Jeromiah himself should take up the study of the bouk with special earnest- ness, ancl that its phraseology should impre1,s itself on his own ~tyle of writing. 'l'here is yot another circumstance which may help U8 to under- stand our prophet's strong interest in the Book of Deuteronomy. It is that his father was not improbably the high priest who found the Book of the Law in the temple. We know, at any rate, that Jeremiah was a member of a priestly family, and that his father was named Hilkiah ( eh. i. 1); and that he had high connections is probable from the respect shown to him by suc- cessive rulers of Judah-by Jehoiakim and Zedekiah, no less than by Ahikam and Gedaliah, the viceroys of the King of Babylon. We may safely assume, then, that both Jeremiah and a large section of the Jewish people were deeply interested in the Book of Deuteronomy, and, though there was no Bible at that time in our seme of the word, that this impressive book to some extent supplied its place. There was, however, as has been indicated above, a danger connected with reading the Book of Deuteronomy, the exhortations of which so repeatedly connect the national prosperity with obedience to the commandments of God. Now, these commandments are obviously of two kinds-moral and ceremonial; not that any hard and fast line can be drawn between them, but, roughly speaking, the contents of some of the laws are more distinctly moral, and those of others more distinctly ceremonial. Some of the Jews had little or no conception of the moral or spiritual side of religion, and thought it enough to perform with the strictest punctuality the ceremonial part of God's Law. Having done this, they cried, "Peace, peace; " and applied the delightful promises of Deuteronomy to themselves. And it seemed as if Providence justified them, for, as was noticed just now, the kingdom of Judah was freer from external danger than it had been for a long time. Another consi<leration may be added. The prophet Nahum, as is well known, predicted the complete destruction of the tyrannical power of Assyria. In B.c. 626, i.e. in thv- fourteenth year of Josiah, a great step was taken towards the fulfilment of that prediction; a powerful rival kingdom to Assyria (though in nominal subordination to it) was established at Babylon, and tht> Medes, now a. powerful and united kingdom, advanced upon Assyria from the east. '!'Lis was just at the time when Josiah was beginning his reformation, and Jeremiah beginning to prophesy. Could there be a more manifest token (so many professedly religious people might urge) of the favour of God to his long humiliatt,d people? Jeremiah, however, thought otherwise. Cassandra-like, he began his dirge when all were lulled in a deep sense of security. The spiritual state of his country seemed to him utterly rotten. He agreed, it is true, with those would-be religious persons that the local shrines and chapels ought to be abolished, a:,:id he could not object to their strict observance of the appointed rites and ceremonies; but he did from the bottom of his heart abhor and detest the supposition that a mere ceremouial worship could be pleasing to God (see those remarkable, though at the same ·time obscure, passages, eh. vii. 8-15, 21-23; :xi. 15). iv INTHODUCTION TO
2. Jeremiah did not cease preaching, but with very little result. We need not wonder at this. The visible success of a faithful preacher is no test of his acceptableness before God. There are times when the Holy Spirit himself seems to work in vain, and the world seems given up to tbu 11owers of eYil. True, even then there is a "silver lining" to the cloud, if we ha-ve only faith to :see it. There is always a" remnant according to the elect.ion of grace ; " and there is often a late harvest which the sower does not li"e to see. It was so with the labours of Jeremiah, who, like the hero Samson, slew more in his death than in his life; but on this interesting point we must not at present linger. Jeremiah went on preaching, "but with small apparent success; when all at once a little cloud arose, no bigger than a man's hand, and soon the fair prospects of Judah were cruelly blighted. Josiah, the favourite, as it seemed, of God and man, was defeated aiid slain on the field of Megiddo, in B.C. 609. The immediate result was a tightening of the political yoke under which the kingdom of Judah laboured. The old Assyrian empire had long been declining; and just at the beginning of Jeremiah's ministry there occurred, as we have seen, one of those great events which change the face of the world-the rise of the great Babylonian power. It need hardly be said that Babylon and the Chaldeans occupy a luge place in the prophecies of Jeremiah; Babylon was to him what Nineveh had beer;. to Isaiah. Ilut, before entering upon this subject of the relations of Jeremiah to the Babylonians, we have first to consider a question of some importance for the study of his writings, viz. whether his references to foreign invaders are covered entirely by the Babylonian aggression. Is it not possible that an earlier danger may have left its impress on his pages (and also on those of Zephaniah)? Herodotus tells us that the Scythians were masters of Asia for twenty-eight years (?), that they advanced to the borders of Egypt, and that, on their return, some of them plundered the temple of Ascalon (i. 106). The date of the Scythian invasion of Palestine can, it is true, only be fixed approximately. The Canons of Em;ebius place it in Olympiad 36.2, equivalent to D.C. 635 (St. Jerome's Latin version), or Olympiad 37.1, equi.alent to D.C. 632 (Armenian version). At any rate, it ranges between about B.C. 634 and 618, i.e. between the accession of Cyaxares and the death of P.;amnutichus ( see Herod., i. 103-105),or more precisely, perhaps, between n.c. 634 and 625 ( accepting Abydenus's account of the fall of Nineveh). •rrue, one could wish for better evidence than that of Herodotus (loc. cit.) and Justin (ii. 3). But the statements of these writers have not yet been disproved, and they suit the chronological conditions of the prophecies before us. A reference to the Babylonian invasion seems to be excluded in the case of Zephaoiah, by the facts that in B.C. 635-625 Babylonia was still under the supremacy of Assyria, and that from neither country could any danger to Palei;tine then be apprehended. The case of Jeremiah is, no <loubt, more complicated. It cannot be maintained that any discourses, in the furrn in wLich we now have them, relato to the Scythians; but it is 'l'I-IE BOOK OF THE PROPHET. ,JEREMIAH.