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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Stories of the Prophets, by Isaac Landman
+
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+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: Stories of the Prophets
+       (Before the Exile)
+
+Author: Isaac Landman
+
+Release Date: February, 2005 [EBook #7482]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on May 9, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STORIES OF THE PROPHETS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, Robert Shimmin,
+David King, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                       STORIES OF THE PROPHETS
+
+
+
+
+                   COMMISSION ON JEWISH EDUCATION
+
+                                of the
+
+               UNION OF AMERICAN HEBREW CONGREGATIONS
+
+                               and the
+
+                CENTRAL CONFERENCE OF AMERICAN RABBIS
+
+                      DAVID PHILIPSON, Chairman
+
+             JOSEPH L. BARON           DAVID MARX
+             EDWARD N. CALISCH         S. FELIX MENDELSOHN
+             H. G. ENELOW              JULIAN MORGENSTERN
+             HARRY W. ETTELSON         JOSEPH RAUCH
+             MAX HELLER                WILLIAM ROSENAU
+             SAMUEL KOCH               SAMUEL SCHULMAN
+             GERSON B. LEVI            ABBA H. SILVER
+             HARRY LEVI                ABRAM SIMON
+             LOUIS L. MANN             LOUIS WITT
+                             LOUIS WOLSEY
+
+                       GEORGE ZEPIN, Secretary
+
+
+
+
+
+                       STORIES OF THE PROPHETS
+
+                         (Before the Exile)
+
+
+
+                          BY ISAAC LANDMAN
+
+
+
+
+                                  To
+                              My Parents
+
+               Who first introduced me to the Prophets,
+                     this book is dedicated with
+                          love and devotion.
+
+
+
+
+                              CONTENTS.
+
+
+I. THE SHEPHERD OF TEKOAH.
+    1. An End to War
+    2. In the Days of Prosperity
+    3. The Man Who Dared
+    4. Treason and a Fight
+    5. Priest Against Prophet
+    6. The Prophet in Tekoah
+
+II. THE MAN WHO LEARNED HIS LESSON.
+    1. An Eventful Night
+    2. The Tragedy with a Purpose
+    3. The Repentant Returns
+
+III. THE STATESMAN PROPHET.
+    1. The Vision in the Temple
+    2. The Parable of the Vineyard
+    3. A Coward on the Throne
+    4. On Deaf Ears
+    5. The Survival of the Fittest
+    6. Working with the Remnant
+    7. Like Father, Like Son
+    8. The Prophet Triumphs
+    9. The Fruit of His Labor
+
+IV. THE COMMONER.
+    1. His Awakening
+    2. The Cause of the Common People
+    3. When Samaria Fell
+    4. Judah Learns Its Lesson
+
+V. THE PROPHET OF WOE AND HOPE.
+    1. The Escape
+    2. The Boy King
+    3. Jeremiah's Call
+    4. The Seething Caldron
+    5. The Great Discovery
+    6. A New Covenant
+    7. To the Fore Again
+    8. The Shadow of a King
+    9. The Temple of the Lord
+    10. A Narrow Escape
+    11. A Taste of Martyrdom
+    12. The Woe of the Prophet
+    13. Teacher and Pupil
+    14. Baruch's First Venture
+    15. The King Hears and Acts
+    16. Beginning of the End
+    17. The First Deportation
+    18. In Exile and in the Homeland
+    19. A Friend in Need
+    20. In the Midst of Despair
+    21. Lamentations and a Vain Hope
+    22. Cowardice and Treachery
+    23. Jeremiah, the Martyred
+
+
+
+
+                        LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+"_The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz._"--Isaiah I, 1
+
+"_Prepare to meet thy God, O Israel._"--Amos IV, 12
+
+"_Yea, I will betroth thee unto me in righteousness, and in
+judgment, and in loving kindness, and in mercy._"--Hosea II, 21
+
+"_Here am I, send me._"--Isaiah VI, 8
+
+"_And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears
+into pruning-hooks._"--Isaiah II, 4
+
+"_For the transgression of Jacob is all this, and for the sins of
+the house of Israel._"--Micah I, 5
+
+"_I sat alone because of Thy hand._"--Jeremiah XV, 17
+
+"_And thou, Pashur, and all that dwell in thy house shall go into
+captivity._"--Jeremiah XX, 6
+
+
+
+
+                               FOREWORD
+
+
+The company of inspired men, commonly known as the prophets of Israel,
+were the unique product of the Jewish religious genius. They were
+pre-eminently preachers of righteousness. Fearless and undaunted, they
+told the house of Israel their sins and the house of Jacob their
+transgressions. They contemplated the facts of life from the highest
+point of view. For them religion and morality were blended, ethics and
+politics were one. Theirs was peculiarly a social message; the demand
+for justice underlies all their thinking and speaking. They had a
+veritable passion for righteousness; through all the ages their words
+have been torches lighting the way of men struggling upward towards
+the truth.
+
+Though living over twenty-six hundred years ago, these men are very
+modern. As a great thinker has well said, "The spirit of the prophets
+of Israel is in the modern soul." The foremost workers for the welfare
+of their fellowmen to-day posit social justice as the first article of
+their program. The world to-day, as never before, is filled with cries
+for social righteousness as the indispensable foundation for the
+structure of society. What is this but harking back to the eternal
+message of the ancient prophets? "Let justice flow as water"
+passionately and unreservedly demanded Amos of old; for him and his
+brother prophets this was the sine qua non for society's welfare; the
+same may be said of the thousands and tens of thousands to-day of
+every creed and every nation who are toiling for the social salvation
+of their fellowmen the world over. Ages meet; the words of the ancient
+preachers of righteousness are still the inspiration for the seekers
+after justice everywhere.
+
+The story of the life work of these giants of the spirit has often
+been told, but it can be told none too often, particularly if the
+telling is well done, as is the case in the present volume. Each one
+of these men delivered the same message in his own individual and
+inimitable way. Yet their work was continuous and forms a consecutive
+tale. In the speeches and experiences of each one of them the eternal
+truths they present appears in differing light. The author of the
+present volume approaches his subject, one might say, from the
+dramatic standpoint, for, with fine insight, he has culled from the
+lives of the prophets those striking and intense experiences which
+illustrate most powerfully the indomitable spirit of these men who
+followed right in scorn of consequence, for were they not the
+messengers of the God of right whose demand upon men is, as told by
+one of them in imperishable words, to do justice, to love mercy and to
+walk humbly with God?
+
+The author has succeeded well in his characterization of the various
+prophets. His pages glow with the vital spark of each prophet's
+flaming figure. He has named his book fittingly "Stories of the
+Prophets," and interesting stories has he told. He has brought to his
+task not only a sympathetic appreciation of his subject, but an
+imaginative faculty that has enabled him to supply links in the
+narrative suggested if not actually given in the incidents preserved
+in the recorded annals.
+
+From the words of the prophets themselves he has, therefore,
+occasionally built up situations which if not strictly indicated in
+the original text may, at any rate, be imagined. Not as predictors of
+events in the far future, for this the prophets were not, despite
+frequent interpretations of their words along this line, but as bold
+speakers of the truth, as fiery preachers of the right, as intrepid
+champions of the poor and oppressed, as fearless denouncers of
+corruption and wrong in high places does our author present the
+leading figures in his book. As such, their words are as significant
+for us to-day as they were for the men of their generation, and their
+impassioned accents sound as forcefully now as they did then. This is
+brought out clearly and strikingly in the sketches of this volume,
+which without doubt will succeed in giving a vivid picture to the
+reader of these towering spirtual heroes who belong to the ages,
+speakers of the everlasting nays and yeas of the Everlasting God.
+
+DAVID PHILIPSON.
+
+CINCINNATI, SEPTEMBER, 1912.
+
+
+
+
+
+                        THE SHEPHERD OF TEKOA
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER I.
+
+                        _An End to War._
+
+
+   "Damascus has fallen!
+    Damascus has fallen!!"
+
+The whole city of Samaria rang with the glad tidings. Fleet-footed
+runners, who had started with this precious news on the day of
+victory, covered more than one hundred and fifty miles to bring it to
+the capital of the Kingdom of Israel.
+
+They crossed mountains and swam rivers, fairly flew over fertile
+plains and through busy cities, shouting, while there was breath in
+their bodies:
+
+   "Damascus has fallen!"
+
+Many of the messengers fell exhausted on the way, but others took up
+the wonderful news from the front and carried it on, until the whole
+northern part of the kingdom knew of the king's victory.
+
+Little by little the whole story was told to the eager Samarians--how
+the king, Jeroboam II, himself led the hosts of Israel; how attack
+followed attack upon the fortified Syrian capital; how the first
+breach was made in the outer wall; how the valiant Israelites rushed
+upon the enemy, and how the final victory was won for Israel's
+standard.
+
+What a celebration was there in Samaria that long-to-be-remembered
+day!
+
+Not since the days when the first Jeroboam led the rebellion of the
+ten tribes against King Solomon's weak son, Rehoboam, and established
+the independent kingdom of the Ten Tribes, with Samaria as the
+capital, was there such rejoicing in that city.
+
+We can picture the celebration in our mind's eye; we cannot describe
+it in words.
+
+Parents who had sent their sons to the war now laughed happily through
+their tears, because there would be an end to war.
+
+Sisters whose brothers doubtless lay dead in and about the walls of
+the doomed city, now sang songs of joy in the midst of their weeping,
+because there would be an end to war.
+
+The strongest and finest men of Israel had given their lives for their
+country, but now, thank God! there would be an end to war.
+
+The fall of Damascus meant the end of a hundred and fifty years' war,
+commenced by Ben-hadad I, of Syria, against Israel, long before
+Jeroboam's great-grandfather established the dynasty of Jehu on the
+throne of Israel.
+
+It meant even more than that; it meant the end of Syrian oppression,
+and, perhaps, a period of peace to the long-troubled and war-ridden
+kingdom of Israel.
+
+No wonder, then, that there were feasts of rejoicing and full-throated
+cries:
+
+
+   "Damascus has fallen! Long live King Jeroboam!"
+   "Damascus has fallen! Long life to the house of Jehu!"
+
+All day and all night Samaria swarmed with people. The streets were
+thronged with shouting men and women who had come from Geba and
+Dothan, and even from Jezreel on the north, and from Schechem and
+Shiloh and Bethel on the south, to help celebrate the great victory.
+
+Sacrifices were brought at all the sanctuaries of Israel--in Bethel,
+in Dan, in Gilgal, in Beersheba.
+
+Priests and people brought thank-offerings, and, together, sang
+praises to God:
+
+   "God is my light and my salvation,
+    Whom shall I fear?
+    God is the strength of my life,
+    Of whom shall I be afraid?"
+
+Truly, God was on the side of Israel, or else the Syrians could not
+have been defeated. He was showing favor to the Northern Kingdom, and
+was pleased with Israel, for was not Judah, the Southern Kingdom, too,
+paying tribute to Jeroboam?
+
+And so they recalled how Joash, the father of the great Jeroboam II,
+defeated Amaziah, king of Judah, took him captive, partially
+demolished the walls of Jerusalem, and looted the Temple in Jerusalem.
+
+
+The older men of Samaria remembered the fine sarcasm with which Joash
+treated Amaziah's challenge to war, in his reply:
+
+"The thistle that was in Lebanon sent to the cedar that was in
+Lebanon, saying, 'Give thy daughter to my son to wife,' and there
+passed by a wild beast that was in Lebanon, and trod down the
+thistle."
+
+How young and old laughed at the repetition of this clever little
+story that compared Israel to a cedar in its strength and to a wild
+beast in its fighting power, and Judah to a poor, little thistle to be
+tramped upon!
+
+Jeroboam II was indeed a son of his father. Joash humbled Judah,
+Israel's enemy on the south; Jeroboam humbled Syria, Israel's enemy on
+the north.
+
+Not satisfied with the fall of Damascus, however, Jeroboam pushed
+right ahead and captured Lodebar and Karnaim, which he turned over to
+Assur-dan, king of Assyria.
+
+The fact is that Jeroboam had to do this. It was his end of a bargain
+made with Assur-dan. It was agreed between the two that the Assyrians
+would keep their hands off during the war between Israel and Syria.
+
+As a reward for Assur-dan's non-interference, Jeroboam undertook to
+capture these two cities and turn them over to the Syrians to become
+part of his empire.
+
+Having fulfilled his agreement, Jeroboam continued his victorious
+march further north, and never stopped until he had laid low the pride
+of Hamath, the prosperous city on the river Orontes.
+
+Jeroboam II, thus had the great distinction of restoring the
+boundaries of the Kingdom of Israel to the proportions of the empire
+of David and Solomon, "from the entrance of Hamath unto the sea of
+Arabah," which is the Dead Sea.
+
+Wonderful was the reception prepared for the king and his victorious
+army on their return to Samaria. More people had come to the city to
+join in the welcoming demonstration than had pilgrimed to Jerusalem on
+the Passover, in the days before the division of the kingdom.
+
+The northern walls were massed with people, and the gates were
+decorated with flowers. Priests and elders, dressed in spotless white
+and led by the high priest, Amaziah, himself, awaited Jeroboam and his
+generals just outside of the city and preceded them to the gates. Such
+an acclamation of joy as greeted the king upon his entrance through
+the gates had never been heard in Samaria.
+
+Passing through a triumphal arch of stone and marble, the procession
+was met by hundreds of maidens and children, clothed in linen and
+gold, who led the way, singing and strewing flowers in the path of
+the heroes.
+
+A turn in the street led to the market-place. Here had been built a
+great triumphal arch of ivory and gold, beyond which was an altar,
+specially erected for the occasion.
+
+Passing through the arch, Amaziah and Jeroboam mounted the steps that
+led to the altar. All the rest remained below. When the priest and the
+king faced the people the singing and the shouting ceased. With due
+ceremony, and according to the rites, the king brought a thanks-offering
+to God for his victories and his safe return. When Amaziah placed the
+sacrifice upon the altar a deep hush fell over the great assembly.
+
+Slowly the smoke of the sacrifice rose to heaven, and the multitude of
+people, like one man, fell on their knees and worshiped.
+
+Jeroboam was deeply moved. Solemnly he raised his right hand, and,
+from the depths of his grateful heart, he said:
+
+   "Peace to the house of Israel!"
+
+Like the rumble of a mighty wave rolling toward the shore came the
+response from the sea of worshiping people:
+
+   "To the house of Israel, peace!"
+
+For one whole week after Jeroboam's triumphant entry into the capital,
+Samaria was a place of feasting and rejoicing. When, by command of the
+king, the celebration came to an end and the people began to return to
+their homes, each one, on leaving the city's gates, repeated to
+himself the now answered prayer of over a century:
+
+   "Peace to the house of Israel!
+    To the house of Israel, peace!"
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER II.
+
+                  _In the Days of Prosperity._
+
+
+It was market day in Samaria.
+
+Great throngs of people crowded all the streets. They jostled each
+other good naturedly, traded, bargained, renewed acquaintanceship,
+spoke of their home towns and expressed the hope of meeting again.
+
+The market place itself, where the many bazaars displayed wonderful
+merchandise from many cities and many lands, was an especially lively
+place. It was gay with life and color. Gilded chariots and ivory-bedecked
+litters passed to and fro. Heralds announced particularly important
+personages and escorts and cleared a way for them with whip or spear.
+Military men and merchant princes, with many followers, often
+scattered the smaller merchants and petty traders in their path
+through the market. Many were caught under the wheels of the vehicles
+of the rich when they did not get out of the way quickly enough.
+Others were purposely thrust aside by the wealthy aristocrats simply
+to show their disdain.
+
+
+It was a typical Samarian market day--crowds and noise; buying and
+selling; idle rich and drudging poor; haughty military grandees, in
+their resplendent attires, and cowed, miserable beggars in their rags;
+color and laughter at the bazaars, and tears and sorrow at the auction
+block just across the way--always crowds and always noise.
+
+The auctioneer was shouting above the general din the good points of a
+man who had just been placed on the block.
+
+"To be sold till the Jubilee Year," he cried. "How much am I bid?"
+
+A clerk read the court's decree that this man was to be sold for debt.
+It was signed by the judges, who sat in the East Gate of Samaria. The
+document was a cold, formal statement. It did not take into account
+the reason why this man, in the full vigor of manhood, had fallen into
+debt. His creditors had pushed the poor fellow hard for their money.
+He could not pay. He pleaded with the judges that the sickness of his
+wife and children had reduced him to direst need, but it was without
+avail. He could not pay his debts and must work them off as a slave
+for seven years; that was the decree of the court. After seven years
+he would be a free man again. Cases like this were very common.
+
+The keen eye of the auctioneer noted a man at the far edge of the
+platform who had made several attempts as if to bid during the sale.
+He was a middle-aged man, tall and thin, but wiry. His face was
+bronzed from exposure to sun and wind. He wore a long woolen mantel
+that completely covered him, even to the sandals on his feet.
+
+"How much am I bid?" The auctioneer spoke the question directly to
+this country yokel, while he winked at the crowd in front of him. He
+thought that the fellow who came to the market clad in such clothes,
+instead of his Sabbath best, had little money with him to buy a slave,
+and less use for one. So he spoke the question again to the "farmer,"
+expecting an answer that would make the crowd laugh and put them in
+good humor.
+
+The country yokel again made as if to speak but changed his mind and
+backed away, facing the auctioneer.
+
+He had hardly backed three paces when he bumped into some one. He was
+pushed violently forward, and, before he could recover, winced under a
+stinging crack from a whip.
+
+He turned quickly and faced two brutish looking men, swearing at his
+awkwardness and cursing his impudence for being in the way.
+
+The "farmer" could have given a good account of himself in a square
+fight with these men, but he knew better than to start a fight with
+them. They were the foreguards to a splendid pleasure outfit--the
+outfit of a very rich Samarian merchant. A fight meant arrest and
+punishment at the hands of Samarian judges, whether he was in the
+right or not. The rich of Samaria had the judges under their thumbs. A
+stranger or a poor man, in fact, anyone who had no influence in
+Samaria, stood little chance of getting justice.
+
+So the farmer cleared the way. Standing aside, he watched the chariot
+drawn by four Egyptian steeds, surrounded by guards, slaves and
+hangers-on, make its way through the crowded market place, paying no
+attention to the rights and privileges of any one. The wealthy
+merchant in the chariot held his head up proudly. He greeted only the
+prosperous looking; upon the curious crowds and small merchants, he
+looked down with contempt.
+
+The merchant whose attendants had so grossly insulted the "farmer"
+drew up before a great palace. Rich carpets were spread from the
+chariot to the steps of the mansion. The rich man's followers bowed
+low as he passed up the steps and through the door held open by
+attendants. Some followed him into the house; others mingled with the
+people in the market place; the slaves went to their quarters by a
+rear entrance.
+
+The stranger in the woolen robe was not as green as he looked. He had
+witnessed the growth and prosperity of Samaria during the last twenty
+years of Jeroboam II's reign until it became the busiest trade center
+in the Empire.
+
+Leaning against the stone column, on which was graven the record of
+Jeroboam's victory over Damascus, and still smarting from the lash of
+the servant's whip, he recalled the story of Samaria's great strides
+to its present prosperous condition.
+
+The subjugation of Judah on the south, which this farmer had good
+cause to remember; the conquest of Syria on the north and Jeroboam's
+peace compact with Assyria further east, assured a long period of
+peaceful development within the empire.
+
+New highways were built, so that the farther ends of the country were
+brought close together for business purposes. Farmers could bring
+their crops to the cities easily. Many remained in the cities and
+engaged in business pursuits. Caravans traveled great distances,
+bringing precious luxuries from one part of the empire to another, and
+even from foreign countries.
+
+Many thus became very wealthy. They built themselves palaces for
+winter residences in the cities and palaces for summer residences in
+the country. To get rich seemed to be the aim of everybody; and, with
+riches, came ostentation and luxuriant living.
+
+The city of Samaria, especially, was the center for Israel's most
+wealthy men. Their homes were wonders of stone and ivory. The
+furnishings rivaled in beauty the splendor of the outside. The rooms
+were high and spacious. The beds and tables and chairs were of the
+finest wood of Lebanon, carved by the craftsmen of Tyre, and inlaid
+with ivory. The coverings were of the richest purple and gold from
+Egypt and the Indies. Wine cellars were a part of every house and
+feasts were spread whenever the occasion offered itself. Fatted lambs
+and calves were slaughtered daily to supply the tables, and new
+instruments were invented to furnish music at the feasts.
+
+This, however, was only one side of the picture of Samaria in its days
+of greatest prosperity. The "farmer" knew that there was another, much
+less beautiful. While the rich were growing richer, the poor were
+growing poorer.
+
+The rich, thinking only of themselves, their wealth, their power,
+their good times, cheated and oppressed the poor unmercifully. They
+gave false weights and short measure and sold at high prices, poor
+stuff at that. They would drive a poor man into debt and have him sold
+into slavery; so that human beings became a drug on the market, as it
+were. In fact, at the very auction which the "farmer" watched that
+day, one poor man was sold for the price of a pair of shoes. The poor
+had even no chance to get justice in the courts. The greed for money
+placed corrupt officials in office and the offenders bribed them to
+the undoing of the poor and needy.
+
+Strange to say, the Israelites, in whose midst there were those who
+lived such scandalous lives and treated the poor people so
+outrageously--the Israelites--nevertheless, believed in their hearts
+that they had not forgotten God. They believed that God was with them;
+that He loved them above all other peoples; that He guarded and
+protected them; that He sent them all their blessings of prosperity
+and peace.
+
+This is the way they reasoned it out: Had not God helped them to
+defeat Judah? Had not God been with them when they crushed their
+ancient foe, Syria? Did not God send them rain in season, so that
+crops were good and plentiful?
+
+"Therefore," said they, "God is on our side. Let us go up to the
+sanctuaries and offer sacrifices upon His altars."
+
+And so, at festival times, Bethel and Gilgal, and Dan and Beersheba
+were crowded with the rich, offering their sacrifices, feasting,
+drinking and rejoicing. It never entered their minds that God is the
+God of the poor, as well as of the rich. Though they continued to rob
+and oppress and enslave the poor and the needy and the helpless, they
+were perfectly satisfied with the idea that all God asked of them was
+to offer the prescribed sacrifices. If there were any who knew
+differently, or thought differently, they seemingly did not dare say
+so in anybody's hearing. For the poor, these were, indeed, evil times.
+
+
+At this point in his musings, the "farmer" actually shuddered. He was
+not aware that his peculiar dress and his peculiar position at the
+moment had attracted attention. While he was contrasting in his mind
+the great difference between the rich and the poor in Samaria, several
+men, having nothing better to do, had stopped to stare at the yokel.
+As is always the case when people stand in the street and gawk, a
+large crowd soon assembled. A military chariot stopped near the group
+of curious gazers to see what was going on. Soon several others were
+halted there, including gilded and gaudy litters, in which fashionably
+dressed women were being conveyed. All stared, called each other's
+attention to the queerly garbed stranger, and finally laughed
+outright.
+
+The man who was the center of attraction became aware of the crowd
+only when he had reached that point in his thoughts, the horrible
+picture of which had made him shudder. When he noticed the crowd, he
+gasped. He recovered from his astonishment quickly, however. He opened
+his mantle, showing his gaunt, powerful form. He raised his head and
+faced the crowd. His face, strong and sunburned, was tense and drawn
+for a moment; then it relaxed. Deep lines, expressing severe pain,
+were furrowed in his forehead.
+
+The crowd, in turn, was astonished at the complete change that had
+come over the "yokel." Before they recovered from their mistaken
+opinion about the man, they saw him clinch his fists in determination
+and heard his voice ring out clearly and distinctly, above the din of
+the market place:
+
+   "Hear ye,
+    Who turn justice to wormwood
+    And cast down righteousness to the earth;
+    Who trample upon the poor
+    And afflict the just;
+    Who take a bribe
+    And thrust aside the needy in the gate:
+    I know how manifold are your transgressions,
+    Saith the Lord, God of hosts,
+    And how mighty your sins,
+    The end of my people Israel hath come,
+    Saith the Lord, God of hosts,
+    I can no longer forgive."
+
+This outspoken attack upon Samaria, its rich, and its military nobles,
+was so extraordinary that it amazed the crowd. Having spoken, the
+"farmer" turned away and was soon lost among the bazaars. Some looked
+after him, astonished at his recklessness in laying himself open to
+the revenge of the powers that be. Others looked after him, amazed at
+his bravery and fearlessness.
+
+That night many in Samaria had heard of the unknown stranger and his
+speech in the market place. At many dinner tables the question was
+asked:
+
+"Who is this man who dares to lift his voice against the high and
+powerful in behalf of the poor and downtrodden?"
+
+"Who is this man who dares to proclaim the doom of the Kingdom of
+Israel in the days of its greatest prosperity?"
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER III.
+
+                      _The Man Who Dared._
+
+
+There lived a man in the little town of Tekoah, in the Kingdom of
+Judah, twelve miles south of Jerusalem, who made a living from
+"dressing sycamore trees."
+
+In ancient Palestine, the fruit of the sycamore that grew in Judah was
+dried, ground into flour and used for making coarse bread. This bread
+was eaten by the very poorest people, who could not afford to buy
+wheat.
+
+Now, the man who lived from gathering poor fruit, out of which poor
+bread was made, for poor people, must, himself, have been very poor.
+
+But a poor man may love his country as much as a rich man; and, when
+the foolish war between Amaziah of Judah and Joash of Israel broke
+out, this "dresser of sycamore trees," from Tekoah, followed his king
+on the battlefield.
+
+At the battle in which Amaziah was defeated and Joash gained his
+greatest victory, leading to the destruction of part of the
+fortifications of Jerusalem, this man, fighting valiantly in the front
+ranks, with many other patriotic Judeans, laid down his life for his
+country. He was buried in the trenches, an unknown hero, whose name is
+not even in the records.
+
+But history gives us the record of his son, named Amos. Left with his
+widowed mother, after the war, the burden of finding a living for the
+two was soon thrust upon him. There was only one thing that he knew by
+which he could earn money--"dressing sycamore trees."
+
+He went at his work with a vim. As he grew up, and his and his
+mother's needs increased, his wits became sharpened. Why could he not
+dry and grind the sycamore fruit himself? This he did and increased
+his income. Then, his mother suggested that she would bake the flour
+into bread, if he would sell it. Amos agreed to that, and the little
+family thrived.
+
+One day Amos brought the idea to his mother that their sycamore bread
+could be sold at a better price in Jerusalem. He asked for permission
+to go there and his mother, desiring more that her son should see the
+capital than that he should get higher prices for the bread, said:
+
+"Go, my son, and God be with thee."
+
+That trip to Jerusalem and the several trips that followed, made a
+great impression upon the young man and gave a remarkable turn to his
+whole life.
+
+He saw Jerusalem, of whose beauty and glory his father had often told
+him, a fallen city. It had not yet recovered from the terrible results
+of the war with Amaziah of Israel; King Uzziah had not yet restored
+the treasures and vessels of which the temples had been looted; and,
+in the quarter of the city where Amos sold his bread, oh! such
+poverty, such wretchedness, such desolation!
+
+His heart was filled with grief. He went to the trenches where he knew
+his father lay in an unmarked grave, and wept bitterly. There, at his
+father's grave, a wonderful thought came to him. A new light entered
+into his life and a great determination for his future career. His
+mind once made up, he soon outlined a plan for himself, and having the
+determination to carry the plan through, he made rapid progress.
+
+With the additional profits that resulted from his business trips to
+Jerusalem, Amos bought sheep and goats and became a shepherd, as well
+as a gatherer of sycamore fruit.
+
+The great rocky wilderness that slopes from the limestone hills of
+Tekoah down to the Dead Sea was just the place where sheep and goats
+could prosper.
+
+So, in addition to the thriving business of his old trade, he dealt,
+also, in goat milk and wool and in the animals themselves.
+
+Often, as he sat on the hillsides, in the cool of the sycamores, and
+watched his flocks, his mind would turn to the things he saw and heard
+in Jerusalem. He had heard there that Bethel, one of the sanctuaries
+of Israel, was always filled with pilgrims at festival time--and he
+determined upon a trip to Bethel, twenty-two miles north of Tekoah.
+
+He returned greatly disheartened.
+
+"Wealth and feasting saw I there," Amos told his mother, "and wine and
+song, and altars reeking with blood of fatted lambs and oxen; but God
+was not in the heart of the people of Israel."
+
+His mother chided him gently. To say such things was blasphemy; for
+sacrifices were demanded of all the people by the religious laws of
+the state; and it was also commanded that a portion of the sacrifice
+should be consumed by him who brought it--therefore the feasting. As
+to the song and wine, did not the Sweet Singer say, "Serve the Lord
+with gladness?"
+
+Amos did not reply. He knew that his good-hearted mother had given
+expression to the idea of God's worship as all the people, both of
+Israel and of Judah, at that time, understood it. They brought the
+sacrifices, as prescribed by the priests at the sanctuaries; a portion
+of the slaughtered animal was given to God on the altar, and the
+portion that was eaten by the sacrificer was looked upon as a meal--a
+banquet--participated in by him and God, together; such a meal soon
+became a feast, with wine and song. Unfortunately, these banquets
+often degenerated into drunkenness and revelry.
+
+Amos felt that such worship of God was not right, but he had not yet
+discovered what was wrong.
+
+When the period of prosperity opened up for Israel, with Jeroboam II's
+conquest of Damascus, Judah also felt the good times. Amos, now an
+experienced master herdsman, took the advantage afforded by the peace
+and improved business conditions. He traveled with his stock-in-trade
+to far northern markets, to Samaria, to Damascus, to Hamath, and, from
+there his caravans wended their way east, even as far as the City
+Asshur, the capital of Assyria.
+
+He was not a mere trader, however. He was a close observer and a
+student of men and things wherever he led his caravans. He talked with
+strangers about other lands which he had not visited and became,
+therefore, well acquainted with political, religious and social
+conditions everywhere.
+
+All this made no change in the outward circumstances of Amos. Success
+did not turn his head. He did not build himself a palace, but remained
+with his mother in the village of Tekoah, where he was born and
+raised. He did not indulge himself with fine clothes and high living,
+but continued to dress simply and live plainly.
+
+His mother was often greatly worried about Amos. When he returned from
+a far northern and eastern trip he would betake himself to his beloved
+hills and sycamore groves and flocks. He would work with the most
+lowly of his sycamore fruit gatherers; but he would often spend hours
+by himself in the woods or in the wilderness.
+
+It was during these lonesome hours that Amos added high thinking to
+his simple living. The grandeur of Samaria and the wealth he saw
+displayed in Bethel did not deceive him. Neither did the peace compact
+between Jeroboam II and Assur-dan III blind him to the exact state of
+affairs in the relationship between the two countries.
+
+He knew that Tiglath-Pileser III, the successor of Assur-dan, had
+crushed all rebellions in Assyria, which Assur-dan III had failed to
+do, and was reorganizing the army of the great empire. He knew that
+Damascus, which had been weakened by Jeroboam II beyond hope of
+recovery, would be the first point of conquest for the young and
+energetic Pul, as Tiglath-Pileser was called. Next before him, to the
+south, lay the rich Kingdom of Israel, the booty from whose palaces
+and sanctuaries would be an enormous prize for the Assyrian emperor
+and his army. After Damascus, must come Samaria!
+
+In other words, Amos saw distinctly that the time was near when Israel
+would have to fight again for its independence and its very life; and
+he asked himself, "Is Israel prepared?"
+
+Clearly it was not. The rich had become unfit for war, because of
+their luxuriant living. The poor had become unfit for war, because of
+their oppression by the rich. Should the Assyrians invade the land,
+how could such a nation of weaklings defend its home and its liberty?
+
+Israel must be warned! It must be awakened from its stupidity to a
+realization of the danger ahead! The rich must cease their extravagances
+and become manly men again! The poor must be given their rights, must
+be treated justly and righteously, that they may become manly men
+again! Only a nation of moral, upright, God-fearing men can hope for
+victory! If the Assyrians should defeat and crush Israel, it will be
+God's punishment visited upon Israel for its sins and crimes.
+
+Amos had often discussed these things with his mother. She was not
+surprised, therefore, when, one day, upon his return from a long trip
+into Assyria, Amos said to her, "I am called to the cities of Israel.
+My mission will be prolonged many days."
+
+The good woman knew and understood. Laying her hands upon his head,
+she repeated the blessing with which she had blessed him when, as a
+timid young man, he made his first trip to Jerusalem:
+
+"Go, my son, and God be with thee."
+
+And so it was that Amos, the herdsmen of Tekoah, had dared to speak
+for the poor people in Samaria, and to prophesy the fall of the
+Kingdom.
+
+His first speech attracted little attention, but others, in various
+parts of the country, to the same effect, followed. Many laughed at
+them; few thought seriously about them.
+
+But Amos was not so easily discouraged. He concluded that the wrong
+idea the people had about God, how to worship Him and what He demanded
+of them, was the cause of all the evil. Amos, therefore, selected the
+sanctuaries during festival season as the place where he must do his
+preaching.
+
+He went especially to Bethel, the king's sanctuary, where Jeroboam
+brought his sacrifices and where the great nobles and soldiers and
+richest merchants gathered and reveled in their feasts.
+
+One day Amos broke in upon a reveling group, with the unexpected call:
+
+   "Prepare to meet thy God, O Israel!"
+
+Such a call was, indeed, unexpected. The Israelites, assembled at the
+sanctuary, offering their sacrifices, believed that they were
+_with_ their God. Some one told Amos as much, and the crowd
+jeered at the fool, who evidently did not understand his religion.
+
+This laughter ceased suddenly, however, when Amos began to chant a
+mournful dirge:
+
+   "Hear ye this word which I take up for a lamentation over you,
+        O house of Israel!
+    Fallen, no more to rise, is the virgin Israel!
+    Cast down upon her soil she lies,
+    There is none to raise her up.
+    The city that taketh the field with a thousand,
+    Hath but a hundred left;
+    And the one that taketh the field with a hundred,
+    Hath but ten left."
+
+A young officer, who felt that the army, the pride of the Kingdom, had
+been grossly insulted, rushed forth from the crowd and exclaimed,
+hotly: "Thou art a false prophet! Prophesy no more."
+
+Then he continued, explaining to Amos and to the crowd, that God could
+not have sent such a message to the house of Israel. God was with
+them, he said, and was gracious to them. Israel was stronger, mightier
+than ever before and Israel was, that very day, at Bethel, at Gilgal,
+at Beersheba, bringing thanks-offerings to God.
+
+Amos stood stolidly by and listened until the young man had finished.
+Then he replied:
+
+   "Thus saith God to the house of Israel:
+    Ye that oppress the poor and crush the needy,
+    That trample upon the just and cause the poor of the land to fail,
+    Seek _Me_ and live,
+    But seek not Bethel,
+    And Gilgal do not enter,
+    To Beersheba go not over;
+    For Gilgal shall surely go into captivity
+    And Bethel shall come to naught.
+    Seek God and not evil
+    That ye may live
+    And so God, the Lord of hosts,
+    May be with you, as you say.
