Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 8.djvu/393

 JEREMIAS

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JEREMIAS

rod of correction in the hand of God, he heard the word that the Lord would watch over the execution of His decree (i, 11 sq.)- That Jerusalem would be de- stroyed was the constant assertion, the celerum censeo of the Cato of Anathoth. He appeared before the people with chains about his neck (cf. xxvii, xxviii) in order to give a drastic illustration of the captivity and chains which he foretold. The false prophets preached only of freedom and victory, but the Lord said: "A lilierty for you to the sword, to the pesti- lence, and to the famine" (xxxiv, 17). It was so clear to him that the next generation would be involved in the overthrow of the kingdom that he renounced mar- riage and the founding of a family for himself (xvi, 1-4), because he did not wish to have children who would surely be the victims of the sword or become the slaves of the Babylonians. His celibacy was conse- quently a declaration of his faith in the revelation granted him of the destruction of the city. Jeremias is thus the Biblical and histori- cal counterpart of Cassandra in the Homeric poems, who foresaw the fall of Troy, but found no credence in her own house, yet was so strong in her conviction that she renounced marriage and all the joys of life. Along with this first task. to prove the certainty of the catastrophe of 5S6, Jeremias had the second commission to declare that this catas- trophe was a moral necessity. to proclaim it in the ears i^f the people as the inevitablr result of the moral guilt sini^ t he days of Manasses ( 1 \ Kings, xxi, 10-15); in a word, to set forth the Babylonian Captivity as a moral, not merely a historical, fact. It was only because the stuli- born nation had thrown otY the yoke of the Lord (Jer., ii, 20) that it must bow its neck under the yoke of the Babylo- nians. In order to arouse the nation from its moral letli- argy, and to make moral pre|> aration for the day of the Lord, the sermons of the preacher of repentance of Ana- thoth emphasized this causal connexion between punishment and guilt, until it be- came monotonous. Although he failed to convert the people, and thus to turn aside entirely the calamity from Jerusalem, nevertheless the word of the Lord in his mouth became, for some, a hammer that broke their stony hearts to repentance (xxiii, 29). Thus, Jere- mias had not only "to root up, and to pull down", he had also in the positive work of salvation " to build, and to plant" (i, 10). These latter aims of the peni- tential discourses of Jeremias make plain why the religious and moral conditions of the time are all painted in the same dark tone: the priests do not in- quire after Jahweh; the leaders of the people them- selves wander in strange paths; the prophets prophesy in the name of Baal; Juda has become the meeting- place of strange gods; the people have forsaken the fountain of living water and have provoked the Lord to anger by idolatry and the worship of high places, by the sacrifice of children, desecration of the Sabbath, and by false weights. This severity in the discourses of Jeremias makes them the most striking type of proiihetic declamation against sin. One well-known hypothesis ascribes to Jeremias also the authorship of the Books of Kings. In reality the thought forming

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the philosophical basis of the Books of Kings and the conception underlying the speeches of Jeremias com- plement each other, inasmuch as the fall of the king- dom is traced back in the one to the guilt of the kings, and in the other to the people's participation in this guilt.

III. Life of Jeremias. — A far more exact picture of the life of Jeremias has been preserved than of the life of any other seer of Sion. It was an unbroken chain of steadily growing outward and inward diffi- culties, a genuine "Jeremiad". On account of his prophecies, his life was no longer safe among his fellow- citizens of Anathoth (xi, 21 sqq.), and of no teacher did the saying prove truer that "a prophet hath no honour in his own country". When he transferred his residence from Anathoth to Jerusalem his troubles in- creased, and in the capital of the kingdom he was doomed to learn by corporal suffering that Veritas parit odium (truth draws hatred upon itself). King Joakim could never forgive the prophet for threatening him with pun- ishment on aceoimt of his un- scrupulous mania for building and for his judicial murders: "He shall be buried with the burial of an ass" (xxii, 13- 19). When the prophecies of Jeremias were read before the king, he fell into such a rage that he threw the roll into the fire and commanded the arrest of the prophet (xxxvi, ■_'l-26). Then the word of the Lord came to Jeremias to K't Baruch the scribe write
 * i,i;ain his words (xxxvi, 27-
 * _'). More than once the

IKophet was in prison and in r I la ins without the word of ilie Lord being silenced (xxxvi, 5 sqq.); more than once he seemed, in human judgment, doomed to death, but, like a wall of brass, the word of the Almighty was the protection of his life: "Be not afraid . . . they shall not prevail: for I am with thee, saith the Lord, to deliver thee" (i, 17-19). The re- ligious opinion he main- tained, that only by a moral change could a catastrophe in outward conditions prepare the way for improve- ment, brought him into bitter conflict with the political parties of the nation. The Sion party, with its superstitious confidence in the temple (vii, 4), in- cited the people to open revolt against Jeremias, be- cause, at the gate and in the outer court of the temple, he prophesied the fate of the holy place in Silo for the house of the Lord; and the prophet was in great dan- ger of violent death at the hands of the Sionists (xxvi; cf. vii). The party friendly to Egypt cursed him because he condemned the coalition with Egypt, and presented to the King of Egypt also the cup of the wine of wTath (xxv, 17-19); they also hated him because, during the siege of Jerusalem, he declared, be- fore the event, that the hopes placed on an Egyptian army of relief were delusive (xxxvii, 5-9). The party of noisy patriots calumniated Jeremias as a morose pessimist (cf. xxvii, xxviii), because they had allowed themselves to be deceived as to the seriousness of the crisis by the flattering words of Hananias of Gabaon and his companions, and dreamed of freedom and peace while exile and war were already approaching the gates of the city. The exhortation of the prophet to accept the inevitable, and to choose voluntary sub-

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