Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/274

Rh no miracle. But on the other hand, if he predicted an exile of just seventy years, the oracle was a failure. The people were not carried into captivity all at once. From which of the two or three times of deportation shall we set out? The books of Kings and Chronicles differ somewhat. But to take the chronology of Jeremiah himself, if the passage be genuine; the deportation began in the seventh year of Nebuchadnezzar, 599 before Christ; it was continued in the year 588, and concluded in 583. The exile ended in the year 536. The longest period that can be made out extends to but sixty-three, and the shortest to but forty-seven years. To make out the seventy years we must date arbitrarily from the year 606.

This prophet predicts that Nebuchadnezzar shall destroy Tyre. The prediction is clear and distinct; the destruction is to be complete and total. “With the hoofs of his horses shall he tread down all thy streets; he shall slay thy people by the sword, and thy strong garrison shall go down to the ground. … I will make thee like the top of a rock; thou shalt be to spread nets upon; thou shalt be built up no more.” But it was not so. Nebuchadnezzar was obliged to raise the siege after investing the city for thirteen years, and go and fight the Egyptians. Then sixteen years after the first oracle, Ezekiel takes back his own words: “The word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, Nebuchadnezzar … caused his army to serve a great service against Tyrus; every head was made bald,” with the chafing of the helmet, “every shoulder was peeled,” with the pressure of burdens; “yet he had no wages, nor his army from Tyrus. … Therefore, behold, I will give the land of Egypt unto Nebuchadnezzar.”

These things speak for themselves, and show the nature of the prophetic discourses, that they were moral addresses, or poetical odes. Ezekiel's celebrated prediction