JEREMIAH, whose name written fully in Hebrew is Yirmyahu (ch. i. 1), often contracted into Yirmyah (ch. xxvii. 1, &c.), was by birth a priest, and dwelt at Anathoth, a village in the tribe of Benjamin, about three miles north of Jerusalem. The meaning of the name is disputed, many commentators following Hengstenberg in supposing that there is an allusion in it to the opening words of the triumphal song of Moses in Exod. xv. 1. We there read, "the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea," and thus giving as the interpretation of the name, Jehovah shall throw, they see in it a reminiscence of that great deliverance. But the name is not found till the time of David, when, however, it seems to have become common (see 1 Chro. xii. 4, 10, 13), and more probably it signifies Jehovah shall exalt. But the whole subject of Hebrew names requires more careful treatment than it has hitherto met with. It is a canon of grammarians that words in most common use become modified and changed to an indefinite extent for the sake of euphony and ease of pronunciation, and as names are of all words most subject to these changes we need a careful consideration of the laws which have regulated their modification. We should thus have firmer ground for deciding, in cases of contested interpretation, which explanation is the more true.

His Parentage.

It is also a subject of dispute whether or not Hilkiah, the father of Jeremiah, was the high-priest of that name, who found the Book of the Law in the temple (2 K. xxii. 8). Clement of Alexandria ('Strom.' 1. 328), Jerome ('Quæst. Hebr. in Paralip.' ad cap. ix. 15), Kimchi and Abravanel affirm his identity: most modern commentators deny it, but for two insufficient reasons. First, it is argued that instead of the simple designation of Jeremiah, as one of the priests who dwelt at Anathoth, some word would have been added to Hilkiah's name to indicate his exalted rank. Most certainly no such word would have been added, and the idea arises from a misunderstanding of the Hebrew language. Jeremiah ben-Hilkiah was the prophet's name, and the parts cannot be separated from one another. So in v. 3 Jehoiakim ben-Josiah and Zedekiah ben-Josiah are the full names of those monarchs, and the title "king of Judah" belongs to Jehoiakim and Zedekiah, not to Josiah. So Zephaniah, "gloriosa majorum stirpe generatus," as Jerome says, has his genealogy carried back to his great-grandfather Hezekiah (wrongly written Hizkiah in the A. V.), but the title "king of Judah" is not added to Hezekiah's name, for the simple reason that had it been so added it would have affirmed, not that Hezekiah, but that Zephaniah was king. When Delitzsch

affirmed the contrary (Herzog, 'RealEnc.' under Zephaniah) his Hebrew was in fault. So here. Jeremiah, son of Hilkiah the high-priest, may be very good English. In Hebrew it would mean that Jeremiah ben-Hilkiah was high-priest, a very different thing.

The second objection is one of those wide assumptions which scholars sometimes make upon very narrow grounds. Anathoth was a priests' city (1 Chro. vi. 60), and to it Abiathar retired "unto his own fields" after the failure of the attempt to place Adonijah upon the throne (1 K. ii. 26). As Abiathar belonged to the race of Ithamar, it is assumed that Anathoth belonged exclusively to that family, and that Hilkiah, being descended from Phinehas, could have had no residence there. But, as Eichhorn asks, “Must all the priestly families at Anathoth belong to the house of Ithamar, and could none belong to that of Phinehas ?" Nothing is more probable than that the dominant house would secure for the high-priest country quarters at a place so very conveniently situated for the performance of his duties at Jerusalem. But whether Abiathar had obtained an estate at a place chiefly belonging to the race of Phinehas, or whether Hilkiah's family were the intruders, or whether Anathoth was attached to the temple service, and both races dwelt there in common; all this is entirely unknown to us, and no argument can be founded upon such uncertain data.

Upon the whole there is so much in the Book of Jeremiah which accords with the assertion of Clement and Jerome, that it is at least possible that it is true. We should thus understand the more than ordinary respect felt for the prophet by Jehoiakim and Zedekiah. While the former put Urijah to death without scruple (Jer. xxvi. 23), he spared Jeremiah, whose fate was a matter of so great importance that the princes of the people and the elders (assembled probably in some solemn law-court) keenly debated it (ib. 10, 16, 17). He seems to have been on terms of personal friendship with Ahikam (ib. 24), and remained with his son Gedaliah on the appointment of the latter as governor over the land (ch. xl. 5, 6). We find again the princes treating Jeremiah with great respect when he

