The Last of the Hebrews

(With gratitude for my charming editor)

 

To me Jeremiah is a kindred spirit of the past. Like everybody he was living under the strictures of his culture. It was also the time when Solon of Athens (638 – 558 BC) issued a bill of rights and Sappho of Lesbos (631 – 572 BC) was the first poet with a personal voice. In Anatolia, Thales of Miletus (624 – 546 BC) laid the foundation of Euclidian geometry and was the first to experiment with electricity. His prodigious student Anaximander (611 – 547 BC) reasoned that the first generation of man, because of his prolonged infancy, could not have survived in his present form. The phylogeny of fetuses and the fossil crustaceans in the rocks suggested to him that we may have sprung from an aquatic species and that all life ultimately had generated from the oceans. In other words, Anaximander was the first to propose evolution.

 Nothing of this had any meaning for Jeremiah. He never heard of it, he never thought of it. Like Thales Jeremiah was a man of means. He did not lend on interest (Jeremiah 15: 10-21) but had no qualms to exploit the situation when real estate prices fell through the floor (Jeremiah 32:7-12; 39:11). Thales displayed similar characteristics of thrift. He bought off or rented all the oil presses in the land and used his monopoly to make a killing from a bumper crop of olives. But that’s where the comparison ends.

On balance, Jeremiah was not living a productive life. Where was his contribution to greater knowledge, to the arts, to philosophy?

The structure of the Book Jeremiah is entirely Baruch’s. He’d put together a florilegium of prophesies loosely rubricated under their topics – like “famine,” (Jeremiah 14: 2-6), “exile” (Jeremiah 28: 13-17), “the House of David” (Jeremiah 33: 24-26), “worship in the high places” (Jeremiah 44: 18), “poverty” (Jeremiah 5: 4-5). Even before the manuscript reached the postexilic editor, there were lacunae from physical damage. Trying to restore chronological coherence, the editor inserted here and there a gloss about the alleged circumstance of a prophecy, adding to the confusion. In Chapter 27 Baruch had resolutely put together in the same section prophesies from different occasions ten years apart, leaving the editor clueless. Jeremiah’s prayer in chapter 32 (Jeremiah 32: 17-23), spoken in the first person, is ending in a gap that has resisted the editor’s best intentions of filling it with grafts from other parts of the manuscript. The text went through at least two editions, the first from some time in the 560s BC, and a more thorough makeover in the century after 538 BC. Jeremiah’s book, however, is surrounded by a surprisingly rich referential material from parallel sources: the cuneiform chronicles of Assyria and Chaldea, excavated epigraphs in Palestine, fragments of Egyptian state papers, the correspondence of Hebrew officials written on potshards, Herodotus’ and Josephus’ compilations from sources lost to us. All these fall in sync with the time of Jeremiah’s activities.

A rare coincidence! One of these sources is the correspondence of the man who held Jeremiah captive in Lachish, mentioning the prisoner by name. The Good Book has a curious way of “economizing on the truth.” Apparently out of the blue the prophet Hananiah prophesizes the return of the exiles. Initially Jeremiah is inclined to agree. Why? Because both prophets were privy to a piece of information the Bible prefers not to impart on us. Spelling it out, however, that King Nebuchadnezzar’s top brass just had staged a coup, which at the time still could go both ways, would take away all of the supernatural luster. Only after Jeremiah’s Chaldean handler had received information of the mutineers’ failure, Jeremiah came out with his iron yoke and even conveyed a death threat to his antagonist. Things begin to make sense.

michael sympson

The oldest son of the High Priest Hilkiah was Jeremiah (643 – 560 BC). He grew up in Anathoth, a little town in the territory of Benjamin, just a brisk hour’s walk to the northeast of Jerusalem. From the roof of his father’s house Jeremiah looked out onto the far-flung estates of his family. In Jerusalem, in 637 BC, his own courtiers assassinated King Amon in open daylight (I Kings 21: 23-24). When news of this arrived in Anathoth, the seven-year-old Jeremiah found the expression on his father’s face somewhat troubling, yet the boy was too shy to ask. Hilkiah listened to the messenger with a smile.

The state of Judah paid for a precarious token independence with hefty tributes to the empire of Assyria. The landed gentry routinely married their daughters into the royal harem in Jerusalem. The offspring filled with “seed royal” the various positions at court, in the guards and in the temple. This network of kinsman was meant to create a united front against any opposition to the House of David. The dynasty owed its existence to Abiathar, a distant ancestor of Hilkiah the High Priest. Abiathar had provided the fugitive David with food and shelter when it was hazardous to do so (I Samuel 22: 21-23) and had reaped for it the rewards, at least until he committed the almost fatal error of punting the wrong horse in the race for David’s succession. Instead of the legitimate prince, the son of a concubine – Solomon – ascended to the throne (I Kings 1: 25) and the ageing Abiathar was fortunate to get away with mere house arrest (I Kings 2: 26-27). One group of potential opposition, however, was not to be intimidated, not even by the mighty King Solomon. Itinerant “prophets” mustered popular support and were known to keep vials of oil in their bundles, and not just for frying an omelet.

A pretender to the throne usually began his bid with a prophet anointing him and promising divine sanction for this move against the ruling dynasty. In a deliberate affront against the still ruling King Solomon, the prophet Ahijah had anointed Jeroboam as king over ten of the twelve Hebrew tribes (I Kings 11: 29-37), and this established the prosperous House of Omri in Israel and Samaria, reducing Judah to a petty principality. In 842 BC, another prophet, Elisha, anointed the leader of the opposition to the House of Omri. Assured of divine sanction, Elisha’s protégée massacred the ruling house to the last man (II Kings 9: 12-37; 10: 1-14). The sitting kings didn’t hesitate to retaliate.

In this age of unrestricted tyranny, the only voice to be heard was the voice of authority. A commoner was reduced to the squeak of a mouse and expected to grovel as “your slave,” “your servant,” “your handmaiden” (J. L. Starkey, The Ostraca of Lachish). The freelance prophet who had the temerity to announce “the word of the Lord came also unto me” had better some tangible protection or at least a safe place to hide before giving unasked-for opinions. Nevertheless, at any given time, hundreds of “prophets” raised the volume in a shouting match with the strutting bull of royal blood (II Chronicles 18: 5). It was not easy to stand out against this level of noise and prophesying became something of a freak show. Even the aristocratic Isaiah drew attention on himself with indecent exposure in public. Ezekiel made it a habit of baking his bread over a fire from his own dung and walked through walls when he could have taken the open door (Ezekiel 4: 12ff). The young Jeremiah read every prophet he could lay his hands on.

His favorite story was the prophet Elijah’s personal encounter with God, when a "great and strong wind” had “rent the mountains, and broke to pieces the rocks,” but “He” was not in the wind, or in the earthquake after the wind, not even in the fire after the earthquake. A sudden silence followed and Elijah pulled a veil over his face, listening to a “still small voice" (I Kings 19: 11-13). In the heat of noon, Jeremiah could sit over the book for hours, straining his inner ear to hear this voice as well.

Especially the phrasing and heady mix of uninhibited metaphor by the prophet Hosea (765 – 725 BC) made an impression on the young Jeremiah. Hosea’s uncouth fulminations against his own wife must have struck a chord with the inexperienced teenager. The woman had a colorful past and Hosea promised that “for the whoredom of her boobs I shall strip her naked and kick her into the wilderness as in the day she was born” (Hosea 2: 3). The young Jeremiah resolved never to “take a wife,” or “have sons or daughters” (Jeremiah 16: 2). He never realized that Hosea was a man well acquainted with jealousy and frequently suffered from bouts of frustrated libido. For him, the plebeian Hosea’s uninhibited outbursts and the imagery of “whoredom” became purely a game with words. The verbal adrenalin may have offered some relief from the bullying Jeremiah suffered in his childhood (Jeremiah 12: 6). In his later years we hear of not a single relationship with a woman. His true feelings made him look somewhere else, yet there was no such thing as a fulfilled male relationship in Hebrew society.

