head of each change, as is done in the common version of Psalm cxix. A true dirge is this poem, over fallen Jerusalem. Yet the poet is strong in religious trust; he acknowledges that the Lord has fulfilled His word of threatening, and trusts that the word of restoration will also be fulfilled in due time. EZEKIEL. (About 595-572 B. C.) He prophesied altogether during the captivity. He was among the captives carried into Mesopotamia by Nebuchadnezzar with king Jeconiah, twelve years before the destruction of Jerusalem. This deportation took place about B. C. 600; and Ezekiel expressly dates the beginning of his prophetic office in the fifth year of this captivity, while the prophecies that seem to have been his latest were in the twenty-fifth year of the captivity, or the fourteenth after the destruction of Jerusalem. By the thirtieth year, mentioned in his introduction, he is supposed to mean the thirtieth of his own age. The scene of his captivity was the river Chebar, the modern Khabour, which flows westwards through Mesopotamia into the Euphrates, about 351 deg. N. latitude, about 300 miles north-west from Babylon, and 140 or 150 west from Nineveh. Here, according to the general policy of those times, the conquered people were placed as a colony in the land of their conquerors. Ezekiel was thus contemporary in a great degree with Jeremiah, beginning somewhat later and continuing to prophesy after the other had ceased. What the one is announcing in Jerusalem to the few Jews who remain there, the other is telling to the victims of the first captivity in their exile, and probably publishing in Jerusalem also. Such is Ezekiel's mission. There is no new subject of prophecy in his pages; but there is much that is characteristic of his writings among those of his compeers. Ezekiel's burdens (contrary to the prevalent practice) are, with few exceptions, in prose,-stately, measured prose. It is only occasionally that the measure becomes distinct enough, and the parallelism sufficiently recurrent, to be considered as poetry. This is the case, however, with chapters vii. xix. xxviii. 12—19, and xxxi. xxxii. The "living creatures" in the prophetic vision, described at the beginning of the book and repeated in chap. x., which (though the whole description is very difficult to realize as a distinct picture to the mind) have plainly the human face and general figure, with the wings of a bird and the feet of an ox, seem to gain a local propriety and something of an explanation, as having been locally suggested to the prophet's mind, from the lately disinterred monuments of the Assyrian cities, in which these and similar combinations are perpetual. The human-headed and winged bulls of Assyrian worship are made ministering servants of Jehovah's glory in the vision of his prophet by the river Chebar. Curious and decisive corroboration of the antiquity of this Jewish book of Ezekiel, which has been describing this strange imagery, to the perpetual wonder of the Christian church, all these ages, while the sculptured bulls of Nineveh lay entombed and unknown! The emblematic style of instruction common among the Hebrew prophets, receives illustration from Ezekiel. In vision he seems to eat a book-roll inscribed within and without (so full and overflowing) with lamentations and woe. It was by his telling this vision, that the emblem had its force upon the people; the emblem itself being transacted only in vision. So, his besieging the city drawn upon a tile; his lying on his left side 390 days, to image (as Grotius explains) the disobedience of Israel 390 years from the days of Solomon's idolatry; and then 40 more on his right side, for the 40 years of Judah from Josiah's purgation of the temple to its destruction; his shaving off his hair and dividing it into three parts, to image the inhabitants of Jerusalem as some destroyed in the siege, others in the flight, and others taken captive;-all these, feeble emblems as they seem to us in telling, would have been feebler still if publicly acted. His wife's death (ch. xxiv.) and his silent sorrow, turned by him to an emblem of the coming destruction of Jerusalem, seems to have been a real event. So may perhaps have been his removing from his house, as an emblem of Judah going into captivity. Ezekiel twice mentions his younger contemporary, Daniel, as well known and highly reputed. He also mentions Job as a real historical personage, joining both these names with that of Noah: "When a land sinneth against me, *** though these three men, Noah, Daniel and Job, were in it, they should deliver but their own souls by their righteousness, saith the Lord Jehovah." This was written (xiv. 14 and 20) apparently before the destruction of the city. The other place is in a later prophecy against the prince of Tyre (xxviii. 3), to whom the prophet says ironically, "Behold, thou art wiser than Daniel!" implying that the wisdom of Daniel had already become proverbial, not only among the Jews, but among the Babylonians, and that the allusion would be intelligible to those who were doomed to fall before the latter. |