CHAPTER XIX
The Poet Preacher--Jeremiah
Agnes M. Lawson
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The Colorado College of Divine
Science
Denver, 1920.
As Constance
in “King John” made Sorrow
majestic and bade kings come before it
and render it homage, Jeremiah has made
Sorrow beautiful. Artists of all ages pay
tribute to his genius, and lovers of
graceful expression acknowledge
themselves his debtors. Jeremiah sings
the Doom Song of the Old Order. It is the
Swan Song of the national greatness and
independence of the Hebrews.
From the
last date that we have of Isaiah to the
first that we have of Jeremiah is
eighty-five years. Like Isaiah’s,
Jeremiah’s ministry is a long one;
he saw the successive reigns of five
different kings; witnessed the fall of
Jerusalem; is thought to have written
“Lamentations” after its fall
and was abducted to Egypt where we lose
sight of him. We know more of Jeremiah
than of any other prophet, for he speaks
very freely of his life, both private and
public. He takes us into the inner
sanctum of his soul; tells us what he
aspired to do and of the reception of his
efforts both by the kings and the people.
The latter days of old Jerusalem are
inextricably interwoven with the personal
life of the prophet.
Nothing more
pathetic than the life story of Jeremiah
was ever written. Belonging to the orders
of both priest and prophet, living at a
time when a profligate nation had ceased
to respect either of them, he was
compelled to submit to ridicule,
buffeting, imprisonment and even corporal
punishment at the hands of a people he
earnestly desired to save.
In sorrow
one can never be consistent, his
perspective is not true, his
vision is foreshortened and the vista
beyond is therefore not clear. In the
breakdown of an old order the new one
grows; in fact, it is always the new one
growing that batters down the old.
Isaiah’s vision had ushered in a
new era. The horizon had so broadened
that henceforth no national boundaries
could hold a vision which had become
universal. Before we can become
distinctively individualistic we must
burst through the national consciousness;
how else can we represent the universal
God? “Jeremiah is the first
distinct individualist among the Hebrew
prophets--a Huguenot in an age ruled by
the Medici, a Savonarola in an age of
Alexander VI--execrating himself, at
times execrating his age and his people,
at other times pleading with them for
Jehovah, and with Jehovah for them, with
infinite pathos, and amidst the ruins of
the old covenant destroyed by
Israel’s sin and Jehovah’s
repudiation of it, prophesying a new
covenant with the elect individuals saved
from the nation’s wreck--strange,
sad, self-contradictory, a Protestant
before Protestantism, a Puritan before
Puritanism,” is the way that Lyman
Abbott sees this unique character.
Should this
contradictory seer follow the great
vision of Isaiah? And if the history of
the race is the history of the individual
written large, what is its significance
in our personal lives? Absolutely true in
our individual unfoldment. The
Transfiguration of Jesus preceded
Gethsemane and the Crucifixion. The new
vision inevitably breaks up the old life,
because it makes new conditions; the new
wine breaks the old bottles in the
fermentation which makes a new being and
the environment demanded by that new
being for its expression. As Mary wept at
the tomb of her dead
“Rabboni,” when there was
no dead teacher, so do we mourn and
cling to old conditions when the new
stand beside us, asking us to recognize
them.
In Biblical
history, Jeremiah stands where Hamlet
does in Shakespearean drama. After the
joyous vision of the poet’s youth,
and the great historic dramas of his
manhood, the vision of a spiritual world
is breaking through Shakespeare’s
consciousness. Hamlet is a being that
stands astride two worlds, a citizen of
neither. The human desires revenge for
his father’s murder; the spiritual
restrains his hand from taking life;
indecision of character is the result.
Jeremiah is not fully emerged from the
spiritual cocoon; he has a great vision
but is still held fast in the meshes of
the material. Not positively belonging to
either world, he is not the power he
would be did he not see double. He knows
old Jerusalem must go and he sees clearly
in his highest moments the return. He too
believes in the Messiah that is to be
born from the “remnant” who
will save the people. Still with all his
power he endeavors to save Jerusalem
while in his heart he does not believe it
can be. “Can the Ethiopian change
his skin, or the leopard his spots?
then may ye also do good who are
accustomed to do evil.” Every one
of us has been in Jeremiah’s place
of development. Many are still there. If
the conviction of the Ethiopian and the
leopard were not in our consciousness, we
should heal every case that comes to us
and nothing would be impossible.
