We feel a shock of surprise and repulsion as we turn from this pathetic story to Jeremiah's fierce invectives against the unhappy king. But we wrong the prophet and misunderstand his utterance if we forget that it was delivered during that brief frenzy in which the young king and his advisers threw away the last chance of safety for Judah. Jehoiachin might have repudiated his father's rebellion against Babylon; Jehoiakim s death had removed the chief offender, no personal blame attached to his successor, and a prompt submission might have appeased Nebuchadnezzar's wrath against Judah and obtained his favour for the new king. If a hot-headed young rajah of some protected Indian state revolted against the English suzerainty and exposed his country to the misery of a hopeless war, we should sympathise with any of his counsellors who condemned such wilful folly; we have no right to find fault with Jeremiah for his severe censure of the reckless vanity which precipitated his country's fate.
Jeremiah's deep and absorbing interest in Judah and Jerusalem is indicated by the form of this utterance; it is addressed to the "Daughter of Zion"[96]:--
"Go up to Lebanon, and lament, And lift up thy voice in Bashan, And lament from Abarim,[97] For thy lovers are all destroyed!"
Her "lovers," her heathen allies, whether gods or men, are impotent, and Judah is as forlorn and helpless as a lonely and unfriended woman; let her bewail her fate upon the mountains of Israel, like Jephthah's daughter in ancient days.
"I spake unto thee in thy prosperity; Thou saidst, I will not hearken. This hath been thy way from thy youth, That thou hast not obeyed My voice. The tempest shall be the shepherd to all thy shepherds."
Kings and nobles, priests and prophets, shall be carried off by the Chaldean invaders, as trees and houses are swept away by a hurricane. These shepherds who had spoiled and betrayed their flock would themselves be as silly sheep in the hands of robbers.
"Thy lovers shall go into captivity. Then, verily, shalt thou be ashamed and confounded Because of all thy wickedness. O thou that dwellest in Lebanon! O thou that hast made thy nest in the cedar!"
The former mention of Lebanon reminded Jeremiah of Jehoiakim's halls of cedar. With grim irony he links together the royal magnificence of the palace and the wild abandonment of the people's lamentation.
"How wilt thou groan[98] when pangs come upon thee, Anguish as of a woman in travail!"
The nation is involved in the punishment inflicted upon her rulers. In such passages the prophets largely identify the nation with the governing classes--not without justification. No government, whatever the constitution may be, can ignore a strong popular demand for righteous policy, at home and abroad. A special responsibility of course rests on those who actually wield the authority of the state, but the policy of rulers seldom succeeds in effecting much either for good or evil without some sanction of public feeling. Our revolution which replaced the Puritan Protectorate by the restored Monarchy was rendered possible by the change of popular sentiment. Yet even under the purest democracy men imagine that they divest themselves of civic responsibility by neglecting their civic duties; they stand aloof, and blame officials and professional politicians for the injustice and crime wrought by the state. National guilt seems happily disposed of when laid on the shoulders of that convenient abstraction "the government"; but neither the prophets nor the Providence which they interpret recognise this convenient theory of vicarious atonement: the king sins, but the prophet's condemnation is uttered against and executed upon the nation.
Nevertheless a special responsibility rests upon the ruler, and now Jeremiah turns from the nation to its king.
"As I live--Jehovah hath spoken it-- Though Coniah ben Jehoiakim king of Judah were a signet ring upon My right hand----"
By a forcible Hebrew idiom Jehovah, as it were, turns and confronts the king and specially addresses him:--