Hebrew Life and Times Part 12

_First citizen:_ I have just offered a sacrifice to Jehovah.

_Second citizen:_ I suppose, then, it is all right. But did not the prophets speak against sacrifice, unless one remembered justice and mercy?

_First citizen:_ Yes, but they were speaking of the old sacrifices on the "high places," at the village shrines. Everyone knows they were heathen shrines and hateful to Jehovah. I offered my sacrifice at the temple yonder, just as we are told to do in the law of Moses, which King Josiah's servants found in the temple.

Look! Why is all that crowd gathered over there in the temple yard?

Let us go and see what is happening. I heard some one say, that a certain Jeremiah who calls himself a prophet, was to speak there to-day. All my friends who have heard him say that he is a false prophet.

(They reach the edge of the crowd. Jeremiah is standing on the steps of the temple, addressing the people, as follows:)

="Trust ye not in lying words, saying, The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, are these. For if ye thoroughly amend your ways and your doings; if ye thoroughly execute justice between a man and his neighbor; if ye oppress not the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow ... then I will cause you to dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers, from of old even forevermore. Behold, ye trust in lying words, that cannot profit. Will ye steal, murder, and commit adultery, and swear falsely, ... and come and stand before me in this house, ...

and say, We are delivered; that ye may do all these abominations? Is this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes?"=

JEREMIAH'S MESSAGE OF A HEART RELIGION

It is clear that Jeremiah was fighting the same old battle that Amos and the other prophets had fought against a religion of mere empty ceremonies. But the battle had grown even harder, because the old false practices had been accepted as though they were just the kind of religion that Amos had preached. The people said, "We are keeping the law of Jehovah," and so they were satisfied with themselves.

=The law to be written on the heart.=--Jeremiah saw that this mistake had come from relying too much on a written law. Something more than an outward law was needed before men could succeed in living together as brothers. It is so easy to keep the letter of the law, or to think one is keeping it, while we lose the spirit of it. What is needed, Jeremiah said, is a changed heart. Again and again he cried to the people, "Oh Jerusalem, cleanse thy _heart_." And in one of the great chapters of the Bible, the thirty-first of the book of Jeremiah, he looks forward to a time when Jehovah and his people should be bound together in a new covenant--not a covenant written on tables of stone like the one which Moses wrote at Sinai:

="But this is the covenant that I will make ... after those days, saith the Lord. I will put my law in their inward parts, and in their hearts I will write it."=

The apostle Paul saw this promise fulfilled by the love which Jesus Christ awakens in men's hearts, so that they gladly and eagerly do the will of G.o.d. On account of this prophecy of Jeremiah our Christian Bible is called the New Covenant, or (from the Latin) the New Testament.

JEREMIAH AND THE BABYLONIANS

In Jeremiah's time (a decade or so before and after B.C. 600) the Babylonians had taken the place of the a.s.syrians as the rulers of the world. There was a powerful king, Nebuchadrezzar, on the throne of Babylon. And the existence of the kingdom of Judah depended on submission to him. But, just as in Isaiah's time a century before, there was now a party in Jerusalem who were constantly plotting to rebel against the Babylonians, hoping for help from Egypt.

=Jeremiah as a patriot.=--Jeremiah had no sympathy with them. He loved his native land deeply and tenderly. But until the people were _worthy_ of liberty he was sure Jehovah would not give it to them.

Again and again they proved their unworthiness. Once when the Babylonian armies were knocking almost at the gates of Jerusalem they remembered that law about Hebrew slaves, which had been made even more strict in the new law, Deuteronomy. According to this law, no Hebrew could be kept in slavery longer than seven years. So in their fear of the Babylonians these rich n.o.bles solemnly set free a great number of slaves whom they had been illegally keeping in slavery. A few days later the hostile army, for some reason or other, withdrew.

And within a month all these slaves who had been set free were seized and reenslaved. How Jeremiah denounced this hypocrisy!

THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM

If Jeremiah's advice had been followed, the people of Judah would have been spared a world of sorrow. But the leaders of the kingdom seemed bent on dragging the whole nation into ruin. In B.C. 597, Jerusalem was captured and some ten thousand of the inhabitants were carried away as exiles to Babylon.

Even that lesson was not enough. Within a few years the new king, Zedekiah, and his n.o.bles again rebelled against Nebuchadrezzar.

Jeremiah protested and was called a traitor. Many times his life was threatened; for a long period he was kept in a filthy dungeon, and almost perished from hunger. But friends saved him. Very soon, in B.C.

586, the city came to the horrible end which Jeremiah had so patiently tried to ward off. The city was captured by Babylonian soldiers and burned. Thousands were carried away as exiles. Thousands more fled to Egypt and to other foreign countries. Only the poorest farmers were left to till the soil. David's kingdom and dynasty were ended.

Jeremiah himself was not taken to Babylon, but remained in Palestine.

According to tradition, his last days were spent in Egypt, with a Hebrew colony there. His life had been spent in keeping alive the soul of true religion in an age when few would listen. He is one of the great heroes of uncompromising truth.