When his
“Call” comes to Jeremiah,
conditions in Judah have become as bad or
worse than in Israel during the time of
her four great prophets. Under the shadow
of the Temple itself, altars to other
gods had been erected; and in the valley
of Hinnom on the southwest of Jerusalem
the gross immoralities of Canaanitish
worship, with its human sacrifices of
their children, were flagrantly
practiced. “Wherefore I will yet
plead with you said the Lord. Hath a
nation changed their gods, which yet are
no gods? but my people have changed their
glory for that which doth not profit. Be
astonished, O ye heavens, at this; for my
people have committed two evils; they
have forsaken me the fountain of living
waters, and hewed them out cisterns,
broken cisterns, that can hold no
water.”
“Cut
off thine hair, O Jerusalem, and cast it
away, and take up a lamentation on the
bare heights; for the Lord hath rejected
the generation of his wrath. The children
of Judah have done that which is evil in
my sight, saith the Lord, they have set
their abominations in the house which is
called by my name, to defile it. And they
have built high places of Tophet which is
in the valley of Hinnom, to burn their
sons and their daughters in the fire;
which I have commanded not neither came
it into my mind.”
Modern Man,
Up-to-date Lady, from your lofty height
of “government by the people and
for the people” look not down on
these benighted Judeans of an olden time.
Are we in this country free from either
idol worship or sacrifice of our
children? Does not money, or what money
buys for us, play a stronger part in our
lives than our spiritual development? Are
our child labor laws rigidly enforced?
The valley of Hinnom was merciful to
children compared to the cotton mills of
the South, in “Our Own United
States.” Who would not prefer a
quick death to a slow, lingering one?
“Take the beam from thine own
eye.” We shall not be at liberty to
criticize these people until spiritual
ideals come first, and the
physical, mental and spiritual
development of the young are considered
the primal work of the whole nation.
Five years
after the Call of Jeremiah, Josiah, the
young king, then in his eighteenth year,
determined to have Solomon’s temple
repaired. Since it was over four hundred
years old at this time, no doubt it was
in great need of it. During the
renovation, Hilkiah, the high-priest,
found the Book of Deuteronomy. After the
Book was read to Josiah, he started upon
tremendous reforms. He tore down the
altars and symbols of idolatry
everywhere--but changing externals can
never change anything permanently, if the
consciousness is not changed also.
Jeremiah believed the reforms to be
superficial: Jehovah had given
“backsliding Israel a bill of
divorcement. Yet for all this her
treacherous sister, Judah, hath not
returned unto me with her whole heart but
feignedly, saith the Lord.”
Josiah’s sons and successors were
as profligate as his predecessors had
been; so while Deuteronomy made a lasting
impression on the few, the nation as a
whole quickly returned to idolatry.
Jeremiah
resorts to many ingenious methods to
attract the attention of the people and
convert them. He is a “defensed
city, and an iron pillar with brazen wall
against the whole land, against the kings
of Judah, against the princes thereof,
and against the people of the land, and
they shall fight against thee; but they
shall not prevail against thee.” We
should not consider this a treatment to
give ourselves did we desire to come into
unison with others; and it acted as
adversely to Jeremiah as it would for any
of us. He was put into stocks, lowered
into a well, imprisoned, yet that
belief in divine protection always
saved his life; though it was endangered
many times.
The people
will not listen to him and he well nigh
despairs; why talk about Jehovah when
nothing but the sound of his own voice is
the result: “And if I say, I will
not make mention of him, nor speak any
more in his name then there is in mine
heart as it were a burning fire shut up
in my bones, and I am weary with
forbearing and cannot contain.” He
must continue, heard or unheard, for
Jehovah fills his consciousness so that
he must speak; and we love him, and read
him for this reason and for the purity
and beauty of his prophetic insight into
the Divine Nature.
Assyria had
been conquered by Babylon, as foretold by
Isaiah, and the political parties had
changed to those favoring an alliance
with Babylon, or those favoring one with
Egypt. Palestine had an unfortunate
geographical position; she was the
battleground of those great rival
kingdoms, and Judah was now far too small
a nation to exist except under the
protection of one or the other of them.
Babylon was energetic; Egypt was
decadent, slothful and luxurious; and
Jeremiah loathed her with all the force
of his virile and ascetic nature. He
openly advocated submission to Babylon as
the one way of saving the national life.
For years he wore a yoke, a reminder that
only in this way could disaster be
averted.