+    Hate evil and love good,
+    And establish justice in the gate.
+    Perhaps God will be gracious,
+    The God of hosts, to a remnant of Joseph."
+
+The young officer shook his head in disgust and walked away. Others,
+however, remained awhile, meditating upon what Amos had said.
+
+Amos, too, when he went his way, felt that his words had made an
+impression. He thought they had fallen, like seeds, upon fertile soil.
+Would these seeds take root? Would they grow and flourish? Would they
+bear fruit when the crisis for Israel came?
+
+But first a crisis for Amos came, when he had to fight for his life.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER IV.
+
+                     _Treason and a Fight._
+
+
+For some time, now, Amos had been preaching his new and formerly
+unheard-of ideas, to the effect that God prefers rather that man be
+just to his fellowmen than that he offer sacrifices; that Israel had
+become weakened because of its indulgence in luxuriant living, on the
+one hand, and because of the oppression and ill treatment of the poor
+and needy, on the other; that God would be with the people against
+their enemies only when the people turned away from their idolatrous
+worship and sought God, by doing good and hating evil.
+
+And he had been rewarded with laughter and jeers and derision on the
+part of the people he tried to save!
+
+Any other man would have given up long ago; not so Amos. His rebuffs,
+however, made him somber and morose.
+
+In his great address at Bethel he held out the hope to Israel that God
+might forgive His people for their crimes and sins if they began to
+lead godly lives. His continued failure to impress the people with
+this message, however, finally led him to the belief that God would
+measure out the severest justice to Israel, in accordance with their
+sins, and without mercy.
+
+Amos had become a well-known figure at all the sanctuaries. Most of
+the people thought him to be one of those wandering dervishes, known
+as "Sons of the Prophets," who made their living by a kind of fortune
+telling, or forecasting the future, as did Samuel in the early days
+when he told Saul where the lost asses were; only, that Amos was one
+of the Sons of the Prophets run mad, judging from the way he talked
+and the strange things he said.
+
+This did not trouble Amos. What worried him was the fact that the
+people would not listen to his addresses.
+
+So, in the year 745, he journeyed again to Bethel, where a great
+festival was to be celebrated. He was determined that the people
+should hear. He was well prepared, too. Instead of beginning with a
+condemnation of Israel, he used new tactics:
+
+"Thus saith God," he began. "For three transgressions of Damascus,
+yea, for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof."
+
+That was interesting. We always like to hear about the punishments
+that others will receive for their misdeeds, even if we close our ears
+to those that threaten us.
+
+And, as for Damascus, she was Israel's ancient foe, and the listeners
+rather liked the idea that God was to visit her with destruction.
+
+When Amos had recounted the sins of Damascus and announced that "the
+people of Syria shall go into captivity into Kir," there was loud
+applause.
+
+Some cried, "Let the Prophet speak!"
+
+Amos continued. He mentioned the sins for which God would punish Gaza,
+Tyre, Idumia, Ammon, Moab, and each period was greeted with volleys of
+applause.
+
+Amos paused for a moment. He swallowed a lump that had risen in his
+throat and lowered his voice. He spoke, sadly and regretfully:
+
+   "Thus saith God,
+    For three transgressions of Judah,
+    Yea, for four, I will not revoke its punishment.
+    Because they reject God's law,
+    And do not keep His statutes;
+    Because their lies have caused them to err,
+    (The lies) After which their fathers did walk.
+    Therefore, I will send a fire upon Judah
+    And it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem."
+
+Poor, weak little Judah! The Prophet was declaring the doom of his own
+country! It was a thing to laugh at! And how they did laugh!
+
+But it was no laughing matter for Amos. His heart was wrung with woe
+from his own people. He waited for the uproar to subside, and then
+went on to the very point which he had come to make:
+
+   "Thus saith God,
+    For three transgressions of Israel,
+    Yea, for four, I will not revoke its punishment.
+    Because they sell the righteous for money,
+    And the needy for a pair of shoes;
+    Who trample on the head of the poor,
+    And turn aside the way of the humble.
+    Upon garments taken in pledge they stretch themselves beside
+        every altar,
+    And the wine of those who have been fined they drink in the house
+        of their God."
+
+Jeers and threatening cries were hurled at Amos from all directions,
+but he stood his ground.
+
+With the art of a master orator he won back his displeased audience.
+Passionately he poured forth the story of Israel and its relationship
+to God--a story he knew so well--and brought the people back to
+breathless attention. He recounted the wonders God had done with and
+for Israel from the days when He brought them out of Egypt, poor,
+miserable slaves, until this day of their wealth and glory.
+
+Here someone stepped out from the crowd and took up the argument for
+the people. If all this beautiful story is true, he claimed, then God
+may punish and destroy all the nations that Amos had mentioned; but
+Israel, to whom God had shown special favors, even up to this day, God
+will not destroy.
+
+Quick as a flash the Prophet answered:
+
+   "Are ye not as the Cushites to me,
+    O children of Israel? saith God.
+    Did I not bring up Israel out of the land of Egypt
+    And the Philistines from Caphtor
+    And the Syrians from Kir?
+    (But) you, especially, have I known of all the races of the earth,
+    Therefore will I visit upon you all your iniquities.
+    Behold, the eyes of the Lord God are upon the sinful kingdom,
+    And I will destroy it from the face of the earth.
+    An adversary shall surround the land,
+    And shall strip from thee thy strength;
+    And thy palaces shall be plundered.
+    Verily, I am now raising up against you
+    O house of Israel, a nation,
+    And they shall oppress you
+    From the entrance of Hamath
+    Even to the brook of the Arabah,
+    Saith the Lord, God of hosts."
+
+"Treason! Treason!" rose up the cry from the several army men who had
+been listening.
+
+"Treason! Treason!" was shouted immediately from many directions.
+
+The army officers who had raised the cry now rushed toward Amos,
+threatening him with bodily harm.
+
+"Treason! Treason!" was echoed by most of the crowd. Hundreds now
+surged forward and things looked bad for the Prophet.
+
+To meet this danger, Amos brought into play all the strength and power
+that he had stored up during his shepherding days. Out in the
+wilderness near Tekoah he had often fought with robbers who had stolen
+his sheep, and, like David, even with wild beasts that had stolen his
+lambs.
+
+Prepared just for this kind of an emergency, keen of eye and alert of
+mind, he met the leaders as they came on.
+
+Unfortunately for Amos, there was nothing that could afford him
+protection from the rear. He could meet any number that might attack
+him face to face; but while he was guarding in front someone might
+strike him in the back--and he was surrounded by the mob.
+
+"Traitor! Traitor!" they shouted.
+
+His blood boiled with anger. He, a traitor! He, guilty of treason!
+Why, he was the only man who saw the danger of his people and had
+ventured to warn them!
+
+"Seek God and ye shall live!" kept flashing through his mind. But this
+was no time for preaching, not even for thinking. It was time for
+action.
+
+And act he did!
+
+The weak, undergrown army officers were like men of straw before Amos
+and he disposed of them as easily. With the speed of lightning he
+turned face, fearing an attack from the rear. There, however, the
+people had not awakened to what was going on.
+
+Facing front again, he saw that the army officers had not yet
+recovered from his blows. They were sprawled on the ground before him
+and a few of the people were laughing at their discomfiture.
+
+Amos had no desire to continue the fight and started to help the
+officers up; but, at that moment, he felt two pairs of hands lay hold
+of his mantle at the neck.
+
+A sudden turn, a quick stretching of his brawny arms, like a swimmer
+making for speed, and the two men, merchants, clad in their holiday
+finery, were pushed to either side into the crowd.
+
+Now, as soon as the bystanders saw with what ease Amos was handling
+his opponents, they began to laugh and take sides. A crowd always does
+that. Some urged Amos to go on fighting; others urged the sprawling
+victims to attack.
+
+Amos, however, was not there to fight, nor did his opponents fancy a
+good beating at his hands. In the meantime a small group of the king's
+guard came up, post haste, and began to disperse the crowd.
+
+The crowd scattered, but gathered again in various streets, in small
+groups, discussing the unusual occurrences of the day.
+
+They spoke, in whispers, overawed by the fearlessness of the
+Prophet--some by his ability in self-defense; some by the force
+of his speeches.
+
+In the palaces of the rich and mighty, gathered in Bethel at that
+time, Amos--what he said and what he did--was the topic of
+conversation no less than he was in the streets, only in one of these
+palaces was hatched a clever scheme for the Prophet's undoing.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER V.
+
+                   _Priest Against Prophet._
+
+
+That very night the most prominent people in Israel--military and
+civilian--assembled at Bethel, and decided that something must be done
+to get rid of the Prophet. They considered Amos crazy, and, therefore,
+dangerous. A little group of leaders gathered in the house of one of
+the merchant princes of Samaria to adopt a definite plan of action.
+
+The High Priest, Amaziah, was called into consultation. He saw the
+seriousness of the matter, as they all did. Such preaching must
+be stopped!
+
+"This man," spoke one of the priests, "is destroying the worship of
+God in Israel. If we are no longer to bring sacrifices on God's chosen
+altars, wherewith shall we worship him? Besides," he added very
+pointedly, "without sacrifices the income of the priesthood will be
+ruined, and the sons of Aaron will be reduced from their high and holy
+office to beggary."
+
+"Nay, this is not the worst," began another priest, who did not think
+so much of his income from the sacrifices as the former speaker. "The
+sons of Aaron can work, as do other men."
+
+"What is more serious," he continued, "is, that this Prophet proclaims
+all other people as equal in the sight of God with Israel; that God
+has performed wonders for them, as for us. I fear," he concluded
+solemnly and with bowed head, "that if such teaching will continue,
+Israel will lose faith in its God."
+
+A captain of the host sprang to his feet. "You priests," he said,
+savagely, "worry about many minor things. This man is telling the
+people that God, Himself, is raising up a powerful nation to destroy
+our great empire. He is filling our peaceful people with dread and
+fear of the imagined enemy and will disturb the peace of our country."
+
+"Yea," cried a wealthy merchant, "and its business prosperity."
+
+"All of which," added another merchant and slave dealer, "is, as our
+friend has said," looking at the captain, "simply imagination. The
+actual danger lies in his arousing the common people. He tells the
+poor that they are not getting their rights; that they are not being
+judged honestly; that the weak and the needy ought to be protected and
+helped--by us, by us! As if we have anything to do with them! I tell
+you that it is here the danger lurks. If this crazy Prophet is not
+silenced immediately, the merchant and military classes will face open
+rebellion on the part of the common horde."
+
+The last speaker seemed to have said the final word on the subject.
+All were silent, their eyes turned toward Amaziah. The aged priest had
+not yet ventured an opinion; but he had been thinking deeply on what
+was said by the others. He agreed, for the most part, with the
+speakers who had preceded him; but he counseled caution and delay.
+"Perhaps, now that the Prophet has seen opposition," Amaziah
+concluded, "he will quit and go home to Judah."
+
+But Amos did not quit, nor did he go home. The fight, that morning,
+was a mere incident, to be forgotten; but his mission to his people
+burned deep in his soul, a flame that could not be quenched.
+
+On the day of the conclusion of the great festival, Amos again
+appeared in the sanctuary. This time it did not take long for a crowd
+to gather. In fact, most of the people were looking for him to appear.
+Even the richest and most exclusive, who usually are not interested in
+such men, had heard about Amos and had come to see and hear him,
+expecting something unusual to occur.
+
+Amos did not waste any time. Without preparatory remarks, he gave
+voice to his warning call:
+
+"Prepare to meet thy God, O Israel!"
+
+Hardly had the words left the Prophet's lips, when a man stepped forward
+from the crowd, and facing Amos with threatening fists, exclaimed:
+
+"Hold thy peace! Thou art a false Prophet. Who hath sent thee
+to prophesy?"
+
+Here was a challenge to Amos. Who, indeed, had appointed him a
+Prophet? Who had set him up to judge the people's wrongdoing? Who had
+commanded him to declare Israel's doom? What entitled him to speak in
+the name of God?
+
+This challenge, however, was just what Amos was looking for. He had
+wanted a number of times to correct the mistaken idea the people had
+of him.
+
+There were, in the land, the long-established Schools of Prophets.
+These schools were under the protection of the king. At the head of
+each was a leader, like Samuel, Elijah and Elisha of the olden days.
+The leader was called "The Seer" and his pupils "Sons of the Prophets."
+
+Now, the Seers and Sons of the Prophets, with the exception of such
+strong and powerful characters as the three great men mentioned,
+usually did the bidding of the king and his officers, and prophesied
+to please them.
+
+Amos was not a member of any of these established schools. He was a
+free lance--in truth, the first of the independent Prophets, who cried
+out against the evils of their day and who, fearlessly and without
+favor, laid the blame where it belonged--on king, on priest, and
+on people.
+
+Amos, therefore, grasped this opportunity to set himself aright. He
+answered his questioner with a series of beautiful similes:
+
+   "Do two walk together unless they be agreed?
+    Does a lion roar in the forest when there is no prey for him?
+    Does a young lion cry out in his den unless he has taken something?
+    Can a trumpet be blown in a city and the people not tremble?
+    Can calamity befall a city and God hath not sent it?
+    Surely, the Lord doeth nothing,
+    Unless He revealeth His purpose to His servants, the Prophets.
+    The lion hath roared; who does not fear?
+    The Lord God hath spoken; who can but prophesy?"
+
+God, then, it was, not the head of a School of Prophets, or a king, or
+a priest, who had sent Amos to prophesy! He, himself, had no desire to
+speak these terrible things he was saying to his people. A force over
+which he had no control--God, had impelled him to his task. It was the
+still, small voice of which Elijah spoke. Though his heart bled, while
+delivering the message, Amos could not help himself. God had commanded
+him; he had but to obey!
+
+Before the challenger could continue the argument, there was a
+disturbance on the outskirts of the crowd. A murmur arose and all
+craned their necks to see what was going on. The crowd opened, forming
+a wide aisle, through which there advanced a tall, majestic figure,
+with flowing robe and gray beard.
+
+"The High Priest!"
+
+"Amaziah!"
+
+"The High Priest!"
+
+The people whispered to each other and an expectant silence followed,
+as the venerable priest walked through the row of bowed heads, toward
+the sanctuary. He stopped in front of Amos and looked at him
+curiously.
+
+Amaziah was an old man, but as erect as a cedar in Lebanon. He was
+dressed in an ephod, the holy garment of his office. The robe was of
+fine twined linen, with threads of blue, scarlet and purple, embroidered
+in gold. Two shoulder pieces, fastened to the shoulders of the ephod
+with cords of "wreathed gold," came down the front of the garment to
+just above the girdle, where they were fastened with two golden rings.
+Held by these cords above, and by blue ribbons through the golden
+rings below, was the breastplate, the insignia of the High Priest. On
+the front of the breastplate, in gold settings, were twelve precious
+stones, four rows of three stones each, on each of which was engraved
+the name of one of the tribes of Israel. A mitre on his head completed
+the High Priest's holy vestments.
+
+Thus brilliantly arrayed, "for glory and for beauty," Amaziah made a
+great contrast to the simply clad shepherd, robed in his woolen
+mantle, as they faced each other.
+
+The splendor of Amaziah, his age and his authority, the tension caused
+by the struggle that was imminent between the Priest and the Prophet,
+overawed the assembly. There was a deep silence, like the calm before
+a heavy downpour.
+
+Amos, cool and collected, always prepared for an emergency, bowed low
+to Amaziah out of respect to his gray head. Amaziah, who was equally
+prepared for an emergency, smiled at Amos, kindly, in greeting.
+
+Amos, of course, did not know that Amaziah was working out a plan that
+had been outlined previous to his starting for the sanctuary. Only
+those who were in the Priest's confidence knew that he had sent a
+message to King Jeroboam, when it was reported that a crowd had
+gathered about Amos and that the Prophet would, no doubt, deliver
+another address. The message to Jeroboam read:
+
+   "Amos hath conspired against thee in the midst of the house
+    of Israel; the land is not able to bear his words. For thus
+    hath Amos said, 'Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel
+    shall surely be led away captive out of his land.'"
+
+The messenger proceeded, post haste, to the palace of the king, and
+Amaziah, quietly and with dignity, went to the sanctuary.
+
+Hardly had Amos lifted his head from his low salute, when Amaziah
+addressed him:
+
+   "O seer! Go, flee away to the land of Judah, and there eat
+    bread, and prophesy there; but prophesy not again any more
+    in Bethel, for it is the king's sanctuary, and it is the
+    royal residence."
+
+How the Priest misunderstood the Prophet! Just because Bethel was the
+king's sanctuary and the royal residence and the seat of all the
+mighty in the land of Israel, Amos had selected it, above all other
+places, to preach his message there.
+
+But Amaziah's little speech contained something more important to Amos
+than this. Amaziah had addressed the Prophet as "seer," he had taken
+him for the leader of a "School of Prophets." Amos immediately
+disclaimed such a questionable distinction. He answered Amaziah:
+
+   "I am no Prophet, nor am I the son of a Prophet; but I was a
+    herdsman and a dresser of sycamore trees, when God took me
+    from following the flock and God said to me, 'Go, prophesy
+    against My people Israel.'"
+
+Entirely unprepared for such an answer, and not quite certain whether
+he understood what Amos meant by his claim that he had taken his
+orders direct from God, Amaziah was disconcerted. Amos did not give
+the Priest a chance to recover from his surprise and continued:
+
+   "Now, therefore, hear thou the word of God: 'Thou sayest,
+    "Prophesy not against Israel, nor preach against the house
+    of Isaac."' Therefore, thus saith God, 'Thy sons and thy
+    daughters shall fall by the sword and thy land shall be
+    divided by line; and thou shall die upon an unclean soil,
+    and Israel shall surely be led away captive out of this land.'"
+
+The fearlessness of the Prophet in attacking the High Priest dismayed
+Amaziah and his followers greatly. The crowd, too, by its acclamations,
+was evidently siding with Amos. Amaziah was, therefore, placed on the
+defensive. In broken and halting sentences he defended himself and the
+people. The ancient laws of Israel, he pointed out, were being adhered
+to by all Israelites. He, for one, was not afraid, even if the Day of
+God, the judgment day, should come to-morrow.
+
+Now, a man like Amaziah might not fear the strict judgment which, Amos
+said, God was to visit upon Israel; but, how about those who were
+guilty of the crimes of which God, through the Prophet, was accusing
+Israel? Amos understood this, though Amaziah did not. The Prophet was
+speaking to all the people and not to one man in particular.
+Therefore, he continued:
+
+   "Woe unto those that desire the Day of God!
+    Wherefore would ye have the Day of God?
+    It is darkness and not light.
+    It is when one flees from a lion,
+    And a bear meets him;
+    Or goes into a house and leans his hand upon a wall,
+    And a serpent bites him.
+    Shall not the Day of God be darkness and not light,
+    Yea, murky darkness, without a ray of light?"
+
+That is why, retorted the High Priest, the people come to Bethel and
+Gilgal and the other sanctuaries. They bring their sacrifices to God,
+that He may forgive their sins, against the coming of the Day of God,
+when all the guilty shall be judged and punished.
+
+Amos did not interrupt Amaziah because he was an old man, and Amos
+knew what courtesy was due the aged. But when the Priest had finished,
+the Prophet, with fine sarcasm, showed the uselessness and selfishness
+of the whole artificial scheme as practiced at the sanctuaries:
+
+   "Come to Bethel and transgress,
+    At Gilgal increase your transgressions,
+    And bring in the morning your sacrifices,
+    And every third day your tithes!
+    Burn some leaven bread as a thanks-offering,
+    And proclaim aloud the voluntary offerings,
+    For you love to do so, O Israelites!"
+
+The sarcastic smile, however, suddenly faded from the speaker's lips,
+as he asked:
+
+    "Did ye bring me sacrifices and meal-offerings in the wilderness,
+    forty years, O House of Israel?"
+
+Then, with the power and fervor of the God-inspired man he was, Amos
+denounced bitterly the whole system of worshiping God by means of
+sacrifices, and delivered a message, new to his hearers, relating to
+what God really expected from Israel:
+
+   "I hate, I despise your feasts,
+    And I will take no delight in your festivals;
+    With your meal-offerings I will not be pleased,
+    And the peace-offerings of your fattlings I will not regard
+        with favor.
+    Banish from me the noise of your songs;
+    To the melody of your viols I will not listen.
+    But let justice roll down as waters,
+    And righteousness as a never-failing stream."
+
+These concluding sentences literally stunned the crowd. Priest and
+people gasped at the Prophet's proclamation that God did not command
+the sacrifices at Sinai and did not care for them, but that, instead,
+He demanded justice and righteousness on the part of His people. The
+Prophet had upset all their ideas and traditions regarding their
+religious forms and practices, and he claimed God for his authority!
+
+No one can tell just what might have happened, there and then, had not
+a company of the royal guard, in answer to Amaziah's note to the king,
+rushed upon the crowd and dispersed it "in the name of the king."
+
+"In the name of the king," also, the leader of a small detachment of
+the guard made his way to Amos and placed him under arrest. Amos might
+have been successful in getting away, had he resisted; but, being a
+law-abiding man, he submitted to the authorities, and, long before the
+scattered crowd was aware of what had happened to the Prophet, he was
+whirled away in a chariot to the palace of the king.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VI.
+
+                     _The Prophet in Tekoah._
+
+
+King Jeroboam II was now an old man. The vehemence and determination
+and aggressiveness that had made him a far-famed conqueror had been
+mellowed by the years and rarely, if ever, showed themselves.
+
+The note he received from Amaziah regarding Amos, however, awoke the
+old spirit in him. The dispatch of the section of the royal guard with
+orders for the Prophet's immediate arrest was in line with the way
+Jeroboam did things during the days when he personally led his armies.
+
+But instead of having Amos put in chains and thrown into a dungeon,
+Jeroboam had him brought into his presence. The king wanted to see and
+speak to the man who, according to Amaziah, had conspired against him
+and the God of Israel and was proclaiming the doom of his dynasty.
+
+Amos, who had never seen the king face to face, who had never even
+been inside any of the royal palaces, was, nevertheless, calm and cool
+as usual. The splendor of the throne room and the crowd of officers
+and counselors did not in the least affright him. He made a low
+obeisance to his king and waited for the order to rise.
+
+Jeroboam was a much keener man than Amaziah. When he saw Amos, studied
+his bearing, the seriousness of his face, the simplicity of his garb,
+he recognized at once that before him stood an uncommon man.
+
+Amos neither smiled the smirky smile of him who is anxious to get into
+the king's good graces, nor did he tremble like a coward, who, being
+caught, feared the king. He waited for Jeroboam to speak.
+
+From the messenger who brought Amaziah's note the king had learned
+something about Amos and about the things he was telling the people.
+Having supposed the Prophet to be either a traitor or a madman, but
+judging him now to be neither one nor the other, Jeroboam now was
+puzzled as to the manner in which to speak to him.
+
+Jeroboam looked quizzically at Amos for a few moments and began:
+
+"Thou, then, art the Prophet?"
+
+"I am a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore trees," Amos replied.
+
+"But thou speakest evil against the king and against the house of
+Israel," exclaimed Jeroboam.
+
+"The Lord God hath commanded me," answered Amos, with deep humility.
+
+"Thou art a traitor and thou shalt die," threatened the king.
+
+"I can but speak," calmly replied Amos, "even if thou slay me."
+
+Jeroboam made the threat to take the Prophet's life in order to test
+him. He figured that it would send Amos groveling to his knees,
+begging for mercy. The quiet manner in which he accepted the threat
+however, puzzled the king. He concluded that Amos must be either
+exceedingly brave or hopelessly crazy.
+
+Now, a man who is not afraid to die, be he brave or crazy, is a very
+dangerous man to have around. It would have been easy enough to behead
+Amos and be done with him, but Jeroboam was not a king who took his
+subjects' lives ruthlessly--especially when it was so simple to get
+rid of an undesirable one in another way.
+
+"Then go to thy flocks and sycamores," commanded Jeroboam, "and speak
+to them."
+
+The king's humorous sally called forth a great shout of laughter from
+those who were present. Jeroboam, smiling, waved his hand, indicating
+that the interview was over. The guard closed around Amos and he was
+led into an outer hall. After a short wait he was informed that, by
+command of the king, he must leave Bethel on that very day and never
+set foot in the Kingdom of Israel again.
+
+Had Jeroboam himself been a wicked man like King Ahab, Amos, no doubt,
+would have disregarded the threat against his life and would have
+confronted the king in his palace, as Elijah confronted Ahab in
+Naboth's vineyard. Jeroboam, as ruler, however, did not oppress or
+mistreat the people. Being an old man, resting on the laurels of his
+great victories and knowing from his friends and counselors and the
+size of the royal treasury that his empire was rich and the people
+peaceful, Jeroboam probably had no idea of the corruption and
+injustice that was rampant in the land. He would have laughed at the
+thought of it.
+
+Besides, and this was the important thing with Amos, it would have
+been folly for him to sacrifice his life at this time. To die a martyr
+for a cause is a noble and beautiful thing--if martyrdom will in any
+way advance this cause. To have confronted Jeroboam or to have
+remained in Bethel would have meant certain death--and, to die then
+would have meant an end to the crusade that he was just beginning
+against the oppression of the poor, the denial of justice, the
+unrighteousness in business dealings and the misunderstanding of God
+and His worship: it would have meant an end to his set purpose to warn
+Israel against Assyria, the enemy approaching from the North, and
+against the inability to meet this enemy, because of the immorality
+that was weakening the nation.
+
+He had plenty of time to think this over as he wended his way
+mournfully out of the busy and joyful thoroughfares of Bethel to his
+quiet, though beloved Tekoah.
+
+Amos found to his great joy that he did not now stand alone. Many who
+had heard him, had understood him. When the news that he had been
+driven out of Israel spread, many followed him to Judah and
+accompanied him to his home in Tekoah.
+
+As was always the case with Amos in a crisis, he thought quickly and
+arrived at a new plan of action speedily. On his way to Tekoah he
+selected from among his followers men who could write--scribes--and
+confided to them that from now on he must confine all his wealth to
+the spreading of his ideas throughout the empire by means of the
+written word.
+
+After all, God had willed it that he should be driven back to Tekoah.
+Amos, as a speaker, could address a crowd only in one place at one
+time. In listening to a speech, too, much of what the speaker says is
+lost to his hearers. Therefore, Amos concluded, God had willed it that
+he should return to Tekoah, write out his speeches and his warnings,
+send them to the farthest ends of the land that all the people may
+read and study and understand in order that they may return speedily
+to God; seek good and not evil, that the nation may live.
+
+By day, he and his followers tended the flocks and gathered the fruit
+of sycamore trees. All the products that were sent to market were sold
+by honest weight and measure and at honest prices.
+
+By night, he and his scribes wrote out the speeches that he had
+delivered in Israel, and especially in Bethel, added new ones and sent
+them with trusted messengers to all parts of Judah and Israel.
+
+Amos was thus probably the first prophet who wrote down his speeches.
+What we have of them, however, are only fragments. There is not one
+speech complete as it was originally written or delivered. The
+fragments are collected in the Biblical book, called "Amos." Through
+this book the name of the humble herdsmen of Tekoah is written large
+in the history of religion.
+
+It was Amos who first conceived of God as the God, not of Israel
+alone, but of all peoples:
+
+   "Are you not as the Ethiopians to me,
+    O Israel? saith God.
+    Did I not bring Israel up out of the land of Egypt,
+    And the Philistines from Caphtor,
+    And the Syrians from Kir?"
+
+It was Amos who first appeared as the public champion of the poor and
+downtrodden, who publicly denounced the greed of the rich and the
+corruption of the men in power:
+
+   "For I know how manifold are your transgressions,
+    And how mighty are your sins--
+    Ye, that trample upon the poor,
+    That afflict the just, that take a bribe,
+    And that turn away the needy in the gate."
+
+It was Amos who first cried out against the mistaken idea that animal
+sacrifices were what God asked of His people:
+
+   "Did ye bring unto me sacrifices and meal-offerings
+    In the wilderness, forty years, O house of Israel?"
+
+It was Amos who first brought forward the great and universal truth
+that God judges every human being, no matter what the race or color,
+according to his or her acts:
+
+   "Seek good and not evil,
+    That ye may live;
+    Seek God and ye shall live."
+
+It was Amos who first made clear, that God demands of men, above all
+things, justice and righteousness:
+
+   "Let justice roll down as a flood of water,
+    And righteousness like a never-failing stream."
+
+We do not know definitely what became of Amos.
+
+One tradition has it that he came to Jerusalem and, while he was
+denouncing Uzziah, king of Judah, Uzziah struck him on the forehead
+with a piece of glowing iron. As a result of the blow, Amos died while
+preaching in the hope of saving his people in Jerusalem, as his father
+died while fighting in defense of Jerusalem, in the hope of saving
+his country.
+
+The probabilities are, however, that Amos lived peacefully with his
+disciples among his sycamore trees near Tekoah, until he had completed
+the writing of his speeches and saw to their distribution all over
+Israel, believing that there was yet time for the people of Israel to
+return to God and to save the nation from the calamity that was
+threatening it.
+
+
+
+
+
+                   THE MAN WHO LEARNED HIS LESSON
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER I.
+
+                      _An Eventful Night._
+
+
+Whenever Jezreel was sent early to bed, although he had been a good
+boy during the day, and, in addition, when his little sister and
+brother were ordered to go with him, he knew the evening would be
+another one of those that made his little heart ache.
+
+Jezreel was only ten years old, but he was sharp and keen for his age.
+He understood that his parents wanted him out of reach and sound.
+Twice before, on similar occasions, after he had recited his night
+prayer and the maid-servant had tucked him in his bed, he lay with his
+eyes closed tight but wide awake, listening.
+
+He knew that what he was doing was wrong, but he could not sleep. He
+heard his father and mother talking to each other loudly, but could
+not make out just what they were saying. Their voices, however, he
+felt, were not soft and sweet, as they usually were, when they
+addressed the children.
+
+On this particular evening, as he went out of the dining-room with
+Lo-ruhamah, his seven-year-old sister, and Lo-ammi, his four-year-old
+brother, Jezreel made up his mind to do a very unusual thing. He
+determined not to sleep at all.
+
+That afternoon, his father, Hosea, had returned from Bethel all out of
+sorts. The children had been expecting him, as they always did, when
+he came home from the sanctuary, to bring the usual little gifts; but
+the father seemed to have forgotten them. In fact, Hosea was quite
+irritated when, not understanding his father's mood, Lo-ammi cried for
+the expected sweets or trinkets.
+
+In a little while, however, Hosea, calmed his youngest son and
+promised all three of the children that, in the morning, he would take
+them to the bazaars in the market place, to buy what they pleased.
+
+Just then their mother, Gomer, came in. She was a beautiful woman,
+dressed in the latest fashions of the wealthy Samarians. Her robes
+were long and flowing. A veil, woven of golden threads and imported
+from Assyria, set off her jet-black hair. Her arms and fingers were
+adorned with jewel-studded bracelets and rings. She was accompanied by
+an Ethiopian slave.
+
+Strange to say, the children did not rush to their mother, except
+little Lo-ammi, who was fond of the jeweled things she wore.
+
+Gomer, on the other hand, did not seem to feel hurt that the children
+clung to their father and quite ignored her. After a formal greeting
+to her husband, and a pat of Lo-ammi's head, Gomer retired to her own
+room.
+
+A little later the evening meal was announced, and, immediately after
+they had eaten, Jezreel, Lo-ruhamah and the baby were told to go to
+bed.
+
+Their attendant, satisfied that the three children were fast asleep,
+left the room and went about her business. Thereupon Jezreel got out
+of bed, moved a chair near to the door, sat down and listened.
+
+Below he heard his father's and mother's voices. Words were spoken in
+a high, shrill tone, loud and harsh, but indistinct. There were short
+periods of silence, followed by explosive sentences that sounded like
+threats. If he could only understand what it was all about! But he
+couldn't, until, finally all was silent in the room below.
+
+Then Jezreel heard the street door close with a bang.
+
+Going to the window that looked out into the street, Jezreel saw his
+mother standing alone in front of the house. It was an unusually
+moonlit night. Samaria, a beautiful city in the daytime, was a very
+dark and gloomy place at night, except when the moon and stars reigned
+in their glory in clear skies. This happened to be just such a night.
+
+The yellow moon was reflected from the red-tiled housetops. In the
+distance were the famous Samarian houses of stone and marble, dark and
+foreboding against the moonlight. Above all the houses towered the
+royal palace--in which Zechariah, Jeroboam II's son, had been king
+since his father died, six months before--with its bright, gilded
+domes, like a sentinel wearing a brass helmet.
+
+But the little boy, in his night clothes, looking out of the window of
+his room into the moonlit and shadowed street, saw only his mother
+standing there below.
+
+His attention was called suddenly away from the window by loud
+sobbing. He hurried to the door, but did not dare open it. He listened
+until the sobbing ceased. Then he returned to the window, to find the
+street empty and deserted. His mother had evidently gone away.
+
+He shivered. He folded his arms tightly, as if hugging himself to keep
+warm. Then he brought his chair from the door to the table, sat down
+and listened. In the room below he heard his father walking up and
+down with regular step. The house was completely silent but for
+Hosea's footfalls.
+
+Jezreel drew his legs up under him on the chair. He was tired and
+rested his head upon his arms on the table. The silence and the
+monotony of the regular heavy walking in the room under him, made him
+drowsy. His little heart ached, though he could not explain why. He
+tried hard to keep awake, but finally fell asleep, there at the table.
+At one time he shivered, when the street door of the house shut again
+with a bang; but he did not wake up.
+
+Below, a great big, powerful man had been keeping up a continuous
+march up and down the room. He was brooding over the events that had
+just preceded and thinking over the years of his married life.
+
+When Hosea first met Gomer, she lived in her father's home in one of
+the poorest sections of Samaria. Diblaim, Gomer's father, was a poor
+man and could not give his daughter the advantages other girls in
+Samaria enjoyed. But Hosea loved Gomer most devotedly and he married
+her.
+
+Son of the priest Beeri, Hosea inherited great wealth and a position
+among the priests at the Bethel sanctuary. He was thus able to give
+Gomer not only a beautiful home in one of the city's most beautiful
+suburbs, but also to introduce her to the royal and social leaders
+of Samaria.
+
+After a few years, however, everything seemed to go wrong in the Hosea
+household. Gomer developed a weakness for luxury and jewels and fine
+clothes; she used to be away from the house and the children most of
+the time; she did not understand her husband, his desire for quiet
+evenings at home with the children and his dislike of the pomp and
+display at the court and in society. And that night, Hosea and Gomer
+parted, Gomer going home to her father.
+
+Hosea felt very much oppressed. Walking up and down the room brought
+him no relief. So he rushed out of the house into the night, into the
+open, where he could breathe more freely--and think. It was the bang
+of the door behind him that disturbed Jezreel, asleep at the table.
+
+But Hosea's brain was all clogged up. It could not dwell upon a single
+line of thought for five consecutive minutes. And yet he was so
+thoroughly absorbed in his thoughts, that he did not notice any number
+of people excitedly hurrying past him.