STUDY TOPICS

1. Look up the story of Jeremiah in the Bible dictionary.

2. Read Jeremiah 1. 1-9, for a taste of his style of writing.

3. One man sacrifices to a heathen G.o.d; another tries to bribe Jehovah with a sacrifice as though he were _like_ the heathen G.o.ds:

_a._ Which is worse?

_b._ Which would the authors of Deuteronomy have considered worse?

_c._ Which would Jeremiah have considered worse?

CHAPTER XXI

KEEPING THE FAITH IN A STRANGE LAND

Twice within twelve years, first in B.C. 597, and again in B.C. 586, the Babylonians took great companies of Hebrews as exiles from Jerusalem to Babylon. Each time there must have been in the line of march some twenty-five thousand men, women, and children--an army which, marching eight abreast, would stretch at least five or six miles.

These must have been sorrowful processions, especially the last of the two. For months they had suffered the horrors of a besieged city. Then had come the break in the walls, the screams of frightened women and children, the heaps of corpses in the streets, and the black smoke and red glare of burning buildings; then the hasty setting out on the long road to Babylon. Some of them perhaps were able to buy a.s.ses to carry the little children and a few of their belongings. But most of them had to trudge along on foot, fathers and mothers carrying the babies, and leaving behind them all their possessions except what could be gathered into a towel or a blanket. For a month or six weeks they tramped. If anyone fell sick, there was no time to take care of him.

He must drag along with the rest or fall by the wayside until he either recovered or died.

THE SETTLEMENT IN BABYLONIA

When they reached the land of their captors they were not made slaves, but were allowed to make their home together in settlements on land set apart for them. In these colonies they probably worked as tenant-farmers on the estates of Nebuchadrezzar's n.o.bles. In the prophetic book of Ezekiel, who was among these exiles, we read about one of these Jewish colonies by the river, or ca.n.a.l, called Chebar (or in Babylonian Kabaru), which means the Grand Ca.n.a.l.

=The attractions of Babylonian life.=--What the Babylonians hoped was that these people would forget that they were Hebrews and become Babylonians, just as immigrants from Europe become Americans. This is exactly what happened in many cases. At first, of course, the Hebrews were bitterly homesick. The land of Babylonia was as flat as a floor.

The Hebrews longed for the lovely hills and valleys of their native land.

=By the rivers of Babylon, There we sat down, yea, we wept, When we remembered Zion.

Upon the willows in the midst thereof We hanged up our harps, For there they that led us captive required of us songs, And they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.

How shall we sing the Lord's song In a strange land?=

But the years went by, and they had time to look about in the new country. They found it full of opportunities for money-making. The soil, watered by hundreds of ca.n.a.ls from the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers, was wonderfully rich. Everywhere there were prosperous towns and cities with great brick buildings, beautifully decorated with sculpture, and thronged with merchants. s.h.i.+ps laden with wheat and dates and with Babylonian rugs and mantles and other beautiful articles sailed up the rivers, or out to sea toward India. Many Hebrews, or Jews (that is, Hebrews from Judaea), became merchants. In their own land they had been chiefly a nation of farmers. The reputation of the Jews for cleverness in trade began with these experiences in Babylon when hundreds of Jewish boys obtained positions in great Babylonian stores or banks, and by and by set up for themselves as merchants. Among the Babylonian contracts on clay tablets coming down to us from this period are many Jewish names.

THE TEMPTATION TO FORSAKE JEHOVAH

These young Hebrew merchants found themselves in a net-work of foreign religious customs. When a customer signed a contract it was proposed that he offer a sacrifice to the G.o.d Marduk, that the enterprise might prosper. There were religious processions and feast days in which everyone joined, just as we hang out flags on the Fourth of July.

Foreigners from other lands joined in these rites and thought nothing of it. Furthermore, some of these captive Jews thought that their Hebrew G.o.d, Jehovah, had not protected them from these mighty Babylonians. Surely, the Babylonian G.o.ds were the stronger, and one should pay them due reverence.

=Memories of the prophets.=--On the other hand, even the dullest of the Jews must have begun to understand that the religion of their prophets was a different kind of religion altogether--not _a_ religion, but _true_ religion; and that Jehovah was not like the bargaining, jealous G.o.ds of the other nations, but was G.o.d, with a capital G, the one righteous Creator and Ruler of the world.

Moreover, the prophets who had taught them to think of Jehovah in this way had again and again declared that just this calamity of exile would come upon them if they as a nation continued to disobey Jehovah's just laws; and what they had foretold had come to pa.s.s. The prophets must have been right. Their teaching must be true.

=Hebrews in other foreign lands.=--There were probably almost as many Hebrews in Egypt at this time as in Babylonia. Indeed, even before the destruction of Jerusalem the constant wars on Canaan had compelled great numbers of them to seek for peace and comfort for themselves and their wives and children in Egypt, in Damascus, and even in far-away Carthage and Greece. The Jews to-day are scattered all over the world.

This began to be true of them from the time of the destruction of Jerusalem.