His father, “the guide of his youth,” (Jeremiah 3: 5), took it upon himself to instruct Jeremiah in the history of his country. Hilkiah was not always sure what to make of the boy’s questions. Where was the justice in the confrontation between Judah’s good king Amaziah, “who did right in the eyes of the Lord” (II Kings 13: 25), and the baddie, Israel’s king Jehoash (801 – 786 BC) “who did evil in the eyes of Yahweh” (II Kings 13: 11)? Did in the end not wickedness prevail? The good king was taken captive, his daughters carried away, and the treasures pilfered from the temple (II Kings 14: 8-14). The High Priest shrugged off the query. Did the Lord not avenge his servant? Did the Assyrians not conquer Samaria? Were the defenders not impaled alive, with their limbs torn off (II Kings 17: 1-6, 24; 18: 7-9), eventually? Too late for Amaziah and his daughters, Jeremiah thought, what kind of justice wiped out the lives of innocents in retribution for the sins of their forebears? And anyhow, was Yahweh not the God of the Hebrews? How could he be so callous and promote a foreigner, the Assyrian king Sargon II (722 – 705 BC), as the “rod of indignation” (Isaiah 10: 6) against his own people?

Jeremiah hadn’t been told yet that it was this very incident, which had set Judah’s policy makers on a course to voluntarily approach Assyria. Since the days of King Solomon the regime in Jerusalem had sought security in an alliance with Egypt (I Kings 3: 1). And should Jerusalem forget Egypt would send a reminder (I Kings 14: 25). But when in 738 BC the Assyrians invaded Israel and imposed heavy tributes, King Menahem of Israel made gestures to recover his losses from his neighbor in the south. Egypt, Judah’s traditional protector, no longer pulled much weight in the region, so in 732 BC Judah’s king Ahaz sent envoys to the King of Assyria, saying, “I am your servant and your son, come up, and save me out of the hands of the king of Syria and the king of Israel, which rise up against me. And Ahaz took the silver and gold from the temple and the treasures of the king's house, and sent it for a present to the king of Assyria. And the king of Assyria listened to him and went up against Damascus, and took it. And king Ahaz went to Damascus to meet Tiglathpileser king of Assyria” (II Kings 16: 7-10). It was an admission of Judah’s dependency and added another stone to the mounting difficulties of Israel. In 725 BC, in an act of desperation, the king of Israel gave in to the advances of Egyptian diplomats. He suspended his tributes to Assyria and signed a treaty with Egypt. A smart move by the Egyptians, a bad idea for Samaria! Only three years later Israel’s capital fell and the Assyrians carried more than 27,000 Israelites into exile (II Kings 17: 1-6, 24; 18: 7, 9). Yet for Egypt things turned out all right! Assyria’s king Shalmaneser V had died during the campaign and a new player entered the scene, although too late for Israel: in 721 BC Chaldea seceded from the Assyrian empire. The Assyrians broke up operations in Palestine. In the meantime Judah was flooded with refugees who had a hard time forgetting that their brothers in the South had aided the enemy. Many of the new arrivals were better educated and looked down on the rednecks in Judah. It was an infusion of fresh blood and King Hezekiah (715 – 687 BC) urgently needed skilled artisans and merchants to create wealth and prosperity (II Chronicles 2: 32). For the first time Chaldea, still struggling to survive the Assyrian counter attack, stretched out her feelers and her envoys expressed an interest in King Hezekiah’s finances and his military capabilities (II Kings 20: 12-13, 14-18). In Egypt, too, a new dynasty from Ethiopia had staged a coup, and the envoys of Pharaoh Tirhakah began probing the situation east of Sinai in 689 BC (II Kings 19: 9). In the Assyrian capital King Hezekiah’s communications with Babylon and Egypt didn’t pass unnoticed. Despite of appeasing advances on the tribute (II Kings 18: 14-16), King Sennacherib of Assyria (704 – 681 BC) laid siege to Jerusalem. Surprisingly the siege was lifted within days, Isaiah says, because the Assyrian king heard “a rumor, and returned to his own land” (Isaiah 37: 7). A different version speaks of some kind of catastrophe that, literally over night, had “smote in the camp of the Assyrians one hundred and eighty-five thousand: and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses” (Isaiah 37: 36-38). The figure is as unreliable as the “rising corpses” are ludicrous: 180,000 would have clean wiped out all of Assyria’s standing reserves; in any given campaign her levy never exceeded 50,000 troops.

Apparently it was a negotiated withdrawal. King Hezekiah, “whose militia and elite troops had deserted him,” could only watch “his daughters, concubines, male and female musicians,” been carried away into Assyrian captivity. He lost territory and fortresses to the surrounding magistracies of Assyria, and continued paying an exorbitant tribute “to be delivered annually: thirty talents of gold, eight hundred talents of silver, precious stones, antimony, couches inlaid with ivory, elephant hides, ebony- and boxwood. And in order to deliver the tribute and to do obeisance as a slave, King Hezekiah sent his personal messenger" (James B. Pritchard, The Ancient Near East, Princeton UP 1958, pp.200-201). A crippling burden for the country and the Assyrians kept a tight grip. Before his long expected annexation of Egypt in 671 BC, Sennacherib’s successor detained Judah’s king Manasse (687 – 642 BC) in the Assyrian capital as a hostage. King Manasseh lived long enough to see Egypt regain autonomy in 652 BC, although still only as the subservient ally of Assyria.

Nevertheless the politicians in Judah sensed a change. Some time before or after King Amon’s assassination, a clique of landed gentry – Ahikam, Achbor, Shaphan the scribe, Asahiah and Jeremiah’s father – approached the chamberlain’s wife, the influential prophetess Huldah (II Kings 22: 14). It would be wrong to call these meetings a conspiracy. It was more like a meeting of lobbyists, jockeying for positions in the royal council. The objective was to shake off the dependency on Assyria, perhaps even gain a foothold on lost Samarian territories without involving help from Egypt. A bold scheme; it could push Judah into the abyss if it failed.

They were not the only faction vying for control at the royal court, yet with the High Priest they held a trump card. The new king, Josiah (648 – 609 BC), had acceded to the throne as a mere boy of nine years. His mother, Jedidah, was a blood relative to members of the group and Hilkiah swiftly seized the opportunity to take custody of her son’s education. Not surprising, the royal teenager was groomed to do “what was right in the sight of the Lord” (II Kings 22: 2). Jeremiah sighed a sigh of relief, seeing his father spend more time in Jerusalem. The young teenager used his freedom, going out to visit the hovels of the sharecroppers and shepherds working the estate.

Jeremiah had learned of the going rate for a commoner’s daughter – “fifteen pieces of silver, and an homer of barley” – yet it was not the girls that interested Jeremiah when he sat down at the fire of a farmhand, watching him “burn incense to the Queen of Heaven, and pour out drink offerings to her.” The man explained it was what their forebears had been doing since times immemorial, even “our kings, and our princes” (Jeremiah 44: 18). Inundated with generation-old debts, the poor in Judah neither had an “inheritance to turn it to the strangers,” nor held a title to the house from which they “suffered eviction” (Jeremiah, Lamentations). Many lived in bondage, not under the yoke of aliens but enslaved by their own people. They were like “orphans and fatherless” and found “bread for their hunger,” by “laboring without rest for the foreigner” (Jeremiah 34: 9-11). Their empty gaze scanned the skies for the coming and going of the stork, as a sign for tilling and harvesting. A life of hardship, “close to the needs” (Virgil, Georgics), finding refreshment only in an amorphous mix of fertility cults and hero-worship. The aristocratic Isaiah used to wrinkle his nose over the ways of humble folks: “They wank themselves into a frenzy” he said, “and copulate under every green tree.” He accused them of “slaying their children under the rocks and pour drink offerings to the smooth stones of the stream” (Isaiah 57: 5-6). Jeremiah was still too young to display the habitual arrogance of his station, for him it was a thrill to listen to the people’s folklore. When over the weekend his father stayed in Anathoth, Jeremiah told him what he had heard about “Tehom,” the scaly dragon of the water-world (Genesis 1: 2). How Yahweh had assailed her in his chariot of fire and how the host of the Elohim had stretched out the skies like a tent cloth and from the slain monster’s carcass had shaped the Sun, the Moon and the stars (Psalms 74: 14-15; 89: 9-10; Isaiah 51: 9-10). Hearing this, Hilkiah shook his head: “Every man is brutish in his knowledge and confounded by the graven image,” he said, “with the axe they cut a tree, deck it out with silver and gold; fasten it with nails. It is a workman’s handiwork, it doesn’t speak and they carry it on their shoulders, because it will not walk” (Jeremiah 10: 3-5). His son was not so sure.