+
+He walked on toward the center of the city in a daze. The first time
+he realized that he was not alone on the streets of Samaria was when
+he found himself being jostled in a wide thoroughfare leading to the
+market place.
+
+Then he was awakened out of the stupor in which he had left his home
+by cries, coming from several directions:
+
+"Shallum!"
+
+"Long live the king!"
+
+"Long life to Shallum!"
+
+Shallum? Who was Shallum? Why was the name being shouted in the
+streets of Samaria?
+
+Hosea, trying to find his bearings, was asking himself these questions
+when he arrived in the market place.
+
+There an unusual and most unexpected sight met him. The place was
+filled with people. Troops were fighting in front of the royal palace.
+From the palace, which was brightly illuminated, soldiers and plain
+citizens were pouring forth in a stream. Above the shrieking of men
+and women and the clang of contending arms, he heard enthusiastic
+shouts:
+
+"King Zechariah is dead! Long live King Shallum!"
+
+What? Zechariah dead!
+
+In a flash the whole situation was made clear to Hosea. Now he recalled
+that down at Bethel, the king's sanctuary, someone had spoken to him of
+a movement that was on foot to depose the king.
+
+Hosea knew that Zechariah was unlike his great father, Jeroboam II,
+whom he succeeded in the year 742 B. C. E. The new king was a
+weakling. Upon his accession to the throne, Syria refused to pay the
+annual tribute, revolted, and Zechariah could not help himself. The
+wealth of the people, the luxury they lived in, the disorganization of
+the army by corruption, the oppression of the poor, the injustices
+practiced in business and in the courts of law, had unfitted Israel to
+wage war against Syria, or any other nation, for that matter.
+
+Zechariah, in the six months that he ruled Samaria, therefore, lost
+all that had been gained by his illustrious father. Hosea, however,
+did not look for an insurrection in Samaria.
+
+But here it was: Zechariah was dead and Shallum--yes, Shallum, the son
+of Jabesh, the one mentioned to Hosea as the probable successor--had
+been proclaimed king. When Shallum was spoken of, down at Bethel,
+Hosea had paid no particular attention. He was occupied with his own
+family troubles then, as he was in the presence of this history-making
+event. The threatened revolution was the farthest thought from his
+mind, at that time as it was at this moment.
+
+Therefore, before Hosea had grasped the full significance of either of
+the two events that had occurred that night, he was jostled into a
+side street by the mob that now filled the market place.
+
+Sick at heart, Hosea did not stop to see the bloodshed and the horror,
+nor to listen to the story of the revolt, but walked on to the outskirts
+of the city.
+
+His head swam from the excitement. His temples pounded like sledge
+hammers. As he walked on, his feet grew heavy and dragged. Just how he
+got there Hosea did not know, but suddenly he found himself in front
+of his own home.
+
+The day was now dawning. The first rays of the sun were shooting their
+way through the early morning mist and playing on the bedewed stones
+of the house. Hosea entered quietly, and walked up to the children's
+bed room. To his amazement he found Jezreel asleep on his arms at
+the table.
+
+As he gazed for a moment upon the children, Hosea's heart was wrung
+with sorrow. He picked Jezreel up from the chair. The boy, asleep,
+clung tightly about his father's neck. Hosea laid him in his bed,
+covered him, kissed him and, with bowed head, went to his own room.
+
+And while little Jezreel was dreaming that a great giant came to his
+home, picked up the house and shook it, carried it away to a beautiful
+valley and brought back his mother, Hosea sat at the window and
+watched and watched, until the morning's duties called him.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER II.
+
+                 _The Tragedy With a Purpose._
+
+
+King Shallum soon discovered that a stolen throne is no sweeter than
+any other stolen thing. A palace is no more protection against
+conscience than a hovel; and Shallum passed miserable days of fear and
+nights of sleeplessness, because of his murder of Zechariah.
+
+Smitten by his conscience and tortured in mind, Shallum was not able
+to collect a large force of followers to protect him or his ill-gotten
+throne. When, therefore, a plot was set on foot to dethrone him,
+Shallum was helpless.
+
+Menahem, the son of Gadi, one of Jeroboam II's generals, organized an
+expedition against the usurper in Tirzah, the city that was the
+capital of Israel for fifty years after the Kingdom of Solomon was
+divided. Within a month after Shallum had proclaimed himself King of
+Israel, Menahem marched from Tirzah to Samaria, attacked Shallum,
+defeated him, and, in turn, mounted the throne of Jeroboam.
+
+Instead of ruling peaceably in Samaria, however, Menahem started a
+reign of terror, until nobody in the country seemed safe in his home
+or in his possessions.
+
+Trouble came for the new king thick and fast.
+
+Tiglath-Pileser III, who had been ruling in Assyria since 745, and
+against whom Amos had warned the weakened Kingdom of Israel, had
+accomplished many conquests north of Israel, in Phoenicia and in the
+frontier lands of Damascus.
+
+In the year 738, Tiglath-Pileser was knocking at the gates of Damascus
+and threatening Samaria. In order to keep the Assyrian conqueror off,
+and save their countries the spoliation and ruin that followed in the
+wake of the Assyrian armies, Menahem, together with Rezin, King of
+Damascus, the Kings of Tyre, Hamath, and other small states, agreed to
+pay him tribute.
+
+Menahem's share was the enormous sum of one thousand talents of
+silver. To raise this amount, he levied a tax of fifty silver shekels
+each on "all the mighty men of wealth," both priests and merchants, in
+the kingdom.
+
+Now, the lawlessness started by Shallum and the anarchy continued by
+Menahem had had their effect. The great sum of money needed for
+Tiglath-Pileser was raised by "all the mighty men of wealth;" but it
+was ground out of the poor by cheating, robbery and even murder.
+
+The conditions against which the Prophet Amos cried out were now
+apparent to all observers. The final overthrow of the kingdom, which
+Amos declared to be but a matter of time, was now evident to all
+patriotic lovers of their country.
+
+These conditions were clear as the light of day, especially to Hosea.
+Being a priest himself, he knew how the very priests at the
+sanctuaries had entered upon secret understandings with rebel
+associates of Menahem and the wealthy merchants to raise the Assyrian
+tribute at the expense of the people. Being a lover of his fatherland,
+he knew that these sins and crimes against God and men must react upon
+the nation as a whole and rush it on to destruction.
+
+Hosea, like Amos, therefore, felt himself called upon by God to warn
+his people, and, if possible, to save his country. He could no longer
+stand aside and see rulers, priests and "all the mighty men of wealth"
+despoiling his well-beloved fatherland. He must speak words of reproach
+and warning. He must open the eyes of his people to the calamity that
+was ahead of them.
+
+One night Hosea was at home brooding over his own family troubles and
+thinking of the future of his country. He had just seen the children
+to bed and his mind was dwelling on Gomer, their mother, from whom he
+had not heard a single word since she went away. As he came downstairs
+he heard shouting and screaming and hurrying footsteps. Going into the
+street, he learned that another of those attacks on peaceful people
+had been made by a company of Menahem's followers for the purpose of
+robbery.
+
+This did not surprise Hosea in the least. What did chagrin and pain
+him was the discovery that the attacking party was under the direction
+of several priests whom, he knew personally.
+
+All that night this phrase kept running through his mind--"Like people,
+like priest." And, strange to say, the thought of Gomer, his wife, whom
+he loved devotedly, whom he never ceased loving, kept on intruding
+itself into his thoughts about his country.
+
+By morning, however, the whole situation had cleared up for him.
+Israel, its rulers and priests were like Gomer. God loved the whole
+people of Israel devotedly as Hosea loved Gomer, but Israel does not
+always understand what God desires of His people any more than Gomer
+understood what Hosea desired of her. If Gomer had continued loving
+her husband, as from the beginning, she would never have left him; if
+Israel had continued loving God, as from the beginning, Israel would
+never have strayed away from His law and commandments. What is to be
+done? Israel lacks knowledge of God and His will! Israel is being
+taught falsehoods by priests and prophets! Israel does not understand
+God's loving-kindness toward His people! Israel must be warned! Israel
+must be taught!
+
+Hosea had determined what to do. His unhappiness at the departure of
+his wife was somewhat lightened now, because he read God's mission to
+him in the tragedy of his home. He felt himself ordained to be a
+preacher to Israel--and he went to work.
+
+From that day on he traveled the wide land over, preaching to the
+people against the corrupt priesthood and against the usurpers of the
+throne of Samaria.
+
+   "Hear the word of God, ye children of Israel,
+    For God hath a controversy with the inhabitants of the land,
+    For there is no truth, nor loving-kindness,
+    Nor knowledge of God in the land;
+    There is naught but perjury and lying,
+    Murder and stealing,
+    Violence and bloodshed.
+    Therefore doth the land mourn,
+    And all its inhabitants languish.
+
+   "Yet, let none bring charges,
+    And let none reprove,
+    Since my people are but as their priestlings.
+    My people are being destroyed for lack of knowledge.
+    Because thou has rejected knowledge
+    I will also reject thee,
+    That thou shalt be no priest to me.
+    Since thou hast forgotten the instruction of thy God,
+    I will also forget thy children.
+    I will change their glory into shame,
+    And it shall be, like people, like priest.
+    The people that doth not understand shall be overthrown!"
+
+Hosea naturally, met opposition everywhere on the part of the priesthood
+and the hirelings of the king. Undaunted, he rebuked Menahem and the
+usurping rulers in Samaria, as well as the priests and the unrighteous
+people.
+
+   "Hear this, O ye priests!
+    And hearken, O house of Israel,
+    And give heed, O house of the king,
+    Since for you is the judgment.
+    They themselves have made kings, without my consent;
+    They have made princes, but without my knowledge.
+    For they commit falsehood;
+    The thief entereth in and the troop of robbers ravageth without.
+    And they consider not in their hearts
+    That I remember all their wickedness."
+
+Then, his heart aching with pain, and remembering the sorrow of his
+life, which led him to prophesy, he concludes:
+
+   "What shall I do unto you, O Ephraim!
+    What shall I do unto you, O Israel--
+    Since your love is like a morning cloud,
+    Yea, like the dew which goes early away."
+
+But the people as a whole, having been taught by the unworthy prients,
+still believed that, in offering sacrifices, all their sins and crimes
+were forgiven them by God. Amos had objected strenuously to this
+common belief. Hosea went a step further and decried the act of
+sacrificing as an act of idolatry.
+
+Referring bitterly to Bethel as Bethaven (the House of Violence)
+Hosea replied:
+
+   "Come not ye into Gilgal,
+    Neither go ye up to Beth-aven,
+    Nor swear, 'As God liveth.'
+    In Bethel I have seen a horrible thing;
+    All their wickedness is in Gilgal;
+    For there I hated them.
+    Because of the wickedness of their doings,
+    I will drive them out of my house;
+    I will love them no more.
+    They shall go with their flocks
+    And with their herds to seek God;
+    But they shall not find Him;
+    He hath withdrawn Himself from them."
+
+Every place where Hosea denounced the sacrifices, the people who heard
+him, but could not or would not understand, called him a fool and said
+that he was mad. "Yes," replied Hosea:
+
+   "The prophet is a fool,
+    The man that hath the spirit is mad
+    Because of the abundance of thine iniquity.
+    They shall cry unto me,
+    'My God, we Israel know Thee.'
+    (But) Israel hath cast off that which is good;
+    Israel hath forgotten his Maker.
+    And now they go on sinning,
+    They make for themselves molten gods,
+    From their silver, idols according to their own model,
+    Smith's work, all of it!
+    To such they speak!
+    Men who sacrifice, kiss calves!
+    They sow the wind and shall reap the whirlwind!"
+
+After that Hosea followed up his rebuke and denunciation with most
+pathetic entreaties:
+
+   "Sow to yourselves righteousness,
+    So shall ye reap loving-kindness.
+    Break up your fallow ground,
+    For it is time to seek the Lord,
+    That the fruit of righteousness may come upon you.
+    But ye have plowed wickedness,
+    Ye have reaped disaster,
+    Ye have eaten the fruit of lies.
+    It is love I delight in, and not sacrifice,
+    Knowledge of God and not burnt-offering."
+
+When the time came for Menahem to send the tribute to Tiglath-Pileser,
+Hosea discovered that even here the king and his advisers were
+double-dealing with Assyria. The sending of the money to the great
+emperor was only a blind on the part of Menahem.
+
+Secretly he was in communication with the King of Egypt, sending
+precious gifts to him. Menahem wanted to create an alliance between
+Israel and Egypt against Tiglath-Pileser.
+
+Hosea saw the folly of it all. He knew that neither the tribute to
+Assyria nor the proposed alliance with Egypt could help the corrupt,
+degraded people. He compares Menahem's double-dealing to the action of
+a silly dove, and concludes:
+
+   "Samaria shall bear her guilt,
+    For she has rebelled against her God.
+    Shall I deliver them from the power of Sheol?
+    Shall I redeem them from death?
+    Come, on with thy plagues, O Death!
+    On with thy pestilence, O Sheol!
+    Repentance is forever hid from mine eyes."
+
+This terrible pronouncement, almost a curse, brought Hosea back to his
+home all wrought up. Never had he spoken so harshly. Never had he felt
+so deeply the doom of Israel.
+
+He found his children in the playroom, playing an old game called
+"Mother." After watching them for a moment in silence and in thought,
+his heart was almost crushed by a question his little girl put to him:
+
+"When is our real mother coming home?"
+
+For answer he drew Lo-ruhamah close to his heart--and wept. Hosea did
+not know; only God knew.
+
+All the love he bore for Gomer came back in an overwhelming flood. She
+had strayed from him, but his love had never lessened. Would that he
+could find her! With all her faults he would forgive her, if she would
+repent and return. And yet, that morning, he had been so harsh. He
+preached that Israel must bear its guilt and that God had forever hid
+repentance from before Him.
+
+If he, a man, could love so deeply and could be willing to forgive,
+how much the more so does God love His people; how much the more so
+will God have compassion and forgive, if Israel will repent and return
+to Him?
+
+And that very night it seemed that God had ordained an ordeal for
+Hosea to test him and inspire him in his further work as a prophet.
+
+A message was brought to Hosea that his wife, Gomer, was to be sold as a
+slave at public auction, in the slave market of Samaria, on the morrow!
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER III.
+
+                    _The Repentant Returns._
+
+
+With a bowed head, though with a stout heart, Hosea went to the market
+place on the following morning. He mingled with the people in the
+vicinity of the slave auction district, watching particularly a certain
+block, on which, he was told, Gomer was to be offered for sale.
+
+He studied carefully every woman that was put upon the block. At last
+he recognized her. But how changed she seemed. Her beauty, for which
+she had been famous, was gone. Her straight erect form was stooped.
+Her eyes, once proud, were cast down. She had a forlorn, hopeless
+look, as if she didn't care what happened to her. Evidently she had
+suffered greatly.
+
+Where had she been during the past four years? What hardships had she
+been through that she was so changed? Why did she fall so low that she
+had to be sold into slavery?
+
+The answers to these questions would have made no difference in the
+plan Hosea had determined to follow with Gomer. Standing on the
+outskirts of the crowd, he raised bid after bid, until he bought her
+for "fifteen pieces of silver and a homer of barley and a half-homer
+of barley."
+
+Gomer was not at all concerned about the one who had purchased her.
+She did not take a single glance in the direction of those who were
+bidding for her. When sold, she stepped wearily down from the block
+and waited listlessly to be claimed by the owner and taken away.
+
+Hosea approached her, stepped to her side and spoke her name in a low
+voice: "Gomer!"
+
+She raised her eyes and looked at him as through a haze. Hosea, too,
+had changed much during the past four years. His love for Gomer, the
+uncertainty of her whereabouts, his grief, his constant preaching to
+Israel that fell on deaf ears, had made deep furrows in his face and
+brought wrinkles to his forehead.
+
+"Come with me," he said softly to her.
+
+For a moment Gomer stared at him; then she fell in a dead faint at
+his feet.
+
+It was a long time before she revived. Sorrow and repentance for her
+foolishness in leaving a home where her husband loved her and where
+her children would have worshiped her, had she permitted them to do
+so, had sapped all her strength. The sudden shock of seeing Hosea and
+the knowledge that he had bought her as a slave nearly killed her.
+
+But Hosea had no thought of revenge. In his great heart there was
+naught but love for Gomer.
+
+On their way home Gomer began:
+
+"I regret," she said, "I am sorry--"
+
+But Hosea stopped her. He would not even listen to words of explanation
+from her whom he loved. He knew that she must have suffered much, that
+she was unhappy. It was sufficient now that she was sorry, that she
+had repented. Hosea did not want to cause her the pain of a recital of
+her sorrows.
+
+That is the way people who love truly do. They forgive and forget,
+quickly and without causing pain.
+
+Hosea had the children removed to the home of a friend for several
+months. During that time Gomer quickly recovered from her trials and
+returned to health and beauty. Then he brought the children back and
+restored them to their real mother.
+
+Once, after the reunited family had spent a very happy evening, a
+tremendous truth came home to Hosea. Here they were all happy, as if
+trouble had never entered to disturb the sweetness and beauty of their
+lives! Why had sorrow and suffering come upon them at all?
+
+Then and there Hosea realized that there was a purpose in his home
+tragedy. He understood better than ever before that God had selected
+him to be a prophet to his people; that God had taught him through
+sorrow and suffering, the lesson he was to teach to Israel.
+
+Israel had become faithless to God and had left His law; even as Gomer
+had left her husband. God grieved for the sins of Israel; even as he
+had grieved for Gomer who had strayed from him. God loved His people,
+nevertheless; even as he loved Gomer, continually. God was prepared to
+take Israel back under His guiding and loving care, when Israel would
+repent of its backsliding and sinning; even as he did with Gomer.
+
+From that day on Hosea's preaching took on a different form. He no
+longer scolded and condemned, but entreated and pleaded with his
+people:
+
+   "Return, O Israel, to the Lord thy God,
+    For thou hast stumbled through thine iniquity.
+    Take words with thee
+    And return to God.
+    Say to Him,
+    'Pardon Thou wholly iniquity
+    And receive (us) with favor.
+    Assyria will not save us,
+    We will not ride upon horses (to Egypt);
+    We will no more say to the work of our hands,
+    "Ye are our god."'"
+
+And, in the fervor of his poetic soul, the prophet hears God's answer
+to repenting and returning Israel:
+
+   "I will heal their backsliding,
+    I will love them freely,
+    For my anger is turned away from them.
+    I will be as dew to Israel;
+    He shall blossom as the lily
+    And strike his roots deep as Lebanon.
+    His saplings shall spread out,
+    And his beauty shall be as the olive tree.
+    They shall return and dwell in my shadow,
+    They shall live well-watered like a garden,
+    They shall flourish like a vine,
+    Their renown shall be like that of the wine of Lebanon."
+
+But such hopefulness and promise of divine love had no more effect
+upon the doomed people than did the attacks upon their sinfulness and
+wrongdoing.
+
+The Judean prophet, Amos, it will be remembered, drew a picture of God
+as a stern judge and Israel as the criminal. Israel is proved guilty
+of all the prophet's accusations, and the Judge pronounces sentence.
+
+The experiences that led the Samarian, Hosea, to prophesy were
+different than those of the Tekoan. Understanding the lasting love
+that dwelt within him for Gomer, and how he yearned for her return to
+him, he cried out to his people, from the depths of a wounded heart,
+speaking through the inspiration of a loving and merciful God:
+
+   "O my people!
+    How can I give thee up, O Ephraim!
+    How can I surrender thee, O Israel!
+    How can I give thee up as Admah!
+    Or make thee as Zeboim!
+    My heart asserts itself:
+    My sympathies are all aglow.
+    I will not carry into effect the fierceness of my anger;
+    I will not turn to destroy Ephraim.
+    For God am I, and not man,
+    Holy in the midst of thee;
+    Therefore I will not utterly consume.
+    Turn thou to thy God,
+    Keep kindness and justice,
+    And wait for thy God continually."
+
+Although Hosea saw that he was laboring to no good effect, he did not
+for an instant give up. Time and again  he recalled the early days of
+love and devotion between God and Israel. He recounted the times when
+Israel deserted God, from the Exodus on, but God always received
+Israel back, when the people repented of their sins and returned to
+acts of justice, righteousness and love.
+
+   "I am the Lord, thy God, from the land of Egypt;
+    Thou knowest no God but Me,
+    And besides Me there is no Savior."
+
+Hosea could not conceive the idea that God would desert Israel
+forever. He recognized, however, that the doom of the sinful nation
+was sealed. And so he read the drama of Israel in his own life.
+Assyria would destroy Samaria. Israel would leave the fatherland as
+Gomer left her home. In exile Israel would learn through suffering and
+hardships as Gomer had done. Israel would redeem itself and,
+eventually, would return to God. God, loving Israel always, would wait
+to receive His repentant people, as he himself had received Gomer.
+
+And so Hosea drew a beautiful picture of that future day in these
+words:
+
+   "And I will betroth thee unto me forever.
+    Yea, I will betroth thee unto me with righteousness,
+    And with justice and with loving-kindness and in mercy;
+    Yea, I will betroth thee unto me with faithfulness,
+    And thou shalt know God."
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+The compiler of the fragments of Hosea's speeches in the book bearing
+the prophet's name--the most fragmentary book in the Bible, and from
+which this story has been built up--concludes his labors with
+this admonition:
+
+   "Whoso is wise, let him understand these things;
+    Whoso is prudent, let him realize them;
+    For straight are the ways of the Lord.
+    The righteous walk in them,
+    But transgressors stumble upon them."
+
+
+
+
+
+                        THE STATESMAN PROPHET
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER I.
+
+                   _The Vision in the Temple._
+
+
+Even his closest friends could not explain what had come over young
+Isaiah, since the physicians announced that King Uzziah was nearing
+his end.
+
+Amoz, Isaiah's father, was of a noble family, very near the throne in
+Jerusalem, and a dear personal friend of the king. Isaiah, too, was a
+prime favorite of Uzziah's, not by virtue of his father's friendship
+for the king, but because of his own fine qualities and excellent
+disposition.
+
+Often Isaiah had been invited, with the Crown Prince, Jotham, to be
+present at the Great Councils of State--a very distinguished honor for
+so young a man. But no one thought, for an instant, that this change
+in manner and behavior, so noticeable to everyone, had come upon
+Isaiah because of his grief over the aged king's fatal illness.
+
+Isaiah was being trained to enter upon a political career. His
+politics was the only serious thing in life for him. The country was
+so peaceful and prosperous, however, that even politics was a matter
+of little consequence to most of the royalty in Jerusalem. They lived
+the joyous life, paid little attention to the Temple and its priests,
+and often laughed at the whole religious ritual. But when great State
+functions occurred at the Palace or foreign ambassadors appeared at
+Court, all royalty celebrated with feasting--and Isaiah was among
+those present and in high favor.
+
+He always came to these occasions in rare good humor and with cheerful
+enthusiasm. He was a young man of many accomplishments. His knowledge
+of affairs was wide and extensive. His cleverness and wit had made him
+famed far and wide. His occasional poems, written for sport and
+festivals, showed a genuine talent, almost a genius, for the poetic
+art. He was considered by all the very life and spirit of the younger
+Court set. A great future as a statesman and man of letters was
+predicted for him by everybody.
+
+Now, however, since King Uzziah became so critically ill that his life
+was despaired of, this unexplainable change took place in Isaiah. He
+seemed to have quarreled with Prince Jotham, who had been reigning as
+king since Uzziah was smitten beyond hope of recovery, though both
+laughed at the rumor and denied it.
+
+What proved the greatest surprise to all, was the fact that Isaiah
+often went to the Temple and talked earnestly with the priests. At
+times he would linger about the place long after the evening
+sacrifices had been offered and the priests had gone home. His jolly
+friends would make sport of him; but his more sober-minded companions
+became quite alarmed when, instead of displaying his usual good humor,
+he spoke with bitter sarcasm. His contagious laugh began to ring
+forced and hollow. He was morose and always ill at ease, as if he were
+laboring under a great strain that burdened his heart and mind.
+
+King Uzziah's death was a lingering one. For many weeks reports from
+the sick chamber were to the effect that he was passing away, but he
+clung to life. Jerusalem had doffed its gala attire and the whole of
+Judah was prepared to go into mourning for its king. For a month or
+more the nobility and the Court had not indulged in any social
+functions, state or private. The Capital and the country were awaiting
+the royal funeral.
+
+Uzziah had been a great king and a good ruler. He had done much for
+the whole country, and especially for the Capital. The mourning in
+Jerusalem and all through Judah was, therefore, genuine and sincere,
+when the king died. The pomp and ceremony that characterized the
+funeral procession were not mere royal show, but expressions of honor
+and deep regret of a loyal people for its beloved sovereign.
+
+The young Isaiah was accorded an honored place in the long list of
+notables who followed the body of the king to its last resting place.
+He walked beside Jotham, his bosom friend; but did not accompany the
+new king on the return to the palace. In the slight confusion that
+followed after Uzziah had been "buried with his fathers," Isaiah
+slipped quietly away and took the road to the Temple Mount.
+
+Taking his way through the Water Gate, on the west side of the Temple,
+he entered the Inner Court. Then he mounted the twelve steps leading
+to the vestibule of the Temple proper. Two priests, who had just come
+out of the chamber where the implements for sacrificing were kept,
+bowed low to him and passed out into the Inner Court. Isaiah was
+evidently so absorbed in his thoughts that he did not notice them, for
+he did not return their salute, but walked forward to the entrance of
+the Hekal, or Temple proper.
+
+There he stood for a moment in silence; then he leaned wearily against
+one of the entrance pillars. Behind him the Priests' Hall and the
+Inner Court were deserted. Before him, in the Hekal, was the Altar of
+Incense, on which coals from the recent sacrifices were still alive.
+To the right of the Altar was the Menorah, the seven-light
+candlestick, and to the left the table of showbread. Behind these hung
+the golden curtains that separated the Holy of Holies from the rest of
+the Temple.
+
+A thin line of blue and purple smoke rose from the live coals on the
+Incense Altar and wound its way upward to the ceiling of the Hekal. As
+Isaiah watched the rising smoke, it became thicker and thicker, and
+filled the whole Temple. His eyes gazed from the Altar to the
+glittering gold curtains behind it. The reflection from the coals, and
+the playing of the blue and purple smoke on the golden sheets, caused
+them to sheen and shimmer until they faded entirely away into the blue
+and purple maze that filled the Hekal.
+
+Isaiah was gazing right into the Holy of Holies, where no human eyes,
+except those of the High Priest, once a year, ever looked, and behold!
+he saw a most remarkable vision.
+
+There, instead of the wooden Ark of the Covenant, he beheld a great
+and lofty throne on which was God, Himself. Instead of the two
+Cherubim of wood and gold, that surmounted the Ark, he beheld
+Seraphim, the fiery Angels, standing attendant before Him. Each of the
+Seraphim had six wings, with two he covered his face, with two he
+covered his feet and with two he flew. And one cried unto another and
+said:
+
+   "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts,
+    The whole earth is full of His glory."
+
+Isaiah felt the very foundations of the threshold shake under him,
+at the sound of the calling. Covering his face with both hands, he
+cried out:
+
+   "Woe is me!
+    I am undone.
+    For I am a man of unclean lips.
+    And I am dwelling among a people of unclean lips;
+    Yet mine eyes have seen the King, the God of hosts."
+
+Uncovering his face, he stretched out his hands towards the throne in
+mute appeal. Thereupon one of the Seraphim flew to the Altar and, with
+a pair of tongs, took from it a live coal. From the Altar the Seraph
+flew directly to Isaiah and, touching his mouth with the live coal,
+said:
+
+   "See, this has touched thy lips,
+    Therefore thine iniquity is gone
+    And thy sin forgiven."
+
+Then Isaiah heard the voice of God Himself, saying:
+
+   "Whom shall I send,
+    And who will go for us?"
+
+Falling to his knees, and again stretching out his hands towards the
+throne, Isaiah answered:
+
+   "Here am I!
+    Send me!"
+
+Kneeling there, motionless, hardly breathing, his lips apart, his face
+expressing the fear and anguish that were in his heart, Isaiah heard
+the reply:
+
+   "Go and say to this people:
+    Hear and hear again, but understand not;
+    See and see again, but perceive not.
+    Make fat the heart of this people,
+    And their ears dull, and besmear their eyes,
+    Lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears
+    And their heart should understand and they be healed."
+
+The force of this message struck Isaiah to the heart. He understood
+its meaning very well. It was terrible! It carried with it the sound
+of doom and the end of his nation. The very thought of it terrified
+him. Holding his head with both hands his back bent forward as under a
+heavy weight, until his face touched his knees upon the floor, he
+cried in heartbreaking tones:
+
+   "Lord! How long?"
+
+And God answered him:
+
+   "Until the cities are in ruin without an inhabitant,
+    And the houses without a human occupant,
+    And the land become utterly desolate,
+    And God hath sent the men far away,
+    And in the midst of the land the deserted territory be great.
+    And should there be a tenth in it,
+    It must in turn be fuel for flame,
+    Like the terebinth and the oak,
+    Of which, after falling, but a stump remains."
+
+For a long time after the voice had ceased speaking, Isaiah remained
+in the position in which he had listened to the last reply.
+
+When, finally, in fear and trembling, he slowly raised his head, the
+vision had gone! Behind him the Priests' Hall and the Inner Court were
+deserted. Before him a thin line of blue and purple smoke rose from
+the live coals on the Incense Altar and wound its way upward to the
+ceiling of the Hekal.
+
+Isaiah passed his hands over his eyes. For a moment he let his cool
+palm rest against his burning forehead. Then he slowly found his way
+out of the Temple and passed out into the silent night.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER II.
+
+                 _The Parable of the Vineyard._
+
+
+The fact was that Isaiah did not grieve particularly over King
+Uzziah's illness and approaching death. What troubled him was the
+attitude taken by his dear friend, the Crown Prince, Jotham, toward
+the political future of the Kingdom of Judah, since his sick father
+had placed the reins of government in his hands.
+
+The differences of opinion between Isaiah and Jotham, as to what was
+best for the nation were so great as to be almost hopeless. So that,
+even before Uzziah died the two stopped discussing problems of State,
+although they continued their warm friendship.
+
+As long as King Uzziah lived, it was plain nothing serious could
+happen to the country. To the south, Uzziah was feared by the
+Philistines and Arabians, whom he had subdued, and his name was
+honored even at the Court of Egypt. To the north Jeroboam II was
+prosperous and at peace; Syria was weak and Assyria had not yet made
+its power felt. Within the extended borders of his own country, Uzziah
+had established peace and had built up commercial enterprise and
+prosperity.
+
+To the average citizen of Judah, therefore, the country was all right,
+the king was all right, and the future had not the slightest cloud
+before it. To Isaiah, the keen-sighted and well-posted young
+statesman, however, neither the country nor the king was fit to deal
+with a great national crisis--and the future had one in store.
+
+When Uzziah became sick and abdicated, quietly, in favor of Jotham,
+then a young man of twenty-five, Isaiah began to call Jotham's
+attention to the internal social conditions of the country; but Jotham
+had such a high respect for his father's ruling power that he would
+not alter a single law nor make a single reform.
+
+When Isaiah attempted to drum into Jotham's head the causes of the
+reign of anarchy in Samaria and the lessons to be drawn therefrom for
+Judah, Jotham, desiring to show his power as a ruler while his father
+was yet alive, busied himself fighting with the Ammonites and
+extending the boundaries of his kingdom.
+
+When, finally, in the year 788 B. C. E., the news came to Jerusalem
+that King Menahem, of Israel, had sent a heavy tribute to the Assyrian
+Tiglath-Pileser, Isaiah's worries over the future of his own country
+became very acute.
+
+It was in this year Uzziah died; and it was on the day of the king's
+funeral that Isaiah saw the remarkable vision in the Temple.
+
+Up to that hour Isaiah was conscious only of the fact that something
+must be done in Judah to save it from the evils of injustice and
+unrighteousness that were being practiced by the rich and powerful
+upon the poor and weak. From that hour on he knew that God had called
+him to be His prophet, that God had selected him to bring the truth
+home to the Judeans and, if possible, to save the nation from the doom
+that awaited the sister-nation, Israel.
+
+What Isaiah saw and heard in the Temple at the close of that memorable
+day, gave him the germ of an idea as to what God demanded of him to
+do. Time, thought and experience ripened that idea into a plan. The
+course of events offered him the opportunity to put the plan into
+action.
+
+Isaiah could not count on Jotham to institute and carry out reforms in
+the religious beliefs and practices of the people, in their commercial
+wrongdoings, in the corrupt law courts and in the general oppression
+of the lower classes. He had to begin work on his own initiative; and
+he began it with the people themselves, in the City of Jerusalem.
+
+He came to the Temple Mount one day, when many pilgrims were gathered
+there. He listened attentively, with the rest, to travelers from
+Arabia, who were relating wonderful tales of adventure. From stories
+of adventure in foreign lands the pilgrims drifted into stories of
+happenings in their own country. Some related rumors of what was going
+on in Samaria; others spoke of the possibility of Judah's being forced
+to fight Assyria some day. Some laughed at such a suggestion; others
+were in grave doubt whether such an emergency would find the nation
+prepared. Some spoke of the evils that were sapping the strength of
+the people; others complained that the king, instead of attending to
+his business of State, was busying himself with his wealth of herds
+and vineyards.
+
+Here Isaiah, who had been silently listening to the discussions, offered
+to recite a poem, an original composition. The suggestion was received
+with loud applause and Isaiah began:
+
+   "Let me sing a song of my friend,
+    My friend's song about his vineyard."
+
+At this introduction everybody settled down comfortably to listen,
+and Isaiah continued:
+
+   "My friend hath a vineyard
+    On a fertile hill;
+    He digged it and gathered out the atones,
+    And planted it with choicest vine;
+    A tower he built in the midst of it
+    And hewed out a wine press.
+    He looked to find grapes that were good,
+    And it yielded only wild grapes."
+
+Isaiah's listeners were disappointed. The story not only lacked
+excitement, it even lacked interest. They shifted in their places
+uneasily, but Isaiah caught their attention again by continuing:
+
+   "And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem,
+    And ye people of Judah.
+    Judge, I pray you, betwixt me
+    And betwixt my vineyard.
+    What more could be done to my vineyard
+    Than that which I have done?
+    When I looked to find grapes that were good
+    Why yielded it wild grapes?
+
+   "And now, pray, I will tell you
+    What I will do to my vineyard:
+    I will take away the hedge thereof,
+    That it shall be devoured;
+    I will break down the wall thereof,
+    That it shall be trodden down;
+    Yea, I will make a waste thereof,
+    That it shall not be pruned or weeded.
+    Then it shall put forth thorns and thickets of brambles;
+    The clouds I will command that they rain not thereon."
+
+Everybody understood now that Isaiah was speaking a parable and that
+its application was to them and to their country. But who was the
+"friend" who possessed this vineyard? Isaiah did not hold the
+questioners in long suspense:
+
+   "For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the House of Israel,
+    And the men of Judah are His cherished plant;
+    And he looked for justice, but, behold! bloodshed;
+    For righteousness, but, behold! a cry of distress."