wrote the roll in the fourth year of Jehoiakim (ch. xxxvi. 11-19, 25); and when the captains would have slain him towards the end of the siege, doubtless because his words did render the defence of the city difficult, and seemed therefore unpatriotic or even traitorous, Zedekiah was glad by stealth to frustrate their purpose (ch. xxxviii. 8-10). It is noteworthy also that he not only had in his service a scribe, but one who was a high noble. For Baruch was the grandson of Maaseiah the governor of the city (2 Chro. xxxiv. 8), and brother of Seraiah the king's chamberlain (Jer. li. 59). Even the Chaldees held him in great respect (ch. xl. 1—4), and throughout the book everything agrees with the supposition that he was a man of high birth.

Political state of affairs.

His call to the prophetic office came in the thirteenth year of Josiah. It was a time when danger was once again gathering round the little kingdom of Judah, and to Jeremiah was assigned a more directly political position than to any other of "the goodly fellowship of the prophets," as both the symbols shewn to him and the very words of his institution prove. If we glance back at the previous history, we find that the destruction of Sennacherib's army in the fourteenth year of Hezekiah, though it had not freed the land from predatory incursions, had nevertheless put an end to all serious designs on the part of the Assyrians to reduce it to the same condition as that to which Shalmaneser had reduced Samaria. It has already been shewn in the note upon 2 K. xviii. 13 that the usual chronology printed in the margin of our Bibles is hopelessly at variance with the dates given to us in the cuneiform inscriptions, which are now throwing so great a flood of light upon the Assyrian period of Jewish history. As Sennacherib did not come to the throne till B. C. 703, according to the testimony of perfectly trustworthy records, it is plain that the defeat of his army could not have taken place seven years previously, in B. C. 710. But I venture with reference to that note to say that the fourteenth year of Hezekiah is

by all means to be retained as the safe connecting link between the chronology of the Bible and that of the cuneiform inscriptions, and that what needs reconstruction is the current chronology, which is based upon calculations which fuller knowledge has proved to be erroneous. Mr Bosanquet in his Appendix to Mr George Smith's valuable history of Assurbanipal (Williams and Norgate, 1871) puts the fourteenth year of Hezekiah as late as B. C. 689. A more elaborate work is that of Schrader, 'Die Keilinschriften u. das Alte Testament,' Giessen, 1872. But as Neteler, "Theol. Quartalschr.,' Tübingen, 1874, has carefully examined his statements, I shall as a rule quote the latter work. He calculates that the fourteenth year of Hezekiah was B.C. 693. Let me add that Ptolemy's canon, on which the usual chronology depends, is based on Babylonian data, but that Schrader's work is founded on no second-hand digest like that of Ptolemy, but on the original and contemporary authorities.

From these inscriptions we learn that Esar-haddon, who ascended the throne according to the Assyrian chronology in B.C. 679, one year after Sennacherib's murder in B. C. 680, and fourteen years after his defeat, was not merely one of the most powerful kings of Nineveh, but that he also claimed Egypt and Palestine as vassal states. Upon the latter he quickly avenged his father's disgrace, capturing as it seems the city of Jerusalem, and carrying the king Manasseh captive to Babylon. But in spite of his great power he had so much cause of anxiety close at home that he did not care to push his conquests in Syria, and after a short detention Manasseh was allowed to return to Jerusalem, nor did the Assyrians ever seriously interfere with him again during the rest of his long reign. The growing power of the Median empire on the one hand, and the insubordination of Babylon on the other, sufficiently occupied the mind of one, who was not merely a warrior, but also a famous builder, as the remains of his palace at Babylon still attest: The inscriptions found there nevertheless record that he carried the terror of his arms from the shores of the Persian Gulf to the mountains of Armenia and

the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea. See Schrader, 207-212.

At Babylon Esar-haddon fixed his abode, the struggle for independence being however maintained by the sons of Merodach-baladan, who had found in the king of Elam an ally. And it is interesting to notice that the Bible represents Manasseh as carried to Babylon by an Assyrian army during the only reign in which a Ninevite king dwelt there (see note on 2 Chro. xxxiii. 11). As proved by cylinders brought from his own palace, Esar-haddon for eleven years made Babylon his home, and, as Assurbanipal his son and successor came to the throne in B. C. 666, it is plain that he also died there. In one of the inscriptions of Esar-haddon we find the name of Minasi sar Yahudi, Manasseh king of Judah, as one of twenty-two kings of Syria and Phoenicia who had to appear before him. Schrader, p. 228.