Images were symbols, not the object of worship, yes? Jeremiah recalled what a Babylonian prisoner-of-war had told him about the temple of Marduk. The inner sanctuary contained nothing else but an empty couch (Herodotus Clio, 181-182). Was this really so different to the allegedly unfurnished Holiest of Holies in Solomon's temple?

Even the elite worshipped Yahweh only in conjunction with other, more visible deities. In Jerusalem, Tammuz, and his mother, the queen of heaven, Ashtoreth (Ezekiel 8: 14), had mansions on the same premises as Yahweh’s male prostitutes (II Kings 23: 7). A Christian traveler from the 5th century AD has reported that the women of Bethlehem (sic!) carried a pole adorned with wreaths to the next river and sent it afloat, weeping and beating their bared breasts until from the distance a young man would announce the arrival of the resurrected shepherd god and then disappear among the grazing herds (Jerome Letters). Like their neighbors, Judah was a land of tribal polytheists with shrines and “high places” dotting the countryside. The place where Yahweh had set his name at first (Jeremiah 7: 12) was the cult center in Shiloh, now on Assyrian territory. Here Yahweh used to convene in council with his celestial peers (I Kings 22: 19-22; Psalms 82: 1-6) and recuperated in the company of his consort Asherah, “she who gives birth to the gods” (Ze'ev Herzog, Deconstructing the Walls of Jericho: biblical myth and archaeological reality. 2001, Prometheus 4: 72-93). Asherah was not without influence. Her 400 prophets had dined at the table of Israel’s Queen Jezebel (I Kings 18: 19); and the mother of King Asa of Judah, too, had been a priestess of Yahweh’s consort (I Kings 15: 13).

In 627 BC, Hilkiah ordered his son to pack his bundle and meet him in Jerusalem. The discontent between three claimants to the throne had plunged Assyria into civil war. The Prince of Chaldea, Nabopolassar of Uruk (625 – 605 BC), seized the opportunity and marched on Babylon, to make it his new capital. Hilkiah, probably in communication with Nabopolassar, saw the time come for a reshuffle of the deck. His son was to deliver the opening salvo. With a cocky and well-coached performance, Jeremiah, still only fifteen, addressed the public, introducing himself and his credentials: “The word of God came to me, saying, before I formed you in the belly I knew you, and I ordained you a prophet to the nations. Then said I, ah, my Lord! How can I speak: I am a child. But the Lord said to me, don’t say you are a child; you shall go where I send you and speak what I command you to say. Then Yahweh put forth his hand and touched my lips and said behold my words are in your mouth. This day I have set you over nations and kingdoms, to root out, and to destroy, to build and to plant” (Jeremiah 1: 5-10).

We use to think of a “prophet” as somebody foretelling the future. That was not how the ancients thought of it. For a glimpse at what the immortals hold hidden in their lap, they would go to a local shrine, pay a fee and ask for an omen (I Samuel 9: 9; 14: 35-46, 15: 11, 23). As in the tale of Balaam's Ass (Numbers 22), “Prophets” received their commissions for casting spells and pronouncing blessings, old-fashioned sorcery under a different name. Elijah the Tishbite was a veritable Merlin in search for his King Arthur (I Kings 17, 18, 19, 21; II Kings 1, 2), but all he had to work with was King Ahab (874 – 853 BC). Prophets were announcing what shall happen, not what will happen; it was an act of intervention, not just a prognosis. The classic example is the curse Ezekiel laid on the Phoenician city of Tyre in 589 BC. This city has always been the favorite object for curses during a prophet’s apprenticeship: “Behold, I shall bring Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, the king of kings, against Tyre, with horses and chariots, and with many soldiers. He shall set up a siege and raise a roof of shields against you. He shall direct his battering rams against your walls, and with his axes he shall break down your towers. He shall enter your gates as a city that has been breached and with your mighty pillars fallen to the ground. The hoofs of his horses shall trample your streets and he shall kill your people with the sword, plunder your riches, loot your merchandise and destroy your pleasant houses. Your stones and timber shall be cast into the midst of the waters, and the music of your songs, and the sound of your lyres shall be heard no more. I shall make you a barren rock. You shall become a place for the lonely fisherman and never be rebuilt, for I am the Lord; I have spoken, says the Lord God” (Ezekiel 26:7-14). The siege operations went on for sixteen years; the city never fell – Nebuchadnezzar would certainly have let us known if it did – the city’s capture by Alexander the Great was centuries later.

In Jerusalem, however, the son of Hilkiah was in a much better position. He spoke for the regime, he had the priesthood by his side, Assyria was on the decline. This made it easy for him to be a prophet. His office opened doors and he became friends with Zedekiah, the king’s brother. Yet even so, it took two more years for Hilkiah’s faction to outmaneuver the competition on the royal council. Only by 624 BC Hilkiah’s cabal gained full control of foreign policies and the treasury (II Kings 22: 7).

Despite being the capital of Judah and a religious center, Jerusalem was only reachable by exiting from the main road between Egypt and Syria and then trek a whole day through rough terrain. Cut off from the seaboard and sidelined by the arteries of trade, Jerusalem was still little more than a mountain fortress that oversaw a suburban area – the Ophiel – stretching west on a narrow mountain ridge. The settlement sheltered barely 9,000 people – the Chaldean deportation figures allow for a realistic estimate (Jeremiah 52: 28-30). During the festivals the numbers swelled to about 20,000 with visitors pitching their tents outside the gates. Even by the standards of the day, this rustic seat of bureaucrats and royal guards was a rather small town. By comparison, the excavations of old Samaria reveal a thriving metropolis of merchants, with 35,000 people sitting next to the international highways. A quilt of Assyrian magistracies – Namath, Byblos, Damascus, Sidon, Tyre, Haran, Megiddo, Samaria and Ashdod – encircled the state of Judah. Only towards the wastelands west of the Jordan, the states of Amman, Moab and Edom maintained their autonomy; the Assyrians weren’t interested.

With King Josiah’s new cabinet, there came changes. The people were told of an “ancient” book pulled out from underneath the debris of the crumbling temple, where it had lain hidden for centuries. The book was the autobiography of Moses, allegedly put in writing at a time when the Hebrews had not yet invented script. The prophetess Huldah backed the pious fraud with her prestige (II Kings 22: 7-14) and the propaganda machine staged the “discovery” in an opulent ceremony. Jeremiah was still only in his twenties when his public career already reached its pinnacle. A cerebral figure, standing tall before his audience yet insecure about his voice, a key too high he felt, lacking in sonority, he made the announcement “to the men of Judah, and to the denizens of Jerusalem. The God of Israel says: cursed be the man that does not obey the words of this covenant. You shall be my people, and I will be your God, that I may perform the oath which I have sworn to your fathers, to give them a land flowing with milk and honey, as it is this day.” And in a pronounced way the king turned and looked at the prophet, answering on behalf of his people: “So be it, oh Lord” (Jeremiah 11: 2-5). Yet what seemed a good idea at the time – a written contract with Yahweh in return for his help – was to haunt the custodians of the faith when the divine partner failed to deliver. The rabbis set out to interpret and revise the received text, and then to reinterpret the interpretation. They still keep doing this.

