Books: Stories of the Prophets

I >> Isaac Landman >> Stories of the Prophets

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The evening of the tragedy in the king's household was no different
than the many others that had preceded it during the time of Amon's
reign. The king and queen had just said good-night to their
eight-year-old son Josiah and his little friend Jeremiah, who had spent
the day with the young prince, and had sent them to bed, in the wing of
the palace occupied by the princes, in care of Ebed-melech, a young
Ethiopian slave, of whom both boys were very fond.

Jeremiah, who was the son of the high priest Hilkiah, lived in Anathoth,
the exclusive suburb to the north of Jerusalem, where the wealthy,
priestly families had their homes.

It was after much begging on the part of Josiah with his royal father,
and on the part of Jeremiah with his mother, that permission was given
Jeremiah to accompany his father into Jerusalem and to spend the day
and night with Josiah in the palace.

The high priest and the king were great friends, though they differed
from each other on matters of politics and religion. Hilkiah was a
follower of the religious practices and ideals of the prophet Isaiah,
while Amon was inclined to follow the religious practices and ideals
of his father, King Manasseh.

A very strange thing happened in Jerusalem and Judah when both the
good King Hezekiah and the great prophet Isaiah died and young
Manasseh came to the throne. The many religious and social reforms
that were instituted by Hezekiah under the guidance and inspiration of
Isaiah, and which saved the country from the ravages of the Assyrian
conqueror, were brought to a sudden halt by King Manasseh.

It seems that the young king was entirely under the influence of the
party at court. This party composed mostly of Manasseh's young friends
differed with the opinions of the old men who stood by Hezekiah and
Isaiah. It was the story of Rehoboam and of Ahaz all over again. The
king listened to the advice of his boon companions instead of to the
counsel of the sages.

Manasseh had another reason which, in his own mind and in the minds of
his advisers, justified the reaction he led against the teachings of
"the remnant" founded by Isaiah, and later taken up by Hezekiah.

Assyria, after the death of Sennacherib, had become the great world
power at which all the Assyrian kings, from Tiglath-Pileser III down,
had aimed. Sennacherib's successors actually conquered Egypt twice,
thus extending the sway of Assyria, with its capital at Nineveh, over
the whole of the then known world.

During both wars in which Egypt was defeated, the little kingdom of
Judah was, by its geographical location, the stamping ground for the
Assyrian armies. Judah was called upon during these wars to do more
than pay its regular tribute. It was forced to furnish food, supplies,
horses, shelter and camps to the Assyrians.

The suffering of the Jewish people at the hands of the Assyrians was
greater than ever before, and the court party asked the king whether
the nation was better off when following in the footsteps of Isaiah
and Hezekiah and worshiping the God of Isaiah and Hezekiah, than it
would be if it worshiped the gods of the Assyrians, the worshipers of
which were always victorious over their enemies.

While the Assyrian armies were coming and going through Judah, Manasseh
was anxious not alone to show his loyalty to the Assyrian throne by
the punctual payment of the tribute levied on Judah, but to show also
his personal faithfulness to the kings of Assyria by paying homage to
their gods.

So Manasseh began a bloody campaign against "the remnant", who were
now called the Prophetic Party in opposition to the Court Party.
Jerusalem flowed with the blood of the martyrs, who were nowhere safe
from the power of Manasseh and the princes.

So great and good a man as the high priest Hilkiah, Jeremiah's father,
had to hide his most inward religious beliefs and convictions in order
to escape the sword of King Manasseh.

When, after a reign of forty-five years, Manasseh died, the Prophetic
Party looked eagerly to Amon, the new king, in the hope that he would
change conditions in the land from those established by his father;
but Amon permitted all the heathen shrines that were erected
everywhere in Judah, and even in the Temple in Jerusalem, to remain.

Just why, therefore, the Court Party assassinated King Amon will never
be known. The fact remains that on this particular evening in the year
639, armed men sprang up in the palace as if by magic. The royal
family was completely exterminated, with the exception of the boy
Josiah, who had retired with Jeremiah, his young guest, to the
nursery.

Hilkiah, Jeremiah's father, who, after taking leave of his boy and
seeing the two youngsters in the care of Ebed-melech, was preparing
for the hour's trip to his home in Anathoth, was as completely dazed
by the uprising and as unprepared for it as was the king himself.