+
+Then Isaiah launched forth into a powerful denunciation of the social
+evils of which Judah and the leading Judeans were guilty--a sixfold
+woe that was rushing the Nation on to destruction.
+
+   "Woe unto them that join house to house,
+    Who add field to field,
+    Until there is no space left,
+    And they dwell alone in the midst of the land.
+
+   "Woe unto them that rise at dawn
+    To pursue strong drink,
+    Who tarry late into the night
+    Until wine inflames them;
+    But they regard not the work of the lord
+    And see not what His hands have made
+
+   "Woe unto them that draw guilt upon themselves
+    With cords of folly,
+    And sin as with a cart rope!
+
+   "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil;
+    That put darkness for light, and light for darkness;
+    That put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!
+
+   "Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes,
+    And prudent in their own conceit!
+
+   "Woe unto them that are heroic in drinking wine,
+    And valiant in mixing strong drink!
+    Who, for a bribe, justify the wicked
+    And strip the innocent man of his innocence!
+
+   "Therefore, as the fire devours stubble,
+    And as hay shrivels in a flame,
+    So their root shall be as rottenness
+    And their blossom go up as dust;
+    Because they have rejected the teaching of the Lord of hosts,
+    And despised the word of Israel's Holy One."
+
+So intensely absorbed in his speech was Isaiah, and so deeply
+interested was the vast assembly whom he was addressing, that no one
+took note of a splendidly arrayed group of men who had come up and
+stood with the rest, listening.
+
+When Isaiah had finished speaking, and the people had caught their
+breath again, some one shouted:
+
+"Behold! The king!"
+
+Isaiah looked over the heads of the crowd toward the newcomers, and
+there he beheld Jotham and a retinue of nobles, laughing heartily, no
+doubt, at his masterful effort.
+
+Fearlessly, and without a moment's hesitation, the prophet did what he
+had threatened Jotham he would do--he denounced his friend, the king,
+before his people:
+
+   "The Lord standeth forth to present his case,
+    And He standeth up to judge His people.
+    The Lord entereth into judgment
+    With the elders of His people and their princes.
+    'Ye, yourselves, have devoured the vineyard.
+    The spoils of the needy are in your houses.
+    What do you mean by crushing my people
+    And by grinding the face of the needy?'
+    Saith the Lord, God of hosts."
+
+Laughing still more heartily at this madness of his old friend, Jotham
+easily made his way to where the prophet stood. He placed his arm
+around Isaiah's shoulder and invited him to go with him and his
+companions to the palace.
+
+Isaiah did as he was bidden. All the way Jotham and his friends made
+fun of the feverish enthusiasm with which the denunciations were
+delivered, but Isaiah did not feel hurt. His heart was quite at peace.
+At last he had launched forth upon the work to which God had so
+unexpectedly and so marvelously called him!
+
+When Jotham and his friends arrived at the palace, a joint embassy
+from Rezin, the king of Syria, and from Pekah, the king of Israel, was
+awaiting them. To the amazement of them all, the ambassadors placed
+before Jotham a demand that Judah join forces with Syria and Israel,
+forthwith, and fight Tiglath-Pileser, the king of Assyria, who was
+then threatening to invade Damascus and Samaria!
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER III.
+
+                    _A Coward on the Throne._
+
+
+King Jotham was wise enough to follow the advice of the Prophet Isaiah
+in his reply to the embassy from Rezin and Pekah. At the Council of
+State, called to consider the message from the kings of Syria and
+Israel, Isaiah counselled an unhesitating and decisive refusal of
+their demand. While, therefore, the ambassadors were received and
+entertained royally in Jerusalem, they returned to their respective
+sovereigns, their mission unaccomplished.
+
+The answer that Jotham sent back to Damascus and Samaria was plain,
+simple and to the point. Judah, he said, had no interest in the
+political policies and intrigues of Syria and Israel and would not
+join a coalition against Assyria.
+
+Both Rezin and Pekah stormed against Jotham and his advisors, but to
+no avail. Judah was strong, independent and at peace, and Jotham would
+not involve his country in a quarrel with which he had nothing to do.
+
+Conditions in Israel were different, however. The majority of the
+people chafed under the indignity of being tributary to Assyria. They
+hated King Menahem who, in his fear, sent the tribute to Tiglath-Pileser
+and became his voluntary subject. Menahem was hated by the rich merchants
+and large landowners as well as by the people generally, because on
+them the burden of the tribute fell the heaviest. The powerful Samarians,
+therefore, formed themselves into a party to oppose the king.
+
+King Rezin, of Syria, who was watching his opportunity to rebel against
+Assyria, kept alive this hostile spirit against Menahem in Samaria and
+Israel. Rezin was working toward a coalition of all the countries along
+the Mediterranean sea that were tributary to Tiglath-Pileser, so that in
+their combined strength they might rise and throw off the Assyrian yoke.
+
+The leaders of the opposition to the king,--the national patriots--in
+Samaria, hoped that Pekaiah, Menahem's son and successor, would prove
+himself a truer son of his country than his father. They looked to him
+to refuse the payment of the Assyrian tribute and to re-establish the
+independence of the Kingdom of Israel; but they were disappointed.
+Pekaiah followed in the political footsteps of his father and the
+hopes of the Samarian patriots waned when he succeeded his father on
+the throne.
+
+Rezin, however, was not to be denied in the plan he had laid out for
+himself and for the other Assyrian tributaries. Pekaiah reigned in
+Samaria less than two years, when, in 735, through the assistance of
+Rezin and the connivance of the patriotic party in Samaria, he was
+assassinated by one of his generals, Pekah, the son of Remaliah.
+
+Pekah was thus raised to the throne of Israel with the avowed purpose of
+uniting with Rezin in the proposed rebellion against Tiglath-Pileser.
+Israel wanted, and needed, the help of Judah in the desperate conflict
+that awaited them. The smaller countries north of Israel and Syria,
+crushed under the burden of their Assyrian tribute, gladly joined the
+Syro-Israelitish coalition; but the embassy to Jerusalem returned
+empty-handed. Rezin and Pekah, however, were not dismayed by the refusal
+of Judah to join them. They bided their time for a better opportunity.
+
+This opportunity came the very next year when Jotham died, suddenly,
+and his son, Ahaz, a young man of twenty, came to the throne of Judah.
+
+Without any notice whatever, Rezin and Pekah united their armed forces
+and marched upon Jerusalem. This sudden invasion of Judah had been
+carefully planned beforehand. It was so arranged that, when the
+Syro-Israelitish forces attacked Jerusalem, a certain man, the son of
+Tabeal, who was willing to play the traitor, was to assassinate Ahaz,
+proclaim himself king, admit the enemy into the city and throw all the
+power and wealth of Judah into the scale with Syria and Israel in the
+war against Tiglath-Pileser.
+
+Ahaz was entirely unprepared for such a move on the part of Pekah and
+Rezin. The news that the two armies were on the march caused
+consternation, not alone in the palace of the king, but in Jerusalem
+and in the entire country.
+
+The northern part of Judah, as far as Jerusalem, was unprotected and
+at the mercy of the enemy. Neither Uzziah nor Jotham looked for a foe
+from that direction. In fact, the Syro-Israelitish forces met no
+opposition whatever until they came within sight of Jerusalem.
+
+The very first thing that Ahaz and his generals did, when they had
+recovered from their consternation, was to prepare the capital for a
+siege. The fortifications were examined and strengthened. The water
+supply to the south of the city, without which Jerusalem could not
+have withstood a siege for three months, was especially looked after.
+
+Now, Ahaz was like that ancient Pharaoh who did not know Joseph, or
+like his own predecessor, Rehoboam, who "took council with the young
+men that were grown up with him." Ahaz did not call Isaiah, the old
+friend and counsellor of the royal house, to advise him in his great
+extremity.
+
+Isaiah, however, called to God to save his nation--if the nation would
+be saved--and did not wait for an invitation from the young king.
+While Ahaz, his advisors and the commanders of his army, were examining
+the water supply of Jerusalem, preparatory to the inevitable siege,
+Isaiah went out to meet him. The prophet came upon the royal party at
+the end of the conduit of the upper reservoir, in the highway of the
+Fuller's field.
+
+Isaiah, who had been quietly and carefully studying the entire situation
+since the embassy came to Jotham, understood well enough that an
+intrigue must be brewing in Jerusalem against the young King. When the
+report reached the city that the enemy was on the march, Isaiah's
+searching inquiries and careful observation of the leaders of the
+capital resulted in the discovery that the son of Tabeal was in league
+with Rezin and Pekah. It was Isaiah at this meeting, who informed Ahaz
+that his immediate danger was as much within his own city as from the
+enemy that was approaching. No wonder, then, that "his heart trembled,
+and the heart of his people, as the trees of the forest tremble with
+the wind."
+
+But Isaiah immediately reassured the trembling Ahaz in the following
+words:
+
+   "Take heed and keep thyself calm; fear not, neither be
+    fainthearted because of these two fag ends of smoking
+    firebrands, because of the fierce anger of Rezin and Syria
+    and of the son of Remaliah. Syria, with Israel, hath purposed
+    evil against thee, saying, 'Let us go up against Judah and
+    distress it and overpower it and appoint the son of Tabeal
+    king in its midst.' But thus saith the Lord God: It shall not
+    stand, neither shall it come to pass, for, the head of Syria
+    is Damascus and the head of Damascus is Rezin, and the head
+    of Israel is Samaria and the head of Samaria is Remaliah's son.
+    Verily, if you will not hold fast, ye shall not stand fast."
+
+Ahaz laughed at the idea of keeping quiet and having no fear, under
+the conditions. He turned away impatiently from the prophet and
+proceeded with his business of examining the reservoir. Isaiah,
+however, would not be put off with mere impatience.
+
+"Ask thee a sign of the Lord, thy God," he cried to Ahaz. "Ask it
+either in the depths of Sheol or in the heights above."
+
+But Ahaz replied, "I will not ask, neither will I put the Lord to
+the test."
+
+Then Isaiah said:
+
+   "Hear now, O House of David! Is it too small a thing for
+    you to weary men, that ye must also weary my God? Therefore
+    the Lord, Himself, will give you a sign. Behold, a young
+    woman will bear a son and call his name Immanuel (God is
+    with us). Before this child shall know to refuse the evil
+    and choose the good those two kings before whom thou
+    tremblest shall be deserted."
+
+Ahaz was tired of mere words. Advice he had enough; he wanted now to
+act. In fact, when the knowledge of the political intrigue in
+Jerusalem became known to him, he immediately made up his mind what to
+do. He, therefore, again turned from Isaiah and ordered his retinue to
+continue the examination of the water supply.
+
+Isaiah then tried another form of argument with this cowardly young
+king, in order to bring him to his senses. He, himself, was positive
+that Tiglath-Pileser, who was at that time in Asia Minor, had, no
+doubt, been informed by his spies of the action taken by Rezin and
+Pekah. Isaiah felt sure, also, that Tiglath-Pileser would immediately
+invade Syria. He knew, in addition, that neither Rezin nor Pekah was
+strong and powerful enough, at this time, to wage a protracted war
+with Assyria; that is why he described them as "two fag ends of
+smoking firebrands." He, therefore, concluded that, at the first
+information of Tiglath-Pileser's march into the northern country,
+Rezin and Pekah would have to return to defend their own lands.
+
+On the other hand, Isaiah knew that, if Ahaz did anything that would
+in any way displease the mighty King of Assyria, the latter would,
+after finishing his campaign in Syria and Israel, attack Judah.
+Therefore, he warned Ahaz in these words:
+
+   "God will bring upon thee and upon thy people and upon thy
+    father's house days such as have not been, since the day
+    Ephraim departed from Judah, through the King of Assyria.
+    Curds and honey will be that child's food (in the wilderness)
+    when he knows to refuse evil and choose the good."
+
+Isaiah ceased. He had delivered his message, had counseled and warned
+the king. He made it clear to Ahaz that, if he did anything except
+trust in the power and care of God for his people, Judah, like Syria
+and Israel, was destined to become a wilderness in the short time that
+it takes a child to reach that age when it can begin to think for
+itself.
+
+Ahaz, however, acted upon his own and his young men's counsel. Hardly
+had he returned to the palace that day, when he sent messengers
+carrying the following letter to Tiglath-Pileser, King of Assyria:
+
+   "I am your servant and your son. Come up and save me from
+    the power of the King of Assyria and from the power of the
+    King of Israel, who have attacked me."
+
+Ahaz followed up this message by ransacking the Temple in Jerusalem
+and the treasures of the royal palace, sending both as a gift and
+bribe to Tiglath-Pileser.
+
+Then exactly what Isaiah foresaw happened. Tiglath-Pileser immediately
+invaded Syria and attacked Damascus. Rezin and Pekah were forced to
+hurry back to defend their own countries, and Judah was saved from
+Syro-Israelitish attack; but Ahaz had already thrown himself at the feet
+of the great Assyrian conqueror, with terrible results to his own
+country.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER IV.
+
+                         _On Deaf Ears._
+
+
+Though the spineless Ahaz sent his cowardly note, and the presents
+that followed, to Tiglath-Pileser secretly, the truth leaked out.
+Great indignation was aroused among certain opponents of the king in
+Jerusalem at the discovery of his act of treachery to the nation, and
+a new party was formed to fight against submission to Assyria.
+
+The aim of the new movement was, principally, to preserve the independence
+of Judah. The only avenue open seemed to be the alliance with Israel and
+Syria that the lamented king, Jotham, would not enter into.
+
+With Ahaz looked upon as a traitor, the only one whom these patriots
+could turn, was the Prophet Isaiah, who loved his land and knew its
+traditions. So, the leaders of the patriotic party came to him with
+their plans. But Isaiah stood firm in the position he had taken with
+Jotham against entangling alliances.
+
+He shocked these gentlemen with a well-spoken rebuke. He told them that
+the patriotism Judah needed was not of alliances and war, but of faith
+in God, of trust in Him who always guards and protects a righteous nation
+against its enemies.
+
+Isaiah knew well enough the weakened and helpless condition of both
+Israel and Syria. To join with them in a war against Tiglath-Pileser
+would mean even greater ruin for Judah than the peaceful submission of
+Ahaz. He pictured the results of such an alliance in the following words:
+
+   "Because this people have rejected the waters of Shiloah that
+        flow softly,
+    And rejoice in Rezin and Remaliah's son,
+    Therefore the Lord is about to bring upon them
+    The waters of the River Euphrates, mighty and great,
+    (Even the King of Assyria, in all his glory).
+    And it shall rise above all its channels,
+    And overflow all its banks;
+    And it shall sweep onward into Judah,
+    And it shall overflow and pass over it,
+    Reaching even to its neck,
+    And its outstretched wings shall cover the breadth of thy land,
+        O Immanuel."
+
+To the king, the prophet sent a concise message that would have been
+heeded and understood by any one but a weakling like Ahaz. Isaiah
+referred to the utter helplessness into which Ahaz had cast Judah by
+his cowardly self-subjugation to Tiglath-Pileser. He pictured what
+might happen when that mighty monarch would receive the king's pitiful
+cry for help:
+
+   "In that same day the Lord will shave with the razor hired
+    beyond the Euphrates the head and the hidden hair; and it
+    shall even sweep away the beard."
+
+Despite Isaiah's efforts, the peace party that stood by Ahaz, and  the
+war party that desired an alliance with Pekah and Rezin, continued
+their separate agitations.
+
+The capture of the town of Elath, at the head of the Arabian Gulf, by
+a detachment of the Syrian army, strengthened Ahaz in his belief that
+help could come only from Tiglath-Pileser. On the other hand, it
+convinced the war party that only the union with Samaria and Damascus
+could restore to the country this center of Judah's lucrative trade,
+that commanded the commerce to the south.
+
+Isaiah recognized the uselessness of appealing to either of these
+opposing parties. He determined to appeal to the country at large, to
+the whole people, who were interested not in party quarrels, but in
+the welfare of the nation. He wanted to create a public opinion in
+favor of peace and in opposition to entangling alliances, either with
+Assyria or with the Palestinian coalition.
+
+On his own property, in the heart of Jerusalem, where all the passers-by
+could see and read it, Isaiah erected a great sign which read:
+
+                     "SWIFT BOOTY--SPEEDY PREY."
+
+He meant this to indicate to the people that the triumphs of either
+the champions of peace or the champions of war would mean ruin to the
+nation at the hands of Assyria.
+
+About this time a son was born to Isaiah. He gave a magnificent feast
+to the leading people of Jerusalem and, to bring his conviction home
+more forcibly, named the boy "Swift Booty--Speedy Prey."
+
+At the close of the feast he addressed his guests and said, in part:
+
+   "Before the boy knows how to cry, 'My mother' and 'My father,'
+    they shall carry off the riches of Damascus and the spoil of
+    Samaria before the King of Assyria."
+
+At a great meeting in Jerusalem, soon thereafter, Isaiah again took up
+the burden of his argument against Israel and Syria. He predicted the
+inevitable destruction of these two kingdoms, because they were in
+rebellion against Assyria, and he pointed out the consequent
+foolhardiness of involving Judah in the oncoming disaster. Regarding
+Israel he said:
+
+   "In that day the glory of Jacob shall grow dim,
+    And the fatness of his flesh wax lean.
+    And it shall be as when a harvester gathers standing grain,
+    And his arms reap the ears;
+    Yea, it shall be as when he gleans in the valley of Rephaim,
+    And the gleanings thereof shall be as the beating of an olive tree--
+    Two or three berries on the topmost branch,
+    Four or five on the boughs of a fruit tree,
+    Saith the Lord, the God of Israel."
+
+Then, addressing himself as if he were speaking to the people of
+Israel, but hoping to drive the lesson home to the people of Judah,
+who were listening to him, he spoke most regretfully:
+
+   "For thou hast forgotten the God of thy salvation
+    And hast not been mindful of the rock of thy strength."
+
+Turning to a consideration of the second of the allies, Syria,
+Isaiah continued:
+
+   "Soon shall Damascus cease to be a city
+    And shall be a ruinous heap.
+    Its cities shall be given up to flocks
+    Which shall lie down, with none to make them afraid.
+    Ephraim shall lose her bulwark,
+    And Damascus her sovereignty,
+    And the rest of Syria shall perish;
+    Like the Israelites shall they be,
+    Saith the Lord of Hosts."
+
+These descriptions of what would happen to Syria and Israel, however,
+did not go unchallenged. The prophet was told that he had evidently
+forgotten that all the nations in Palestine and along the Mediterranean,
+except Judah, were parties to this coalition against Tiglath-Pileser.
+Isaiah laughed. With fine scorn he cried:
+
+   "Ah! The multitude of many peoples
+    That roar like the roaring of the seas!
+    And the rushing of nations,
+    That rush like the rushing of many waters!
+    But he shall rebuke them and they shall flee far off,
+    And shall be chased as the chaff of the mountains before the wind,
+    And like the whirling dust before the storm.
+    At eventide, behold, terror;
+    Before the morning, they are no more."
+
+Then, as if addressing himself to all the petty northern countries
+that were trying to drag his own beloved fatherland into the whirlpool
+of disaster, Isaiah spoke as follows:
+
+   "Make an uproar,
+    And be broken in pieces;
+    And give ear, all ye of far countries;
+    Gird yourselves and be broken in pieces,
+    Take counsel together, and it shall be brought to naught;
+    Speak the word and it shall not stand;
+    For God is with us."
+
+And in answer to the appeal of the people as to what ought to be done
+in this national crisis, Isaiah replied:
+
+   "Call ye not conspiracy all that this people calleth conspiracy.
+    What they fear do not fear, nor be filled with dread.
+    The Lord of Hosts, Him regard as the conspirator!
+    Let Him be your fear and your dread!"
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER V.
+
+                 _The Survival of the Fittest._
+
+
+While Isaiah was thus attempting to influence the two parties in
+Jerusalem, exactly what he had warned Ahaz of happened. The Assyrian
+forces made a speedy march into Syria, with Damascus as the point of
+attack. The combined Syro-Israelitish army, upon hearing of
+Tilgath-Pileser's new move, abandoned the siege of Jerusalem and hurried
+back to defend their own countries.
+
+The great Assyrian conqueror easily subdued all the land about
+Damascus and finally besieged the city itself. Rezin offered him
+desperate resistance, but it was useless. Tiglath-Pileser destroyed
+all the forests, fruit groves and fertile fields in the vicinity of
+the city, until both food and water failed the defenders.
+
+In a last sally from the doomed city, the Syrian troops were literally
+cut to pieces. Rezin escaped with his life, and, disguised and alone,
+re-entered Damascus. But he was caught, brought before Tiglath-Pileser
+and put to death.
+
+In the meantime, all Israel and Samaria quaked at the fate that
+awaited them. Pekah, who had been lending Rezin what help he could,
+without entirely weakening himself, was ready and willing to give the
+Assyrian battle. Tiglath-Pileser, however, had his hands full with
+Damascus. He therefore, welcomed the suggestion of a certain Hoshea,
+son of Elah of Samaria, who offered to follow the example of the
+traitor Menahem.
+
+Tiglath-Pileser assented gladly. He promised help and protection to
+Hoshea, as he did to Ahaz, for voluntary submission to Assyrian rule.
+So Hoshea conspired against Pekah in Samaria, slew him, proclaimed
+himself king under the protection of Assyria. and sent tribute to
+Tiglath-Pileser at Damascus. Cowardice and treachery thus once more
+sealed the fate of the kingdom of Israel.
+
+After the fall of Damascus, the victorious Assyrian ordered a great
+_Durbar_ to celebrate his victory in that city. All the tributary
+kings in Palestine were commanded to meet him and pay homage to him
+there.
+
+The splendor and display of the gathering was rivaled only by the
+magnificence of the welcome the terrible monarch received on his
+return to Asshur, his own capital.
+
+Among the princes who hob-nobbed with their master at Damascus were
+the cowardly Ahaz and the traitorous Hoshea. But both were happy in
+that their countries escaped the awful havoc they witnessed in
+Damascus and throughout Syria.
+
+Tiglath-Pileser always carried with him a wonderfully wrought altar on
+which he offered sacrifices to Asshur, the Assyrian god. During the
+religious exercises at the Damascus festival, in which all the
+Assyrian vassals participated, Ahaz was particularly struck with the
+beauty of this altar. Thereupon he sent to Urijah, the high priest in
+Jerusalem, "the fashion of the altar, and the pattern of it, according
+to all the workmanship thereof," with instructions to have it
+duplicated for the Temple in Jerusalem.
+
+Isaiah, when he heard of this, was thunderstruck by the audacity of
+the king who had no respect for his people or for his God.
+
+Not only was this heathen altar built, but it replaced the ancient
+one, which was set aside. Ahaz even went further. When he returned
+from Damascus, he himself, instead of the regularly appointed priest,
+offered the sacrifices upon the new altar, as he had seen Tiglath-Pileser
+do. To cap the climax, Ahaz introduced certain pagan religious ideas,
+copied from the Assyrian worship, into the cult of the Temple, simply
+to please and gratify his Assyrian master.
+
+With so base a king, Isaiah could hope nothing for the nation. Truly
+could he cry out in the anguish of his spirit:
+
+   "My people--a boy is their leader!"
+   "My people--thy guides lead thee astray."
+
+Of one thing, however, Isaiah was positive. When messengers came to
+him from various parts of the country to inquire what to do in this
+national crisis he answered them all alike: "God hath founded Zion,
+and in her shall the afflicted of His people take refuge."
+
+He was certain that neither a weakling like Ahaz nor a terror like
+Tiglath-Pileser could bring destruction upon the city that God had
+selected as the center of His worship, or upon the people whom God had
+chosen, to reveal Himself to them and to entrust them with His law.
+
+The patriotic and religious backsliding of Ahaz and his counselors,
+however, seemed to point to the destruction of both. But Isaiah was
+not dismayed. Trusting faithfully in God's protecting hand over His
+people, he could not conceive that God would desert them for long. God
+would not permit a backboneless king to reign over His people. The
+successor to Ahaz would be a different type of man--an ideal prince in
+the sight of God and men:
+
+   "And there shall come forth a shoot out of the stock of Jesse,
+    And a branch of his roots shall bear fruit.
+    And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him,
+    The spirit of wisdom and understanding,
+    The spirit of counsel and might,
+    The spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.
+    And he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes,
+    Neither arbitrate after the hearing of his ears;
+    But with righteousness shall he judge the poor,
+    And arbitrate with equity for the afflicted of the land:
+    And he shall smite the tyrannous with the rod of his mouth,
+    And with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked,
+    And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins,
+    And faithfulness the girdle of his reins,
+    And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
+    And the leopard shall lie down with the kid;
+    The calf and the young lion shall feed together;
+    And a little child shall lead them.
+    And the cow and the bear shall make friends;
+    Their young ones shall lie down together;
+    And the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
+    And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp,
+    And the weaned child shall stretch out his hand to the serpent's eye.
+    None shall do evil or act corruptly in all my holy mountain,
+    For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the
+        waters cover the sea."
+
+In all literature there is no more beautiful and meaningful
+description of what an ideal ruler should be and of the peaceful and
+happy state to which such a ruler could bring his country.
+
+But Isaiah did not lose sight of the fact that just as little as an
+Ahaz could accomplish the destruction of the nation, so little could
+an ideal king, even if his fond dream would come true, accomplish the
+reconstruction of the nation, single-handed and alone.
+
+What was necessary, therefore, was the raising and educating of a new
+generation of citizens in Judah; a just, patriotic, God-fearing
+company of men who, when the hoped-for king shall have come to the
+throne, would support him, with their valor and their lives, in
+building up the entire nation to walk in God's way.
+
+So Isaiah began quietly with his own family first, and later with a
+few friends and disciples who believed as he did. "Binding up the
+admonition and sealing the instruction among my disciples," said
+Isaiah, "I will wait for the Lord who is hiding His face from the
+House of Jacob, and in Him will I trust. Behold, I and the children
+whom the Lord hath given me are signs and symbols in Israel from the
+Lord of Hosts who dwells in Mount Zion."
+
+Isaiah's idea was similar to that of Moses in the olden days in the
+wilderness. The present generation, ruler and people, that did not
+place its trust wholly in God, would slowly die out; a new generation,
+better and more fit, would survive to save the nation.
+
+Just at this time, when Isaiah began his slow work of upbuilding the
+nation, a son and heir was born to the king. Isaiah accepted this
+incident as a message of approval of his course from God. He and his
+disciples looked to this prince to be the ideal king; and in
+celebration of the event Isaiah greeted the heir apparent in the
+following fine outburst of hope for the future:
+
+   "Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given;
+    And the government shall be upon his shoulder;
+    And his name shall be called wonder-counselor,
+    Divine hero, father of glory, prince of peace.
+    For the increase of dominion and for peace without end,
+    Upon the throne of David and upon his kingdom,
+    To establish and support it by justice and by righteousness
+    From henceforth, even forever; the favor of the Lord of Hosts
+        will perform this."
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VI.
+
+                  _Working With the Remnant._
+
+
+Isaiah called his little band of disciples and followers "The Remnant."
+He referred to them as "The Remnant" because he knew that, if only
+these remained true and faithful to God, for their sakes God would not
+forsake the Fatherland.
+
+It was upon "The Remnant" that he placed the future welfare of his
+country. Through these few he hoped to regenerate the rest of his
+people, despite the corruption and wrongdoing of their leaders. He
+aimed, especially, to prepare the young generation for patriotic,
+God-fearing, God-trusting lives.
+
+The prophet had set for himself no easy task. He met opposition from
+many directions. The king himself opposed him for political reasons.
+The priests, who sided with the king in his introduction of Assyrian
+rites and practices in the Temple service, opposed him on religious
+grounds; so that, for many years, Isaiah simply devoted himself to
+teaching and preaching moral living, just and righteous dealing and
+absolute trust in God.
+
+   "Hear, O heavens, and give heed, O earth, for the Lord speaketh:
+    Sons have I brought up and placed on high, but they have proved
+        false to me.
+    The ox knows its owner and the ass its master's crib,
+    But Israel has no knowledge; my people have no insight;
+    Ah! Sinful nation, people deep laden with guilt,
+    Race of evil-doers, perverse children!
+    They have forsaken the Lord;
+    They have spurned the Holy One of Israel;
+    They have become rebellious.
+
+   "On what place can you yet be smitten since you continue rebelling?
+    The whole head is sick and the whole heart faint,
+    From the sole of the foot to the head there is no soundness,
+    Only wounds and bruises and fresh sores,
+    Which have not been dressed nor bound up nor softened with oil."
+
+With words of this kind, and in similar speeches, Isaiah tried to
+describe the condition of Judah to its people. The cowardice of Ahaz
+in throwing himself at the feet of the Assyrian had, indeed, smitten
+the land and the people very sore. The large tribute to Tiglath-Pileser
+had to be collected and paid. The burden was terrible to bear. In the
+meantime, Judah's enemies from the south and along the Mediterranean
+coast took advantage of the weakened condition of Judah and attacked
+the country from many points.
+
+Isaiah tried, with all his might, to bring the people, as a whole, to
+an understanding of Judah's condition. He wanted them to join "The
+Remnant" and to live their lives in accordance with his teaching,
+which were really not his, but God's. Only in this way, Isaiah said,
+could a country that had fallen deeply into sin and unrighteousness,
+and was at the mercy of its enemies, be saved:
+
+   "Your land is a desolation, your cities are burned with fire,
+    Your tilled land--before your eyes strangers devour it;
+    And the daughter of Zion is left like a booth in a vineyard,
+    Like a lodge in a field of cucumbers, like a watchtower.
+    Unless the Lord of hosts had left us a remnant,
+    We should almost be as Sodom,
+    We would have been like Gomorrah."
+
+This simile, comparing Jerusalem to these ancient cities of evil
+repute, was answered by Isaiah's opponents with the statement that the
+people of Sodom and Gomorrah were idol worshipers, but that the people
+of Judah brought their sacrifices to the Temple and observed the
+holydays in accordance with the ancient laws. This was the same kind
+of an argument as the citizens in Samaria gave to Amos and Hosea.
+
+Isaiah, however, who knew, and had taught "The Remnant" that sacrificing
+animals was not the true manner of worshipping God, replied as follows:
+
+   "Hear the word of the Lord, ye Rulers of Sodom;
+    Give heed to the instruction of our God, ye people of Gomorrah!
+    What care I for the great number of your sacrifices? saith the Lord.
+    I am sated with the burnt offerings of rams and the fat of
+        fed beasts,
+    And in the blood of bullocks and lambs and he-goats I take
+        no pleasure.
+    When ye appear before me--who has required this of you?
+    Trample no more my courts, bring no more offerings,
+    Vain is the odor of incense--it is an abomination to me;
+    I am not able to endure a fast and a solemn assembly.
+    Your new moons and your appointed days my soul hateth.
+    I am tired of bearing it.
+    When ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you.
+    Also, if ye make many prayers, I will not hear."
+
+Then Isaiah launched forth into one of the most beautiful speeches that
+he delivered in his whole career. In it he brought home to the people
+the true idea of the religion which God had commanded to Israel, and
+through which Judah could be regenerated, strengthened and saved:
+
+   "Your hands are stained with blood;
+    Wash, that ye may be clean;
+    Remove the evil of your deeds from before mine eyes.
+    Cease to do evil; learn to do good;
+    Seek justice; relieve the oppressed;
+    Vindicate the orphan; plead for the widow."
+
+In one of the sublimest passages that any prophet ever uttered, Isaiah
+promised the people God's forgiveness in the following wonderful appeal:
+
+   "Come now, let us argue together, saith the Lord.
+    Though your sins be as scarlet,
+    They may become white as snow;
+    Though they be red as crimson,
+    They may become as wool;
+    If ye willingly yield and are obedient,
+    Ye shall eat the good of the land,
+    But if you refuse and rebel,
+    Ye shall be devoured by the sword.
+    The mouth of the Lord hath spoken it!"
+
+While Isaiah thus pleaded and threatened, he gained many additions to
+"The Remnant," but he failed to create a deep impression either with
+the reigning house or with the powerful priesthood or with the
+majority of the rich in Jerusalem and Judah.
+
+In the meantime, a vassal of Assyria, in far-off Babylonia, rebelled
+successfully. Immediately, various Palestinian states, including
+Judah, began to prepare a similar attempt to free themselves from the
+Assyrian yoke.
+
+Ahaz had died in 721, the year in which Sargon the Great captured
+Samaria, after a two year's siege, and effectually reduced the kingdom
+of Israel. Hezekiah, his young son, to whom Isaiah looked for the
+ideal prince he had pictured, succeeded him.
+
+The calamity of the northern kingdom did not seem to bring Isaiah or
+Ahaz any warning. The king had been paying his Assyrian tribute
+regularly and faithfully; the prophet had centered his hope in "The
+Remnant" and in the crown prince, and bided his time.
+
+When, however, six years later, in the year 715, Hezekiah joined the
+coalition of Palestinian states against Assyria, Isaiah was not only
+disappointed, but became greatly alarmed.
+
+To permit Hezekiah to follow the advice of his father's counselors,
+Isaiah knew would be national suicide. For three years, therefore,
+while the agitation for coalition and rebellion was going on, Isaiah
+cast off his prophet's mantle and sandals, and walked barefooted and
+in the garb of a captive through the treets of Jerusalem, as an object
+lesson to the people of Judah, to show them what might await them if
+they rebelled against Assyria.
+
+But even this, for the time being, was of no avail. Rebellion was in
+the blood of the king and the court clique. Somehow the very thought
+of it in Jerusalem seemed to reach the Assyrian capital. Hardly had
+Hezekiah begun to carry his contemplated revolt into action when
+Sennacherib, the new Assyrian king, was on the march.
+
+Once more Judah was invaded by the Assyrian hosts, and once more
+Judah's rulers bent their knee in submission and undertook to pay a
+tribute that was heavier than ever before.
+
+Yet Isaiah, though heartbroken, was in no way dismayed. His unbounded
+faith in the final triumph of God's purposes led him to go on,
+fearlessly, to oppose the king and his associates to the very end.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VII.
+
+                     _Like Father, Like Son._
+
+
+A chain, we are told, is as strong as its weakest link. The weak link
+in the long chain of Assyrian provinces was the fact that whenever a
+new king came to the throne, if he happened to be away, fighting in
+the field, he had to hurry back to the capital, backed by the complete
+military force under his command, in order to establish himself firmly
+in his dominions.
+
+Immediately upon the withdrawal of the king's armies from the field,
+all the provinces that hated Assyria bitterly, rebelled. Naturally,
+all the work of conquest had to be done over again. Then, when another
+change took place in the rulership of Assyria, the new king met the
+same conditions and the same difficulties.
+
+When Tiglath-Pileser died, Shalmaneser IV., who laid siege to Samaria,
+was forced to reconquer all the Syrian and Palestinian tributaries.
+The great Sargon, who reduced Samaria and carried its inhabitants
+captive into the northern part of the Assyrian Empire, left his
+successor, Sennacherib, no better legacy.
+
+With Sennacherib's ascension to the throne in the year 704, therefore,
+the usual thing happened--rebellion broke out all along the line of
+his possessions.