King Josiah’s extensive building program was soon running out of funds. The regime turned its attention to the shrines in the country. For centuries, the “high places” had hoarded valuable offerings. In the name of religious reform, the king’s troopers vandalized the rural shrines, murdered their priests and desecrated ancient tombs, crushing every form of resistance (II Kings 23: 5-16). The intimidated populace was made to watch the temple prostitutes burn alive, their valuables auctioned off (II Kings 23: 6). The politicians in Hilkiah’s circle realized they had groomed a monster with nothing but Huldah’s pronouncements standing between them and the zeal of the King (Josephus, Antiquities X, 4:2). It made the king’s regime odious, perhaps not to posterity, but to the people who had to live through it. The political opposition left the country, joining the refugees from Samaria. In the capital cities of Mesopotamia emerged a new cosmopolitan Jewry hostile to the regime in Jerusalem. Their criticism was aimed not just at the House of David, but the whole institution. The critics denounced monarchy as tyranny and the rejection of Yahweh’s dominion: A king, they said “will take the sons of the people, and appoint them for himself, his chariots, and his horsemen. He will appoint captains over the people and levy their labor to reap the king’s harvest, forge the king’s armor and build his chariots. Kings will take our daughters to be confectionaries, cooks and bakers, and take the best from our fields, vineyards and olive groves and give it to their servants” (I Samuel 8: 7, 11-18).

By now, the insurgent Nabopolassar had achieved his objective and made Babylon his residence. It was the largest city on the planet, a metropolis in the truest sense of the word. In 614 BC, the Chaldean signed a pact with the Medes and, two years later, Assyria’s capital, Nineveh, fell to the coalition and was destroyed. Without delay, the Assyrian regime reconstituted itself in Harran, which was captured as well, just three years after. Together with his Egyptian ally, the Assyrian marshal Ashur-Uballit II and the still formidable Assyrian army marched to regain the city, creating a momentary vacuum in Palestine. King Josiah saw the time come to reunite the two Hebrew territories. He started an expedition – some describe it as a crusade – across the Samarian border towards Bethel (II Kings 23: 15). It seemed the end game, but Jeremiah’s announcement: “And Yahweh said to me, Israel has redeemed herself. Go and proclaim to the north: return, you backsliding Israel! I will not keep my anger for ever” (Jeremiah 23: 13) was premature. King Josiah had to terminate the campaign in all haste before the retreating forces of Egypt and Assyria, although beaten again, could catch up with him. With Carchemish as the new capital, the Assyrians took positions in the Syrian Desert to recuperate.

Giving in to overtures from Babylon, a new Pharaoh, Necho, thought it safe to renounce his allegiance to Assyria in 608 BC, and march against Carchemish as the southern arm of a pincer movement with the Chaldean forces bearing down from the North. Facing the prospect of a simultaneous attack on two fronts, Assyria needed to slow down the Egyptian army in order to face one attacker at the time. Assyria’s diplomats arrived in Jerusalem with one last bargaining chip: the province of Samaria. Judah and Samaria would be reunited again under the House of David!

The offer was received with jubilation: “Again I will build you, o virgin of Israel, you shall again be adorned and go forth in merry dances. You shall plant vines upon the mountains of Samaria, and the watchmen upon the mount Ephraim shall cry, arise and let us go to Zion. Behold, I will gather them from the North Country and the coasts of the earth, even the blind and the lame, the women and her that travails with child. I let them walk by the rivers in a straight way and they shall not stumble: for I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn” (Jeremiah 31: 1-9). It was not to be. We don’t know whether Hilkiah was still alive at the time, he disappeared from the records, yet without the High Priest the council could only lose leverage on a king who previously hadn’t made himself conspicuous for his endowment with brains. As it happened, in 606 BC “Pharaoh Necho went up against the king of Assyria to the river Euphrates” and “King Josiah went against him” (II Kings 23: 29). The pharaoh gave fair warning and “sent ambassadors saying, what have I to do with you, king of Judah? I come not against you this day” (II Chronicles 35: 21). King Josiah would not listen, received a fatal wound in battle and “his servants carried him dead from Megiddo.” From one day to the next, Egypt had regained her traditional influence over the region.

Suddenly Jeremiah was the mouthpiece for a lost cause. Heartbroken, he lamented: “We looked for peace and a time of health but no good came” (Jeremiah 8: 15).

In Jerusalem, Josiah’s oldest son acceded to the throne, but Pharaoh Necho had other plans. He deported Judah’s king to Egypt, where he died in exile (Jeremiah 22: 11-12), and in his stead charged another son of Josiah – King Eliakim – to “exact the silver and the gold of the people, a hundred talents of silver, and a talent of gold” (II Kings 23: 33-37).

Sidelined by a regime that was in no forgiving mood, Jeremiah came to the realization that “Prophets prophesy falsely and priests rule by their own means and my people love to have it so. Woe on us! The day goes away and the shadows of the evening are stretching out” (Jeremiah 5: 31; 6: 4). He left Jerusalem and, as in his youth, mingled with the people in the mud hovels whose skin was “black like an oven.” King Eliakim’s taskmasters pressed the emaciated mothers to send their chronically undernourished little ones to the mines; four- and five-year-old midgets, maggot-like crawling through the claustrophobic shafts. They looked up to a swinging basket of food lowered down in exchange for a basket of ore going up. No ore, no food. In the hovels of the sharecroppers Jeremiah saw “the children gather wood, and the fathers kindle fire, and the women knead their pathetic little cakes to Ashtoreth, the queen of heaven, and pour drink offerings” (Jeremiah 7: 18). “Surely,” he said, “these are poor; they are foolish. I will go to the great men and speak to them” (Jeremiah 5: 4-5). Yet, in the eyes of his peers, Jeremiah was merely putting himself on the wrong side of the fence; and he was outraged about their indifference: “Wicked men: laying in wait to set a trap and catch you. As a cage is full of birds so are their houses full of deceit: that’s how they became great and rich. They put on fat, they shine, and damn them, they ignore the rights of the orphans and needy, and yet they prosper, troop in into the brothels every day and like horses lift their heads from their feed in the morning and neigh after the neighbor’s wife” (Jeremiah 5: 7-8, 27-28). Jeremiah had his first run-in with the law.

On a public holiday he positioned himself at the center of the temple’s court, announcing that the Lord “shall make this house as desolate as Shiloh, and this city a curse to all nations on earth” (Jeremiah 26: 6). In the ensuing riot, Jeremiah surrendered to the king’s guards. A somewhat risky move! Only recently, an otherwise unknown commoner – Urijah, son of Shemaiah – after expressing unasked opinions had sought asylum in Egypt. The Egyptians promptly extradited the man, giving him over to Elnathan, the commissioner of Judah. The fugitive was executed in Jerusalem (Jeremiah 26: 20-23). Fortunately, Jeremiah was no ordinary commoner. Ahikam, the old friend of his father, was still pulling some weight at the royal court (Jeremiah 26: 14-24). The prophet was permitted to retire to his estates in Anathoth, albeit under house arrest.

“I was like a lamb brought to the slaughter,” he says, “and I knew not that they had devised devices against me, saying, let us cut him off from the land of the living, that his name may be no more remembered. The men of Anathoth, seek my life and say prophesy not in the name of God, that you die not by our hand” (Jeremiah 11: 18-23). “I plead with you my Lord; let me talk with you of your judgments. Wherefore does the way of the wicked prosper? Wherefore are all they happy that deal very treacherously? You have planted them, and now they have taken root: they grow, they bring forth fruit: you are near in their mouth, and far from their reins. How long shall the land stay in mourning, and the herbs wither in the field, for the wickedness of the people? Even my brothers, and the house of my father, even they have dealt treacherously” (Jeremiah 12: 1-6).

