In the meantime Pharaoh had moved to the assist- ance of his ally. On hearing of his approach, the Chal- dieans at once raised the siege and advanced to meet him. The nobles seized the moment of respite to reassert their power over the king, and their defiance of Jehovah, by re-enslaving those whom they had so recently manu- mitted; and the prophet thereupon utters a doom on these miscreants which, in thefiercenessof its tone and in some of its expressions, recalls those of Elijah on Ahab (Jer. xxxiv, 20). This encounter was quickly followed
ZEDEKIAH
1079
ZEDEKIAH
by Jeremiah's capture and imprisonment, which, but for the interference of the king (Jer. xxxvii, 17, 21), would have rapidly put an end to his life (ver. '20). How long the Babylonians were absent from Jerusalem we are not told. It must have required at least several months to move a large array and baggage through the difficult and tortuous country which separates Jerusalem from the Philistine Plain, and to effect the complete re- pulse of the Egyptian army from Syria, which Josephus affirms was effected. All we certainly know is that on the tenth day of the tenth month of Zcdekiah's ninth year, the Chaldieans were again before the walls (Hi, 4). From this time forward the siege progressed slowly but ■surely to its consummation, with the accompaniment of both famine and pestilence (Josephus). Zedekiah again interfered to preserve the life of Jeremiah from the vengeance of the princes (xxxviii, 7-13), and then oc- curred the interview between the king and the prophet of which mention has already been made, and which affords so good a clew to the condition of abject depend- ence into which a long course of opposition had brought tlie weak-minded monarch. It would seem from this conversation that a considerable desertion had already taken place to the besiegers, proving that the prophet's view of the condition of things was shared by many of his countrymen. But the unhappy Zedekiah throws away the chance of preservation for himself and the city which the prophet set before him, in his fear that he would be mocked by those very Jews who had al- ready taken the step Jeremiah was urging him to take (ver. 19). At the same time, his fear of the princes who remained in the city is not diminished, and he even condescends to impose on the prophet a subter- fuge, with the view of concealing the real purport of his conversation from these tyrants of his spirit (ver. 24- 27).
But while the king was hesitating the end was rap- idlj' coming nearer. The city was indeed reduced to the last extremity. The fire of the besiegers had throughout been very destructive (Josephus), but it was now aided by a severe famine. The bread had long been consumed (Jer. xxxviii, 9), and all the ter- rible expedients had been tried to which the wretched inhabitants of a besieged town are forced to resort in such cases. Mothers had boiled and eaten the flesh of their own infants (Bar. ii, 3 ; Lara, iv, 10). Persons of the greatest wealth and station were to be seen search- ing the dungheaps for a morsel of food. The effemi- nate "nobles, whose fair complexions had been their pride, wandered in the open streets like blackened but living skeletons (ver. 5, 8). Still the king was seen in public, sitting in the gate where justice was administered, that his people might approach him, though indeed he had no help to give them (Jer. xxxviii, 7).
At last, after sixteen dreadful months had dragged on, the catastrophe arrived. It was on the ninth day of the fourth month, about the middle of July, at mid- night, as Josephus with minuteness informs us, that the breach in those stout and venerable walls was effected. The moon, nine days old, had gone down below the hills which form the western edge of the basin of Jerusalem, or was, at any rate, too low to illuminate the utter dark- ness which reigns in the narrow lanes of an eastern town, where the inhabitants retire early to rest, and where there are but few windows to emit light from within the houses. The wretched remnants of the army, starved and exhausted, had left the walls, and there was nothing to oppose the entrance of the Chal- d;eans. Passing in through the breach, they made tlieir way, as their custom was, to the centre of the city, and for the first time the Temple was entered by a hostile force, and all the princes of the court of the great king took their seats in state in the mi<ldle gate of the hitherto virgin house of Jehovah. Tlie alarm quickly spread through the sleeping city, and Zedekiah, collecting his wives and ciiildren (Josephus), and sur- rounding himself with the few soldiers who had sur-
vived the accidents of the siege, made his way out of the city at the opposite end to that at which the Assyr- ians liad entered, l)y a street whicli. like the Bein es- Surein at Damascus, ran between two walls (probably those on the cast and west sides of the so-called Tyro- pcL'on valley), and issued at a gate above the royal gar- dens and the Fountain of Siloam. Thence he took the road towards the Jordan, perhaps hoping to find refuge, as David had, at some fortified place in the mountains on its eastern side. On the road they were met and recognised by some of the Jews who had foruierly de- serted to the Chahheans. By them the intelligence' was communicated, witli the eager treachery of desert- ers, to the generals in the city (Josephus), and, as soon as the dawn ofday permitted i(, swift pursuit was made. The king's party must have had some hours' start, and ought to have had no difficLdty in reacliing the Jordan; but, either from their being on foft, weak and infirm, while the pursuers were mounted, or perhaps owing to the incumbrance of the women and baggage, they were overtaken near Jericho, when just within sight of the river. A few of the people only remained round the person of the king. The rest lied in all directions, so that he was easily taken.