+
+In Palestine, King Hezekiah of Judah became the leader of a movement
+for a strong organization of all Palestinian and Syrian states and
+cities with the purpose of concerted rebellion against the new king.
+
+So strong was the patriotism aroused among the various peoples that
+Padi, king of the city of Ekron, who would not join the proposed
+coalition, was captured by the citizens, bound in chains and handed
+over a prisoner to Hezekiah in Jerusalem.
+
+It did not take Sennacherib long to make up his mind what to do. His
+predecessors had shown him the way. He organized a strong force,
+composed mostly of mercenaries, and marched at once into Phoenicia.
+
+City after city fell before his prowess and he worked his way rapidly
+into Palestine. Unfortunately for Hezekiah and his allies, no
+concerted action could be agreed upon by them. Each one feared for
+himself; each one tried to be on the safe side.
+
+Sennacherib took advantage of the situation in this rebellious
+district of his empire. He marched his armies, victorious throughout
+Phoenicia, into Palestine, meeting with success after success. The
+city of Tyre resisted most nobly on its own account, but it was no
+match for the Assyrians. Immediately after that Ekron, too, fell, and
+Judah itself was overrun by Sennacherib's troops.
+
+The great disappointment of the Palestinian allies in this struggle
+for independence during the years 703-701, was that the help they
+looked for from the Arabian tribes to the south was very meagre, and
+that the horses and chariots they counted upon from Egypt did not
+materialize at all.
+
+In Jerusalem, the prophet Isaiah counseled against the proposed
+rebellion from its very beginning. He warned Hezekiah, the leaders in
+Jerusalem, and even the nations who were entering into the coalition
+with Hezekiah, of the folly of this step. Knowing, as he did, the
+situation, the weakness of the leaders, the corruption within Judah
+and the demoralization of the army and the people generally, because
+of greed and oppression, he understood that Sennacherib's forces would
+rout the Palestinian forces unmercifully.
+
+He wanted no coalition. He wanted Hezekiah and the Judeans to trust
+wholly in God. "Quietness and trust" was his motto and "Abiding faith
+in God" his standard.
+
+   "By repenting and remaining quiet you shall be delivered;
+    In resting and in trusting shall your strength consist."
+
+Hezekiah, like his father, Ahaz, however, placed his trust in himself
+and in the power of his armies. There was no doubt in Hezekiah's mind
+but that the assistance that would come from Egypt would strengthen
+him sufficiently to defeat Sennacherib and gain complete independence
+for Judah.
+
+Isaiah, who knew differently, preached openly against Hezekiah; but he
+had no more influence with the king than he had had with his father:
+
+   "Woe to the rebellious sons, is the oracle of Jehovah,
+    Carrying out a plan which is not mine,
+    Establishing a treaty contrary to my spirit,
+    So that they heap sin upon sin;
+    Who would set out for Egypt without asking my decision,
+    To flee to the shelter of Pharaoh,
+    And the refuge in the shadow of Egypt.
+    The shelter of Pharaoh will be your shame,
+    And the refuge in the shadow of Egypt your confusion."
+
+While Isaiah's position among the people, and his standing in the
+community in Jerusalem, made Hezekiah fear to do him bodily harm, or
+even to arrest him, the king and his counselors, who were, naturally,
+eager to gain all the assistance possible from the people at home,
+sent out men who were in favor of fighting Assyria to refute the
+opinions and arguments of Isaiah.
+
+These men also called themselves prophets of God; but Isaiah saw in
+them only false prophets:
+
+   "For it is a rebellious people, lying sons,
+    Sons who will not heed Jehovah's instruction,
+    Who say to the seers, 'See not!'
+    And to those who have visions, 'Give us no vision of what is right!
+    Speak to us what is agreeable, give us false visions!
+    Turn from the way, go aside from the path,
+    Trouble is no more with Israel's Holy One.'"
+
+When Sennacherib's armies finally came into Judah, Isaiah still saw
+the possibility of saving the country from the horrors of devastation,
+and he warned the king and people in these words:
+
+   "Therefore, thus saith the Holy One of Israel,
+    Because ye reject this word,
+    And trust in perverseness and crookedness and rely thereon,
+    Therefore this guilty act shall be to you
+    Like a bulging breach in a high wall about to fall,
+    Suddenly, in an instant, will come its destruction;
+    Yea, its destruction shall be as when one dashes an earthen vessel
+        in pieces, shattering it ruthlessly,
+    So that not a potsherd is found among the pieces
+    With which to take up fire from the hearth or to draw water from
+        a cistern."
+
+Notwithstanding the utter failure that faced Hezekiah in his course,
+neither he nor his counselors gave heed until Sennacherib had captured
+and destroyed forty-six fortified Judean cities and towns and had
+actually begun preparations for a siege of Jerusalem.
+
+It was then that Hezekiah came to his senses. When Sennacherib was at
+Lachish, Hezekiah sent him a message which was almost a duplicate of
+the one sent by Ahaz to Tiglath-Pileser:
+
+   "I have offended; withdraw from me; whatever you lay on me I
+    will bear."
+
+The tribute that Sennacherib laid on Hezekiah was three hundred
+talents of silver and thirty talents of gold. To meet this, Hezekiah
+was forced to ransack the Temple in Jerusalem and the treasure-chamber
+of the royal palace. He was even forced to strip the doors and pillars
+of the Temple of their gold decorations in order to make up the
+enormous tribute to send to Sennacherib.
+
+Judah once more lay a helpless tributary at the feet of Assyria.
+Sennacherib withdrew his armies and returned to Nineveh. Hezekiah had
+proved himself both a coward and a traitor; a traitor because he did
+not do all in his power to assist such allies as Tyre and Ekron; a
+coward because, unlike Tyre and Ekron, he did not fight Sennacherib to
+the bitter end.
+
+It was only after his own country had been terribly devastated by the
+Assyrian mercenaries that he followed the advice which Isaiah gave him
+in the first place. Had he followed it before, he would have saved not
+alone his country and his people from the ravages of war, but he would
+have been spared the payment of so large a tribute and the desecration
+of the Temple.
+
+The real reason why Sennacherib withdrew from before Jerusalem was the
+fact that, while he was engaged in Palestine, all the Babylonian
+provinces rebelled. He, therefore, received Hezekiah's message with a
+great deal of pleasure. In truth, he was eager to act upon it, for he
+had to hurry to Babylonia to subdue the rebels there.
+
+Immediately after the Assyrian troops were out of Palestine, however,
+Hezekiah returned to his old policy and began a war to regain the
+forty-six cities which Sennacherib had conquered and in which he had
+left Assyrian governors.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER VIII.
+
+                     _The Prophet Triumphs._
+
+
+The fearful crisis through which Judah and Jerusalem had passed,
+before Sennacherib withdrew from Judah to fight his subjects in
+Babylonia, set both the king and the people to thinking.
+
+Hezekiah had evidently become convinced that Isaiah's counsel for
+peace with Assyria was the best; for, after he had reconquered several
+of the fortified cities and towns captured by Sennacherib, he made an
+arrangement with the Assyrian king to pay an annual tribute
+peacefully, in order that his country should be at rest.
+
+During the ten years that followed, Hezekiah, instead of seeking
+alliances with foreign nations, for the purpose of rebellion, devoted
+himself to building up his own country, and to reforming his own
+people, in line with the preaching of Isaiah.
+
+Once, when Hezekiah was sick, Isaiah called on him at the palace. The
+prophet cheered him in his illness and expressed his hope for the
+king's speedy recovery. This call established a friendlier
+relationship between the king and the prophet.
+
+At another time, Hezekiah invited Isaiah to the palace; and Isaiah was
+glad to go, because Hezekiah, in his new policy, was following the
+commandments of God which, as taught by Isaiah, were destined to save
+the nation from its enemies.
+
+"The Remnant," which Isaiah educated, now grew in great proportions,
+until it included the majority of Jews who were leading upright lives.
+Isaiah, himself, was established as a true prophet of God among
+his people.
+
+Upon his recovery from his illness, Hezekiah began to reform the
+religious life of the country. He destroyed the "high places" on which
+many people offered sacrifices to strange gods. He broke up the brazen
+serpent to which the people sacrificed and which they worshiped from
+the days of the Wilderness. He destroyed many idols and practically
+banished idolatry from the land. Men turned from their evil ways; they
+left off their wrongdoing and dealt justly and honorably, one with
+another. Not only did they worship their God, but they had full faith
+in Him.
+
+It so happened, therefore, in the year 690, when Sennacherib marshaled
+his great Assyrian army, in order to conquer Egypt, that another
+crisis came upon Hezekiah and Judah; but neither king nor people
+feared the Assyrians, because they now trusted in the God of their
+fathers to save them from the hands of their enemy.
+
+Sennacherib had determined to conquer Egypt for two reasons: first,
+because none of his great predecessors on the Assyrian throne had ever
+gone so far south in their conquest; second, because Egypt was always
+stirring up rebellion in the Assyrian provinces of Asia Minor, by
+promising them help. Sennacherib figured, therefore, that, with Egypt
+thoroughly subdued, the great Assyrian Empire would be permanently
+established and strongly founded on absolute union.
+
+Sennacherib made one of his whirlwind marches toward Egypt. A little
+poem describing his march, is preserved in an ancient record:
+
+   "He has gone up from Rimmon.
+    He has arrived at Aiath.
+    He has passed through Migron.
+    At Michmash he lays up his baggage.
+    They have gone over the pass.
+    At Geha they halt for the night,
+    Ramah trembles.
+    Gibeah of Saul flees.
+    Shriek aloud, O people of Gallim.
+    Hearken, O Laishah.
+    Answer her, Anathoth.
+    Madmenah flees.
+    The inhabitants of Gebin are fled.
+    This very day he halts at Moab.
+    He shakes his fist against Mount Zion,
+    Against the Hill of Jerusalem."
+
+Finally, Sennacherib had a problem to solve: He wanted to be sure of the
+friendship of Hezekiah, through whose land he would have to pass on his
+way to Egypt. He was afraid on the one hand, that, having passed through
+Judah, Hezekiah might rebel and attack him from the rear; on the other
+hand, he wanted the city of Jerusalem to be a safe-guard to himself,
+so that, if he should be defeated by the Egyptians, he could escape to
+its shelter.
+
+Therefore, when he came within hailing distance of Jerusalem, he sent
+word to Hezekiah to deliver the city into his hands peacefully, and
+also to join with him in the proposed conquest of Egypt. Sennacherib
+was willing to furnish two thousand horses if Hezekiah would furnish
+him two thousand men to mount them, and to join the Assyrian cavalry.
+He did not want to attack Jerusalem, because he could not afford to
+waste his strength on a long siege, and thus weaken his forces before
+he met Egypt on the battlefield.
+
+But this time, Hezekiah, being older and wiser, and knowing that his
+people were certain that God was on their side, sent word back to
+Sennacherib that there was no reason whatever for such action on the
+part of Judah at this time since the country was at peace with
+Assyria, paying the tribute annually.
+
+Encamped at Lachish, on the western border of Palestine, and eager to
+press on toward Egypt, Sennacherib thought to force Hezekiah into
+helping him by an unusual display of his power; so he sent his
+Commander-in-Chief, with a great retinue, to the king in Jerusalem.
+
+A meeting was arranged between them and Hezekiah's representatives
+just outside of Jerusalem, at the conduit of the upper reservoir, the
+place where Isaiah first confronted King Ahaz.
+
+King Hezekiah, himself, did not go out to receive the emissaries from
+the Assyrian army. Instead, he sent Eliakim, who was Governor of the
+Royal Palace, Shebnah, the Secretary of State, and Joah, the
+Chancellor of the Treasury.
+
+A great assembly of the leading citizens of Jerusalem gathered upon
+the walls to see and hear the interview between the agents of
+Sennacherib and Hezekiah.
+
+The spokesman for the Assyrians began:
+
+   "Thus saith the great king, the King of Assyria, 'What
+    confidence is this which you cherish? You, indeed, think, a
+    simple word of the lips is counsel and strength for the war!'
+    Now, on whom do you trust, that you have rebelled against me?
+
+   "Indeed, you trust in the staff of this bruised reed, even
+    upon Egypt, which, if a man lean on it, will go into his
+    hand and pierce it. So is Pharaoh King of Egypt to all who
+    trust in him."
+
+Eliakim, speaking of his king, attempted to make clear to the Assyrians
+that they were misjudging Hezekiah. He did not lean upon Egypt; no
+alliance had been entered into between the two nations; Judah did not
+desire to enter into this quarrel at all and relied upon neither Egypt
+nor Assyria. "We trust in the Lord our God," concluded Eliakim.
+
+Quick as a flash came back the reply from Assyria:
+
+   "If you say to me, 'We trust in the Lord our God,' is not
+    _he_ the one whose high places and altars Hezekiah has taken
+    away, and has said to Judah and Jerusalem, 'You shall worship
+    on this altar in Jerusalem?'
+
+   "Now, therefore, give pledges to my master and King of
+    Assyria, and I will give you two thousand horses, if you
+    are able on your part to set riders upon them.
+
+   "How can you repulse one of the least of my master's servants?
+    And yet you trust in Egypt for chariots and horsemen! Have I
+    now come up against this place to destroy it without God's
+    approval? God it was who said to me, 'Go up against this land
+    and destroy it'"
+
+Shaken a little bit in their argument, and a great deal in their
+faith, Eliakim, Shebnah and Joah held a short consultation. Then
+Eliakim said to the spokesman, in a whisper:
+
+   "Speak, I pray you, to your servants in the Aramaic language,
+    for we understand it; but do not speak with us in the Jewish
+    language in the hearing of the people who are on the wall."
+
+The Assyrian caught the drift of this request at once. He understood
+that the people had evidently not given up their idolatrous practices
+very graciously and that their trust in the Lord their God was not as
+great as that of Hezekiah. He, therefore, answered Eliakim, so that
+all could hear:
+
+   "Has my master sent me to your master and to you to speak
+    these words? Is it not rather to the men who sit on the wall,
+    that they shall eat their own refuse and drink their own
+    water together with you?"
+
+Then, walking away from the official group and facing the assembly on
+the walls, he cried with a loud voice in the Jewish language, saying:
+
+   "Hear the message of the great king, the King of Assyria.
+    Thus saith the king, 'Let not Hezekiah deceive you; for he
+    will not be able to deliver you out of my hand.'
+
+   "Neither let Hezekiah make you trust in God by saying, 'God
+    will surely deliver us, and this city shall not be given
+    into the power of the King of Assyria.'
+
+   "Hearken not to Hezekiah, for thus saith the King of Assyria,
+    'Make your peace with me and come over to me; thus shall
+    each one of you eat from his own vine and his own fig tree
+    and drink the waters of his own cistern, until I come and
+    take you away to a land like your own land, a land full of
+    grain and of new wine, a land full of bread and vineyards,
+    a land full of olive trees and honey, that you may live and
+    not die.'
+
+   "But hearken not to Hezekiah, when he misleads you, saying,
+    'God will deliver us!' Has any of the gods of the nations
+    ever delivered his land out of the power of the King of
+    Assyria? Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are
+    the gods of Sepharvaim, Hena and Ivvah? Where are the gods
+    of the land of Samaria that they have delivered Samaria out
+    of my power? Who are they among all the gods of the countries,
+    that have delivered their country out of my power, that God
+    should deliver Jerusalem out of my power!'"
+
+This speech cast a deep gloom upon the people gathered upon the wall.
+All were silent. Not a single man, not even the representatives of the
+king, could answer the Assyrians' arguments.
+
+Then Eliakim, Shebnah and Joah hastened back to Hezekiah and repeated
+to him the message of Sennacherib through his Commander-in-Chief. As
+soon as King Hezekiah heard it, he tore his clothes and covered
+himself with sackcloth and went into the Temple. He sent Eliakim,
+Shebnah and the eldest of the priests, covered with sackcloth, to
+Isaiah, and they said to him:
+
+Thus saith Hezekiah:
+
+   "This is a day of trouble and of discipline and of contumely.
+    It may be God, thy God, will hear all the words of the high
+    official, whom his master, the King of Assyria, has sent to
+    defy the living God, and will rebuke the words which the Lord
+    your God has heard; therefore lift up your prayer for the
+    remnant that is left."
+
+When Isaiah heard the message of the king, he sent back this reply of
+hope and courage to the palace:
+
+   "Thus saith the Lord: 'Be not afraid of the words that thou
+    hast heard, with which the servants of the King of Assyria
+    have blasphemed me. Behold I will put forth a spirit in him
+    so that he shall hear tidings and shall return to his own
+    land, and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his
+    own land.'"
+
+Hezekiah, acting upon the advice of Isaiah, then sent Sennacherib's
+emissaries back to Lachish with a flat refusal to do what the King had
+asked him.
+
+When the Commander-in-Chief returned to Lachish, to his great amazement,
+Sennacherib and his army were not there. An officer who was left behind,
+however, told him that Sennacherib had broken camp and had marched
+against Libnah.
+
+The next that was heard of the Assyrian armies in Jerusalem was that a
+plague had fallen upon the camp of Sennacherib and that, in great
+disgust and disappointment, the king and what remained of his forces,
+had returned to Nineveh.
+
+It was at that time that Isaiah gave expression to a conception of
+God's relationship to the nations of the earth that was entirely
+different from that held by the people up to this time.
+
+According to Isaiah, God had used Assyria as a rod with which to whip
+the people of Judah, God's chosen people, into an understanding of His
+law and commandments, by which they should live.
+
+Now that Hezekiah and his people had thoroughly reformed and were
+following in the ways of God and His commandments, Assyria's work was
+done. Because Assyria, however, had prided herself that she had become
+a great power in the world on account of her own strength, God would
+now destroy Assyria.
+
+This is the dirge that Isaiah sang regarding Assyria and God's hand in
+the life and death of nations, while Sennacherib was retreating toward
+Nineveh, his capital:
+
+   "Woe, Assyria, rod of mine anger,
+    The staff in whose hand is mine indignation.
+    Against an impious nation am I wont to send him.
+    And against the people of my wrath I give him charge,
+    To take spoil and gather booty,
+    And to tread them down like the mire in the streets.
+    But he--not so doth he plan;
+    And his heart--not so doth it purpose.
+    For destruction is in his heart,
+    And to cut off nations not a few.
+    For he saith, By the strength of my hand have I done it,
+    And by my wisdom, for I have discerned it;
+    And I have removed the bounds of thy peoples,
+    And I have robbed their treasuries,
+    And like a mighty man I have brought down those who sit enthroned.
+    And my hand hath seized, as on a nest,
+    The riches of the peoples.
+    And as one gathers eggs that are unguarded,
+    I, indeed, have carried off all the earth."
+
+To this boasting of Assyria, God answers, speaking through Isaiah:
+
+   "Before me is thy rising up and thy lying down,
+    Thy going out and thy coming in.
+    I know thy raging against me
+    And thine arrogance hath come to my ears.
+    Therefore I will put my ring through thy nose,
+    And my bridle between thy lips,
+    And will make thee return,
+    By the way in which thou hast come."
+
+Not long after this, while Sennacherib was worshiping in the temple of
+Nisroch, in Nineveh, he was attacked by his own sons and killed, and
+Esarhaddon, one of his sons, succeeded him on the throne of Assyria.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER IX.
+
+                    _The Fruit of His Labor._
+
+
+Blessed is the man whose toil and striving of a lifetime bring
+results, even though he, himself, does not live to see them!
+
+Thrice blessed is the man, the fruit of whose labor is garnered while
+he is among the living, to see and enjoy it!
+
+The prophet Isaiah was a thrice-blessed man. Although no one knows
+where or how he died, every one knows where and how he lived, and how
+his life was fruitful in blessings for his people.
+
+He saw kings come and go on the throne of Judah. He passed through
+many crises in the history of his country. He experienced many woes
+because of his patriotic devotion to the welfare of his land and
+people.
+
+But through it all he remained, uncomplainingly, staunch in his faith
+and true to his God. He believed, implicitly, in the justness of God
+and, therefore, in His demand of righteousness as the standard of
+living for the people. Isaiah's own strength, in time of trial and
+tribulation, came from his trust in God; and that same trust he urged
+upon Jerusalem and Judah in his day and, through his discourses, upon
+all men, for all time.
+
+Thus it was given Isaiah to see the fruit of his labor in the peace
+and prosperity of Judah during the remainder of his life which he,
+undoubtedly, spent in peace with his family in his home in Jerusalem.
+
+It is no wonder that he conceived the ideal of a time of universal
+peace, in which God shall be the God of all the nations, an era in
+which all peoples shall come to Him, and believe in Him, and follow in
+His law, and live such just and righteous lives that there would be an
+end to war in all the earth:
+
+   "It shall come to pass, in the end of days,
+    That the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established at the
+        top of the mountains,
+    And it shall be exalted above the hills;
+    And peoples shall flow unto it.
+    And many nations shall go and say,
+    'Come ye, and let us go up to the mountains of the Lord,
+    And to the house of the God of Jacob;
+    And he will teach us of His ways,
+    And we will walk in His paths.'
+    For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,
+    And the word of the Lord from Jerusalem,
+    And He shall judge between the nations,
+    And arbitrate for many peoples;
+    And they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
+    And their spears into pruning hooks;
+    Nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
+    Neither shall they learn war any more."
+
+
+
+
+
+                             THE COMMONER
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER I.
+
+                         _His Awakening._
+
+
+Sloping down from the Judean hills toward the plain of Philistia and
+the Mediterranean Sea is the Shefelah, or Lowlands, a section of
+Palestine, far-famed for its stretches of rich farm lands, vineyards
+and olive groves.
+
+These foothills were once the constant battlefield on which the
+Israelites from the hill country and the Philistines from the plain
+struggled for mastery; but, since the days of King Amaziah, who
+conquered Philistia soon after he came to the throne of Judah, in the
+year 798, the Shefelah, far away from the political turmoils in
+Samaria and Jerusalem, was one of the most peaceful and richest farm
+sections in Israel or Judah.
+
+Up in Samaria, in the year 734, Hoshea, son of Elah, had played the
+traitor and had bent his head to Tiglath-Pileser, the Assyrian
+conqueror. Up in Jerusalem, Ahaz, son of Jotham, had acted the coward
+and had slipped his neck under the Assyrian yoke. But down in the
+Shefelah, on the lower highlands, politics and political intrigues
+played little part in the lives of the humble peasant folk.
+
+Numerous towns and villages dotted the Shefelah, especially on the
+highway running northeast from Gaza, in Philistia, to Jerusalem, in
+Judah. These towns and villages were the centers where the neighboring
+farmers gathered at set times and where the many daily wage earners
+lived all the time.
+
+Rich and fertile sections like the Shefelah were the backbone, the
+strength and the power of Israel and Judah. While the high and mighty
+princes and merchants lived in the capitals and squandered their
+wealth, the simple and hard-working farm folk and wage earners made up
+the bone and muscle of the population, raised the necessities of life
+and, in times of need, furnished the sinews of war.
+
+Yet, notwithstanding the fertility of the Shefelah, its rich fields
+and olive groves, its plentiful and well-watered pasture lands, the
+farmers in the entire section, had to live from hand to mouth. Though
+they labored hard at their toil, they were, in fact, poor and unable
+to lay aside anything for a rainy day.
+
+It was very difficult to become reconciled to such a condition of
+affairs. No one seemed interested enough to fathom the reason for it,
+except a certain young peasant, named Micah, who had a home in the
+town of Moresheth, and was the proud possessor of several well-paying
+olive groves and vineyards in the vicinity.
+
+Micah's interest in the population was aroused, one day, when the
+widow of one of his neighbors came to him for advice. Her husband had
+owned a farm, adjoining one of Micah's pastures, on which there was a
+heavy mortgage. Now that the head of the family was gone, the merchant
+in Jerusalem, who held the mortgage, threatened to eject the widow and
+the children, because they could neither pay the amount borrowed nor
+the interest due thereon.
+
+The sturdy young peasant, brought up in a home of severe simplicity,
+where gentleness and kindness were taught and practiced, pitied the
+woman and her children in their sad plight and loaned her the needed
+interest payment to stave off ejection from her home. Thereafter, he
+looked after her family until the oldest son was able to manage his
+own affairs.
+
+Talking to some of his day-laborers he discovered a very amazing
+situation. He found that most of them had, at one time or another,
+owned their farms, but had lost possession of them through lawsuits,
+in which mortgage holders from Jerusalem had involved them, or through
+unjust treatment on the part of tax collectors and corrupt judges.
+
+More amazing still was the knowledge that, all through the Shefelah,
+the majority of vineyards and olive groves were not owned by those who
+cultivated them, at all, but that they formed the vast estates of the
+princes and wealthy men of Jerusalem.
+
+The beautiful and fertile Shefelah, then, was not the habitation of
+happy and contented tillers of the soil, who sang at their tasks and
+prided themselves upon their independence! It was in the heavy grip of
+a _land trust_, controlled by the great interests in the capital!
+
+This knowledge caused Micah to enter upon his investigations with
+greater interest and deeper feeling. He discovered that the nobility
+and the rich were fattening upon the sweat and toil of the rural and
+working population. A farmer thrown into debt was sure to lose his
+acres, and a wage earner, having no possessions that could be taken
+from him, was sure to lose his liberty. Widows and orphans were
+quickly robbed of their inheritances by the greedy land-grabbers of
+the metropolis, aided by a corrupt judiciary.
+
+All this was a severe shock to the young peasant. He, himself, born
+and raised on a farm, had inherited his father's estates free from
+debt. He lived simply, worked hard, saved a neat sum every year--and
+imagined that every one else was doing the same.
+
+Awakened to the real condition of affairs, Micah now determined to
+leave his estates in the care of his trusted overseers and to go to
+the great and famed cities of his land, to study at first hand the
+causes that had made possible the terrible economic and social wrongs
+in his section of the country.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER II.
+
+                _The Cause of the Common People._
+
+
+Micah, the Moreshtite, came to Jerusalem when the capital was at
+comparative peace. The struggle between King Ahaz and the Prophet
+Isaiah had narrowed down to an armed neutrality, as it were--the king
+was paying his tributes to Tiglath-Pileser and the prophet was
+preparing his "Remnant" for the day when the crown prince, Hezekiah,
+would come to the throne.
+
+The young peasant took no sides and embraced no causes in Jerusalem.
+He stood aside, the better to study conditions as an onlooker. To his
+great dismay and sorrow, he found the situation even worse than he had
+imagined it. It was true of the rich and mighty of the capital that
+
+   "They covet fields and seize them,
+    And houses, and take them away.
+    They oppress a man and his house,
+    Even a man and his heritage."
+
+This much was clear on the surface of things.
+Rapacity on the part of the rich meant oppression
+of the poor; increase of power for the mighty meant
+decrease of opportunity for the humble tiller of the
+soil and for the wage earner.
+
+Seeing all this and understanding it, Micah felt himself impelled to
+fight the cause of the common people.
+
+Conditions and a sympathetic soul thus made Micah a Prophet.
+
+One of the people, he spoke in their behalf with the feeling and
+passion of a man who has been through the mill of bitter experience:
+
+    Woe is me! for I am as when they have gathered the summer fruits,
+    As when they glean the grapes of the vintage:
+    There is no cluster to eat,
+    Nor first-ripe fig which my soul desireth.
+
+    The godly man has perished out of the earth,
+    And the upright among men is no more:
+    They all lie in wait for blood;
+    They hunt every man his brother with a net.
+    Both hands are put forth for evil,
+    To do it diligently.
+    The prince asketh and the judge is ready for reward,
+    And the great man, he uttereth the evil of his soul;
+    Thus they weave it together.
+    The best of them is as a brier;
+    The most upright is worse than a thorn hedge.
+    A man's enemies are the men of his own house.
+
+Where shall he look for help and guidance--he, a commoner, without
+power, without influence? To whom shall he go for instruction, for
+inspiration, to struggle against conditions in the face of which he
+was helpless?
+
+Micah returned to Moresheth to think matters over at his leisure. It
+was not an easy or simple task that he had voluntarily assumed.
+
+One source of strength he always had to rely upon. Close to the soil,
+seeing the Creator's handiwork in the fields at his feet by day and in
+the wonders of the starry firmament by night, he was full of the
+spirit of God.
+
+At the very outset of his self-imposed mission he could exclaim,
+fervently:
+
+   "But as for me, I will look unto the Lord:
+    I will wait for the God of my salvation:
+    My God will hear me."
+
+God's guiding hand often leads us to our destinations by winding and
+unexpected paths. It is strange to record that Micah's first
+opportunity, in the task he had set before himself, came to him by way
+of Egypt and an Ethiopian usurper. The ambitions of that wily Pharaoh
+led directly to the fall of Samaria and to the Commoner's first great
+prophetic utterance.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER III.
+
+                      _When Samaria Fell._
+
+
+A man who is a traitor to his country will, in all likelihood, prove
+traitorous to his avowed friends.
+
+Hoshea, son of Elah, of Samaria, was such a man. Tilgath-Pileser, the
+Assyrian conqueror of Damascus assisted Hoshea to assassinate King
+Pekah, and appointed the assassin to rule in Pekah's stead, in the
+year 734 B. C. E., merely as a matter of expediency. It was an easier
+method of re-annexing the rebellious Kingdom of Israel to the Assyrian
+Empire without cost of life or treasure, and he stooped to it.
+
+But when Tiglath-Pileser died and Shalmaneser IV succeeded him on the
+throne in Nineveh, Hoshea gave ear to the siren voice of Egypt, and
+rebelled.
+
+It is related that Hoshea sent an embassy to King So, more correctly,
+Pharaoh Sabako, of Egypt, when that energetic Ethiopian prince became
+master over the whole of the ancient Nile country.
+
+The new Pharaoh had ambitions northward. It was he who organized a
+coalition of Assyrian provinces in the Mediterranean country, with an
+eye to Nineveh. The traitor, Hoshea, proved the miserable stuff he was
+made of by joining actively in Sabako's ambitious schemes.
+
+In answer to Sabako, Shalmaneser rushed his veteran troops toward
+Egypt. The Kingdom of Israel was the first rebellious province he had
+to deal with. Hoshea was prepared when, in 728, Samaria was besieged.
+Samaria held out bravely enough for two years, waiting all the time
+for help from Egypt. But Sabako's promised armies and funds never
+came.
+
+Shalmaneser died during this siege; but his successor, the great
+Sargon, came on with re-enforcements and finally, in 721, captured and
+reduced Samaria, before Hoshea's Egyptian ally had been heard from.
+
+That was the end of the Kingdom of Israel, founded by Jeroboam ben
+Nebat, in the year 937, B. C. E., when he rebelled from Rehoboam, King
+Solomon's son. The Kingdom of Israel had lasted just 218 years.
+
+Sargon sent away 27,290 captives, the youth and pride of Israel and
+Samaria, and had them scattered widely apart, in all his provinces.
+The conqueror, himself, proceeded southward to meet and defeat Sabako,
+at Raphia, on the great Nile-delta-highway along the Mediterranean
+coast.
+
+While the records do not show that these events made any impression
+upon the leaders of thought, such as Isaiah, in Jerusalem, they
+brought Micah his first opportunity to prohesy.
+
+Living in Moresheth, on the highroad from Gaza to Jerusalem, Micah,
+who up to this time knew only of the corruption of the classes and the
+oppression of the masses of Judah, now had first-hand information of
+the political situation, as well.
+
+Sargon's armies captured and passed through Gaza on their march to
+Raphia. By way of Gaza, Micah learned that Samaria had not been razed
+to the ground. There was, therefore, hope for the city and for Israel.
+Micah's hope, however, was not political. He, unlike Isaiah in
+Jerusalem, was not concerned with politics. His concern was with the
+social wrongs and economic outrages of which, as he had now learned,
+both Israel and Judah were victims.
+
+There was this distinction, however, Israel had already collected the
+wages of its sins, had paid the price and had been chastised by the
+rod of Assyria. Judah might be recalled to its better self and escape
+a similar calamity.
+
+So, before the dust of Sargon's victorious armies, passing through
+Gaza, had settled in the roads, Micah went again to Jerusalem and
+launched forth earnestly and with vigor upon his prophetic mission.
+
+In his very first public utterance he drew a deadly parallel between
+Israel and Judah:
+
+   "Hear, ye peoples, all of you;
+    Hearken, O earth, and all that therein is:
+    And let the Lord God be witness against you,
+    The Lord from His holy temple.
+
+    For, behold, the Lord cometh forth out of His place.
+    And will come down, and tread upon the high places the earth.
+    And the mountains shall be molten under Him,
+    And the valleys shall be cleft,
+    As wax before the fire,
+    As waters that are poured down a steep place.
+
+    For the transgression of Jacob is all this,
+    And for the sins of the house of Israel.
+    What is the transgression of Jacob? Is it not Samaria?
+    And what are the high places of Judah?
+    Are they not Jerusalem?"
+
+Fearlessly, with bold strokes, and in vivid pictures, he described the
+terrible conditions as he knew them:
+
+   "Hear, I pray you, ye chiefs of Jacob,
+    And ye judges of the house of Israel!
+    You surely ought to know what is just!
+    Yet, you hate good and love evil;
+    You who devour the flesh of my people,
+    Flay their skin from off of them,
+    And break their bones!"
+
+It was possible for Judah to be saved, if the governing classes, the
+judiciary, the great landowners and the wealthy merchants dealt justly
+and righteously with the common people, the poor, the peasant and the
+wage earner:
+
+   "For this will I lament and wail;
+    I will go stripped and naked;
+    I will make a wailing like the jackals,
+    And a lamentation like the ostriches."
+
+Micah did more than merely preach and wail. Down in the Shefelah he
+set himself to help his fellow-peasants and to correct the injustices
+practiced upon them, wherever he could.
+
+But the western foothills were not the whole of Judah; and the origin
+and source of the demoralizing wickedness lay not in the farm
+sections, but in the capital; and as to the capital, "her wounds are
+incurable." The cause of the downfall of Samaria and Israel
+
+   "Is come even to Judah;
+    It reacheth unto the gate of my people,
+    Even unto Jerusalem."
+
+Therefore Micah, less hopeful than Isaiah, who was biding his time for
+a change of heart in the rulers and chiefs of the country, said of the
+coming of the day of reckoning:
+
+   "Then shall they cry unto the Lord, but He will not answer them:
+    Yea, He will hide His face from them at that time,
+    According as they have wrought evil in their doings."
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER IV.
+
+                   _Judah Learns its Lesson._
+
+
+King Hezekiah's preparation for rebellion against Sennacherib, in 715,
+shattered any optimistic hopes that Micah held for a continuation of
+improvement in the condition of the common people, in which he had
+been instrumental up to this time. The costs of war always fell
+heaviest on the poor, and the devastating results of war upon the
+farming population.
+
+Younger and readier to act than his older contemporary, Isaiah, he was
+not satisfied with a negative warning, such as the older prophet gave
+the leaders in Jerusalem when he walked about the city barefoot and in
+the garb of a slave.