“Woe is me, my mother, that you have born me a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth! I have neither lent on interest, nor men have lent to me on interest; yet every one of them does curse me. You, Lord, said it should be well with my remaining life; the enemy shall entreat me in the time of evil. Lord, know that for your sake I have suffered reprimand. Because of you I was made to eat your word; I sat alone because of your hand on me. Will you be to me altogether as a liar, like water running through the fingers” (Jeremiah 15: 10-21)?

“Oh Lord, you have deceived me. Since I spoke I cried violence and spoil; your word exposed me to reproach and made me the butt of ridicule.”

“Then I said I would not make mention of you, nor speak any more in your name. Your word was shut up in my bones and I was weary with forbearing. I heard the defaming of many; saw fear on every side. Report, say they, or we shall report you. All my familiars watch for my halting, saying, he may be enticed, and we shall prevail against him and take our revenge on him. Cursed be the day wherein I was born: cursed be the man who brought tidings to my father, saying, a son is born to you instead of slaying me from the womb” (Jeremiah 20: 14-18). If he was honest he could not deny the truth of what was not his office to endorse, when he heard the poor people saying that “since we’ve stopped burning incense to the queen of heaven, and pour out drink offerings to her, we live in misery, consumed by famine and the sword” (Jeremiah 44:18).

The conclusion seemed inevitable. It was not for a man to seek God in his own heart: “The heart is deceitful above all things; who can know it” (Jeremiah 17: 9)? I have heard the prophets say, I have dreamed, I have dreamed. Yes, they prophesy out of their own heart’s deceit. Say every one to his neighbor, what has Yahweh answered? Has he spoken? And don’t even mention the ‘burden of the Lord:’ every man's word shall be his own burden, a reproach never to be forgotten” (Jeremiah 23: 11-40).

Among the expatriates, Ezekiel took a different approach. In his view, God had plans that did not include the Hebrews: “If the prophet be deceived when he has spoken a thing, I the Lord have deceived that prophet. I gave my people statutes that were not good, and judgments whereby they should not live; and I polluted them in their own gifts, that I might make them desolate” (Ezekiel 14: 9, 20: 25-26). But how do you accept that God is not in your corner, in fact explicitly refuses to be in anybody’s corner (Jeremiah 13: 13-14; 14: 11-12). Consequently Deutero-Isaiah formulated a new doctrine: “I form light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil: I am God, and there is none else, and my thoughts are not your thoughts” (Isaiah 45: 6-7; 55: 8). The story of heartbreaking loyalty to the abusive father! Of finding excuses for the abuser developed to an art form! The story of the Jews!

In 605 BC, just one year after his triumph over Judah and the Assyrians, Pharaoh Necho became overambitious. King Nebuchadnezzar II (630 – 562 BC) had just ascended to the throne of Babylon and Necho, in a complete turnaround, changed sides again and went to the assistance of Carchemish. As the senior partner in a renewed alliance with what the pharaoh envisioned to become an Assyrian buffer state, Egypt would have extended her influence well into Mesopotamia. Instead, he lost it all. King Nebuchadnezzar’s army cut down the combined forces of Egypt and Assyria to the last man. Yet Jeremiah’s bitter comment, “You also shall be as ashamed of Egypt, as you were ashamed of Assyria” (Jeremiah 2: 37). “Pharaoh king of Egypt is but a noise; he has passed the time appointed. Egypt is like a very fair heifer, but out of the north destruction is coming; it is coming” (Jeremiah 46: 11, 17, 20), was not something anybody cared to hear. After all Egypt’s loss was Judah’s gain; there were no longer any tributes going to Egypt. And although the new regime rejected the prophet’s hyperbole, it still thought to employ Jeremiah’s diplomatic skills to take precautionary measures. There was a tribe of Nomads, the Rechabites, which fled from King Nebuchadnezzar’s revenue officers, seeking refuge in Jerusalem. Jeremiah was entrusted to broker a deal – the Rechabites were known to be skilled horsemen (Jeremiah 35: 1-19). For a career in the government it was Jeremiah’s final straw and it didn’t earn him much gratitude. King Eliakim’s need for cavalrymen was none of Jeremiah’s concerns (Josephus, Antiquitates Judaicae 10: 89-95), and the administration had heard just about enough from Jeremiah: “The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron upon your heart, and upon the horns of your altars. Hear ye kings of Judah, and inhabitants of Jerusalem; the Lord of the armies says he will bring evil upon this place, which whosoever hears it, his ears shall tingle” (Jeremiah 17: 1-3, 19: 3). The outburst earned him a misdemeanor charge and another night in the stocks. Not that the cooler did him any good; on his release he taxed his jailor’s patience with further altercations (Jeremiah 20: 1-4). Already in his forties and considered an old man, Jeremiah was thought to be acting beneath his station.

Then, in 604 BC, something happened. From underneath the arch to his quarters in Jerusalem, a stocky man with strong shoulders approached the prophet. Jeremiah recognized the quick, toothy smile. Baruch, the son of Neriah, made no secret of his Chaldean partisanship (Jeremiah 43: 2-3). He was the spokesman for the expatriates in the Diaspora and held contacts to officials at the Babylonian court (Jeremiah 39: 11-12). Baruch had followed, perhaps was instructed to follow, the prophet’s dissolute activities for quite a while. The time had come to offer Jeremiah what he needed most: direction, leadership, someone to ease that weight of the world from his shoulders.

In retrospect it may appear that Jeremiah had been a Chaldean sympathizer all along, and it is true, the policies of his father had put Jeremiah in the position of a Chaldean straw man, but before Baruch recruited him, the prophet was nobody’s partisan except that of Judah and the House of David. Only now he began to officially serve a foreign cause.

He still had his connections with members of the royal house and in the eyes of his Chaldean handler, this must have made him an asset. For many years, Jeremiah had jotted down in private “the words that I have spoken” (Jeremiah 30: 2; Talmud BT Baba Bathra 14b). These notes form the first autobiography in the literature of the West, and later became the model for the Confessions of St. Augustine (354 – 430 AD). The manuscript laid the foundation for Baruch to produce an early version of the Biblical text, with “all the words of the Lord from the mouth of the prophet” (Jeremiah 36: 2-5). Recruiting the prophet was not such a simple task, and I am not sure whether Baruch had been completely honest with Jeremiah. He didn’t need to convince him that the outrage against the poor in the land had resulted in a debt of sin towards God, but to believe that Nebuchadnezzar held God’s mandate to bring justice to the disenfranchised – as was indeed the proclamation of the Chaldean regime (A.K. Grayson, Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles, 1975) – was much harder to swallow. Baruch knew of a growing faction among the expatriates who firmly believed that, as a payoff for their return from exile, God – or at least the overlord in Babylon – would cast away “the seed of Jacob and David, so not to take any of his seed to be rulers over the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob ever again” (Jeremiah 33: 24-26). To Jeremiah the royalist, this didn’t sound kosher and he continued to insist that “even if this place shall become a pasture for the shepherds to rest their flocks, the days shall come that I will cause David to grow a branch of righteousness, Judah shall be saved, and Jerusalem shall dwell safely; David shall never want a man to sit on the throne of the house of Israel” (Jeremiah 33: 12).

In his private notes, Jeremiah had mused about a “conspiracy among the men of Judah and Jerusalem. The house of Israel and the house of Judah have broken the deal God had offered their fathers and went to serve other gods. Therefore says the Lord, I will bring them evil, which they shall not escape; and though they cry to me, I will not listen” (Jeremiah 11: 10-11). In Baruch’s editing this became much more inflammatory: “Who is the wise man, that may understand why the land is perishing? The Lord says, because they have walked after the imagination of their own heart, therefore I will scatter them among the heathen, and I will send the consuming sword. Therefore take the cup of fury from my hand, and give to drink from it to all nations. I will consume the nation and the kingdom that will not serve Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, with the sword, the famine, and with pestilence. But nations that bring their neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon, those shall remain in their land, says the Lord, and they shall live and prosper” (Jeremiah 9: 12; 25: 15-32; 27: 8-11). The book was now ready for a public reading.