He was
thrown into prison; the king favored the
Egyptian party, so Jeremiah and his yoke
were not popular in Jerusalem. Here, with
the aid of Baruch, a scribe, whose
brother was chief chamberlain to the
king, he wrote a warning of the fall of
Jerusalem if they did not come under the
protection of Babylon. The book was read
to the king as he sat in his winter
palace before a burning brasier; but when
he had heard a few pages he took a knife,
cut the leaves and burned the roll,
though members of his court advised
against it. He ordered the death of both
Jeremiah and Baruch, but they escaped,
and Jeremiah dictated another book to
Baruch, which we read today.
As predicted
by Jeremiah, Babylon conquered Jerusalem.
The king, Jeconiah, the chief of the
people and the craftsmen, were deported
to Babylon. Ezekiel was in this first
captivity in the year 597 B.C. The
brother of the king was placed on the
throne, and left there on sufferance.
Zedekiah was a weak king, not strong
enough to resist the Egyptian party,
although he was more favorable to
Jeremiah than his brother had been. So
twelve years later the army of
Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon,
returned and destroyed Jerusalem. This
time the city was sacked and destroyed,
and the whole population, excepting the
very poor, carried away to Babylon.
Nebuchadnezzar, in recognition of
Jeremiah’s advocacy of the
Babylonian party, charged his captain,
“Look well to him, and do him no
harm, but do even as he shall say unto
thee.” Jeremiah desired to remain
in Palestine, and was permitted to do
so.
The most
charming illustration of Jeremiah’s
is the potter and the clay. “The
word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord
saying, Arise and go down to the
potter’s house and behold, he
wrought his work on the wheels. And when
the vessel that he made of the clay was
marred in the hand of the potter, he made
it again another vessel, as it seemed
good to the potter to make it. Then the
word of the Lord came to me, saying, O
house of Israel, cannot I do with you as
this potter? saith the Lord. Behold, as
the clay in the potter’s hand, so
are ye in my hand.”
So Judah,
just as we each individually must do,
lost her life of rebellion and idolatry
that she might find the life of obedience
to Jehovah. The Potter has his ideal for
each child of His, and His purpose in
each nation. On the wheel we remain until
we learn to yield ourselves without
reservation to Him. The clay cannot
dictate to the potter, nor can man to
God; for He alone knows our final
destiny. We save ourselves from being
“broken” by training
ourselves into pliability.
Jeremiah
could see no hope for Judah save the
discipline that would come from the
captivity, for “We walk after our
own devices, and we do every one after
the stubbornness of his evil heart.”
What more could Jehovah do? As he had
sent his “Bands of Love” to
Israel, he also had sent great prophets
to Judah. Isaiah he had sent to the
influential people; Micah he had sent to
the poor and plain people; Zephaniah had
come and seen, “The just Lord is in
the midst thereof; he will not do
iniquity, every morning doth he bring his
judgment to light, he faileth not; but
the unjust knoweth no shame.”
Habbakuk also has stood on the
watchtower: “I will stand on my
watch, and will set me upon my tower, and
I will watch to see what he will say unto
me, and what I shall answer when I am
reproved. And the Lord answered me, and
said, Write the vision, and make it plain
upon tables, that he may run that
readeth. For the vision is yet for an
appointed time, but in the end it shall
speak, and not lie; though it tarry, wait
for it; because it will come.”
Nothing more remained for Jehovah to do,
he had done all; he must make Judah again
another vessel, for it was marred in the
hands of the potter.
In a cave,
near Jerusalem, Jeremiah, it is thought,
wrote his dirge over the fallen city. The
city of David lay in ruins before the
poet, and he has written a poem of such
beauty and pathos that not since has it
been excelled:
LAMENTATIONS
“How doth the city sit
solitary that was full of people!
How is she become as a widow, she that
was great among nations!
Princess among the provinces, how is
she become tributary.”
Surely, we
can all understand the author’s
great anguish. We have each experienced
it, when we have been bowed under a great
sorrow, when life seemed desolate--that
narrow bridge we all must cross and cross
alone--when the old life lies in ruins
and the new is not yet clear. We look
forth and see that the merry old world
goes on as usual; the careless laugh, the
busy pass by, each intent on his own
work; we are amazed that it can be so,
when our world has ceased to be.
“Is it nothing to you, all ye
that pass by?
Behold and see if there be any sorrow
like my sorrow, which is done unto
me.”
--Modern Reader’s Bible.
But the
world moves along and carries us with it;
each must turn from his sorrow, just as
the great dirge ends:
“Turn thou us unto thee, O Lord,
and we shall be turned:
Renew our days as of old.”
Life is
movement, there is no cessation:
“Weeping may endure for the
night,
But joy cometh in the
morning.”
* * * * *
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