Stories of the Prophets Part 28

Therefore, when Jeremiah had fully recovered and had once more risen to his feet, Pashhur arrested him and had him led to the upper Temple gate, which is the gate of Benjamin. There he put him into the stocks with his own hands.

That whole day and that whole night Jeremiah remained pilloried.

Hundreds of people pa.s.sed him. Some, urged on by the priests and the false prophets, mocked at him; some, pitying him from the depths of their hearts, sympathized with him; some spat upon him.

Near the pillory, all that day and night, there hovered a gray-haired Ethiopian who longed to speak a word of cheer and comfort to the unfortunate prophet and to give him water to drink and food to eat, but he dared not because of the guard that Pashhur had placed over him.

During all the terrible agony and shame, Jeremiah did not utter a loud word of complaint or condemnation.

On the following morning Pashhur ordered Jeremiah to be brought to his chamber. There twenty-one stripes were administered to him; and after warning him never to enter Jerusalem again, Pashhur ordered him to leave the city and be thankful he wasn't carried out of it a corpse.

Before going, however, Jeremiah turned on Pashhur and said to him:

"The Lord hath not called thy name Pashhur, but Magor (Terror), for thus saith the Lord: 'Behold I am about to make thee a terror to thyself and to all thy friends; and they shall fall by the sword of your enemy before your very eyes. But thee and all Judah will I give into the hands of the King of Babylon, and he will carry them into captivity and slay them with the sword.

"'Moreover, I will give all the riches of this city and all its possessions and all the treasures of the king of Judah into the hands of their enemies, and they shall carry them away to Babylon; and thou and all that dwell in thy house shall go into captivity, and thou shalt die at Babylon and be buried there, together with all thy friends to whom thou hast prophesied falsely.'"

Here, for the first time, Jeremiah spoke of Babylon as the source from which all the evil impending over Judah was to come. For, one of the Elders who had accompanied him to Tophet, the day before, had whispered to him that Jehoiakim was preparing for a revolt from Nebuchadrezzar.

The reason why such a dangerous idea had entered the mind of Jehoiakim was that Nebuchadrezzar had received word, while yet at Riblah, that his father, Nabopola.s.sar, had died. Without delay, and before having subdued the Palestinian states to his entire satisfaction, he marched to Babylon to be crowned and to establish himself firmly upon his throne.

Jehoiakim thought he saw an opportunity here to regain his independence. Jeremiah knew how foolhardy and impossible this undertaking would be. He so informed Pashhur, therefore, and received a kick and a cuff for his pains, as a farewell from that worthy officer upon leaving Jerusalem.

CHAPTER XII.

_The Woe of the Prophet._

"What now?" Jeremiah asked himself.

Without an idea as to what his next move should be or where he should now turn, he took the road leading to Anathoth.

A day and a night in the stocks and the smarting lashes at Pashhur's hands, had given him a taste of martyrdom, and left him sick of heart and soul. He wanted to go home! Yes, he would go home where he would find, among his relatives and those dear to him, the shelter and comfort and rest that he longed for so much. His heart yearned for love and his soul for peace.

He turned northward. Head bent, spirit crushed, wounded in mind and in body, he approached the town of his birth, where he had spent the happy days of his youth, where he had received his call to prophesy, that ended now in humiliation and disgrace.

The painful, bitter thoughts that pa.s.sed through his mind were suddenly disturbed by the noise of someone running toward him and calling his name. Jeremiah looked up to see young Baruch, all out of breath, coming toward him, both his arms waving in the air as if giving a warning.

"Flee, master, flee!" Baruch cried, looking back in fear lest some one was pursuing him or would overhear him.

"Baruch!" exclaimed Jeremiah, stretching out his arms in welcome. The sight of the young man was the first moment of joy he had had since his encounter with Pashhur.

Baruch did not hear the joyous note in his master's greeting. His face was pale and he was trembling from head to foot. Mechanically he ran into Jeremiah's embrace, but did not return it. Facing Anathoth and pointing toward it, he whispered, rapidly, "They have devised devices against thee, saying, 'Let us destroy the tree with the fruit thereof; let us cut him off from the land of the living, that his name may be no more remembered.'"

Jeremiah finally succeeded in calming Baruch and drew out of him the fact that his cousins had conspired to kill him, and that, to save himself, he must not enter Anathoth.

Jeremiah's family had been poor but respectable citizens of Anathoth for many generations. They traced their ancestry back to Eli and to the high priest, Abiathar, who served in the Temple during the time of David, but whom Solomon banished to the suburb.

His relatives had always looked upon Jeremiah as the black sheep of the family. Now, in addition to their poverty, he had cast ridicule upon them by his actions, and contempt by his punishment in the stocks. So they decided to put him out of the way and be rid of him, once for all.

By this time the two men had reached the gray, barren hillside from which the Jordan valley and the Dead Sea can be seen in the distance.

It was here where Jeremiah received his call and commission to be a prophet to his people. With deep emotion did he now bewail his lot:

"Ah! I was like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter and I knew it not."

The injustice and the unrighteousness of it all came to him more forcibly at this place of sacred memories, and he cried:

"Oh, Lord G.o.d of Hosts, who judgest righteously, who triest the heart and the mind, I shall see thy vengeance on them; for unto thee have I revealed my cause."

In the bitterness of his spirit he could no longer restrain his woe.

Outcast and disgraced, persecuted in Jerusalem and his life sought for by his own family, Jeremiah cursed the very day of his birth:

"Cursed be the day in which I was born.

Let not the day wherein my mother bore me be blessed.

Cursed be the man who brought joyful tidings to my father, saying, 'A man child is born to thee,' making him very glad.

Let that man be as the cities which the Lord pitilessly overthrew, Because he did not let me die.

Why was I born to see labor and sorrow, That my days should be consumed with shame?"

Baruch did not break in upon the grief and anguish of Jeremiah. He turned away, sat down quietly at the foot of a tree and listened, with a fast-beating beating heart, to the sobs that were racking the very frame of his beloved teacher.

For a long time the two sat there, each engrossed in his own thoughts.

The tree-clad hills of Gilead, to the northeast of them, were now bathed in the deep shadows cast by the rapidly setting sun. Baruch walked over to Jeremiah and laid a light hand upon his shoulder.

Jeremiah felt his presence but did not raise his head.

"Master!" Baruch called softly.

Jeremiah looked up into a tear-stained face in which he read sympathy, love and sincere devotion. He arose slowly. The lines of a faint smile of appreciation played about his mouth. He grasped the young man in his embrace and clung to him as if he were his only remaining hope.

"Baruch! Baruch!" he cried, in a tear-choked voice, and held him tight and stroked his head and kissed his forehead. The boy melted into tears in the man's almost crus.h.i.+ng embrace, and his very soul went out to him in sympathy and love.

There in the twilight, the bond of friends.h.i.+p had been established between Jeremiah and Baruch, to be broken only in death!

Baruch attempted to comfort his friend, but he at once saw the hopelessness of the task.

Then he suggested to Jeremiah that they run away, that they go to Babylonia, to Egypt, anywhere, to escape the horror of it all at home.

But Jeremiah showed him the uselessness of trying to run away from duty's call:

"And if I say, I will not think of it nor speak any more in His name, Then there is in mine heart, as it were, a burning fire shut up in my bones."

There was a fire burning within the heart of Jeremiah, impelling him to prophesy. He could not help himself! He would not escape it!

And, what is more, that day of woe and trial, and the night that followed, bound up Baruch's destiny with that of Jeremiah.

CHAPTER XIII.