+
+Micah came up to the capital to stir it up; and he did set the people
+to talking and to thinking when, in a memorable speech, he differed
+fundamentally from Isaiah in his declaration that the Temple, the very
+House of God, as well as the city in which it was situated, could and
+would be destroyed:
+
+   "Hear this, I pray you, ye heads of the house of Jacob,
+    And rulers of the house of Israel,
+    That abhor justice and pervert all equity;
+    That build up Zion with blood,
+    And Jerusalem with iniquity.
+    The heads thereof judge for reward,
+    And the priests thereof teach for hire,
+    And the prophets thereof divine for money;
+    Yet will they lean upon the Lord, and say,
+    'Is not the Lord in the midst of us?
+    No evil shall come to us.'
+    Therefore shall Zion, for your sake, be plowed as a field,
+    And Jerusalem shall become heaps,
+    And the mountain of the house as the high places of a forest."
+
+Micah, naturally, received opposition from the same clique of false
+prophets that opposed Isaiah, and made his labors so difficult and, at
+first, unsuccessful; that misled king and people, "that bite with
+their teeth and cry, 'Peace,' to make my people to err." To these
+Micah gave as well as he received:
+
+   "The seers shall be put to shame,
+    And the diviners confounded.
+    Yea, they shall all cover their lips,
+    For there is no answer of God.
+    But as for me,
+    I am full of power by the spirit of the Lord,
+    And of judgment and of might,
+    To declare unto Jacob his transgression
+    And unto Israel his sin."
+
+For years Micah kept at his task. He was indeed a tribune of the people,
+the champion of their rights against the vested interests, the great
+commoner of his day and time, fearlessly and courageously standing out
+against all opposition, trusting absolutely in God.
+
+At last came the crisis of 704-1 and Hezekiah's memorable change of
+mind and heart. Micah played no mean part with Isaiah, in Hezekiah's
+reforms that followed.
+
+Reforms were needed, however, not alone by "the heads of the house of
+Jacob" and "the rulers of the house of Israel," not alone in the
+courts of law and among the priests and prophets; they were needed as
+well in the religious beliefs and practices of the common people,
+whose cause was Micah's cause.
+
+With the passing of all political danger to the fatherland, Micah
+retired permanently to his farms in Moresheth. There he devoted the
+remainder of his peaceful, happy years to teaching the common people,
+"_my_ people," as he fondly refers to them, the religious, moral
+and ethical life that God demanded of them.
+
+Micah employed the same vivid, picturesque language in his speeches of
+peace as he did in his addresses of war. There is extant a remarkable
+oration in which he pictures a religious controversy between God and
+his people, and in which he makes a declaration of what _true
+religion_ is that has not been better phrased in all the thousands
+of books that have been written on religious subjects since that day.
+
+The address is in the form of a dialogue between God and Israel, and
+reads as follows:
+
+   "Hear ye now what the Lord is saying:
+    'Arise, contend thou before the mountains,
+    And let the hills hear thy voice.
+    Hear, O ye mountains, the Lord's controversty,
+    And ye enduring rocks, the foundations of the earth:
+    For the Lord hath a controversy with His people,
+    And He will plead with Israel."
+
+Then God is pictured pleading with the people:
+
+   "O my people, what harm have I done unto thee?
+    And wherein have I wearied thee?
+    Testify against me.
+    Is it because I brought thee out of the land of Egypt,
+    And redeemed thee out of the house of bondage,
+    And sent before thee Moses, Aaron and Miriam?
+    O my people, remember now what Balak, king of Moab, devised,
+    And what Balaam, the son of Beor, answered him;
+    (Remember what took place) from Shittim unto Gilgal,
+    That ye may know the righteous acts of the Lord."
+
+As with the purely religious teachings of the older prophets, the people
+could not quite understand Micah. They believed that religion consisted
+in offering the prescribed sacrifices regularly, and that, in having
+fulfilled this obligation they had performed their religious duties.
+
+The average Judean's idea of religion, of the relationship between man
+and God, was that of a _bargain_ between man and God; so many
+sacrifices brought to God, so many favors from God, in return; the
+more precious and numerous the sacrificial oils and burnt offerings,
+even to one's children, offered to God, the more precious and numerous
+would be the blessings from God.
+
+To this false idea Micah replies, with irony that stings, in these
+words:
+
+   "Wherewith shall I come before the Lord,
+    And bow myself before God on high?
+    Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings,
+    With calves of a year old?
+    Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
+    Or with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
+    Shall I give my first-born for my transgression,
+    The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?"
+
+To which God answers, through Micah, in the world-famed and unparalleled
+definition of religion:
+
+   "It hath been declared unto thee, O man, what is good:
+    Yea, what doth the Lord require of thee,
+    But to do justice, and to love mercy,
+    And to walk humbly with thy God?"
+
+
+
+
+
+                     THE PROPHET OF WOE AND HOPE
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER I.
+
+                          _The Escape._
+
+
+The entirely unexpected assassination of King Amon, of Judah, in the
+year 639, surprised and appalled the entire country, as well as
+Jerusalem, the capital.
+
+King Amon had succeeded his father, Manasseh, to the throne of Judah
+but two years before. He had had no chance to show the character of
+man he was and the type of a ruler he would be, and yet, without
+apparent knowledge on anybody's part that a conspiracy was brewing
+among the princes of the royal palace itself, Amon's life was snatched
+away in a most cruel manner.
+
+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:
+
+   "Behold, we have come unto thee,
+    For thou art the Lord our God."
+
+To this false idea that God-worship and idol-worship are the same thing,
+Jeremiah gave answer patiently and kindly, as if reasoning with children,
+recalling what God had accomplished for Israel in the past and the duty
+of obedience to His voice by Israel's descendants in the present:
+
+   "Truly in vain is the help that is looked for from the hills,
+    the tumult of the mountains; truly the Lord our God is the
+    salvation of Israel. But the shameful thing (idolatry) hath
+    devoured the labor of our fathers from our youth, their
+    flocks and their herds, their sons and their daughters. Let
+    us lie down in our shame, and let our confusion cover us;
+    for we have sinned against the Lord our God, we and our
+    fathers, from our youth even unto this day; and we have not
+    obeyed the voice of the Lord our God."
+
+Then Jeremiah delivered a message of hope, of God's promise to the
+people, in case they should return from their backsliding:
+
+   "If thou wilt return, O Israel," saith the Lord, "if thou
+    wilt return to me and if thou wilt put away thine
+    abominations out of my sight; then shalt thou not be
+    removed; and thou shalt swear, 'As the Lord liveth,' in
+    truth, in justice, and in righteousness; and the nations
+    shall bless themselves in him, and in him shall they glory."
+
+Jeremiah aimed at first merely to arouse the people to a knowledge of
+their false point of view toward God; but he soon discovered that he
+was on the wrong track. Pleading, persuasion, promises and prophecies
+of hope had no more effect upon the daily life of the people than did
+Josiah's destruction of the shrines and sanctuaries upon their
+religious practices.
+
+It was at this time that evil days came upon the Empire of Assyria. It
+was crumbling to pieces. From north of the Black Sea and from east of
+the Carpathian Mountains savage hordes of Scythians were swarming over
+Assyria. Nomads, without any settled country whatever, they were
+sweeping eastward and southward, down across the shores of the
+Mediterranean, creating devastation everywhere. They were not only
+eager for the far-famed riches of Assyria, but looked toward the
+south, even as far as Egypt.
+
+And the little kingdom of Judah lay directly in their path, as it did
+during former attempted conquests of Egypt.
+
+Jeremiah once more recalled the vision of the seething caldron, with
+the strong wind from the north, threatening to pour out the hot
+contents over the land.
+
+Poor Judah! The country was seething with destructive idolatry within,
+and the seething hordes of Scythians were endangering its life from
+without.
+
+Poor Jeremiah! What was there for him to do now? A double calamity was
+hanging over his people and his beloved country. Even if he stood alone
+he must try to save them both.
+
+So he began a campaign, the burden of which was two-fold. He undertook
+to warn the people against the danger which even King Josiah had
+recognized and of the new danger that was threatening from the north.
+
+He felt sure, as had the other prophets before him, that unless the
+people turned from their backsliding they would lack the moral courage
+to withstand the foreign foe and could never gain God's help and
+protection in fighting their enemies.
+
+Once more he returned to his early methods of pleading with the
+people. He appealed to them to restore the relationship of children
+and father that had existed between them and God from the earliest
+days. He recounted their history from the slavery of Egypt to his own
+day. He pointed to the wonderful things that God had performed for
+them, but it all seemed of no avail.
+
+Then he turned to the people with the threats of the danger from the
+north. He tried to impress them with the idea that God was sending the
+Scythians as an instrument with which to punish the idolatrous and
+immoral Judeans.
+
+   "Behold a people is coming from the northland,
+    And a great nation is arousing itself from the uttermost parts
+        of the earth.
+    They lay hold on bow and spear; they are cruel and merciless.
+    Their din is like the roaring of the sea, and they ride upon horses.
+    Everyone is arrayed as a man for battle against thee, O daughter
+        of Zion.
+
+   "We have heard the report of it, our hands become feeble;
+    Anguish taketh hold upon us;
+    Go not forth into the field, nor walk by the highway,
+    For there is the sword of the enemy, terror on every side.
+    O, my people, gird thee with sackcloth, and sprinkle thyself
+        with ashes;
+    Take up mourning as for an only son, bitter lamentation;
+    For the destroyer shall suddenly come upon us."
+
+From Dan and Mount Ephraim in the north the evil tidings announcing
+the approach of the Scythians had already been brought to Jerusalem.
+These savages were approaching Judea like a destructive hot wind and a
+whirlwind from the wilderness, like a lion gone up from his lair "to
+lay waste the earth."
+
+   "Announce in Jerusalem, 'There they are!'
+    Robber bands are coming from a far distant land;
+    Yea, they are raising their cry against the cities of Judah,
+    Lying in wait in the field over against her on every side,
+    Because she hath rebelled against me, saith the Lord."
+
+The farmers were deserting their lands and the villagers in the
+outlying parts of the country their homes, rushing south to the
+protecting walls of Jerusalem. The roads were filled with frightened
+men, women and children. They were not the happy pilgrims who went
+down to Jerusalem for the great holidays. In their fear they jostled
+each other and even fought to get ahead of each other. They cared
+nothing for their fellows. Everyone aimed to reach the capital first.
+
+Jeremiah saw all this, and knew exactly what the result would be when
+the robber bands came to besiege the city. Already the farthest
+outlying sections had been ravaged, towns destroyed, fields laid
+waste, and the inhabitants driven in all directions.
+
+No wonder that Jeremiah was filled with woe. He tried very hard to
+restrain himself, not to pronounce the doom of his people. But a great
+force within him urged him to speak:
+
+   "My anguish, my anguish! I am pained to the depths of my heart.
+    My heart is in a tumult within me, I cannot keep silent,
+    For I have heard the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war!
+    Destruction succeeds destruction, for the whole land is laid waste.
+    How long must I see the signal, hear the sound of the trumpet!
+    For my people are senseless, they know me not,
+    They are foolish children, and they have no understanding;
+    They are skilled! in doing evil, but they know not how to do right!"
+
+In Jerusalem there were many who believed that they were innocent of
+any wrong-doing because they were worshiping God the only way they
+knew; but what they knew was the same old heathen way. There were
+many, indeed, who continued their wicked practices secretly even in
+places where, by King Josiah's orders, the idolatrous shrines and
+sanctuaries had been destroyed.
+
+What brought pain and sorrow to Jeremiah more than anything else was
+the fact that the people insisted that they were not sinning, that
+they were living in accordance with the laws of God.
+
+To them Jeremiah answered:
+
+   "Run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem and see and know,
+    And seek in its open spaces, if ye can find a man,
+    If there is any who does right and seeks after the truth!
+    And though they say, 'As the Lord liveth,' surely they swear to
+        a falsehood.
+    O Lord, do not thine eyes look upon truth?"
+
+Always wanting to be fair and honest in his condemnation of the
+people, Jeremiah bethought himself that perhaps only the common people
+who "know not the way of the Lord and the law of their God" were at
+fault. Therefore he turned himself to the nobles, to the princes of
+the realm, to the wealthy and exalted, saying to himself, they "know
+the way of the Lord and the law of their God." But to his great dismay
+he found that these, too, "have all broken the yoke and burst the
+bonds" that made them the beloved of God in the ways of their
+righteousness.
+
+   "Therefore I am full of the wrath of the Lord; I am weary of
+        restraining myself.
+    I must pour it out upon the children in the street and upon the
+        assembly of young men,
+    For both the husband and the wife shall be taken, the aged and him
+        that is advanced in years.
+    And their houses shall be turned over to others, their fields
+        to robbers.
+    For from the least even to the greatest of them, each greedily robs,
+    And from the prophet even to the priest, each deals deceitfully.
+    They heal the hurt of my people as though it were slight,
+    Saying, 'Peace, peace,' when there is no peace."
+
+This condition was reason enough for Jeremiah to point out, regretfully,
+
+   "Thy conduct and thy acts have procured these things for thee!
+    This is the cause of thy calamity; verily it is bitter, for it
+        toucheth thy heart."
+
+Yet hopefully he pleaded,
+
+   "Cleanse thy heart, O Jerusalem, from wickedness, that thou mayest
+        be delivered.
+    How long shall thy evil thoughts stay within thee?"
+
+This preaching, pleading, threatening, in which Jeremiah was assisted
+greatly by Zephaniah, King Josiah's teacher, and the little crowd of
+men, "the remnant" of Isaiah's days, whom Hilkiah had gathered about
+him, now known as the Prophetic Party was not a matter of days or
+months, but of years.
+
+Josiah, standing practically single-handed among the nobles and the
+Court Party, the legacy fron his grandfather Manasseh, continued his
+reforms to the best of his ability.
+
+At last the work was having its effect. The constant hammering away
+began to tell. Great progress was actually being made in the religious
+and moral awakening of the people.
+
+And now came the joyous news that Psammetich I., Pharaoh of Egypt, had
+sent an embassy to meet the invading Scythians in the north, before
+they approached Egyptian territory; that he bought the savages off by
+means of gifts and large sums of money; that the danger of an invasion
+of Egypt, and therefore of Judah, was past.
+
+The Prophetic Party pointed to the sparing of Judah from the ravages
+of the Scythian scourge as God's way of showing his approval, not
+alone of the king's outward reforms, but of the people's inner
+awakening to lives of righteousness.
+
+And soon after, the most important event in the whole history of
+Israel up to that time, an event that had a lasting influence, not
+alone upon the Jews but upon the whole world, occurred in the temple
+in Jerusalem.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER V.
+
+                      _The Great Discovery._
+
+
+The great deliverance from the Scythian invasion strengthened Josiah
+and the Prophetic Party in their work of reform. They felt that their
+God had spared them because much of the idolatrous worship had already
+been stopped in Jerusalem and many of the pagan shrines destroyed.
+
+The king also determined to repair and rebuild certain parts of the
+Temple. The great building that Solomon erected now looked like a
+hodge-podge of architecture. No repairs whatever had been made on it
+since the days of King Joash, about two hundred years before, while
+many additions in the interior and in the courts had been made by Ahaz
+and Manasseh.
+
+Josiah determined to clear out everything foreign connected with the
+Temple; inside and out he was going to restore it as it was in the
+days of Solomon, and to beautify it. Walls were cracked and foundations
+had settled at different points. The alterations and repairs planned,
+accordingly, were very extensive and were to be done immediately.
+
+But the Temple treasury and the coffers of the royal house were empty.
+The enormous tributes that the predecessors of Josiah were forced to
+pay to Assyria had greatly reduced the financial resources of both
+king and Temple.
+
+Josiah, therefore, introduced a new method of collecting funds for the
+proposed work.  He placed great collection boxes at the Temple gates.
+All who visited Jerusalem and the Temple were expected to make some
+contribution. Money came in fast, especially when, under the supervision
+of Hilkiah, the masons and the artisans and the workmen of all kinds
+had actually started operation.
+
+In addition, Josiah caused collections to be made for this purpose all
+through his kingdom, including the old kingdom of Israel, where a
+remnant of the people still remained. With theis money, the hewn
+stone and the timber necessary for the repairs were bought and the
+workmen paid.
+
+It is recorded that everyone did his work faithfully and efficiently
+and that the building, for that reason, was being restored in
+exceptionally quick time.
+
+On a certain day, in the year 621, Josiah sent Shaphan, his minister
+of foreign affairs, to the Temple to empty the collection boxes and
+to report back to him on the progress of the repairs.
+
+When Shaphan came to the Temple, Hilkiah approached him carrying a
+parchment statement, "I have found the Book of the Law in the House of
+God;" and Hilkiah handed the book to Shaphan.
+
+Being questioned, Hilkiah explained that the book was discovered in
+one of the corner-stones of the Temple. It had probably been placed
+there by King Solomon himself, he explained, at the time when the
+Temple was built. But after Solomon's death, during the constant
+war between Israel and Judah and the inroads that idolatry had made
+in both countries, the real, genuine "Book of the Law" that was to
+have been the basis for government, the constitution of both Israel
+and Judah, had evidently been lost sight of and forgotten. Now, by
+the merest accident, it was found again.
+
+When Shaphan glanced through it he immediately saw what a wonderful
+discovery had been made. So he took the book to the king. He reported
+to Josiah first, that the money was collected, material paid for and
+workmen satisfied; then, that the King's orders regarding the repairs
+of the Temple had been faithfully carried out; finally, that Hilkiah
+had discovered a book and that he had delivered it to him. The king,
+having heard the whole story of the discovery, ordered Shaphan to read
+the book to him, aloud.
+
+What Shaphan read amazed Josiah and the few advisers whom he had
+called in to listen to the reading. Everything in it seemed to be the
+exact opposite of conditions as they existed in Judah. The laws for
+sacrifices and ceremonies in the Temple; the statutes regarding the
+priesthood in the Temple; the observances of the holidays; the
+commandments regarding duties of officers of the law and the
+administration of justice; the humane laws between man and man, all
+were different from, actually opposed to, the practice of priest,
+judge and people in Josiah's entire kingdom.
+
+During the reading of the book Josiah recognized how little real
+headway his reforms thus far had made. When he heard Shaphan read:
+
+   "The judges shall judge the people with righteous judgment.
+    Thou shalt not pervert justice; thou shalt not respect
+    persons; neither shalt thou take a bribe, for a bribe
+    blindeth the eyes of the wise and perverteth the words of
+    the righteous. Justice and only justice shalt thou follow,
+    that thou mayest live and inherit the land which the Lord
+    thy God giveth thee",
+
+he understood how far from this ideal his people had strayed.
+
+When he heard the great declaration of God's unity,
+
+   "Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one; and
+    thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with
+    all thy soul, with all thy might",
+
+he understood how little he had accomplished throughout his reign, in
+attempted suppression of the worship of many gods.
+
+When he heard the scribe read aloud that it is God's will to be
+worshiped only in that "place which the Lord your God shall choose out
+of all your tribes to put His name there," he determined, more than
+ever before, to pull down every shrine and pagan sanctuary and to
+center the worship of the Lord in the Temple in Jerusalem alone.
+
+At the end of the book, Shaphan read a series of wonderful blessings
+that were promised king and people, if they would live in accordance
+with the commandments contained in the Book of the Law--and Josiah saw
+visions of peace and prosperity for his kingdom. But the reading of
+the last lines cast a heavy gloom upon the little party, for the book
+concluded with the enumeration of a series of evils upon evils that
+would surely befall king and people should they not live in accordance
+with these commandments:
+
+   "All these curses shall come upon thee and follow thee and
+    overtake thee until thou art destroyed, because thou hast
+    not hearkened unto the Lord thy God, to keep His commandments
+    and His statutes which He commanded thee."
+
+Upon hearing this very dramatic conclusion, Josiah came down from his
+throne and bowed himself to the ground. He rent his clothes and wept
+aloud, as if he were mourning for one who had died and whom he had
+loved best of all in the world.
+
+Then, restraining himself and collecting all his strength, he turned
+to Shaphan and Hilkiah and the others, who had been listening to the
+reading, and said:
+
+   "Go ye, inquire of the Lord for me, and for them that are
+    left in Israel and Judah, concerning the words of the book
+    that is found; for great is the wrath of the Lord that is
+    poured out upon us, because our fathers have not kept the
+    word of the Lord, to do according unto all that is written
+    in this book."
+
+Leaving the King's presence, Hilkiah and his companions held a short
+council to determine what to do next. The Book of the Law was so
+extraordinary that they needed the wisdom of some sage to explain to
+them how to proceed.
+
+Those of the Prophetic Party understood well enough what this book
+was. They considered that it was a copy of the law which Moses was
+ordered to "put by the side of the Ark" and which Solomon probably
+placed in the corner-stone of the Temple when he built it. They who
+had been trained by the descendants of the little party of faithful
+Judeans whom Isaiah had gathered about him, knew that this law had
+been continually violated since the days of Hezekiah and practically
+forgotten. Therefore they wanted someone who was an authority, one who
+would be trusted by all the people, to interpret this book and to
+declare it to be the genuine Law of Moses.
+
+First, someone suggested that Jeremiah be called in to interpret the
+book, but Hilkiah objected on the ground that Jeremiah was still a
+young man and that his opinion probably would not be heeded by all the
+people. Shaphan then suggested that the book be taken to Huldah, the
+Prophetess, a wise and aged mother in Israel, then living in
+Jerusalem.
+
+This suggestion was agreeable to all. With Hilkiah as leader of the
+delegation, they came to Huldah, bringing the request from the King.
+Her face lighted up benignly when she had read the book, but when she
+thought of the reply she had to send back, her brows knitted and
+wrinkles of care and pain showed in her face. Returning the scroll to
+Shaphan, Huldah said:
+
+   "Thus saith the Lord, the God of Israel; Tell ye the man
+    that sent you unto me: Thus saith the Lord, 'Behold, I will
+    bring evil upon this place, and upon the inhabitants thereof,
+    even all the curses that are written in the book which they
+    have read before the king of Judah. Because they have forsaken
+    me, and have burned incense unto other gods, that they might
+    provoke me to anger with all the works of their bands;
+    therefore is my wrath poured out upon this place and it shall
+    not be quenched.'
+
+   "But unto the King of Judah, who sent you to inquire of the
+    Lord, thus shall ye say to him: 'Thus saith the Lord, the
+    God of Israel: As touching the words which thou hast heard,
+    because thy heart was tender, and thou didst humble thyself
+    before God, when thou heardest his words against this place
+    and against the inhabitants thereof, and hast humbled thyself
+    before me and hast rent thy clothes and wept before me; I also
+    have heard thee, saith the Lord. Behold, I will gather thee
+    to thy fathers and thou shalt be gathered to thy grave in
+    peace, neither shall thine eyes see all the evil that I will
+    bring upon this place and upon the inhabitants thereof.'"
+
+The good prophetess knew that what happens to individuals must happen
+to whole nations. Here was a people that had been adding evil to evil
+and transgression to transgression for many generations. Just as a
+person who keeps on sinning and sinning, without reforming in his
+heart and in his deeds, arrives at a time when, no matter how anxious
+he is to turn from his evil ways, it is too late and he must finally
+pay the penalty for his misspent life, so this nation of Judah, into
+the very heart of which the cancer of wrongdoing had long been eating,
+could not, at this late date, escape its final destruction.
+
+But it is different, as the Prophetess Huldah expressed it, with
+individuals who turn from their evil paths while they are young, or who,
+like Josiah, attempt to do the right thing in the very midst of evil.
+
+Therefore, she could send back the message to the king, that he,
+because of the tenderness of his heart, because of his humility before
+God, because of his unquestioned effort to act in accordance with
+God's commandments, would return unto the God who sent him here before
+the evil days were to come upon the land, before the doom that awaited
+his people would encompass them.
+
+The king had been anxiously awaiting the return of his messengers,
+when they arrived at the palace from the house of the Prophetess. They
+were quickly ushered into the throne room.
+
+It was with great hesitation that Hilkiah finally made up his mind to
+report the words of the prophetess, exactly as she had spoken them.
+When the priest had finished, a deep, deathlike silence hung over the
+room, as if some catastrophe were impending.
+
+Josiah turned away from the little group, rested his arm heavily upon
+the throne and leaned his head upon it. Hilkiah, Shaphan and the
+others saw and felt the emotion that surged through the young king and
+caused his whole frame to tremble. A soft, gentle sound escaped him,
+as if he were weeping.
+
+Suddenly, however, Josiah's attitude changed. He ran the back of his
+hand over his eyes, straightened up and faced his friends. He was calm,
+composed, determined. He had concluded that he, himself, was the least
+to be considered in this matter. He needed advice from more older and
+more experienced men. Consequently, before the counselors present left
+him, Josiah ordered Shaphan to call an assembly of the elders of the
+entire people to meet in Jerusalem before the coming Passover.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VI.
+
+                        _A New Covenant._
+
+
+Josiah was determined not to give up so easily. He would not admit to
+himself that his country and his people were beyond hope. He figured
+that perhaps the prophetess had exaggerated purposely in order to
+recall the people to their duty to their God and to the country, more
+quickly and more conscientiously.
+
+He was not at all happy over the fact that he himself would escape the
+threatened destruction of his people. What he wanted was to discover
+some possible way, and to make every attempt, to save all his people.
+
+At the council of the Elders, as a first step, he suggested that the
+coming Passover be celebrated faithfully in accordance with the
+commandments in the rediscovered law book.
+
+Messengers were therefore sent throughout Judah, and even up into
+Israel, to announce a pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the celebration of
+the Passover, by order of the king and the Elders.
+
+Great and happy throngs came to the Capital for the festival. It was a
+multitude of people far different in mien and behavior from that same
+multitude that had rushed to the protection of the fortified city when
+the Scythian invaders had threatened the country a few years before.
+
+Now, when the Passover eve, that is the fourteenth day of the first
+month, was at hand, it was found that the great majority of the people
+did not bring with them the prescribed sacrifices, either because they
+did not know of the custom or because they were too poor.
+
+Such a condition, however, did not dismay Josiah and his officers. He,
+himself, out of his own treasury, distributed the means for making the
+sacrifices to over thirty-three thousand people. Hilkiah and the heads
+of the Temple service, out of their own means, did the same for the
+Priests and the Levites. So that everyone present in Jerusalem that
+day observed the Passover properly and happily.
+
+On the following morning, that is, on the first day of the festival,
+an assembly of all the people present, both great and small, was
+called in the Temple courts.
+
+The King and his advisers sat on a platform especially erected for the
+purpose. When order was secured, the King arose and stood in his place
+and "read of the words of the Book of the Covenant that was found in
+the House of God, before all the people."
+
+The impression made upon the assembly was wonderful. As Josiah
+proceeded with his reading the murmurs and low exclamations of
+surprise changed into a deep and impressive silence that was not
+broken even when the King had finished and had laid aside the Book of
+the Law.
+
+Reverently and with bowed head, Josiah raised a prayer unto God:
+
+   "Look down from Thy holy habitation, from heaven, O Lord,
+    and bless Thy people Israel."
+
+And with one voice the whole assembly answered, softly:
+
+   "Amen, Oh Lord, Amen."
+
+Then Josiah addressed the people. He pleaded with all the fervor and
+sincerity of his soul for them to re-establish, on that day, the
+ancient covenant between them and their God. This they did with a
+great shout of acclamation. Josiah continued:
+
+   "This day the Lord thy God commandeth thee to do these
+    statutes and ordinances; thou shalt therefore keep and do
+    them with all thy heart, and with all thy soul. Thou hast
+    avouched the Lord this day to be thy God, and that thou
+    wouldest walk in his ways, and keep his statutes, and his
+    commandments, and his ordinances, and hearken unto his voice;
+    and the Lord hath avouched thee this day to be a people for
+    his own possession, as he hath promised thee, and that thou
+    shouldest keep all his commandments; and to make thee high
+    above all nations that he hath made in praise, and in name,
+    and in honor; and that thou mayest be a holy people unto
+    the Lord thy God, as he hath spoken."
+
+When the King had finished and sat down, a great murmur welled up
+from the assembled people, until it grew into one great shout from
+the multitude:
+
+   "We have heard and shall do accordingly."
+
+Thus the people of Judah and Israel once more took upon themselves the
+duty and burden to be a holy people unto the Lord their God, as they
+had done at Sinai in the days of Moses.
+
+There was one man in the assembly, however, who not entirely carried
+away by the enthusiasm of the moment. It was Jeremiah. He knew well
+enough how a people, excited by a new and novel situation, would make
+promises which perhaps later they would be disinclined to keep. The
+mere acceptance of the covenant did not already mean the carrying out
+of its statutes in their daily life.
+
+Therefore, Jeremiah arose in the midst of the assembly, and, before
+the people were dispersed, struck one note of warning:
+
+   "Cursed be the man that heareth not the words of this
+    covenant, which I commanded your fathers in the day that I
+    brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, out of the iron
+    furnace, saying, 'Obey my voice, and do them according to
+    all which I command you; so shall ye be my people, and I
+    will be your God; that I may establish the oath which I sware
+    unto your fathers, to give them a land flowing with milk and
+    honey, as at this day.'"
+
+In conclusion, Jeremiah bowed his head and expressed the hope of the
+realization of the new covenant with the words:
+
+   "Amen, Oh Lord."
+
+And all the assembly once more responded:
+
+   "Amen, Oh Lord."
+
+Great feasting and rejoicing throughout the entire city by all the
+people followed during the whole festival. It was the greatest
+Passover in the history of Judah and Jerusalem, and of it is recorded:
+
+   "And the children of Israel that were present kept the
+    Passover at that time, and the feast of unleavened bread
+    seven days. And there was no Passover like to that kept in
+    Israel from the days of Samuel the prophet; neither did any
+    of the kings of Israel keep such a Passover as Josiah kept,
+    and the priests and the Levites, and all Judah and Israel
+    that were present, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. In the
+    eighteenth year of the reign of Josiah was this Passover kept."
+
+When the festival and the celebration were over, the spirit thereof
+did not die with the departure of the people from Jerusalem to their
+homes in all parts of the country. Josiah went to work in earnest to
+accomplish his share of the keeping of the new covenant. He dismissed
+every idolatrous priest in the land and destroyed every vestige of
+their worship in Jerusalem, in every town and village and on every
+high place.
+
+Up in Israel he carried on this work under his personal direction, and
+at Bethel, with his own hands, he destroyed the altar erected by
+Jereboam I. at the time of the division of the kingdom.
+
+It was while in northern Israel, where he ordered the dead bones of
+the idolatrous priests to be burned upon the very altars at which they
+worshiped, that Josiah espied two sepulchers, of a type that he had
+not met before. They were so unlike the sepulchers of the idolators
+that he marked them especially and talked about them. One of the
+monuments, he was told, "is the sepulcher of the Man of God who came
+from Judah and proclaimed these things that thou hast done against the
+altar at Bethel;" and when he found that the other ancient monument
+was the last bed on earth of "the Prophet that came out of Samaria,"
+he ordered that neither one should be touched. The memory of those
+early prophets was sacred and hallowed to the king.
+
+Within a few years, all this work undertaken by Josiah was accomplished.
+Genuine love of God and genuine living in accordance with His
+commandments seemed to have been restored everywhere among the people.
+In addition, the political changes that were taking place in Assyria,
+Babylonia and Egypt, left Josiah entirely at peace to work out the
+destiny of his own people and kingdom.
+
+In the year 608, however, in the thirty-ninth year of Josiah's reign,
+he entered upon a political campaign that proved to be the first and
+greatest mistake of his life and resulted not alone in his death, but
+in a great religious and moral decline that eventually led to the
+destruction of Jerusalem and Judah.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VII.
+
+                       _To the Fore Again._
+
+
+The mystery of the Scythian invasion of Asia has not yet been clearly
+solved. The results of that invasion, however, shook thrones and shattered
+kingdoms and changed the face of the then known civilized world.
+
+Assyria was the greatest sufferer, for the Scythian ravages had so
+weakened the great empire that it never recovered. Incidentally, this
+same cause reawakened the spirit of conquest in the Medes, led to the
+re-establishment of the independent Babylonian kingdom and brought
+about, indirectly and unnecessarily, the death of the good King Josiah.
+
+During the last years of Ashurbanipal's long and brilliant reign over
+Assyria, the Medes, under their king, Phraortes, turned the tables on
+Assyria and invaded the empire. Ashurbanipal's army defeated the
+ambitious Mede and drove him back into his own territory. But his son
+and successor, Cyaxerxes, having made certain changes in the
+organization of the Median army, again invaded Assyria and actually
+besieged Nineveh.
+
+At the same time the Scythians began to swarm over Media, and
+Cyaxerxes was forced to return to his own country and defend it.
+
+Cyaxerxes, being a wise as well as a great king, managed to buy off
+the barbarian Scythians and later actually trained them for service in
+his army, both as teachers of archery and as mercenaries.
+
+In the meantime, the Assyrian successor of Ashurbanipal made the
+mistake that cost him his life and his empire. He appointed
+Nabopolassar, a Chaldean of ancient lineage and of enthusiastic
+patriotism for his age-old country. Nabopolassar immediately entered
+into an alliance with Cyaxerxes that had for its purpose the overthrow
+of Nineveh and the establishment of Babylonia as an independent state.
+
+Nabopolassar declared himself king of Babylonia, to the great dismay
+of the Assyrian court. To seal his alliance with the Medes, a marriage
+was arranged between Amytis, Cyaxerxes' daughter, and Nebuchadrezzar,
+his son and Crown Prince.
+
+Nineveh was attacked at the same time by the Babylonians and Medians
+in the year 608. The great capital was besieged for two years. So
+fierce was the vengeance wrought upon the city and its inhabitants by
+the united armies that when the capture was finally made both were
+completely blotted out. For many centuries not even the location of
+Nineveh could be found.
+
+This occurred in the year 606. The end of Nineveh brought to a close
+the history of the great Assyrian power that had ruled so masterfully
+over the then known entire world. It also brought about a situation
+that had its direct effect upon the beginning of the end of the
+Kingdom of Judah.
+
+In Egypt history was in the making. Psammetich I, a Libyan soldier,
+recognizing in the crumbling of Assyrian power his own opportunity,
+made himself master of the country and established a new dynasty in
+Egypt. His son and successor, Pharaoh Necho, grasped the chance given
+him by Nabopolassar's attack on Nineveh to win back the provinces
+along the Mediterranean, that had been Egyptian before they were
+conquered by Assyria.
+
+Without further ado, therefore, Necho, with a great army, started
+north, to conquer all of Assyria that he could and add it to his own
+Empire. This meant an invasion of Judah.
+
+King Josiah was by no means ready to sit still and fall helplessly
+from the frying pan into the fire, as it were. Once entirely free from
+Assyria, he intended to maintain his independence. At least, he was
+not going to allow Pharaoh Necho to slip the noose around his neck
+without a struggle. Josiah, therefore, organized his armies and went
+out to meet Necho. This was when the campaign against Nineveh began.
+
+To the Pharaoh's great surprise, when he reached the plain of Megiddo,
+he was confronted by Josiah. Necho sent him word that he had no
+quarrel with Judah whatever; but Josiah could see nothing in the
+future but the sovereignty of Egypt over his dominions and was
+determined to retain his independence at all costs. So, the war was on.