The conspirators, however, had no design on Hilkiah's life; and so, in
the pandemonium that reigned in the palace, Hilkiah stole quietly up
to the nursery.

At the door he met Ebed-melech on guard. The young Ethiopian always
waited just outside the little princes' apartment until he was sure
that the boys' every wish was satisfied and that they were asleep,
before retiring to the servants' quarters.

Hilkiah did not speak to Ebed-melech. In his excitement he probably
did not see him. He opened the door, which was not locked, hurriedly,
and entered, followed closely by the Ethiopian, who surmised, from
Hilkiah's appearance, that something unusual had happened.

Instead of finding the boys tucked away in bed, asleep, he found them
wide awake, at play. Josiah had leaned a tiny chair up against the
posts at the foot of the bed, propped it up with pillows, and, with a
wand in his hand, was playing at king. Jeremiah, in another part of
the room, had bound and laid several toy animals upon a little table
and was playing at high priest.

When Hilkiah broke into the nursery the boys stopped suddenly at their
play and looked shamefacedly at the priest. They did not notice the
flushed face nor the anxious, eager look in his eyes that changed
immediately to hope as he snatched both lads in his arms, bade them be
silent and started out of the nursery.

Ebed-melech was at his heels, asking what was wrong. Hilkiah told him
of the uprising, in a few whispered words. The Ethiopian thereupon
took the amazed Josiah in his brawny arms and led the way through the
servants' hall to the court yard.

In the tumult that reigned within the palace Hilkiah, Ebed-melech and
their burdens were not noticed by the conspirators. Unmolested, they
made their way into the royal gardens. There they hid in the shrubbery
with the boys, whose cries had been stopped by commands and pleading.

When the noise quieted down in the palace and the conspirators had
evidently been satisfied with their work, Hilkiah, carrying Jeremiah,
and Ebed-melech, carrying Josiah, quietly stole out of the garden and
made their way through a narrow by-way crossing the Mount of Olives to
Anathoth.

They arrived at Hilkiah's home at daybreak, both boys asleep. Jeremiah's
mother, almost distracted by anxiety, met the four eagerly at the door,
and, after a few words of whispered explanation by her husband, she
understood what had happened.

Silently and with the help of servants the two boys were brought into
Jeremiah's room, where they slept peacefully, being none the wiser for
the tragedy in the palace in Jerusalem.

CHAPTER II.

_The Boy King._

It was interesting to see, the next morning, the effect upon the two
boys when they discovered that instead of being in Josiah's bed in the
palace in Jerusalem they were in Jeremiah's, at his home in Anathoth.

Josiah thought it was a great joke and laughed at the miracle, as he
called it, that was performed during the night. Jeremiah, however,
being two years older than his friend and of a more active mind and
imagination, tried quietly to study out what had taken place.

Just as Josiah was figuring the miracle all out, Jeremiah's mother
entered the room. The dear woman was choked up with tears and could
not say a word. In reply to the volley of questions with which she was
greeted, she merely pressed the two boys to her bosom and kissed them.

Her trembling arms made the lads feel that something had gone wrong.
They clung to her most affectionately. She told them to dress quickly;
that it was already late in the day; that breakfast was waiting for
them and, she added smilingly, that if somebody did not reach the
breakfast room in a hurry somebody would be scolded.

At breakfast she unfolded the story of the tragedy at the palace very
guardedly and with great care, so that the blow should not fall too
heavily upon Josiah. When she finally told them that the King and
Queen were dead, the boys broke out in loud weeping. It was all she
could do to comfort and quiet them.

Just at this time, Hilkiah, Jeremiah's father, who had gone back to
the city for news, returned. He related that Jerusalem was in a great
uproar. The conspirators in the palace, who had proclaimed one of
their number as king, were having a hard time of it with the army and
the people.

It seemed that the assassins were not at all well organized and that
the assassination was most unpopular. The army proved faithful to the
royal house and the people sided with the army.

When Hilkiah had announced to the leaders of the army and the people
that the whole of Amon's family was not destroyed, but that young
Josiah was safe at Anathoth, there was great public rejoicing amid the
mourning for the king. Within a few hours the army laid siege to the
palace which was in the possession of the conspirators.

