: ingrained sinfulness of Israel on the other, follows logically the certainty that punishment must come. Like the northern kingdom, Judah is to be banished from Yahweh's presence (715). The completeness of the destruction is symbolised by the earthen pot dashed to pieces before the eyes of the people (19 10f.). Yet there is always the possibility that the people will repent. The prophet put his discourses in written form, thinking that if a compendium of his various messages could be read to the multitude they would bethink themselves (36:3). But an occasional gleam of hope like this makes the prevailing gloom only the more visible. At the very beginning of his mission the preacher was obsessed by the vision of complete ruin: "I beheld the earth and it was a chaos, and the heavens had no light; I beheld the mountains and they trembled, and all the hills moved to and fro; I beheld, and lo there was no man, and all the birds of heaven were fled; I beheld, and lo the fruitful field was become a wilderness, and all the cities were broken down before Yahweh, before the fierceness of his wrath" (4: 24 f.). The concrete details must leave no doubt in the hearers' minds: "The corpses of this people shall be food for the birds of heaven and for the wild beasts, and no one shall scare them away. I will cause joy and gladness, the joy of the bridegroom and the joy of the bride, to cease from the cities of Judah and from the streets of Jerusalem, for the land shall become a desert. In that day, says Yahweh, they shall bring out the bones of the kings of Judah and the bones of her princes, and the bones of the prophets, the bones of the priests, and the bones of the dwellers in Jerusalem out of their tombs and spread them out before the sun and the moon and the host of heaven" (7:33 and 8:1). No more fearful threat could be uttered to men who believed that the soul finds rest only when the body has been properly buried.1 1 Outrage of the tombs was one of the ways by which the Assyrian kings sought to strike terror into their enemies, as is shown by the boast of Ashurbanipal, Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, II, p. 193. What would follow after the blow had actually fallen? This question finds no direct answer in the genuine words of Jeremiah. The passages which promise restoration are not from the hand of the prophet, but are inserted by later editors in the manner already familiar to us. One intimation that Jeremiah had some hope that a remnant would be spared is given, however, in his attitude toward the first group of exiles-the men carried away in 597. Those who were spared in this visitation and who remained in Jerusalem seem to have plumed themselves on the thought that they were the righteous remnant, and that the exiles were the wicked who had been punished. Jeremiah looks at the matter in another light. To him the good figs of his vision typify the exiles. Yahweh will set his eyes on them for good (chapter 24). To the same effect is the letter which the prophet sent to these same exiles (29), designed to keep them from false hopes of an early return. The prediction that the exile would last seventy years was, however, intended not so much to set a time for the return as to wean the exiles from any hope of immediate change in their lot. It must be clear that the importance of Jeremiah in the religion of Israel arises not so much from any definite doctrine promulgated by him as from the example he gave of a man true to his convictions throughout a lifetime of trial and opposition. The steadfastness of the man excites our admiration even at this distant day. During his life his people were blind to it, but after his death, when the fulfilment of his predictions called attention forcibly not only to his message but also to his character, the conviction that he had indeed been in the counsel of the Almighty came with overwhelming force. The result was to cause his memory to be cherished, his message to be studied, and to some extent his example to be followed. True religion was here set forth in an object-lesson which none could misunderstand. Religion was seen to be a matter of the individual heart in communion with its God. When the nation per ished this religion still found its dwelling-place in the heart CHAPTER X THE BEGINNINGS OF LEGALISM WITH Jeremiah the old school of prophets came to an end. By the time he had completed the first five years of his ministry, a new force had appeared in the intellectual and religious life of Israel, something which was to supersede the prophets as organs of the divine will. This new force was a book, and the account of its discovery and effect is one of the most dramatic that we have in all Hebrew literature. It was in the reign of Josiah, when the royal officers were taking account of the money in the temple chest in order to apply it to the repair of the building, that the priest, Hilkiah, informed them, casually, it would seem, that he had found a book, which he called the book of Yahweh's Instruction. It has been pointed out recently that this is parallel to a story in the Egyptian inscriptions according to which a certain king, when about to rebuild a temple, found a plan of the original temple in the old foundation wall and by it was guided in his erection or restoration. There is also a statement in one of the chapters of the Book of the Dead to the effect that this chapter was found under the feet of one of the statues when the prime minister was on a tour of inspection of the temple. Other parallels are cited both from Egyptian and from Babylonian sources, so that we might suspect the story to be simply one of the floating anecdotes which are current in different regions. On the other hand, they may all testify to the custom of depositing books of importance, like other valuable objects, in the sanctuaries, a custom which may well have prevailed in Israel from an early time. The contents of the book thus found, if we are right in identifying it with Deuteronomy (in the primitive form of that book, that is), give no indication that the report of its finding in the temple is a fiction. The important thing is that the book had a marked effect on the king when it was read to him and that the result was a thorough reform of religious practice in Judah. The country sanctuaries were violently suppressed; the temple was cleansed of everything that was contrary to the demands of the newly found document; and the people, acting through their natural leaders, took a solemn obligation to act in accordance with the demands there formulated. The reforms thus inaugurated correspond closely with the programme laid down in our book of Deuteronomy, and we can scarcely doubt that this book was the source of the influence exerted on king and people. For our present purpose it is not necessary to determine the exact limits of the original book and of the various accretions that have been made to it from time to time. The tone of all the Deuteronomic writers is homogeneous, and their religion expresses itself in like phrases throughout. Why the programme of the prophetic party should be embodied in a book is not hard to conjecture. We have seen that Isaiah gathered a small group of disciples to whom he committed his written words as a solemn testimony. These men had hardships to endure during the reign of Manasseh and found it impossible to appear in public. Nothing would seem more natural than that they should not only cherish the written words of their master but should themselves engage in writing down their ideas of what was needed ⚫ in Judah. Their consciences were revolted by the open and flagrant superstition practised and encouraged by Manasseh. In their reflections they realised the need of more definite and specific regulations than had been laid down by the earlier prophets. The prophets, to be sure, had insisted on righteousness as the supreme requirement of Yahweh. But none of them had given more than a very general definition of what was meant by righteousness. A rule |