+
+It did not last long, however. It seems that not even a single pitched
+battle was fought. Josiah was picked off by a Libyan archer in the very
+first skirmish and wounded mortally, to the dismay of his entire army.
+
+His old and devoted servant, Ebed-melech, was with the king in his
+chariot. The faithful Ethiopian carried the wounded Josiah from the
+royal chariot to another one. Protected by a detachment of the body
+guard, as if in mockery, Josiah was taken back to Jerusalem, dying.
+Before he reached the capital he was dead, and Necho declared himself
+master over Judah without the least resistance. He made it, at once,
+an Egyptian province.
+
+The mourning for the dead King in Jerusalem and Judah was sincere and
+widespread. It is recorded that many odes by the poets and musicians
+of that day were written in his memory and that Jeremiah lamented for
+his friend in accents more woeful than did David for Jonathan. Ebed-melech
+hung around the sepulcher of his beloved master for many days. It was
+months before he returned to the palace to resume his duties.
+
+   "Like unto him was there no king before him, that turned to
+    the Lord with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with
+    all his might, according to the law of Moses; neither after
+    him arose there any like him."
+
+To indicate the force and power of Josiah's life with the people of
+Judah, and the genuine value in their own lives of the late king's
+reforms, the people at large passed over Eliakim, Josiah's eldest son,
+and raised his second son, Jehoahaz, to the throne of Judah.
+
+Eliakim was a weakling, who loved ease and luxury above everything
+else. The people feared that he would not continue the life and work
+of his father. Jehoahaz, on the other hand, was a true son of his
+father, and would have made a splendid successor to the throne of
+Josiah, had not Pharaoh Necho interfered with the will of the people
+of Judah.
+
+In the third month of the young king's reign (he was only twenty-three
+years old) Necho ordered him to appear before him at Riblah, on the
+Orontes. Arrived there, Jehoahaz was immediately thrown into chains
+and sent a prisoner to Egypt.
+
+Necho then proclaimed Eliakim King of Judah and to show his complete
+mastery over king, land and people, he changed Eliakim's name to
+Jehoiakim.
+
+The mourning in Jerusalem and Judah was now twofold. The people wept
+for their beloved king who was dead and for his beloved son who was a
+prisoner beyond hope.
+
+A few men like Hilkiah and Jeremiah, and the others of the Prophetic
+Party, saw in Jehoahaz's successor the coming of more evil days for
+Judah. To those who hoped that there might again be a political change
+and that Jehoahaz would return from Egypt, to reign in his father's
+stead, Jeremiah held out no hope:
+
+   "Weep not for him who is dead, nor wail for him; weep rather
+    for him who is gone, for he shall not return, and never again
+    shall he see the land of his birth. For thus saith the Lord,
+    concerning Shallum (Jehoahaz), the son of Josiah, who was
+    king instead of Josiah his father, who went forth from this
+    place: 'He shall not return thither again, but in the place
+    whither they have led him away captive he shall die, and this
+    land shall not see him again.'"
+
+Soon after Jehoiakim came to the throne, word came from Egypt that
+Jehoahaz had died. It was then that Jeremiah, who with Shaphan and
+Hilkiah had quietly aided the king in his policy of reform, but had
+retired to his home in Anathoth when these reforms began to bear
+fruit, heard again the call to go out and prophesy to the people of
+Judah. Danger was threatening from the throne and this danger brought
+Jeremiah out of his seclusion, to the fore again.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER VIII.
+
+                     _The Shadow of a King._
+
+
+Pharaoh Necho's ambitions were short-lived.
+
+The child's-play conquest of Judah was not to be repeated in dealing
+with the conquerors of Nineveh.
+
+Nebuchadrezzar really had no thought of extending the sway of his
+reborn Babylonia to Egypt; but he would not countenance for a moment
+Necho's encroachment upon Assyrian territory.
+
+In dividing up the Assyrian Empire, Cyaxerxes was perfectly satisfied
+with the absolute independence of Media and such Assyrian possessions
+as adjoined his country. The rest, to the west and south, including
+ancient Syria and Judah, was apportioned to his son-in-law. There was
+no quarrel about the division.
+
+Syria and Judah being his, Nebuchadrezzar swore by all his gods that
+Necho should be made to suffer for his audacity.
+
+Necho encamped at Riblah, after the victory over Josiah. Riblah,
+situated in the broad valley between the Lebanon and Hermon ranges,
+was destined to be the scene of several tragedies in Judean history.
+It was here that Necho awaited the outcome of the struggle at Nineveh.
+
+He did not have long to wait. Nineveh gasped her last in the year 606.
+Nebuchadrezzar left his father-in-law to complete the destruction of
+the glory of Assyria, and, flushed with victory, marched at once
+against the Egyptian invader.
+
+Necho was prepared for this. He broke camp at Riblah and proceeded to
+meet Nebuchadrezzar. The Babylonian and Egyptian armies faced each
+other at Carchemish by the Euphrates, in 605; and the result once more
+cast Judah into the political balance.
+
+In the meantime, Jeremiah was forced back to his labors by the
+conditions at Jerusalem. Necho knew what he wanted when he substituted
+Jehoiakim for Jehoahaz on the throne of Judah. Jehoiakim was weak,
+pliable, incapable of big things. Jeremiah knew that, too. Therefore,
+he had to go to work again.
+
+Jeremiah raised no false hopes, based on anything Jehoiakim would do
+for himself or for Judah. Even while Josiah lived, the crown prince
+showed the type of man he was. Instead of applying himself to the work
+of succeeding to the throne, he spent his time in riotous pleasure,
+and his father's money in lavish extravagance.
+
+As crown prince, he built himself a sumptuous new palace. Unlike
+Josiah, when the Temple was repaired, Jehoiakim did not pay fair
+wages, and oppressed his artisans and mechanics. When he sat in
+judgment, he did not judge righteously.
+
+Therefore, at Josiah's unexpected death, Jeremiah approved the action
+of the people in raising the unfortunate Jehoahaz to the throne.
+Necho's substitution of Jehoiakim filled the prophet with alarm. The
+happy years of Josiah's reign vanished like a mist; and, with a heart
+that was heavy-laden, Jeremiah left Anathoth, where he had been living
+quietly with his relatives and friends, and went down to the turmoil
+in Jerusalem.
+
+Satisfying himself that he had not exaggerated the situation in the
+capital, and, seeing now that the calamity of Josiah's death was more
+far-reaching than he had at first supposed, Jeremiah addressed himself
+to Jehoiakim with the following warning:
+
+   "Woe to him who buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his
+        chambers by injustice;
+    Who causeth his neighbor to labor without wages, and giveth him
+        not his pay;
+    Who saith, 'I will build me a vast palace with spacious chambers;
+    Provided with deep-cut windows, ceiled with cedar and painted
+        with vermillion.'
+    Dost thou call thyself king because thou excellest in cedar?
+    Thy father--did he not eat and drink and execute law and justice?
+    He judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well.
+    'Was not this to know me?' saith the Lord.
+    But thine eyes and heart are bent only on thy dishonest gain,
+    And on the shedding of innocent blood and on oppression
+        and violence!"
+
+Nor did Jeremiah hesitate to point out that such a state of affairs
+could not exist long and that such a king could not reign long over
+Israel.
+
+He even foretold the fate of Jehoiakim. He knew that the political
+situation, as it would develop when Nineveh was conquered, would once
+more embroil Judah. Jehoiakim, he was sure, could not stand the test.
+
+Therefore, he could see nothing but the fall and untimely death of
+Jehoiakim, and he added, "They shall not lament over him, saying one
+to another, 'Oh, my brother!' or 'Oh, my sister!' They shall not wail
+for him, saying, 'Oh, Lord!' or 'Oh, his glory!' but shall be glad
+when he is 'buried as an ass is buried, drawn out and cast forth.'"
+
+On that very day came the news of the Battle of Carchemish. It was one
+of the epoch-making struggles of ancient history. Victory perched
+proudly on the banner of Nebuchadrezzar and Necho was utterly routed,
+fleeing toward Egypt, the Babylonians in hot pursuit.
+
+Within that very year all signs of Egyptian rule in Syria and
+Palestine were wiped out. "The king of Babylon had taken from the
+brook of Egypt unto the river Euphrates all that pertained to the king
+of Egypt." Judah became a Babylonian province and Jehoiakim but the
+shadow of a king.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER IX.
+
+                    _The Temple of the Lord._
+
+
+Nebuchadrezzar had taken up his headquarters where Pharaoh-Necho had
+encamped at Riblah, and there received the homage of the little Syrian
+and Palestinian states that he had wrested from Egypt.
+
+To Jeremiah's great surprise, Jehoiakim sent a secret embassy to
+Nebuchadrezzar vowing allegiance to Babylon.
+
+Jehoiakim's submission pleased Jeremiah. He saw in it a splendid
+opportunity for Judah. All that was needed now was to keep the people
+in the path of right. Their future, he felt, could be worked out well
+enough as long as the country was at peace, free from the ravages of
+war.
+
+But here Jeremiah was met by a new difficulty. Josiah's reformation,
+followed by his death and the quick changes in the country's political
+fortunes, had not worked out very satisfactorily. People began to
+doubt the wisdom of the whole proceeding.
+
+In the first place, some said that God was displeased at Josiah's
+overriding the traditional forms of worship. The opportunity for God
+to show that displeasure was at Megiddo, and, therefore, Josiah lost
+his life there. All the people, it was plain, had not yet arrived at
+the conception of God held by a Jeremiah or Josiah.
+
+Again, there were others who fell back into the old reasoning that the
+gods of the other nations were mightier than Judah's God, and,
+therefore, they fell back into the old idolatrous ways. They were
+merely awaiting the opportunity to worship the other gods publicly as
+some of them were already doing privately.
+
+Then, again, there were many who believed that the new Book of the Law
+and the new order of things prohibiting sacrifices in any place except
+the Temple in Jerusalem, did not permit of enough sacrificing to God,
+and, therefore, was He again visiting the land with the rod of Egypt
+and Babylonia.
+
+And, opposing all these, Jeremiah and his followers were positive in
+their hearts and souls that sacrifices were by no means the all-important
+feature of the worship of God, but, as Jeremiah had reminded the
+people on the day of the Great Passover, God asked them only to obey
+His voice and to live in accordance with the moral law that He had
+commanded them.
+
+   "So shall ye be my people, and I will be your God; that I
+    may establish the oath which I sware unto your fathers, to
+    give them a land flowing with milk and honey."
+
+King Jehoiakim had no interest whatever in these differing religious
+opinions among the people.
+
+As long as he could pay his tribute to Nebuchadrezzar and live
+luxuriously and voluptuously in his newly built palace, he cared not
+further. Religiously and morally he permitted things to take their own
+course, as if morals and religion had no part to play in the strength
+and safety of his people and in their national welfare.
+
+Jeremiah was now convinced that it was his duty once more to take up
+the brave fight for God and His law. The opportunity came during the
+Feast of the Ingathering, in the year 604.
+
+Many thousands had come from all parts of the country to Jerusalem to
+celebrate the festival. All brought with them many heads of cattle and
+bags of grain and flour for the prescribed sacrifices.
+
+They were a happy company. When the Temple came into view, rising
+majestically in the distance, they shouted to each other, "The Temple
+of the Lord! The Temple of the Lord!" out of sheer joy in beholding
+the sacred structure that meant so much to them.
+
+"The Temple of the Lord! The Temple of the Lord!" they cried, and
+pointed to the magnificent edifice which some of them had never
+seen before.
+
+Jeremiah listened to these joyous shouts and observed sorrowfully the
+self-satisfaction of those who had come to offer their sacrifices. He
+was much alone these days. His parents had been dead some years and a
+new Priest was in charge of the Temple. Shaphan and all Josiah's old
+counsellors were either gone to their reward or had been dismissed
+from service by Jehoiakim. Shaphan's two sons, Ahikam and Gemariah,
+were indeed high in the counsels of the king, but they bothered little
+about Jeremiah and his teachings.
+
+So Jeremiah stood alone, on the first day of the festival, at the
+Temple gates. A multitude of people passed him, taking their turn at
+bringing their offerings. From within the Temple he heard the sounds
+of cattle being slaughtered and smelt the odor of burning flesh. The
+noise deafened him; the odors choked him. Here were king, priest and
+people leading unrighteous lives and believing that this wholesale
+slaughtering and burning was what God demanded of them! Here were
+elaborate form and ritual, but no justice and love!
+
+Jeremiah fairly gasped for breath when the full meaning of this came
+to him. Turning upon a great crowd that was jammed at the gates,
+waiting their turn to enter the Temple, he cried:
+
+   "Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel:
+
+   "'Add your burnt-offerings unto your sacrifices, and eat ye
+    flesh. For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them
+    in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt,
+    concerning burnt-offerings or sacrifices.
+
+   "'But this thing I commanded them, saying: Hearken unto my
+    voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people;
+    and walk ye in all the way that I command you that it may
+    be well with you.
+
+   "'Yet they hearkened not, nor inclined their ear, but walked
+    in their own counsels and in the stubbornness of their evil
+    heart. This is the nation that hath not hearkened to the
+    voice of the Lord their God, nor received instruction. Truth
+    is perished and is cut off from their mouth.'"
+
+What an amazing outburst! God did not command them concerning
+burnt-offerings and sacrifices! The man is ridiculous!
+
+Religious discussions and controversies had often taken place in the
+Temple courts. Here was the Forum of the People, in fact, and several
+men who had often proclaimed themselves as prophets, speaking the word
+of God, joined issue with Jeremiah, whom they now recognized.
+
+"Here is the Temple--the Temple of the Lord," they exclaimed. "What
+was it built for, if not for sacrifices?" they wanted to know. "What
+other way is there for men to worship God than to bring their
+offerings to him?"
+
+Jeremiah replied that sacrifices were instituted by men, by the
+priesthood, not by God, and continued, making plain once for all his
+understanding of the way God wanted men to show their religion:
+
+   "Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel: Amend your
+    ways and your doings, and I will cause you to dwell in this
+    place. Trust ye not in lying words, saying, 'The Temple of
+    the Lord! The Temple of the Lord! The Temple of the Lord!
+
+   "'For, if you really amend your ways and your deeds, if ye
+    faithfully execute justice between a man and his neighbor,
+    if ye oppress not the resident alien, the fatherless and
+    the widow, and shed not innocent blood in this place, and
+    do not go after other gods to your hurt; then I will cause
+    you to dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your
+    fathers, forever and ever.'"
+
+Here was a very amazing accusation! What does he mean by saying that
+the people are trusting in "lying words?" Jeremiah insisted:
+
+   "But now ye _are_ trusting in lying words that cannot profit."
+
+Then he hastened to explain fully and without reserve:
+
+   "Will ye steal, murder and commit adultery; swear falsely
+    and offer sacrifices to Baal, and go after other gods whom
+    ye have not known, and then come and stand before Me in this
+    House which is called after My name and say 'We are free to
+    do all these abominations?'
+
+   "Is this, My house, which is called by my name, a den of
+    robbers in your eyes?
+
+   "Behold: I, indeed, have seen it, saith the Lord."
+
+The crowds stood there, mouths agape. They had never heard anything so
+outspoken and fearless before. Several so-called prophets were
+prepared to go on with the argument, but a number of assistant
+priests, who were marshalling the people with their sacrificial
+offerings into the Temple in proper order and to their appointed
+places, put a halt to the debate.
+
+Word had come from the interior of the Temple that the chief priests
+were waiting for the sacrifices. The assistants wanted the people to
+move on. So it was arranged that, on the day following, Jeremiah
+should meet a chosen few of the Jerusalem prophets to discuss their
+differences of opinion publicly, in the Temple courts.
+
+Jeremiah's acceptance of this challenge nearly cost him his life.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER X.
+
+                        _A Narrow Escape._
+
+
+The issue was squarely drawn.
+
+Either the Temple Prophets were the true spokesmen of the God of Judah
+and Jeremiah was an impostor, or Jeremiah spoke the truth that had
+been "cut off from their mouth" and the Temple Prophets were feeding
+the people on "lying words."
+
+A great concourse of citizens of Jerusalem and pilgrims to the city
+gathered for the debate. Jeremiah, much older looking than his years,
+was the center of attraction. He was tall and erect. His face was
+somewhat drawn and showed wrinkles of worriment. He was dressed in an
+unadorned brown mantle that singled him out among the holiday-attired
+priests and prophets with whom he was conversing.
+
+Evidently this was to be a friendly argument, without ill-feeling on
+either side.
+
+Jeremiah was the first to speak. As soon as he began it was plain to
+be seen that his worry was not fear of the arguments with which his
+opponents were about to attack him, but that it was deeper-seated. He
+started by informing his hearers that he was well acquainted with the
+things that were being preached in Jerusalem as the word of God.
+
+   "I hearkened and heard, but they spake not aright. No man
+    repenteth him of his wickedness, saying, 'What have I done?'
+    Everyone turneth to his course as a horse that rusheth
+    headlong into battle.
+
+   "Yea, the stork in the heavens knoweth her appointed time;
+    the turtle dove and the swallow and the crane observe the
+    time of their coming; but my people know not the law of
+    the Lord."
+
+"Is that so?" queried one of the Jerusalem prophets, with a sneer. In
+his reply, he pointed out that both the laws of the religion and the
+laws of the State were known to the priests and prophets, in whose
+charge were the Temple and the government, and were obeyed by them and
+the people. With sweeping gestures he emphasized the prosperity of the
+people and the peace of the country. "Thou art the disturber of the
+peace," he concluded hotly. "Leave the Temple and the State to the
+wise men, the scribes, the priests and prophets in Jerusalem, and all
+will be well."
+
+"The same kind of argument," thought Jeremiah, as he listened
+attentively to the speaker. "They always fail to grasp the vital
+things that God demands of them." In his rejoinder, therefore,
+Jeremiah came back forcibly:
+
+   "How do ye say, 'We are wise and the law of the Lord is with
+    us!' But, behold, the false pen of the scribes hath made
+    falsehood of it. The wise men are put to shame. Lo, they
+    have rejected the word of the Lord.
+
+   "And what manner of wisdom is in them? Every one, from the
+    least even unto the greatest, is given to covetousness; from
+    the prophet even unto the priest every one dealeth falsely.
+
+   "And they have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people
+    slightly, saying, 'Peace, peace,' when there is no peace."
+
+Instantly there came to Jeremiah's mind the story of the Kingdom of
+Israel with its deceitful priests and false prophets, who, at Bethel
+and Shiloh, taught and preached untruths about God--and the sad end of
+them all. They, too, had thought everything was well with them and
+their sanctuary and the peace of the land. So Jeremiah continued:
+
+   "Then go now to my sanctuary which is in Shiloh, where I
+    caused my name to dwell at first and see what I did to it
+    because of the wickedness of my people Israel.
+
+   "And now because ye have done all these deeds, and although
+    I spoke to you insistently, ye have not heeded, and although
+    I called you, ye have not answered, therefore I will do to
+    the house, which ye call by My name, in which ye trust, and
+    to the place which I gave to you and to your fathers, as I
+    did to Shiloh."
+
+This speech started several commotions in different parts of the
+crowd. From the extreme edge, to the right of the speakers, one man
+began to come forward, shouting:
+
+"Blasphemy!"
+
+The cry was taken up all around him. From various directions men,
+throwing their arms in the air and yelling at the top of their voices,
+made their way with difficulty toward the speakers, crying:
+
+"Blasphemy! Blasphemy!!"
+
+Jeremiah, at first, could not understand the commotion. What had he
+said, what had he done, that was blasphemous? Then, as the cry became
+general and the surging mob became threatening, the thought came to
+him that the people had been taught by the priests and prophets in
+Jerusalem that the Temple was inviolable, that no matter what the
+political fortunes of Judah might be, God would never permit "the
+House which is called by His name" to be destroyed.
+
+Now Jeremiah understood and he was helpless. His simile of the
+sanctuary at Shiloh suggested the destruction and ruin of the Temple
+in Jerusalem--and that was blasphemy.
+
+He did not know, however, that his opponents had purposely planted men
+in various sections of the assembly to wait and watch for any
+blasphemous hint in his argument and to raise the cry against him.
+
+"Blasphemy! Blasphemy!" The cry was now general. And the leader who
+started it, when he came within reach of Jeremiah, grasped his mantle
+and shouted:
+
+"You must die!"
+
+The Temple guard rushed to the prophet's assistance. Blasphemy was
+punishable by death, but the punishment must come in the regular,
+legal way and not by the hands of the mob.
+
+Under protection of the guard, therefore, Jeremiah was led to the new
+gate, built by King Josiah, where the princes sat as judges. At his
+heels was the threatening, gesticulating crowd, goaded on by
+Jeremiah's enemies, demanding his life.
+
+The trial was opened without delay. Here were thousands of witnesses
+who had heard the man and there seemed little hope for him to escape
+being stoned to death. One of the prophets opened the case for the
+prosecution, addressing himself to the judges:
+
+   "This man is worthy of death; for he hath prophesied against
+    this city in the name of God, saying, 'This house shall be
+    like Shiloh. This city shall be deserted, without an inhabitant.'"
+
+Turning dramatically to the crowd, he swept his arm over their heads,
+adding for the purpose of affirmation:
+
+   "As ye have heard with your ears."
+
+"Aye, aye," many responded.
+
+"Blasphemy! Blasphemy!" shouted others.
+
+And still others demanded, "He must die! He must die!"
+
+When a semblance of quiet was restored, Jeremiah stepped forward from
+between the two guards who had him in charge, faced the accusing
+people, and said, very calmly and humbly:
+
+   "It was the Lord who sent me to prophesy against this Temple
+    and against this city all the words that you have heard."
+
+"Bah!" jeered the leaders of the opposition, and many took up the
+signal and joined in the jeering. Jeremiah did not permit the jeers to
+interrupt him:
+
+   "Now therefore reform your ways and your acts and obey the
+    voice of the Lord your God; and the Lord will repent of the
+    evil that he has pronounced upon you."
+
+"Hear him! Hear him!" arose from all directions. "He blasphemes! He
+blasphemes!" Jeremiah paid no attention to these outcries, but turned
+to the judges and concluded his defense:
+
+   "But as for me, see, I am in your hand; do with me as
+    appears to you to be good and right.
+
+   "Only be assured that, if you put me to death, you will
+    bring innocent blood upon yourselves and upon this city and
+    upon its inhabitants, for verily the Lord hath sent me to
+    you to speak all these things in your ears."
+
+Jeremiah ceased. He walked back to his place between the two guards to
+await his sentence. The mob was rather taken by surprise at the
+prisoner's defense. He made no arguments for release, no pleas for his
+life, but stated his belief in his work and his faith in God, trusting
+for the rest in the justness of his cause.
+
+From out among the princes arose Ahikam, the eldest son of Shaphan,
+who was the Royal Scribe for Jehoiakim, as his father had been for
+Josiah. Ahikam and Jeremiah had been close friends as young men, even
+as their fathers had been all their lives. Recently, however, they had
+not seen much of each other. Jeremiah was busy about his business and
+Ahikam was permanently stationed in Jerusalem, at the palace.
+
+Jeremiah hardly recognized Ahikam when he began to address the judges.
+His interest in the speaker was greatly stirred, however, when he
+heard Ahikam say that he had no apology to offer for the position he
+was taking, nor for his friendship and love for the man who was
+accused of the crime of blasphemy. He said that he believed that his
+and Jeremiah's fathers were of the greatest service to King Josiah in
+the prosperity that attended his reign, and that, though the priests
+and prophets of Jerusalem might not understand it, Jeremiah wanted the
+peace and prosperity of the nation and of the capital, not their doom.
+
+Then, rising to a pitch of oratorical flight, he cried:
+
+   "This man is not worthy of death, for he hath spoken to us
+    in the name of the Lord our God."
+
+Up jumped Pashhur, the chief officer of the Temple, and told the story
+of Uriah, the son of Shemaiah, who also had prophesied in the Temple
+in the name of God. Pashhur continued:
+
+   "And he prophesied against the city and against this land
+    according to all the words of Jeremiah; and when Jehoiakim,
+    the king, with all his mighty men and all the princes, heard
+    his words, the king sought to put him to death; but when
+    Uriah heard it, he was afraid, and fled and went into Egypt.
+
+   "And Jehoiakim, the king, sent men into Egypt, and they
+    fetched forth Uriah out of Egypt, and brought him unto
+    Jehoiakim, the king, who slew him with the sword, and cast
+    his dead body into the graves of the common people."
+
+But Ahikam, who, like his father, was acquainted with the history of
+his people, arose and answered Pashhur:
+
+   "Micah the Moreshtite, prophesied in the days of Hezekiah,
+    king of Judah, and he spake to all the people of Judah,
+    saying, 'Thus saith the Lord of Hosts: "Zion shall be plowed
+    as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps and the mountain
+    of the house as the high places of a forest."'
+
+   "Did Hezekiah, king of Judah, and all Judah put him to death?
+    Did he not fear the Lord and entreat the favor of the Lord
+    so that the Lord repented him of the evil which he had
+    pronounced against them? But we are on the point of doing
+    great injustice to ourselves."
+
+To the surprise of the priests and the prophets Ahikam's argument
+prevailed with the princes who sat in judgment, and with the people
+themselves. They dispersed without further ado, but they continued
+discussing the situation among themselves.
+
+No punishment was visited upon Jeremiah, but he had a narrow escape.
+
+Jeremiah and Ahikam left the gate arm in arm. They were happy at the
+renewal of their friendship, even if it took place in the shadow of
+death.
+
+Ahikam warned his friend to be more careful, when they parted.
+Jeremiah left him with much to think about. It was the first time that
+he had been attacked and his life threatened. In addition, though
+Jeremiah did not hear of it that day, Pashhur had sworn to corner
+Jeremiah yet, so that he could not escape.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XI.
+
+                     _A Taste of Martyrdom._
+
+
+Jeremiah returned home a very sad man, but not a wiser one from the
+point of view of his safety. He kept much to himself in the city of
+Anathoth and devoted his time to teaching a group of young men with
+whom he had surrounded himself.
+
+Among them was Baruch, son of Neriah, of a distinguished Jerusalem
+family, whose members had always stood high in the counsels of the
+kings. Baruch was not only a disciple of Jeremiah, but also acted as
+his secretary when writing was to be done.
+
+Baruch was intimate with Jeremiah's family in Anathoth, and he
+informed Jeremiah that his cousins did not approve of his actions in
+the Temple. They did not like the notoriety it brought them and hoped
+he would hold his peace.
+
+These cousins did not have the courage to speak their mind to Jeremiah
+face to face, and so he did not trouble about them, their likes or
+dislikes, their approval or disapproval. He had on his mind a very
+troublesome problem when it began to be rumored that Jehoiakim was
+about to re-introduce human sacrifices in Ge-Hinnom.
+
+Ge-Hinnom was the "valley of the son of Hinnom, which is by the entry
+of the gate of potsherds, called Tophet." The southwestern gate of the
+City of Jerusalem overlooked this valley where an altar had been
+erected for the atrocious Moloch-worship, but which was destroyed by
+Josiah during the Reformation.
+
+Jeremiah had but to hear of the king's proposal to re-establish the
+Moloch-rites, to act.
+
+He went to Jerusalem, despite the pleading of Baruch not to go,
+gathered a number of the Elders who had been his father's and Josiah's
+friends and co-workers, and asked them to accompany him to Tophet.
+
+They proceeded through the southwestern gate, "the gate of the
+valley," followed by a number of idlers, the curious who keep at a
+distance to see what will happen.
+
+Arrived at the ruins of the altar of Moloch, Jeremiah drew from under
+his mantle a potter's earthen bottle, and, without giving a hint of
+what he was about to do, broke it on one of the altar stones. Turning
+to the Elders, he said:
+
+   "Thus said the Lord of Hosts: 'Even so will I break this
+    people and this city, as one breaketh a potter's vessel,
+    that cannot be made whole again.'"
+
+That was all! He had portrayed more vividly than he could ever have
+done in a long speech what would be the consequences if the king
+persisted in bringing back the horrible worship of Moloch.
+
+Returning to the city, Jeremiah stopped at the Temple. He had not been
+in Jerusalem since he narrowly escaped stoning at the hands of the
+mob. As soon as he was recognized--and the word of his coming had been
+spread by the onlookers, who had returned from Tophet ahead of him--the
+crowd gathered about him, anxious to hear what he would have to say.
+
+He told them a story first. He had been down at a potter's house that
+morning, watching the potter at work. The vessel the potter made
+didn't suit him, so he destroyed it while the clay was yet soft and
+pliable. Then he made another vessel out of that same clay, "as seemed
+good to the potter to make it." This story he followed up with a
+passionate plea to the people:
+
+   "'O house of Israel cannot I do with you as this potter?'
+    saith the Lord. 'Behold, as the clay in the potter's hand,
+    so are ye in my hand, O house of Israel.'
+
+   "'At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and
+    concerning a kingdom, to pluck up and to break down and to
+    destroy it; if that nation, concerning which I have spoken,
+    turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I
+    thought to do unto them. And at what instant I shall speak
+    concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and
+    to plant it; if they do that which is evil in my sight, that
+    they obey not my voice, then I will repent of the good,
+    wherewith I said I would benefit them.'
+
+   "'Now, therefore,' thus saith the Lord: 'Behold, I frame
+    evil against you, and devise a device against you. Return
+    ye now every one from his evil way, and amend your ways and
+    your deeds.'"
+
+Several of the Jerusalem prophets, upon Jeremiah's coming to the
+Temple, gathered quickly in Pashhur's chambers to talk the matter
+over. They had thought that the charge of blasphemy had frightened
+Jeremiah so that he would not return; but here he was again, as
+persistent in his course as ever. Not one was willing to admit that
+there was some truth in Jeremiah's pleadings and threats, but all of
+them came to this conclusion:
+
+   "Come and let us devise devices against Jeremiah; for the law
+    shall not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise,
+    nor the word from the prophet. Come, and let us smite him
+    with the tongue, and let us not give heed to any of his words."
+
+Pashhur listened to all their talk with amusemsnt. Jeremiah had been a
+nuisance around the Temple, of which he was chief officer, long
+enough. Here was his chance to fix him, he thought.
+
+"Come, and let us smite him with the tongue?" he asked, with a jeering
+laugh. He told them that they were fools to argue with the pest. He
+would show them how to deal with him.
+
+Pashhur buckled up his mantle, gritting his teeth. He fairly ran to
+the open place where Jeremiah was speaking. He burst through the crowd
+with curses upon them all. Facing Jeremiah, he shouted:
+
+"Thou--" but his anger and hate overcame him. He almost foamed at the
+mouth with rage and could not speak a word.
+
+Before Jeremiah understood what the matter was, Pashhur slapped him on
+both cheeks with his hands. Then he struck him square on the jaw with
+his right fist--and Jeremiah dropped to the slabbed marble of the
+courtyard, where he had been standing.
+
+The crowd was startled and amazed at what had happened. But Pashhur
+gave no opportunity for remonstrance. A number of the Temple guards,
+who had come up with their chief, dispersed the people with curses and
+blows.
+
+Pashhur stood over the prostrate body of Jeremiah, like the victor
+over his defeated adversary--waiting for him to show signs of rising
+that he might strike him again. When Jeremiah regained consciousness,
+however, the brutal Pashhur had thought better of it. Another such
+blow and he would have killed the prophet--and Pashhur knew the law on
+shedding innocent blood.
+
+Therefore, when Jeremiah had fully recovered and had once more risen
+to his feet, Pashhur arrested him and had him led to the upper Temple
+gate, which is the gate of Benjamin. There he put him into the stocks
+with his own hands.
+
+That whole day and that whole night Jeremiah remained pilloried.
+Hundreds of people passed him. Some, urged on by the priests and the
+false prophets, mocked at him; some, pitying him from the depths of
+their hearts, sympathized with him; some spat upon him.
+
+Near the pillory, all that day and night, there hovered a gray-haired
+Ethiopian who longed to speak a word of cheer and comfort to the
+unfortunate prophet and to give him water to drink and food to eat,
+but he dared not because of the guard that Pashhur had placed over him.
+
+During all the terrible agony and shame, Jeremiah did not utter a loud
+word of complaint or condemnation.
+
+On the following morning Pashhur ordered Jeremiah to be brought to his
+chamber. There twenty-one stripes were administered to him; and after
+warning him never to enter Jerusalem again, Pashhur ordered him to
+leave the city and be thankful he wasn't carried out of it a corpse.
+
+Before going, however, Jeremiah turned on Pashhur and said to him:
+
+   "The Lord hath not called thy name Pashhur, but Magor
+    (Terror), for thus saith the Lord: 'Behold I am about to
+    make thee a terror to thyself and to all thy friends; and
+    they shall fall by the sword of your enemy before your very
+    eyes. But thee and all Judah will I give into the hands of
+    the King of Babylon, and he will carry them into captivity
+    and slay them with the sword.
+
+   "'Moreover, I will give all the riches of this city and all
+    its possessions and all the treasures of the king of Judah
+    into the hands of their enemies, and they shall carry them
+    away to Babylon; and thou and all that dwell in thy house
+    shall go into captivity, and thou shalt die at Babylon and
+    be buried there, together with all thy friends to whom thou
+    hast prophesied falsely.'"
+
+Here, for the first time, Jeremiah spoke of Babylon as the source from
+which all the evil impending over Judah was to come. For, one of the
+Elders who had accompanied him to Tophet, the day before, had
+whispered to him that Jehoiakim was preparing for a revolt from
+Nebuchadrezzar.
+
+The reason why such a dangerous idea had entered the mind of Jehoiakim
+was that Nebuchadrezzar had received word, while yet at Riblah, that
+his father, Nabopolassar, had died. Without delay, and before having
+subdued the Palestinian states to his entire satisfaction, he marched
+to Babylon to be crowned and to establish himself firmly upon his
+throne.
+
+Jehoiakim thought he saw an opportunity here to regain his
+independence. Jeremiah knew how foolhardy and impossible this
+undertaking would be. He so informed Pashhur, therefore, and received
+a kick and a cuff for his pains, as a farewell from that worthy
+officer upon leaving Jerusalem.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XII.
+
+                    _The Woe of the Prophet._
+
+
+"What now?" Jeremiah asked himself.
+
+Without an idea as to what his next move should be or where he should
+now turn, he took the road leading to Anathoth.
+
+A day and a night in the stocks and the smarting lashes at Pashhur's
+hands, had given him a taste of martyrdom, and left him sick of heart
+and soul. He wanted to go home! Yes, he would go home where he would
+find, among his relatives and those dear to him, the shelter and
+comfort and rest that he longed for so much. His heart yearned for
+love and his soul for peace.
+
+He turned northward. Head bent, spirit crushed, wounded in mind and in
+body, he approached the town of his birth, where he had spent the
+happy days of his youth, where he had received his call to prophesy,
+that ended now in humiliation and disgrace.