Jeremiah, after his brushes with the law, was under a gag order, so the task fell on Baruch. It was a well-chosen occasion with visitors from all over the country crowding the temple.

The reading at the temple gate caught the attention of members of the royal council: “Gemariah the son of Shaphan the scribe, Michaiah his son, Elishama the scribe, Delaiah the son of Shemaiah, Commissioner Elnathan, Jehudi the son of Nethaniah, Zedekiah the son of Hananiah, and all the princes” (Jeremiah 36: 9, 11-19). The king’s council quickly arranged for a second reading in private and the councilors realized they had to inform the king. Knowing their master, they had the decency to advise Baruch and his companion to lay low for a while. King Eliakim ordered the book to be delivered to his winter residence. Sitting next to a fire, the king interrupted the reading after every three sheets and had them cut off from the scroll and burned on the hearth, the first recorded act of literary censorship (Jeremiah 36: 11-19). He then ordered the arrest of Baruch and Jeremiah, but the two were nowhere to be seen for the whole year.

The vacation was put to good use, trying to recover the lost manuscript from memory (Jeremiah 36: 21-26), the text that after extensive editing has found its way into the Bible. Baruch added “many like words” (Jeremiah 36: 32), which could mean anything, leaving the subsequent editors with ample license to amend and rewrite. The story of Jeremiah is as much the story of how the custodians preserved, amended and passed on his story, as it is the story of Baruch, the man who created the Jeremiah whom posterity still remembers. If Jeremiah had fallen silent after King Josiah’s debacle, would we even remember him?

In Judah, there was a growing sense of political and military encirclement. Every year King Nebuchadnezzar conducted another campaign into the surrounding territories. Egypt, still reeling from the disaster at Carchemish, could do little but watch. Yet the old crocodile still had teeth. In 600 BC, Nebuchadnezzar invaded Egypt. The Pharaoh’s Greek and Lydian mercenaries stood their ground and the Babylonian king was wounded in battle. Although the Chaldean chronicles report a victory, the “King of Kings” withdrew and in the following season, stayed put. Spies reported to the pharaoh that the Chaldean king “gathered chariots and horses in great numbers” (A.K. Grayson). Nebuchadnezzar, however, had decided to consolidate, and in a number of sharp actions against petty princes in the Arabian Desert, he trained his raw recruits for bigger things to come: “Scouring the desert they took much plunder from the Arabs, their possessions, animals and gods” (A.K. Grayson, II Kings 24: 1).

In the famine of 598 BC, Jeremiah, after a long absence, dared showing his face in public again and dutifully extended his prayers on behalf of the land: “Judah mourns, and the cry of Jerusalem is gone up. Their nobles have sent their little ones to the waters and they return with their vessels empty and cover their heads in shame. The ground is chapt, there is no rain in the earth, and the plowmen’s head is sinking. The hind has calved in the field and forsook it, because there is no grass. Oh Lord, although we have sinned against you, help us for your name's sake” (Jeremiah 14: 2-6). Yet God had other things on his mind and through his Chaldean handler he told the prophet: “Pray not for this people” (Jeremiah 14: 11). To compound the problems, the king of Judah died leaving his successor King Coniah with an inheritance where people, like flies, crowded the garbage dumps for food. If King Nebuchadnezzar needed an invitation, this was it; the handler received orders to unleash his prophet: “Say to king and queen, humble yourselves and sit down, for your principalities shall come to an end. The cities of the south shall be shut for good and Judah carried away captive, all of it” (Jeremiah 13: 16). “Do not lament Eliakim king of Judah, he shall be dragged to the gates of the city and cast out of Jerusalem like the carcass of an ass. And as I live, Coniah, his son I will give into the hand of assassins” (Jeremiah 22: 18-26). This was to be the first and only shot. On the 16th of March 597 BC, facing no resistance, King Nebuchadnezzar occupied Jerusalem and deported the king, “the queen, the eunuchs, the princes of Judah and Jerusalem,” and 3,000 of “the carpenters, and the smiths” (Jeremiah 29: 2). Of all deportations this was the most severe.

The period of “exile” and of Zionist sectarianism begins here. The Chaldean ruler made Zedekiah (597 – 586 BC) king; Zedekiah’s nephew Coniah checked in into a Babylonian prison (II Kings 24: 15-18). Like every other prisoner, the dethroned king was seen to fall in line to receive his daily ration (James B. Pritchard, The Ancient Near East, Princeton UP, 1958, Vol. I, p. 205). Jeremiah himself remained in Judah, but he bade farewell to his oldest brother.

He asked him to deliver a letter to the expatriates in Babylon, a testimony to the bitter and continuing squabbling between the factions: “To the priests, and to the prophets, and all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had carried captive from Jerusalem to Babylon. The God of Israel says that Ahab the son of Kolaiah, and Zedekiah the son of Maaseiah prophesy a lie in his name! He will make them a curse to all the captives of Judah in Babylon, and people shall say: the Lord make you like Zedekiah and like Ahab, whom the king of Babylon roasted in the fire for villainy and their adultery with their neighbors' wives, and for their lying words spoken in God’s name. To Shemaiah the Nehelamite, the Lord says: because you have sent letters to the people at Jerusalem, and to Zephaniah the son of Maaseiah the priest, and to all the priests, saying, the Lord has made you priest instead of Jehoiada the priest, and that you should officiate in the house of the Lord, and that every man who makes himself a prophet should be put in the stocks, tell us, why have you not reproved the prophet of Anathoth? For his dispatch to us in Babylon says this captivity is going to be long and therefore we should build houses and plant gardens and eat their fruit” (Jeremiah 29: 1-3, 8-14, 20-32). Among the expatriates, the call for the abolition of the monarchy became increasingly dogmatic, and not only because it was considered a political tradeoff.

Similar sentiments echoed throughout the Mediterranean. In Athens, Solon issued a bill of rights; in Italy the magistrates of a provincial town sent their king into exile and began the long march towards world dominion. Signs of a new era, but for Jeremiah, the sun was setting.

He was the last of the Hebrews, rooted in the soil and unwavering in his loyalty to the House of David. Baruch, on the other hand, was the new cosmopolitan Jew; gone were the days when “the fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the childrens' teeth are set on edge.” From now on, “every one shall receive his own reward” (Jeremiah 31: 29-30). Home was everywhere where a synagogue opened the door. Among the exiles in Babylon the worshippers of Yahweh had gained the religious monopoly virtually by default. Cut off from the physical presence of their shrines, the exiles were left with little else than belaboring semantics and the law: “And I will give them a heart to know me, and they shall be my people, and return to me with their whole heart” (Jeremiah 24: 7). The Torah was the product of exile, and “exile” is a prominent leitmotif in this book. Adam and Eve are driven out of Paradise, Cain is exiled for homicide, Noah takes to the ships, and Lot barely escapes from the destruction of Sodom. On his own free will Abraham leaves behind his friends and the comforts of the city for a life under the stars. Yet most of the expatriates in Babylon, Khorasan and Egypt modeled their lives on the story of Joseph who had risen from bondage to prosperity and advancement in a foreign country (Genesis 11:28 ff.). They had no intention ever to return to Palestine.

