Jeremiah, the Martyred.

The forcing of Jeremiah into Egyptian exile with the others was the stroke that finally broke Jeremiah's heart. Against such stiff-necked perversity he could hold out no longer. He submitted, like a lamb, this time to be led, literally, to the slaughter.

Judah was destroyed, the Temple burnt, the royal family exterminated, the last of the friends of Jeremiah's family dead, the strength and nobility of the nation in Babylonian captivity, and now, the miserable remnant that was left in Judah, self-exiled to Egypt!

The destination of the emigrants was Tehaphenes, just across the boundary from Judah. There was already a small colony of Jews there. Being a frontier city on the main road to Jerusalem, Judeans often found refuge there from the many destructive armies that swept Judah.

These gave all the emigrants a hearty welcome. Jeremiah might have settled down there to pass the remaining years of his life quietly and at peace; or, he might have gone to Babylon where Nebuzaradan had promised to look after him. The course of events however, bade him remain where he now was.

Pharaoh Hophrah still had in mind the conquest of Babylon. But Jeremiah had preached all his life that Nebuchadrezzar was God's chosen servant for smiting the nations, Egypt among them. He had, many times, dared death rather than dare be untrue to God and to his mission as a prophet. Therefore, in Tehaphenes, before Pharaoh's palace, Jeremiah delivered the following oration:

"Take great stones in thine hand and hide them in the clay
of the pavement which is at the entry of Pharaoh's house in
Tehaphenes, in the sight of the men of Judah; and say unto
them, Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel:
Behold, I will send and take Nebuchadrezzar, the king of
Babylon, My servant, and will set his throne upon these
stones that I have hid; and he shall spread his royal
pavilion over them. And when he cometh, he shall smite the
land of Egypt."

Both the Jews and the Egyptians who heard him were thoroughly enraged.
Their rage swelled into an outcry, and the outcry into an attack upon
Jeremiah. The very stones of which he spoke were showered upon him by
the infuriated mob.

Death, that he had often faced but escaped, now came to Jeremiah in
this way—and Baruch, loving disciple and friend that he was, and
Ebed-melech, faithful admirer and servant that he was, stood by
Jeremiah's side to the last, sharing his fate with him.

Through no fault of his own, but as God's chosen servant, speaking naught but the word of God as it was revealed to him, Jeremiah had been despised, degraded, spat upon, made to suffer for the sins of his people and, finally, he was martyred at their hands.

It is held by some that the martyrdom of Jeremiah inspired a later prophet to write the following remarkable lines, although most Jewish scholars explain these lines as personifying the people of Israel and referring to its sufferings:

"Who would have believed what now we hear?
And to whom was the Lord's arm revealed?
Why, he grew up like a sapling before us,
Like a shoot out of dry ground!

"He was despised and forsaken of men,
A man of pain and familiar with sorrow:
Yea, like one from whom men hide their faces,
He was despised, and we esteemed him not.

"Surely our sufferings he himself bore,
And our pains he carried;
Yet we esteemed him stricken,
Smitten of God and afflicted.

"But he was wounded for our transgressions,
Crushed because of our iniquities;
The chastisement for our well-being was upon him,
And through his stripes healing came to us.

"All of us, like sheep, had gone astray,
We had turned each his own way;
And the Lord laid upon him,
The guilt of us all.

"He was sore pressed, yet he resigned himself,
And open not his mouth,
As a lamb is led to the slaughter,
And as a sheep that before her shearers is dumb.

"Shut out from justice he was hurried away;
And as for his fate, who regarded it?—
That he was cut off out of the land of the living,
Stricken to death for our transgressions.

"They made his grave with the wicked,
And his tomb with the ungodly,
Although he had done no violence,
Neither was any deceit in his mouth.

"But the Lord hath pleasure in His servant;
He will deliver his soul from anguish;
He will let him see and be satisfied,
And will vindicate him for his woes."

(Isaiah LIII.)

[END OF VOLUME ONE.]