Of Assurbanipal we have now an interesting history, and so far from his reign having been inglorious, we find the record of expeditions into Egypt, whence he expelled Tirhakah, and subsequently his son Rudammon. He further, to establish his authority, divided Egypt into twelve petty principalities, by which means it was reduced to a state of utter powerlessness, until Psammetichus once again united them under his own vigorous rule. Subsequently he carried on wars with Tyre, with Arvad, with Minni, a region near Armenia, and with Elam, a country which we constantly find in the cylinders in close alliance with Merodachbaladan and his sons. In one of these expeditions he destroyed in Elam the royal city Shushan, beheaded Teumman the king, and filled the river Ulai with the corpses of the slain. It was after these conquests that he transplanted Elamites into the empty cities of Samaria, to which reference is made in Ezra iv. 9, 10, where he is probably the person called "the great and noble Asnapper." But the cylinders contain no record of any interference with Judæa, which, as the Bible also testifies, enjoyed great peace, not merely during the rest of Manasseh's life, but also during the thirty-one years of Josiah's reign. The king of Judah is however mentioned among the tributaries of Assurbanipal. See Schrader, p. 230.

But towards the end of Josiah's reign, danger began to appear from several quarters. I dismiss the Scythian invasion about the sixth year of Josiah; for though they held supremacy over "the whole of Asia" for twenty-eight years (Her. 1. 104), yet there are no traces of any attack made by them on Judæa. They certainly marched into Palestine; for Psammetichus met them, and persuaded them to retrace their steps. On their return, Herodotus tells us that they plundered the temple of Aphrodite at Ascalon (ib. 105); and as the town of Beth-shean situated in the Jordan valley, about twelve miles south of the Sea of Galilee, is called Scythopolis in 2 Macc. xii. 29, we may suppose that they took possession of it in their retreat. But their march was evidently down the level plain of the Shephêlah near the sea, and there are no signs of any attempt on their part to penetrate the mountainous region in which Jerusalem lay. Media was the real scene of their operations. With a defeat of the Medes their supremacy began, and it was a Mede, Cyaxares, who finally expelled them from the country. Neteler, p. 429, from the fact that the Scythians did not molest Judæa, draws the inference that it was under the protection of Nineveh as one of its vassal states.

The danger of Judæa really rose from Egypt on the one hand and Babylon on the other, and the presence of the Scythians had been a relief to it. In Egypt, as we have seen above, Psammetichus put an end to the subdivision of the country, and made himself sole master in the seventeenth year of Assurbanipal, being the twenty-fourth of Manasseh. As he reigned for fifty-four years he was during the last eighteen or nineteen years of his life contemporary with Josiah, but it was his successor Necho who slew Josiah at Megiddo. Meanwhile as Egypt grew in strength so Nineveh declined, partly from the effects of the Scythian invasion, but still more from the growing power of the Medes, and from Babylon having achieved its independence. Two years after the battle of Megiddo Nineveh fell before a combined attack of the Medes under Cyaxares and the Babylonians under Nabopalassar. But Nabopalassar does

not seem to have otherwise been a warlike king, and Egypt remained the dominant power till the fourth year of Jehoiakim. In that year, B.C. 586 according to the cylinders, Nebuchadnezzar defeated Necho at Carchemish, and began a career of conquest, from which however he was for the time recalled by tidings of his father's death. Attended only by his light-armed troops he hurried home across the desert, but as Jews are mentioned among the prisoners brought to Babylon by the bulk of his army, who returned more leisurely by the usual route, it is plain that he had endeavoured to wrest Judæa from the Egyptian empire. Subsequently having peaceably succeeded his father he returned to the attack, and Jehoiakim became his vassal. After three years of servitude he rebelled (2 K. xxiv. 1), and for a time Nebuchadnezzar seems to have been content with sending against him a small army of Chaldees accompanied by contingents from Syria, Moab, and Ammon (ib. 2); but when Phoenicia joined in the revolt, he took the field in person, and having left part of his army to conduct the siege of Tyre, he marched upon Jerusalem, captured it without delay, and as Josephus tells us ('Antiq.' x. 6. 3), put Jehoiakim to death, and three months afterwards carried Jehoiachin, the queen-mother Nehushta, and a large number of nobles and artificers, captive to Babylon.