During the three days that followed the palace was besieged by a
detachment from the army. Many of the leading men of Jerusalem and
many of the army officers came to Hilkiah's home, in the meantime, to
see the young prince and to pay homage to him as his father's
successor on the throne; but Hilkiah would not permit them to see or
speak to Josiah until the siege was successful and the usurpers put
out of the way.

When the palace finally fell and the conspirators were put to death, a
great concourse of people, headed by the king's guard, marched to
Anathoth, gathered before Hilkiah's home and called for the Prince.

Hilkiah brought Josiah to a window in the second story of the house.
Upon seeing him a great shout went up from the crowd below:

"The king!"
"The king!"

The captains of the host then entered the house and consulted with
Hilkiah while the crowd outside carried on happily over the survivor
of the ancient dynasty.

After a little while the captains, surrounding Josiah who was sitting
on Hilkiah's shoulders, reappeared. A shout of acclaim greeted them.
Then began a triumphant march back to Jerusalem.

At the gates the whole city of loyal people greeted them. The royal
chariot was waiting. Instead of horses, picked young men drew it to
the palace where Josiah was proclaimed king in his father's stead.

So it happened, in the year 639, that a boy eight years old reigned as
king in Jerusalem.

CHAPTER III.

_Jeremiah's Call._

Josiah and Jeremiah passed through the first great and vital
experience of their lives together and the friendship between these
two lads was thereby knit as closely as was that of David and
Jonathan.

From the very beginning of Josiah's mounting the throne of Judah, this
friendship promised even to outrival that of the king's great ancestor
and Saul's son. Every day Hilkiah had to bring Jeremiah to the palace,
because the young king was not permitted to leave Jerusalem and go to
Anathoth.

One of the very first official acts of the king was to make Ebed-melech
a freedman; but the young Ethiopian chose to remain at the palace in
Jerusalem, to be at the right hand of his master, even to put the young
king to bed, for many years after he was crowned, as he had done the
baby prince.

This friendship of Josiah and Jeremiah had an unlooked-for effect upon
the former; for, though teachers in all the subjects that pertained to
the education of the young king were appointed, Hilkiah, the high
priest, practically became the young monarch's guardian and father.

In fact, the older Josiah grew the more he understood the love of
Hilkiah for him and the heroic act he had performed in saving him on
that terrible night of the conspiracy.

So it happened that while the boy king was instructed by special
tutors in the laws and intricacies of government, his religious and
moral training came under the influence of Hilkiah. This meant that
the moral qualities that make for manhood and character, and the
principles of religious belief that were developed in Josiah, were
identical with those that Hilkiah taught his own son.

At the suggestion of Hilkiah, a cousin of the young king, named
Zephaniah, a member of the Prophetic Party and follower of the
teachings of Isaiah, was appointed Josiah's religious instructor. The
king, therefore, grew up in total ignorance of the idolatrous
religious beliefs and practices introduced by his grandfather,
Manasseh, and practiced by his father, Amon.

Josiah was so busy with the many things relating to the government of
his kingdom that he had no time to study his religion very deeply, but
the moral influence of Zephaniah and Hilkiah was very apparent in his
development and showed their effect in his later years.

Jeremiah, on the other hand, received an education on much broader and
more general lines. Not burdened with cares of state, he studied first
of all the history of his own people and his own religion, and the
history and religion of the other peoples with whom his country came
in contact. In his religious training he was grounded deeply in the
religious history of now almost forgotten Israel as well as of Judah.
He paid special attention to the moral and religious condition of his
country and of its people and made himself master of his father's
ideals, which meant the ideals and hopes of the older prophets.

As Jeremiah advanced in years and Josiah took the reins of government
more and more into his own hands, the former's visits to the palace
became less and less frequent.

Jeremiah delighted to stay in Anathoth. He spent many hours studying
in his own room. He roamed among the barren hills near his village
from which, looking down the ravine, a view could be had of the blue
waters at the north end of the Dead Sea.

He often came across the many altars that had been erected on the high
hills and in thick groves in imitation of the heathen. Even in the
city of Jerusalem, the religious legacy left by King Manasseh had not
been destroyed. The Temple Courts were desecrated by images and the
Temple itself defiled by idolatrous practices.

