assured one another they had seen the last of Nebuchadnezzar's armies, and that, even if they had not, their city was impregnable ( eh. xi. 3). In vain Jeremiah told them their city's fate was sealed-that both they and Zedekiah their king should be delivered up into Nebuchadnezzar's handfl (Jer. xxi. 7; xxiv, 8-10; xxxii. 3-5; xxxiv. 2-3); their princes ancl prophets encouraged them in the delusion that they should not serve the King of Babylon (Jer. xxvii. 9). In Zedekiah's fourth year, exactly a twelvemonth before Ezekiel's stepping forth as a prophet, one of these false prophets-" lower," or "fallen prophets," as Cheyne prefers to call them, regarding them as "honest though misguided enthusiasts "-Hana- niah by name, announced in the temple, before the priests and all the people, as well as in Jeremiah's hearing, that within two full years Jehovah would break the yoke of the King of Babylon from off the neck of all the nations (Jer. xxviii. 1-4). To such a vaticination he had probably been moved by the arrival shortly before of an embassy from the Kings of Edom, Moab and the Ammonites, Tyre and Zidon, which had for its object the formation of a league against the eastern conqueror (Jer. xxvii. 3), and which seemingly had so far succeeded as to draw into its meshes the weak Judman sovereign, and to excite among the unreflecting populace wild expectations of a speedy deliverance from the yoke of Babylon. These expectations, however, were doomed to disappointment. So far from Hananiah's vain-glorious announcement coming true, was Jere- miah's instantaneous rejoinder, within a brief space the easy yoke of wood the nation then bore would be exchanged for one of iron, which more- over Hananiah himself would not behold, since in that year be should· die for having taught rebellion against the Lord (Jer. x..x.viii. 16). Yet the ferment occasioned by Hananiah's prediction did not cease, but spread beyond the bounds of Palestine, till it reached the banks of the Cbebar and penetrated to the palace of the king. "The valiant son of Nabopo- lassar," who seldom dallied with incipient revolt, but usually pounced upon his victims in the midst of their treasonable projects, would speedily have crushed the new alliance, and with it Zedekiab, had not Zedekiab, fearing an evil fate, taken time by the forelock and despatched an embassy to Babylon (Jer. xxix. 3), ifhe did not afterwards proceed thither himself(Jer. li. 59), to give to his offended suzerain assurances of continued loyalty. How much of truth such assurances contained was not long in appearing, as five years later he broke into open revolt against the King of Babylon (2 Kings xxiv. 20), leaguing himself with Tyre and Ammon, and calling in the aid of Hophra, or Apries, of Egypt (eh. xvii. 15), who promised him "much horses and people." With that rapidity of movement which characterized "the favourite of Merodach," as it has distinguished all great generals, the troops of Babylon were on the march, and stood in front of Jerusalem before the war-chariots of Hophra could be mustered; and although for a time, when these latter did arrive, the Chaldean soldiers were compelled to raise the siege, it was only to return after Hophra's defeat viii INTRODUO'l'ION TO
or retreat-it is unc6rtain which-to invest the city with stricter closeness than before. After a siege of eighteen months, the supposed impregnable fortress fell. Zedekiah, who with his court had precipitately fled from the palace, was captured in the plains of Jericho and conducted to the presenoe of bis conqueror at Riblath, who cruelly massacred his sons and his nobles before bis eyes, blinded himself, bound him with chains, and carried him to Babylon, thus unconsciously fulfilling both the word of Jeremiah uttered one year before, that "Zedekiab should speak with the King of Babylon mouth to mouth, and that his eyes should behold the kina-'s eyes" (Jer. xxxii. 4), and that of Ezekiel spoken five years before, that Zedekiah should be brought to the land of the Che.ldeans, which yet he should not see, though he should die there (eh. xii. 13). On the city's fall a massacre of its inhabitants ensued, pitiless and unsparing, realizing all the horrors suggested by Ezekiel's parable of a boiling pot (eh. xxiv. 2-5). A month after, its fortified walls were laid in ruins, its temple, palaces, and mansions, with "all the houses of Jerusalem," being given to the flames, and its population, such of them as had escaped both sword and fire, swept away to swell the company of exiles upon the Chebar, leaving only a handful of the poorest of the poor upon their native soil, to act as its vine-dressers and husbandmen, with Gedaliah the son of Ahikam as their governor, and Jeremiah as Jehovah's prophet by his siqe (2 Kings xxv.; 2 Chron. xx:xvi.; Jer. xxxix., xl., Iii.). (2) The situation on the Ohebar was, in some respects, different from what it was in Jerusalem. From the first, among the exiles there would doubtless be kindred spirits to Ezel-iel, pious hearts who recognized in their banish- ment from Judah the judgment of Heaven upon an apostate people, who mourned over their own and their country's declension, and who, as by the rivers of Babylon they sat down and wept (Ps. cxxxvii. 1), remembered Zion, and longed for a restoration to its sacred precincts; but just as certainly there would be others, and these probably the larger number, who carried with them their old habits of idolatry, and showed as little dis- position to abate their devotion to heathenism as their fathers had done before them ( eh. xx. 30), or as their brethren were then doing in Jerusalem. Even at the moment when they pretended through their elders to be inquiring at Jehovah's prophet, they were setting up idols in their heart ( eh. xiv. 4); when they listened to the prophet's preaching, whether he denounced their heathen practices and called them to repentance, or prophesied against them Heaven's judgments for their wickedness, they applauded his eloquence ( eh. xxxiii. 32), and puzzled their heads over his parables (eh. x.x. 49), but never dreamt of doing as he told them. In the breasts of both sections of the community there kept on slumbering delusive hopes of a speedy deliverance from exile, fostered on the one side by the i;ecret conviction that Jehovah would not prove unfaithful to his chosM city and people, and, on the other side, by the unauthorized utterances of false prophets and prophetesses in their midst, who "Baw peace for JeruBalem THE BOOK OF TF!E PROPHET EZEKIEL. ilt