The events of the reign of Zedekiah are so fully narrated in the pages of Jeremiah that we need not recapitulate them, nor are they of any importance for the understanding of the nature of the prophet's work and ministry. The facts of importance as shewn above are (1) the growth of Egypt into a first-rate power under Psammetichus. This gives us the true explanation of statements such as those made in ch. ii. 18, 36. When critics like Maurer and Knobel attack these passages on the ground that no tendencies to an alliance with Egypt could have existed in Josiah's time, they betray a great want of historical insight. The statesmen of Judah were not so dull as not to see the political importance of the consolidation of Egypt into one empire, and we may well imagine that the question of a close alliance with Psammetichus was often debated in the

councils of Josiah. The youthful Jeremiah gave his voice against it. Josiah recognized that voice as inspired, and obeyed. His obedience cost him his life at Megiddo, and as men would say, was a mistake. But the Bible has here lifted the curtain which usually hangs over the dealings of God's providence. Josiah's death honourably in battle was vouchsafed in mercy that "he might not see the evil" about to befal Jerusalem (2 Chro. xxxiv. 28). That evil had become a necessity because the Jewish nation had rejected the final opportunity of repentance given them by Josiah's earnest efforts to extirpate idolatry. The particular mode of his death may have been the result of his own obstinacy (ib. xxxv. 21, 22): his death itself was inevitable because he had done his work, done it honestly and thoroughly, but without success. He had failed, but as the failure was not his own fault, he was in mercy spared the sight of the sad results of the nation's refusal to repent.

(2) The second great fact is the transference of power from Nineveh to Babylon. We have seen in our days the transference of empire from Paris and Vienna to Berlin, but neither of these states was ever a great crushing military power like Nineveh, and Berlin was never a subject town like Babylon, nor is Paris now destroyed as was Nineveh. The fall of Nineveh was sudden, complete and final. So great, so powerful, so populous just before, she became as in a day "empty and void and waste" (Nahum ii. 10. See Lenormant, 'Prem. Civilisations,' II. 307). Now so sudden a displacement of power must have had a bewildering effect upon the politics of those days: and no doubt Josiah saw in the expedition of PharaohNecho against Carchemish a determination to profit by the decline of Nineveh, and to establish Egyptian in the place of Assyrian supremacy in all the countries west of the Euphrates. And probably he still believed in Assyria, and imagined her to be a first-rate power.

(3) The last great event was the defeat of Necho by Nebuchadnezzar at Carchemish four years after the battle of Megiddo. On that day the fate of the Jewish nation was decided, and the primary object of Jeremiah's mission then ceased. The ministry of Jerem

iah really belonged to the last eighteen years of Josiah's reign. Judah's probation was then going on, her salvation still possible. And each year the scales of justice hung less evenly: each year Judah's guilt became heavier, her condemnation more certain. But to the eye of man her punishment seemed more remote than ever. Her old enemy Nineveh had fallen. The new power Babylon was inactive. Critics do not sufficiently remember that her empire was the work of one man. It began with Nebuchadnezzar, and virtually it ended with him; but till his victory at Carchemish there was nothing to foreshew his coming greatness. Jehoiakim was the willing vassal of Egypt, the supreme power. No wonder that, being an irreligious man, he scorned all Jeremiah's predictions of utter and early ruin: no wonder that he destroyed Jeremiah's roll, as the record of the outpourings of mere fanaticism. It was his last chance, his last offer of mercy: and as he threw the torn fragments of the roll, on the fire he threw there in symbol his royal house, his doomed city, the temple, and all the people of the land.

It was in this fourth year of Jehoiakim that Jeremiah boldly foretold the greatness of Nebuchadnezzar's empire, and the wide limits over which it would extend. Very possibly it was this prophecy (ch. xxv.) which placed his life in danger, so that he had to use the ministry of Baruch in sending the roll to Jehoiakim (ch. xxxvi. 5). Whither he and Baruch retired after the king had finally sealed the fate of Jerusalem we know not. "The Lord," we read, "hid them" (ch. xxxvi. 26). When Jeremiah appears again Nebuchadnezzar was advancing upon Jerusalem to execute the prophecy contained in ch. xxxvi. 30, 31. And with the death of Jehoiakim the first period of Judah's history was brought to a close. Though Jeremiah remained with Zedekiah, and tried to influence him for good, yet his mission was over. He testifies himself that the Jewish Church had gone with Jehoiachin to Babylon. Zedekiah and those who remained in Jerusalem were but the refuse of a fruit-basket from which everything good had been culled (ch. xxiv.), and their destruction was a matter of course. Jeremiah held no distinctive office towards them. It is much