The teachings of his father and the religious influence of his home
were great factors in turning Jeremiah's mind to view these
abominations with alarm for his people. Idolatry and heathen worship
led the people to practice vice and commit crimes that were abhorrent
to the religious ideas and ideals taught by such men as Amos, Hosea
and Isaiah in the days gone by, and by Zephaniah and Hilkiah in
Jeremiah's time.

Now Jeremiah knew very well that when Josiah reached the age of
manhood the influence of Zephaniah and Hilkiah upon him would tell. He
felt quite sure that, in due time, religious and moral reforms would
be introduced into the country by the king. He was convinced,
nevertheless, that a movement for reform of some kind must come from
the people at large as well as from the king.

Sometimes he thought that the people ought to be prepared for the
reforms that Josiah would surely introduce. Often, therefore, he felt
the voice of God speaking within him, urging him on to go down into
the city and there speak to the people of the living God, of His love
for them and of His religious and moral demands upon them.

One day, in the early spring, while roaming among the hills,
meditating upon the thoughts that consumed all his waking hours, he
stopped before an almond tree. It was just beginning to shoot its
earliest leaves. He contemplated this wonderful miracle of nature. He
saw the hand of God working through that tree; he saw that God must be
very watchful over the things He created; he saw in that tree a
symbol--God's message to him that the immoral and ungodly people of
Jerusalem and Judah could be awakened to a new life, even as the
almond tree was blooming into new life.

At another time he was watching carelessly a boiling caldron. A wind
unexpectedly came up from the north, so strong that Jeremiah thought
the caldron would turn over and empty its contents upon the ground. In
this, too, Jeremiah saw a symbol--a call from God to warn the people
of Judah against the oncoming of the Scythian hordes that were roaming
at large over the once great Assyrian empire, even reaching the little
states along the Mediterranean.

One night, in his room, Jeremiah was thinking over these and similar
incidents that had been happening to him quite frequently of late.
Though ready to retire, he knew that he could not sleep, because a
terrible restlessness was consuming his mind and heart.

Noiselessly, he stole out of the house into the open. It was one of
those wonderful full-moon, spring nights, when the sky is clear blue,
unclouded and studded with myriads of stars, stars, stars.

Jeremiah breathed in deeply and tramped out into the hills. He walked
lightly, as on air, without fatigue. A strange feeling, as if he
wished to get away from himself, drove him on. Finally, he reached a
point from which he could discern the most northerly corner of the
Dead Sea. For awhile he stood in his favorite spot and meditated,
though he could not, for the world of him, say what was passing
through his mind.

He pressed his temples with his open palms, hoping in that way to
clear up the jumble of thoughts tumbling about in his head. He
clenched his fists. He beat the palm of his left hand with the fist of
his right. He raised his arms to heaven, as if pleading for advice and
guidance. He was, evidently, passing through a great, inward struggle.

Then he heard a voice, clearly and distinctly, saying over and
over again:

Before I formed thee, I knew thee;
Before thou camest forth, I sanctified thee.
I have appointed thee a prophet unto the nations.

and he knew that God was speaking to him.

A stifled groan escaped his lips. The muscles of his face and body,
tense up to this moment, relaxed. He dropped to his knees and gave up
the fight. He buried his face in his arms and cried, in a muffled
voice:

Alas, O Lord God!
Behold, I do not know how to speak;
I am only a youth.

This plea showed clearly what inward agonies Jeremiah had been through.
Timid by nature, he shrank from God's call to him to go out and
prophesy to the people of Judah and Jerusalem, and he struggled
against it. Although he was now a young man of twenty-four or five, he
feared to undertake this great task and to answer the call. He felt
that he was yet too young and unprepared to deliver the message of God
to his people.

But God answered him, saying:

Do not say, "I am only a youth";
For to all to whom I shall send thee, thou shalt go,
And whatever I command thee, thou shalt speak.
Be not afraid of them,
For I am with thee to deliver thee.

And Jeremiah tells us that God, having stretched
out His hand toward him and touched his lips to purify
them, spoke to him further:--

Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth;
See, I have set thee this day over the nations and kingdoms,
To tear up, to break down and to destroy, to build up and to plant.