In 595 BC, news began to circulate of a conspiracy in King Nebuchadnezzar’s military. In Jerusalem the prophet Hananiah, the speaker of the royal court, took this as a sign. He announced that God was about to break the yoke of Babylon “within the space of two full years” – one wonders how he came to this figure, had there been negotiations with the mutineers? Hananiah announced the return of the captives, of the royal princes and even of the sacred vessels carried away from the temple. Giving away his true feelings, Jeremiah liked to think so as well: “In the presence of all the people the prophet said to Hananiah, amen, the Lord do so and perform your words which you have prophesied.” But, as a seasoned politician, Jeremiah was not leaving without a piece of friendly advice: “Nevertheless hear this: The prophets of old prophesied war, evil and pestilence. The prophet who prophesies peace, him shall we remember. And Jeremiah went his way” (Jeremiah 28: 1-11). This did not please his Chaldean handler. Through his contacts Baruch made a few inquiries and learned of the purges in the Chaldean top brass after the collapse of the attempted coup. He arranged for a public showdown.

Jeremiah threw an iron yoke at the feet of the flustered Hananiah and shouted: “Yahweh has not sent you; but you make these people trust in a lie. Thus says the God of Israel, I have put a yoke of iron upon the neck of all nations; they shall serve Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon.” This was followed by a personal touch: “Hear now, Hananiah, the Lord will cast you off from the face of the earth: this year you shall die, because you have taught rebellion against the Lord.” The “Lord?” Which lord? The one up high, or the one in Babylon? Oddly enough, “Hananiah died the same year in the seventh month.” His family would remember it and hold Jeremiah responsible (Jeremiah 28: 13-17).

In 593 BC, Nebuchadnezzar himself delivered a punitive strike and ordered a second wave of deportations. The Chaldean propaganda machine went into overdrive: “I will acknowledge them that are carried away captive, I have sent them out of this place for their own good” (Jeremiah 24: 1-6). At long last, King Zedekiah gave Jeremiah a hearing for what could well be called the first Jewish bill of rights: “Execute righteousness and deliver the spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor: do no wrong, do no violence to the stranger, the fatherless, nor the widow, neither shed innocent blood. Woe unto him who uses his neighbor's service without wages, and gives him not for his work” (Jeremiah 22: 2-5). In spite of opposition from his own advisers, men of wealth, who lived in houses with “large chambers, ceiled with cedar, and painted with vermilion” (Jeremiah 22: 13-15), King Zedekiah issued a writ of manumission, proclaiming “that every man should let his Hebrew servants, men and women, go free” (Jeremiah 34: 7-11). For Jeremiah this seemed his finest achievement. Yet, only four years later, Zedekiah rescinded his manumission orders. The well-informed Ezekiel is telling us what happened.

“Know ye not what these things mean? The king of Babylon has taken Zedekiah and accepting his oath made an alliance with him. He removed the mighty of the land to prevent rebellion so that the kingdom might continue. Yet Zedekiah sent ambassadors to Egypt, asking for horses and soldiers. Shall he prosper? Shall he escape who does such things? As I live, says the Lord, surely he shall die in the place where the king dwells who’d raised him and whose oath he has despised and whose alliance he broke. Neither shall Pharaoh with his mighty army come to his aid. As I live, says the Lord, surely it was my oath he has despised and my alliance he broke; I shall make him pay” (Ezekiel 17: 12-21). “His” oath? “His” alliance? On whose side is this god?

A new pharaoh ascended to the throne (Jeremiah 44: 30). Apparently he made promises and began moving reserves to Migdol on the Sinai. Whatever his role was in this, King Zedekiah threw all his resources into the fortified strongholds in Lachish, Azekah and Jerusalem, and waited for Egyptian reinforcements.

They never came. The hands of the Egyptian high command were tied. Substantial detachments, stationed in Cyrene (modern Aswan), were keeping a constant eye on Libya. A war in the North was a luxury Egypt just could not afford, and King Nebuchadnezzar knew it. He wasted no time and established headquarters in Riblah, Lebanon, 35 miles northeast of Baalbek. The Chaldean cavalry took possession of Judah’s open countryside, cutting off all supplies to the cities. Nebuchadnezzar’s field marshal began siege operations under the walls of Jerusalem in 588 BC.

Jeremiah was beside himself: “I have set my face against this city for evil, and not for good. For your treachery, says the Lord, I proclaim my kind of liberty for you, the sword, the pestilence, and the famine; the king of Judah, the princes, the eunuchs, and the priests, I will give into the hand of their assassins: and their corpses shall be meat for the vultures” (Jeremiah 21: 1-10; 34: 17-21). Zedekiah saw no other way but to take the furious prophet into protective custody. The bitterly disappointed Jeremiah decided to occupy his mind with more worldly matters.

In the general panic real estate prices were dropping through the floor. After a regime-change, Jeremiah, as a noted Chaldean partisan, could expect that his titles on recently acquired real estate from deportees would be authenticated. From his confinement he managed not only to transact business but commanded access to a considerable amount of silver bullion, a testament to his standing and wealth (Jeremiah 32: 8-9). Baruch even brokered deals on behalf of the regime’s exiled opposition (Jeremiah 32: 42-44). The move, however, didn’t look so smart anymore when in Jerusalem reports arrived of Egyptian troop movements in the Sinai. The Chaldean marshal wasted no time. He broke camp to confront the Egyptian forces. As if on cue, news reached the Egyptian commander of troubles on the Libyan border. After a brief standoff, the pharaoh’s mercenaries returned to Egypt without firing a shot. When the news arrived, King Zedekiah released the prophet from custody and Jeremiah tried to reach his home in Anathoth. Either at the city gate, or when passing the walls of Lachish, he was recognized by a captain of the guards, a relative of the late prophet Hananiah. He arrested Jeremiah as a Chaldean collaborator and after giving him a sound caning asked the authorities in Jerusalem what to do with him (J. L. Starkey, The Ostraca of Lachish).

Snapped in iron, the prophet passed into the custody of another personal enemy, Jonathan the scribe. King Zedekiah hesitated to intervene. Jeremiah’s jailer commanded a powerful following and the king needed all the support he could get. The whereabouts of Baruch at this point are uncertain. At last, remembering his friendship with the prophet, Zedekiah arranged a meeting. Jeremiah pleaded for his life and the king had him moved to the prison’s courtyard with orders to supply him from the royal purse with food (Jeremiah 32: 2-16). With nothing but uncertainty ahead, Jeremiah saw no reason why he should hold back on his feelings: “Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh: is there any thing too hard for me?” (Well it would be harder to actually stop the Chaldean war machine, wouldn’t it?) “The Babylonians shall set fire on this city, and burn it” (Jeremiah 32: 27-29). This was exactly what his enemies at court were counting on. They went to speak with the king and Zedekiah duly abandoned the prophet. The jeering courtiers roped down the struggling Jeremiah into the prison’s cesspool.

Only the king’s eunuch, Ebedmelech the Ethiopian, interceded and Zedekiah changed his mind again, even had “thirty men” to spare, which pulled the prophet out of his hole with “old cast clouts and old rotten rags” propped under his armpits. Nobody mentions a bath. Zedekiah held a perfumed handkerchief to his nose when he interviewed Jeremiah for the last time in the lives of both (Jeremiah 38: 1-14). He insisted that Jeremiah should keep the conversation confidential; the monarch was worried about “the Jews that are fallen to the Babylonians. I am afraid, once they deliver me into their hand, they will mock me” (Jeremiah 38: 15-19). So when the courtiers returned and inquired what this conversation was all about, Jeremiah didn’t say a word and the courtiers eventually left him alone, stinking and still snapped in iron (Jeremiah 38: 19, 24-28). The next morning news broke that King Zedekiah and his retainers had escaped from the besieged Jerusalem. What the people didn’t know was, that the Chaldean marshal had blocked every escape route towards Egypt. In case the fugitives had a ship waiting the Chaldean posse cut them off from the seaboard and Zedekiah could only flee deeper into Chaldean territory. Nebuchadnezzar’s cavalry picked up the fugitives one by one. Locked in iron they were sent to the king’s headquarters. The king of Babylon was not particularly known for cruelty, especially not if held against the jewels of cruelty among the rulers of Assyria, he was popular with the masses, but here he felt, he had to set an example. Zedekiah was made to watch the execution of his sons. Then, he himself was blinded. King Nebuchadnezzar moved on to summary executions of the ringleaders, of “Seraiah the chief priest, and Zephaniah the second priest, and the three keepers of the door, the eunuch, which had the charge of the men of war; seven of the king's bodyguards, the principal scribe of the armed forces who mustered the people of the land, and threescore of the people who were found in the midst of the city” (Jeremiah 52: 24-27).