Now that God had selected him for a distinct and set purpose in life,
no matter how incapable and unworthy he deemed himself, and being
assured of His help and protection, Jeremiah walked slowly homeward.
For the first time he noticed that the sun had risen big and bright
and warm. His mind was calm and at rest, but his heart was filled with
woe because of what the future held out for him and his people.

CHAPTER IV.

_The Seething Caldron._

An old Hebrew proverb says, "Train up a child in the way he should go,
and even when he is old he shall not depart from it." If one should
say that the man who wrote this proverb must have thought of King
Josiah, the statement could not be entirely denied. For the religious
training he received at the hands of Zephaniah and Hilkiah soon showed
itself in the way he began to revolutionize the religious life of
Judah.

When he was only eighteen years old he began to uproot the heathen
worship that had been reintroduced by his grandfather, after the death
of Hezekiah and Isaiah. His aim was to cleanse the land entirely of
the foreign altars and sanctuaries that Manasseh had erected to the
gods of Babylonia and Assyria.

In the twelfth year of his reign, that is, in the year 627, the old
chronicler tells us, Josiah

"brake down the altars of the Baalim in his presence; and the
sun-images that were on high above them he hewed down; and
the Asherim, and the graven images, and the molten images, he
brake in pieces, and made dust of them, and strewed it upon
the graves of them that had sacrificed unto them, and purged
Judah, and Jerusalem."

It was at this time that the decline in the fortunes of Assyria set
in. Esarhaddon and his successor, Ashurbanipal, preserved a semblance
of holding the empire together; but it was not for long. Built up by
mercenaries, whose fighting was for pay and not for their country, the
weak rulers who followed Ashurbanipal on the throne in Nineveh hurled
the empire quickly to its fall.

Even in the last days of the cultured and illustrious Ashurbanipal the
outlying provinces of Assyria became independent. The Assyrian
governors were slowly withdrawn from the tributaries along the
Mediterranean Sea, and Judah, always ready to resist a foreign yoke,
began to feel its independence.

Josiah added to his territory most of what had been the kingdom of
Israel and reigned over a country that nearly equalled in size that of
David and Solomon. This good fortune of Judah, perhaps more than
anything else, convinced the king that God was again favoring his
nation, and that, therefore, it was time to remove from his dominions
all those things that were abominations in the sight of God.

Now, it is one thing to cleanse a land of its outward show of
idolatrous worship and abominable practices and another to purge the
hearts and minds of a people that have been sotted with these for more
than two generations. To do the latter never entered into Josiah's
calculations. He didn't even give it a thought. But the uselessness of
outward reforms, without inward chastening, did not escape the
deep-thinking Jeremiah.

It was evident to him that Josiah was only scratching the surface and
he wanted to come to the well-meaning king's help. Notwithstanding his
call and his conviction that his life work as a prophet had been
determined upon even before his birth, Jeremiah was yet too timid to
take up his burden among the people until the word of God came to him
a second time, saying:

"Gird up thy loins and arise,
Speak to them all that I command thee,
Do not be terrified before them, lest I terrify thee in
their presence;
For behold, I myself make thee this day a fortified city,
And a brazen wall against the kings of Judah, its princes, and the
common people.
And they shall fight against thee, but they will not overcome thee,
For I am with thee to deliver thee."

So Jeremiah's course was not to be smooth and easy! He would encounter
opposition from the common people, the princes, the king himself! But
there was no turning back for him now! Though his heart was heavy, it
was determined. Jeremiah went down to Jerusalem to preach.

His first pleadings were in line with Josiah's reforms:

"A voice is heard upon the bare heights, the weeping and the
supplications of the children of Israel; because they have
perverted their way, they have forgotten the Lord their God.
Return ye backsliding children;
I will heal your backsliding."

Jeremiah began his eventful career with the old cry of Amos and Hosea,
against the widespread evil, the seething caldron of idolatry and
wrongdoing that threatened the destruction of the nation. It was far
more serious, however, than in the days of the earlier prophets. Then
the people worshiped idols and seemed to know no better; now the
people employed all the ancient idolatrous practices for worshiping
the idols and the heavenly bodies and God at the same time.

Therefore, Jeremiah heard from the people at the idols' shrines, in
reply to his pleadings, practically the same answer that greeted Amos
at Bethel:

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