Jerusalem was put to the torch, houses, temple, palace and all (Jeremiah 39: 1-9). The King of Kings expressed concern for Jeremiah, putting his commander in charge for the prophet’s welfare (Jeremiah 39: 11-12). The chronicler may have heightened the colors a bit, the fact remains that with or without King Nebuchadnezzar’s personal intervention, the Chaldean officials knew the prophet. Baruch’s influence must have been considerable. Jeremiah was no ordinary prisoner and Baruch no ordinary scribe. Marshal Nebuzaradan ordered the prophet’s release from prison, provided him with funds and handed him over to the care of the newly appointed governor of Judah, Gedaliah, the son of Ahikam. Jeremiah was again a free man. He asked the Chaldean general to release his benefactor, Ebedmelech the Ethiopian (Jeremiah 39: 14, 16-17; 40: 4-6). The general was a busy man. He had orders to implement a sweeping land reform, designed to win the popular support of the underprivileged.

The evicted landowners were forced to pack up and leave with the deportees. “This is the people whom Nebuchadnezzar carried away captive: in the seventh year three thousand Jews and twenty-three; in the eighteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar eight hundred and thirty-two; in the twenty-third year of Nebuchadnezzar, seven hundred forty-five persons: altogether four thousand and six hundred” (Jeremiah 52: 28-30). Gedaliah, the new Governor, chose Mizpah – King Saul’s old lair – as his seat of government, a symbolism not lost on his opponents.

Jeremiah withdrew from public affairs and returned to his estates in Anathoth. At home Baruch was already waiting; it was their first meeting since the prophet’s arrest. Seven months passed in pastoral peace; from the hills drifted the bleating of the herds and in the fields the wheat nodded under the Sun. Then, in the autumn of 586 BC, a horseman cantered into the courtyard, covered in dust.

He brought the worst possible news. The new governor was a popular administrator (II Kings 25: 22-25). Fugitives trickled in from every direction and paid their respect to the new regime. With the Davidic bloodline out of the picture, Mizpah was on the cusp of becoming a center of national rebirth. Among the arrivals was a general of Judah’s old army – Johanan, the son of Kareah – members “of the seed royal, and ten of the princes of the king” (Jeremiah 41: 1-3), as well as women from the royal harem and their bastards, like Ishmael, the son of Nethaniah. Johanan became Gedaliah’s chief of security. He was able and alert. Aware of Ishmael’s hostile intentions, he suggested making the man disappear before things could go wrong (Jeremiah 40: 15). Gedaliah would not listen; his was a policy of reconciliation. Johanan remained skeptical: “Can the leopard change his spots” (Jeremiah 13: 23)? He and his men left Mizpah – the roads required policing. That was the moment Ishmael had been waiting for. Over dinner, he and his thugs killed Gedaliah, their host – a violation of every taboo in the book! Whoever was pulling the strings here, this murder stripped the last shred of credibility from the House of David (Jeremiah 41: 1-3).

Unable to muster support, Ishmael robbed a passing caravan, murdered most of the merchants, then burned Mizpah to the ground and took hostages to shield his escape (Jeremiah 41: 5-10). Johanan did what he could. His posse caught up, freed the hostages and killed most of Ishmael’s men. But Ishmael himself escaped across the border to Moabs.

Johanan summoned the prophet to meet him near Bethlehem (Jeremiah 41: 11-17). Jeremiah, or rather Baruch, urged the fugitives still to put their trust in Chaldea; but Johanan knew Nebuchadnezzar’s interrogators would not be in a forgiving mood.

I suspect Johanan didn’t really intend to ask the prophet’s advice. In a time when Yahweh’s rule by “the sword, the famine and the pestilence” had given them “for a prey in all places whither they went,” (Jeremiah 44: 13; 45: 6), God was beginning to lose credit. Johanan felt responsible for his charges and so the meandering train of courtiers and women went to Egypt into exile. Jeremiah was the only pillar of the old establishment left standing; he was the last best hope for a national rebirth, Johanan was not the man to leave Jeremiah a choice. Baruch, on the other hand, was losing his grip on Jeremiah. The prophet finally drew the line when Baruch suggested that Jeremiah should take on the role of a second Moses (Jeremiah 42: 2-15, 22). The prophet raised a sarcastic eyebrow: “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel to you, yes you, Baruch: you seek great things for yourself? Seek them not” (Jeremiah 45: 5). The two parted ways; Baruch traveled back to Babylon.

Jeremiah had a little farewell message: “A prophet delivers a message to the king.” he said, “He is instructed not to tarry and not to take food or shelter. Yet a colleague, under the ruse of a divine vision of his own, is cheating on the man and lures him to his table. The two sit at their meal when the spirit suddenly seizes the lying host and from his mouth issues genuine prophesy. He announces that lions shall eat his guest for his disobedience. And so it happens” (I Kings 13). Jeremiah turned and walked away. “You didn’t tell the end of your story,” Baruch muttered to himself: “The prophet who had caused the calamity feels remorse, searches the road for the corpse and buries him in his own tomb. Brother!”

The prophet traveled downstream to Tahpanhes (now Tell Defenneh) a city in the Nile delta (Josephus Antiquitates Judaicae, 10: 180-181). The Egyptian authorities of this period kept a close watch on foreign immigrants and appointed to them strictly segregated districts under tight curfews. The site is now on the Suez Canal. Josephus alleges, that only five years later Jeremiah died a violent death from the hands of his own countrymen. Another rabbinical tradition says that after his victory over Egypt, King Nebuchadnezzar had taken Jeremiah and Baruch with him to Babylon. One wonders. After the ageing Nebuchadnezzar was forced to give up his designs on the city of Tyre in 573 BC, the disappointed king told his Jewish court sorcerer in no uncertain terms that he expected compensation, or else! Ezekiel scrambled to lay a curse on Egypt: “The word of the Lord came to me: Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon made his army labor hard against Tyre, yet neither he nor his army got anything from Tyre. Therefore I will give the land of Egypt to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon; and he shall carry off its wealth to be the wages for his army” (Ezekiel 29: 17-19). This, too, turned out to be an empty promise. In 567 BC, contingents of raw recruits were marching through the streets of every Egyptian city. Pharaoh Amesis II had assumed the throne in a military coup and his predecessor went to Babylon into exile. King Nebuchadnezzar, ageing and ailing, took this as a pretext to confronted Pharaoh Amesis on the Sinai. Apparently it was again a standoff and a quick treaty without casualties. Both sides claimed victory and then parted ways. My guess is that these events have bypassed the real Jeremiah who was done with heroics and memorable last words, suggesting, when “you’ve done reading this book, you shall bind a stone to it, and cast it into the midst of Euphrates, and say, thus shall Babylon sink” (Jeremiah 8: 58-64). News of the amnesty for the last living Hebrew king may never have reached the Jews in Egypt. On April 2, 561 BC, Nebuchadnezzar’s son released Coniah from prison after 37 years of captivity, “spoke kindly unto him, changed his prison garments” and allowed him to pass his final days as a pensioner at the royal palace in Babylon (Jeremiah 52: 32-34).

I see Jeremiah as an old man sitting on his porch, fanning away the mosquitoes. His garden by the riverbank is a pleasant place to be; the Egyptian women are pretty, the Egyptian men tanned and toned. Collections of stories and novels are available, but learning hieroglyphics is for the young. Jeremiah was late in his eighties when he died.

© – 10/10/2009 – by michael sympson, 12,200 words, all rights reserved