+
+The painful, bitter thoughts that passed through his mind were
+suddenly disturbed by the noise of someone running toward him and
+calling his name. Jeremiah looked up to see young Baruch, all out of
+breath, coming toward him, both his arms waving in the air as if
+giving a warning.
+
+"Flee, master, flee!" Baruch cried, looking back in fear lest some one
+was pursuing him or would overhear him.
+
+"Baruch!" exclaimed Jeremiah, stretching out his arms in welcome. The
+sight of the young man was the first moment of joy he had had since
+his encounter with Pashhur.
+
+Baruch did not hear the joyous note in his master's greeting. His face
+was pale and he was trembling from head to foot. Mechanically he ran
+into Jeremiah's embrace, but did not return it. Facing Anathoth and
+pointing toward it, he whispered, rapidly, "They have devised devices
+against thee, saying, 'Let us destroy the tree with the fruit thereof;
+let us cut him off from the land of the living, that his name may be
+no more remembered.'"
+
+Jeremiah finally succeeded in calming Baruch and drew out of him the
+fact that his cousins had conspired to kill him, and that, to save
+himself, he must not enter Anathoth.
+
+Jeremiah's family had been poor but respectable citizens of Anathoth
+for many generations. They traced their ancestry back to Eli and to
+the high priest, Abiathar, who served in the Temple during the time of
+David, but whom Solomon banished to the suburb.
+
+His relatives had always looked upon Jeremiah as the black sheep of
+the family. Now, in addition to their poverty, he had cast ridicule
+upon them by his actions, and contempt by his punishment in the
+stocks. So they decided to put him out of the way and be rid of him,
+once for all.
+
+By this time the two men had reached the gray, barren hillside from
+which the Jordan valley and the Dead Sea can be seen in the distance.
+It was here where Jeremiah received his call and commission to be a
+prophet to his people. With deep emotion did he now bewail his lot:
+
+   "Ah! I was like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter and I
+    knew it not."
+
+The injustice and the unrighteousness of it all came to him more
+forcibly at this place of sacred memories, and he cried:
+
+   "Oh, Lord God of Hosts, who judgest righteously, who triest
+    the heart and the mind, I shall see thy vengeance on them;
+    for unto thee have I revealed my cause."
+
+In the bitterness of his spirit he could no longer restrain his woe.
+Outcast and disgraced, persecuted in Jerusalem and his life sought for
+by his own family, Jeremiah cursed the very day of his birth:
+
+   "Cursed be the day in which I was born.
+    Let not the day wherein my mother bore me be blessed.
+    Cursed be the man who brought joyful tidings to my father, saying,
+    'A man child is born to thee,' making him very glad.
+    Let that man be as the cities which the Lord pitilessly overthrew,
+    Because he did not let me die.
+    Why was I born to see labor and sorrow,
+    That my days should be consumed with shame?"
+
+Baruch did not break in upon the grief and anguish of Jeremiah. He
+turned away, sat down quietly at the foot of a tree and listened, with
+a fast-beating beating heart, to the sobs that were racking the very
+frame of his beloved teacher.
+
+For a long time the two sat there, each engrossed in his own thoughts.
+The tree-clad hills of Gilead, to the northeast of them, were now
+bathed in the deep shadows cast by the rapidly setting sun. Baruch
+walked over to Jeremiah and laid a light hand upon his shoulder.
+Jeremiah felt his presence but did not raise his head.
+
+"Master!" Baruch called softly.
+
+Jeremiah looked up into a tear-stained face in which he read sympathy,
+love and sincere devotion. He arose slowly. The lines of a faint smile
+of appreciation played about his mouth. He grasped the young man in
+his embrace and clung to him as if he were his only remaining hope.
+
+"Baruch! Baruch!" he cried, in a tear-choked voice, and held him tight
+and stroked his head and kissed his forehead. The boy melted into
+tears in the man's almost crushing embrace, and his very soul went out
+to him in sympathy and love.
+
+There in the twilight, the bond of friendship had been established
+between Jeremiah and Baruch, to be broken only in death!
+
+Baruch attempted to comfort his friend, but he at once saw the
+hopelessness of the task.
+
+Then he suggested to Jeremiah that they run away, that they go to
+Babylonia, to Egypt, anywhere, to escape the horror of it all at home.
+But Jeremiah showed him the uselessness of trying to run away from
+duty's call:
+
+   "And if I say, I will not think of it nor speak any more in
+        His name,
+    Then there is in mine heart, as it were, a burning fire shut up
+        in my bones."
+
+There was a fire burning within the heart of Jeremiah, impelling him
+to prophesy. He could not help himself! He would not escape it!
+
+And, what is more, that day of woe and trial, and the night that
+followed, bound up Baruch's destiny with that of Jeremiah.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XIII.
+
+                       _Teacher and Pupil._
+
+
+Wonderful is the love of teacher and pupil! There is no blood
+relationship to fuse that love. No selfishness enters into it. There
+is only the common interest of the spirit upon which it feeds and
+grows. It is, therefore, a love of the purest type.
+
+Such a love was that of Jeremiah and his pupil, Baruch. Just as the
+friendship between Josiah and Jeremiah was lasting, because as boys
+they passed through the same danger at the time of the death of
+Josiah's father, and just as the friendship between David and Jonathan
+before them was knit closely together at the time when David was in
+flight before the anger of King Saul, so Jeremiah and Baruch were
+closely bound together in friendship and love from the very first
+night that they spent outside of Anathoth together, when the pupil
+saved his teacher's life from the conspiracy of his relatives.
+
+Who knows what would have happened to the despondent, disgraced,
+heart-broken old man that day had not Baruch warned him of the fate
+that awaited him in his home town!
+
+Yes! At fifty Jeremiah was an old man. His beard was gray, his hair
+white, his shoulders prematurely bent. Deep wrinkles, lines of care
+and woe, were furrowed in his face. Only at times, when he delivered
+his fiery addresses to the people or when he courageously faced an
+enemy like Pashhur, would he straighten up to his full height and show
+a semblance of his gaunt form and strong physique.
+
+Teacher and pupil passed many days and nights together in the
+foothills, undecided on the next step for Jeremiah to take. Just then
+he dared go neither to Anathoth nor to Jerusalem--and Baruch would not
+leave him.
+
+Fortunately, for both of them, old Ebed-melech, who had followed
+Jeremiah from the pillory to Pashhur's chamber and from there, at a
+distance, when he started for Anathoth, brought them food and drink
+late that first night of their hiding, and continued to do so
+every night.
+
+For the present Jeremiah had little hope of returning to his task in
+Jerusalem. He, therefore, often prayed to God in behalf of his people;
+but always the answer came back to him:
+
+   "Seest thou not what they do in the cities of Judah and in
+        the streets of Jerusalem?
+    Therefore pray not thou for these people,
+    Neither lift up cry nor prayer for them,
+    Neither make intercession to me,
+    For I will not hear thee."
+
+But the effect of prayer is mightier upon the persons who pray than
+upon those prayed for. While Jeremiah's prayers could not bring back
+the people of Judah to just and righteous lives without effort on
+their own part, and while Jeremiah knew well enough that God could not
+save these people simply because he prayed for them, yet the very act
+of praying brought comfort and consolation to the distracted and
+despondent prophet and to his loving pupil who clung to him.
+
+After some days spent in discussing various plans for returning to
+Jerusalem, an inspiration came to Jeremiah. He would write out the
+addresses he had previously delivered in Judah and Jerusalem and add
+such new thoughts as occurred to him, exactly as the Prophet Amos had
+done when he was driven out of Bethel to Tekoah!
+
+Many weeks were then spent by Jeremiah in dictating, and by Baruch in
+writing down the prophecies. At last, when the scroll was completed
+and Baruch looked up into Jeremiah's face, as if to ask "What now?"
+Jeremiah took the young man by the shoulders and looking straight into
+his eyes, said to him:
+
+   "I cannot go into the house of the Lord; therefore, go thou,
+    and read in the roll, which thou hast written from my mouth,
+    the words of the Lord in the ears of the people, in the Lord's
+    house upon the fast-day; and thou also shalt read them in the
+    ears of all Judah that come out of their cities.
+
+   "It may be they will present their supplication, before the
+    Lord, and will return every one from his evil way; for great
+    is the anger and the wrath that the Lord hath pronounced
+    against this people.
+
+   "It may be that the house of Judah will hear all the evil
+    which purpose to do unto them; that they may return every
+    man from his evil way; that I may forgive their iniquity and
+    their sin."
+
+This suggestion, or rather command, for the moment stunned Baruch. He
+was not prepared to devote his life to the work of God in behalf of
+his people, as his master had done. The son and heir of Neriah, Baruch
+had a splendid future before him. He was a young man, full of hope
+that his country's trouble would end, and full of ambition to become a
+great man in Judah's history; but he knew that if he accepted the
+mission that the prophet was entrusting to him, he might as well give
+up all thought of such a future. The same fate that had overtaken
+Jeremiah would probably overtake him, too.
+
+All this Baruch had told Jeremiah with hesitation and a trembling
+voice. Jeremiah, both his hands resting on the young man's shoulders,
+listened very sympathetically. He knew that the great ambitions of his
+pupil could never be realized. The country was doomed to destruction,
+unless a great religious and moral revolution should change the
+character and the lives of the people.
+
+For a moment Jeremiah looked straight into Baruch's eyes with the
+tenderness of a mother. Then, embracing him tightly in his arms, he
+pressed him to his heart and said:
+
+   "O Baruch! Thou didst say, Woe is me now! for the Lord hath
+    added sorrow to my pain; I am weary with my groaning--and I
+    find no rest. Thus shalt thou say unto him, Thus saith the
+    Lord: 'Behold, that which I have built will I break down
+    and that which I have planted I will pluck up; and this in
+    the whole land.'
+
+   "'And seekest thou great things for thyself? Seek them not;
+    for, behold, I will bring evil upon all flesh,' saith the
+    Lord; 'but thy life will I give unto thee for a prey in all
+    places whither thou goest.'"
+
+For a long time Baruch's head was buried in Jeremiah's arms. Neither
+spoke a word. Finally, when Jeremiah released Baruch from his embrace,
+the young man's knees were shaking and he would have dropped to the
+ground but for the support of Jeremiah's hands.
+
+Tears streamed down his face. Baruch kissed his master's hands again
+and again and cried out that he would go, that he would do Jeremiah's
+bidding, which was God's bidding. "And Baruch, the son of Neriah, did
+according to all that Jeremiah, the prophet, commanded him," and he
+went down to Jerusalem and "read in the book, the words of the Lord,
+in the Lord's house."
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XIV.
+
+                    _Baruch's First Venture._
+
+
+It was the year after, that is 603, the fifth year of the reign of
+Jehoiakim, and the ninth month, that Baruch took the completed scroll
+and went down to Jerusalem.
+
+He had timed his coming so as to arrive at the Temple on a great
+fast-day, when many people were in the Temple courts attending to
+their sacrifices.
+
+The young man met very few whom he knew and was practically lost in
+the crowd. Standing at the new gate in the upper court of the Temple,
+the one built by Josiah, Baruch was wondering what to do. The day was
+rather cold and everyone was hurrying about his duties, personal or
+religious, or else seeking a place of warmth and shelter.
+
+Baruch could see no chance of gathering a crowd, to whom to read from
+his scroll. Like every young man who is about to attempt a big and
+unusual thing, Baruch hesitated. Then he decided to give up for the
+present and try again some other time. He tucked the scroll under his
+arm and prepared to go down from the Temple Mount into the city.
+
+Just as he turned to pass through the gate, however, he ran into no
+less a prominent personage than Gemariah, son of Shaphan and brother
+of Ahikam, who had defended Jeremiah during his trial at this very
+gate.
+
+Gemariah knew Baruch and greeted him most kindly. Baruch, too, was
+delighted to find someone he knew. After Gemariah had inquired about
+Anathoth and Baruch's family, he asked "What is that scroll?" Baruch
+replied that it was something he desired to read to the people
+assembled in the Temple.
+
+Gemariah laughed affectionately, slapped the young man heartily on the
+shoulder and asked whether it was some new poem or tale of adventure
+that he had written. Baruch replied simply that it was something he
+desired to read in the hearing of the assembled people. Gemariah
+laughed again and very generously offered him one of the chambers
+above the new gate for his purpose. Then he actually sent out a crier
+to assemble a crowd for the young author. With expressions of good
+wishes Gemariah left Baruch and proceeded to the place of the king,
+where, in the chambers of the chief scribe, a meeting of the king's
+counselors had been called to discuss Jehoiakim's proposed revolt from
+Nebuchadrezzar.
+
+Before long, Gemariah's chamber was overflowing and Baruch was reading
+from the scroll. His voice was clear and strong. He was evidently very
+well acquainted with his text, for he emphasized and enthused over
+particular passages with all the power of an orator:
+
+    Thus saith the Lord:
+
+   "Cursed is the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh
+    his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord. For he
+    shall be like the heath in the desert, and shall not see
+    when good cometh, but shall inhabit the parched places in
+    the wilderness, a salt land and not inhabited.
+
+   "Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord and whose
+    trust the Lord is. For he shall be as a tree planted by the
+    waters, that spreadeth out its roots by the river, and shall
+    not fear when heat cometh, but its leaf shall be green; and
+    shall not be anxious in the year of drought, neither shall
+    cease from yielding fruit."
+
+Then Baruch turned to a passage of a different character. He was
+following a pre-arranged program. He aimed at interesting his audience
+first with selections of poetic charm and beauty. So he read:
+
+   "The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is exceedingly
+    corrupt; who can know it? I, the Lord, search the mind, I try
+    the heart, even to give every man according to his ways,
+    according to the fruit of his doing. As the partridge that
+    sitteth on eggs that she hath not laid, so is he that getteth
+    riches, and not by right; in the midst of his days they
+    shall leave him, and at his end he shall be a fool."
+
+These beautiful figures of speech brought Baruch a round of applause.
+He now had his audience; so he proceeded, and, with the fire and
+fervor of a Jeremiah, delivered the following:
+
+   "The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron, and with
+    the point of a diamond: It is graven upon the tablet of
+    your heart, and upon the horns of your altar.
+
+   "Thus saith the Lord of hosts:
+
+   "'Because ye have not heard my words, behold I will send and
+    take all the families of the north,' saith the Lord, 'and I
+    will send unto you Nebuchadrezzar, the king of Babylon, my
+    servant, and will bring them against this land, and against
+    the inhabitants thereof, and against all these nations round
+    about; and I will utterly destroy them, and make them an
+    astonishment, and a hissing, and perpetual desolations.
+
+   "'Moreover, I will take from them the voice of mirth and the
+    voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice
+    of the bride, the sound of the millstones, and the light of
+    the lamp. And this whole land shall be a desolation and an
+    astonishment; and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon.'"
+
+Ah! The young man, then, was a prophet! This was evident to everyone.
+He was speaking as did the Prophet Uriah, whom the king had put to
+death, and as spoke the Prophet Jeremiah who, last year, had been
+pilloried and driven out of Jerusalem!
+
+Murmurs of astonishment and of pity arose from the audience. Men
+whispered to each other about the brilliant young man's probable
+arrest, punishment and, perhaps, death. Baruch felt instinctively the
+drift of the conversations, and smiled. With a well-selected passage
+he brought the talkers back to attention by the power and forcefulness
+of his oratory. He was a transformed man, cool, collected, eyes ablaze
+and peering at the very souls of his hearers. He held them and swayed
+them and finally moved many to tears and to ask, "Wherefore hath the
+Lord pronounced all this great evil against us?" "What is our
+iniquity?" "What is our sin that we have committed against the Lord
+our God?"
+
+Now Baruch told them who he was and whose the addresses were. And in
+answer to the questions put to him he quoted from Jeremiah:
+
+   "Because your fathers have forsaken me, saith the Lord, and
+    have walked after other gods, and have served them, and
+    have worshiped them, and have forsaken me, and have not kept
+    my law; and ye have done evil more than your fathers; for,
+    behold, ye walk every one after the stubbornness of his evil
+    heart, so that ye hearken not unto me; therefore will I cast
+    you forth out of this land, into the land that ye have not
+    known, neither ye nor your fathers."
+
+It was, indeed, fortunate for Baruch that none of the Temple prophets
+happened to be in the audience. There was present, however, a young
+man who was at first amused at Baruch's poetic fancies, then
+interested, then outraged when he discovered that he was listening to
+Jeremiah's prophesies. This young man was Micaiah, son of Gemariah, in
+whose chamber Baruch was speaking.
+
+Now, Micaiah, grandson of the illustrious Shaphan, was growing up to
+be a different type from his noble ancestor. He was proud of his
+father's position at court and in the temple. He moved in the choicest
+royal circles and was a devoted court follower.
+
+When Baruch had finished his answer to the questioners, Macaiah had
+had enough. Without a word he made his way through the crowd and ran
+all the way to the palace where, he knew, his father was at the
+counsel of the princes.
+
+Post-haste and out of breath, he entered the scribe's chamber and
+repeated, as best he could, the words he had heard Baruch read out of
+the book to the people.
+
+Here was a very awkward situation. The princes admitted Jeremiah's
+cleverness and Baruch's courage; but just at this time, when the king
+was contemplating rebellion from Babylonia, such preaching was
+treasonable and would prove injurious to the cause.
+
+They held a hurried conference. Some were for the immediate arrest of
+Baruch; some were for his immediate death; some, who were opposed to
+rebellion, were for hearing the book read to them. Among the latter
+was Gemariah. One of their number, therefore, Jehudi by name, was
+despatched to the Temple with orders to bring Baruch and his scroll to
+the palace.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XV.
+
+                   _The King Hears and Acts._
+
+
+Jehudi arrived in Gemariah's chamber to hear Baruch finish this:
+
+   "Thus saith the Lord:
+
+   "'Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom; neither let the
+    mighty man glory in his might. Let not the rich man glory
+    in his riches; but let him that glorieth, glory in this,
+    that he hath understanding, and knoweth me, that I am the
+    Lord who exerciseth loving-kindness, justice and righteousness
+    in the earth; for in these things I delight, saith the Lord.'"
+
+Jehudi pushed his way roughly through the crowd to Baruch. He laid his
+hand upon the speaker's shoulder and ordered him, in the name of the
+princes, to accompany him.
+
+Baruch did not hesitate. His mind had been made up to face any
+consequences that might result from his mission. His heart, therefore,
+was strong and he accompanied Jehudi without protest.
+
+Some of the princes marveled at the youth of Baruch, when they beheld
+him. He felt much reassured when Gemariah stepped forward, smiled at
+him and took the scroll from his hands. The son of Shaphan glanced at
+several columns of the scroll, returned it to Baruch and said:
+
+   "Sit down, now, and read it in our ears."
+
+While selecting his passages, Baruch thought very quickly. Why not
+select prophecies that these princes would repeat to the king? Nothing
+could please his master more than that Jehoiakim should hear; perhaps,
+at last, he would understand. Therefore Baruch chose the following,
+addressed to the "King of Judah that sittest upon the throne of David,
+thou and thy servants and thy people".
+
+   "Execute ye justice and righteousness and deliver him that
+    is robbed out of the hand of the oppressor; and do no wrong,
+    do no violence, to the sojourner, the fatherless, nor the
+    widow; neither shed innocent blood in this place.
+
+   "For if ye do this thing, indeed, then shall there enter in
+    by the gates of this house kings sitting upon the throne of
+    David, riding in chariots and on horses, he, and his servants
+    and his people. But if ye will not hear these words, I swear
+    by myself, saith the Lord, that this house shall become
+    a desolation."
+
+As Baruch proceeded, he noted the restlessness of the princes under
+the thunderbolt denunciations contained in his master's words. So, he
+selected for his concluding passage this warning:
+
+   "For thus saith the Lord concerning the house of the king
+    of Judah:
+
+   "'Thou art Gilead unto me, and the head of Lebanon; yet
+    surely I will make thee a wilderness, and cities which are
+    not inhabited.
+
+   "'And I will prepare destroyers against thee, every one with
+    his weapons; and they shall cut down thy choice cedars, and
+    cast them into the fire.
+
+   "'And many nations shall pass by this city, and they shall
+    say every man to his neighbor, "Wherefore hath the Lord
+    done thus unto this great city?" Then they shall answer,
+    "Because they forsook the covenant of the Lord their God,
+    and worshiped other gods, and served them."'"
+
+Upon hearing this, the princes "turned in fear one toward another,"
+and the spokesman said, "We will surely tell the king of all
+these words."
+
+Baruch was happy. His first venture upon his mission had proved more
+successful than even Jeremiah could have hoped. He handed the scroll
+to Jehudi, expressed his thanks for the courtesy shown him, made his
+adieus and prepared to leave. Gemariah stopped him at the entrance,
+however, and said to him, warningly and with emphasis:
+
+   "Go, hide thee, thou and Jeremiah, and let no man know where
+    ye are."
+
+Baruch left the palace completely satisfied. Not only had he read the
+prophecies to the people, but also to the princes; and now the princes
+themselves were to read them to the king. On his way to Jeremiah's
+hiding place, however, some of the joy in his heart left him, because,
+thinking of Gemariah's suggestion, he feared lest the anger of the
+king should be aroused and a search be sent out for Jeremiah with the
+purpose of arresting him.
+
+The winter palace was one of the achievements upon which Jehoiakim
+always congratulated himself because of its structure and beauty.
+Gemariah and the princes found the king in the sun parlor. Though the
+day was bright and clear, it was unusually cold. A charcoal fire in an
+Assyrian-wrought brass brazier, provided warmth for Jehoiakim who, at
+this time, was by no means a well man.
+
+The king was greatly amused by Gemariah's story of the incidents at
+the Temple gate and in the scribe's chamber. He laughed heartily at
+the fact that Neriah's son was turning prophet.
+
+Jehoiakim asked to see the scroll. Gemariah, not knowing what the
+king's attitude would be, had left it behind. Jehudi was sent for it.
+Jehoiakim seated himself comfortably in front of the brazier, while
+the princes were standing, and ordered Jehudi to read to him.
+
+Jehudi had read but three or four columns when the king, to the
+amazement of the princes, rose and in anger snatched it out of
+his hands.
+
+He glanced through parts of the papyrus, and, with an amused smile,
+took a penknife out of his robe and began to slice the scroll
+into pieces.
+
+Several of the princes appealed to the king not to destroy it. In
+reply, Jehoiakim walked up and down the chamber, cursing and swearing
+that such things should be in his kingdom. He punctuated his remarks
+by throwing piece after piece of the scroll into the brazier until it
+was all consumed. Then he dismissed the princes, called them back and
+ordered that the army prepare for rebellion, dismissed them again,
+once more called them back and gave command that Jeremiah and Baruch
+be found and brought before him, dead or alive.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XVI.
+
+                     _Beginning of the End._
+
+
+Jeremiah waited eagerly for the return of Baruch and listened most
+attentively to the story of his adventure at the Temple and in the
+palace of the king. His pupil's bravery and courage in trying moments
+pleased the master greatly, and he complimented Baruch on his
+achievements thus far. The question of the restoration of the scroll
+never entered Jeremiah's mind at all, on account of his gladness in
+having had his discourses brought home to the king.
+
+Three days later, however, Ebed-melech brought with the provisions the
+news that Jehoiakim had burned the scroll. Upon hearing this, all the
+spirit of hopefulness left Jeremiah. He lost his temper and, at once,
+dictated the following prophecy against Jehoiakim:
+
+   "Concerning Jehoiakim, king of Judah, thou shalt say,"
+    Thus saith the Lord:
+
+   "'Thou has burned this roll, saying "Why hast thou written
+    therein saying, The king of Babylon shall certainly come
+    and destroy this land, and shall cause to cease from thence
+    man and beast?"'
+
+   "Therefore, thus saith the Lord concerning Jehoiakim, king
+    of Judah:
+
+   "'He shall have none to sit upon the throne of David; and
+    his dead body shall be cast out in the day to the heat, and
+    in the night to the frost. And I will punish him and his seed
+    and his servants for their iniquity; and I will bring upon
+    them, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and upon the men
+    of Judah, all the evil that I have pronounced against them.'"
+
+Then Jeremiah took another papyrus and began once more the laborious
+task of dictating his discourses to Baruch.
+
+Those were indeed days of pain and sorrow for Jeremiah and Baruch.
+They were not troubled so much by Jehoiakim's designs upon their
+lives--for Ebed-melech kept them well informed on the progress of the
+search--as they were by the preparations for rebellion. They knew that
+this was the beginning of the end.
+
+At one time the faithful, old Ethiopian warned them that the search
+party was near at hand. They were forced to hide in a cave for two
+days. It was then that Jeremiah cried:
+
+   "Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me a man of
+    strife and a man of contention to the whole earth."
+
+This danger past, Jeremiah and Baruch continued their laborious task
+of finishing the new scroll of prophecies. Then came Spring, and with
+it Jehoiakim's rebellion.
+
+Nebuchadrezzar had not yet fully established himself on his throne in
+Babylon. He was too busy to deal with the rebellious Judean, himself.
+So he ordered a guerrilla warfare to be carried on by detached troops
+in all parts of Judah. It was only a question of time, however, when
+Nebuchadrezzar would invade Judah with his entire army and crush
+Jehoiakim like a snail under foot. No wonder that Jeremiah asked:
+
+   "Who will have pity on thee, O Jerusalem?
+    Or who will bemoan thee?
+    Or who will turn aside to ask for thy welfare!"
+
+His grief was not alone for the great and glorious city and for its
+people, but for himself as well, that he should have to witness what
+he knew was inevitable:
+
+   "Oh, that I could comfort myself against sorrow!
+    My heart is faint within me.
+    The harvest is past, the summer is ended and we are not saved.
+    For the hurt of the daughter of my people am I hurt.
+    I mourn; dismay hath taken hold of me.
+    Is there no balm in Gilead?
+    Is there no physician there?
+    Why, then, is not the health of the daughter of my
+        people recovered?
+
+   "Oh, that my head were waters and mine eyes a fountain of tears,
+    That I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter
+        of my people.
+    Oh, that I had in the wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring men;
+    That I might leave my people and go from them."
+
+This despondency and hopelessness did not last long, however. As
+Nebuchadrezzar's guerrillas continued their cruel and merciless
+warfare, destroying crops and whole villages, Jeremiah determined that
+he must once more return to Jerusalem. He was ready and willing to pay
+for his efforts in behalf of his country with his life, if need be.
+
+A comforting and encouraging message came to him from God, at
+this time:
+
+   "I will make thee unto this people a fortified, brazen
+    wall; and they shall fight against thee, but they shall
+    not prevail against thee, for I am with thee to save thee
+    and to deliver thee.
+
+   "And I will deliver thee out of the hand of the wicked,
+    and I will redeem thee out of the hand of the terrible."
+
+But Baruch and Ebed-melech counseled against undue risks. They had
+heard that the Rechabites, that tribe of wandering nomads, which,
+because of the vow their ancestor, Jonadab, son of Rechab, had taken
+never to settle permanently in any definite place and never to follow
+agricultural pursuits, had been driven south by the marauding
+guerrillas and were making their way toward Jerusalem. Jeremiah and
+Baruch fell in with them and came, unobserved, into the city.
+
+Many strange stories had been told about these nomads and the whole
+population turned out to gape and wonder at them. Jeremiah directed
+them to the Temple, and hundreds of people followed them.
+
+At the Temple, Jeremiah ordered bowls of wine and cups and invited the
+Rechabites to refresh themselves with drink.
+
+Jazaniah, their leader, arose in his place and, with a courteous bow
+to Jeremiah, replied:
+
+   "We drink no wine. For, Jonadab, our father, commanded us:
+    'Ye shall never drink wine, neither ye nor your sons. And
+    we have obediently done just as Jonadab, our forefather,
+    commanded us.'"
+
+This incident gave Jeremiah the opportunity once more to pen his
+artillery against the people of Judah and Jerusalem.
+
+   "Thus saith the Lord:
+
+   "'Will he not learn instruction as to how one should heed
+    my words? For, while the sons of Jonadab, the son of Rechab,
+    have performed the command of their forefather, this people
+    hath not hearkened unto me.'
+
+   "Therefore, thus saith the Lord: 'Behold I am about to
+    bring upon Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem all the
+    evil that I have pronounced against them.'"
+
+Jeremiah thus revealed dramatically the meaning of all his preaching.
+Just as the Rechabites had remained faithful to the ancient vow of
+their ancestors, so must Judah remain faithful to the covenant between
+them and their God, if the country was to be saved from the hands of
+the Babylonians.
+
+Yet, this proved to be but one more act in the hopeless part that
+Jeremiah was playing in the drama of Judah. Hopeless, indeed, it was
+now. As Jeremiah himself expressed it:
+
+   "Can the Ethiopian change his skin,
+    Or the leopard his spots?
+    Then may ye also do good
+    That are taught to do evil."
+
+The very next year, the year 597, Nebuchadrezzar gathered his full
+army at Riblah and prepared to march on Jerusalem.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XVII.
+
+                    _The First Deportation._
+
+
+Poor, miserable Jehoiakim! He was not even given an opportunity to
+meet Nebuchadrezzar on the battlefield in a single engagement. The
+Babylonian had hardly entered Judean territory when Jehoiakim died and
+was buried with his ancestors.
+
+Of course, Jeremiah's prophecy, at the moment of his anger, that
+Jehoiakim's body would be thrown to the dogs, did not come true; but
+the king's death did not in any way put off the calamity that was to
+befall Jerusalem and its people. Upon hearing of Jehoiakim's death,
+Nebuchadrezzar, at Riblah, hastened his preparations to besiege
+Jerusalem.
+
+An eighteen-year-old boy, Coniah, also known as Jehoiachin, succeeded
+his incapable father to the throne.
+
+Jeremiah's advice to the young king was to submit to Nebuchadrezzar
+and remain in peace. The policy of Nebuchadrezzar, with regard to his
+dependencies, was that of peace. As long as they did not rebel and
+paid their tribute, he left them entirely undisturbed to work out
+their own futures.
+
+So Jeremiah hoped that if Jehoiachin would at once show his
+willingness to be honest with Nebuchadrezzar, there would still be a
+chance for the country. Therefore he sent this message to the king:
+
+   "Say to the king and to the queen mother, 'Sit ye down low,
+    For from the head hath fallen your fair crown.'"
+
+Urged on by the queen mother and his father's counselors, however,
+Jehoiachin proposed to hold out against the Babylonian siege.
+Jeremiah, therefore, delivered the following oration in Jerusalem:
+
+   "As I live, saith the Lord, though Coniah (Jehoiachin), the
+    son of Jehioakim, wore the signet ring upon my right hand,
+    I would pluck him thence. And I will give thee into the hand
+    of them that seek thy life, whom thou dreadest, into the
+    hands of the Chaldeans, and I will hurl thee forth, and thy
+    mother who bore thee, into a land where ye were not born,
+    and there ye shall die. But to the land for which they long
+    they shall not return.
+
+   "Is Coniah despised as a broken vessel and thrown forth into
+    a land which he knoweth not? O land, land, hear the word of
+    the Lord! Write down this man as childless! For no man of
+    his seed shall prosper, sitting upon the throne of David and
+    ruling any more in Judah."
+
+But Jehoiachin continued his stubborn defense until, driven by the
+horrors of famine, he
+
+   "together with his mother and his servants, his princes and
+    his chamberlains went to meet Nebuchadrezzar."
+
+On this unconditional surrender, Nebuchadrezzar determined never again
+to be troubled by stiff-necked, rebellious Judah. To that end he
+thoroughly ransacked the treasuries of the Temple and of the royal
+palace. He took away all the gold vessels that belonged to the worship
+of the Temple and, in addition, carried away
+
+   "as captives, all Jerusalem and all the princes and all the
+    mighty warriors, even ten thousand, and all the craftsmen
+    and the smiths; none remained, except the poorest people of
+    the land.
+
+   "And he carried away Jehoiachin to Babylon; and the king's
+    mother and the king's wives, and his chamberlains, and the
+    chief men of the land he carried into captivity from
+    Jerusalem to Babylon.
+
+   "And all the men of ability, even seven thousand, and the
+    craftsmen and the smiths, a thousand, all of them strong
+    and ready for war; these the king of Babylon took captive
+    to Babylon."
+
+This was the first great deportation, in the year 597. The pride and
+strength of the country were taken away and led captive to a strange
+land.
+
+Poor Jeremiah!
+
+Now he did not glory in the fact that all that he had spoken had
+finally come true.
+
+He wept bitterly. He mourned as if every one of the exiles had been
+his brothers and sisters. He could not be consoled.
+
+But when his first grief had worn off and the Prophet had a chance to
+study the conditions and to consider the future, God vouchsafed to him
+a new message for his people--a message of hope and of promise.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+                 _In Exile and in the Homeland._
+
+
+Stripped of all its best people the country was in a sorry plight
+when, in the year 596, Nebuchadrezzar, on departing for Babylon,
+raised Zedekiah to the throne of Judah.
+
+Zedekiah was an uncle of the ill-fated Jehoiachin. He was the third
+son of Josiah, and, like his brothers, Jehoahaz and Jehoiakim, he was
+to see the fortunes of Judah ebb to their lowest point, and finally to
+witness the destruction of the capital and the end of Judah.
+
+The king had to surround himself with a vulgar, arrogant and uncouth
+set of people. All of the princes and leading Judeans who were taken
+to Babylon had been forced to sell their estates and properties at
+whatever price they would bring. These were bought up by anyone that
+came along and created a class of newly-rich that the country had
+never had before.
+
+The court was now, therefore, composed of these newly-rich, who knew
+nothing about affairs of state, but who prided themselves on the fact
+that because they were spared in Judah, they were the choice remnant
+of God.
+
+Zedekiah himself was feeble, slow to make up his mind and to come to a
+decision. He went to everybody for suggestions and help, including
+Jeremiah and the horde of false prophets that swarmed in Jerusalem.
+Unfortunately, he always took the wrong advice.
+
+Notwithstanding these unpromising conditions, Jeremiah was filled with
+new hope for his land and people. He believed that now they would
+understand his position regarding them and the meaning of his constant
+preaching and teaching.
+
+One day he was walking through a fig orchard near Anathoth. It was
+harvest time and everywhere there were baskets laden with figs. Under
+a particularly fine tree he noticed two baskets. One was filled with
+very good figs; the other with very bad ones. Immediately he saw in
+them a symbol for his people.
+
+He compared Zedekiah, his upstart courtiers and the remnant in
+Jerusalem to the basket of bad figs. The princes, elders, mechanics
+and artisans, whom Nebuchadrezzar had carried away, he compared to the
+basket of good figs. There was no message of hope in the "bad figs"
+now ruling the country; there was hope, however, in the exiles.
+Therefore Jeremiah sent the following letter to the Jews in Babylonia:
+
+   "Build ye houses, and dwell in them; and plant gardens and
+    eat the fruit of them. Take ye wives and beget sons and
+    daughters; and take wives for your sons and give your
+    daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters;
+    and multiply ye there, and be not diminished.
+
+   "And seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you
+    to be carried away captive, and pray unto the Lord for it;
+    for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace.
+
+   "For, thus saith the Lord: 'After seventy years are
+    accomplished for Babylon, I will visit you and perform my
+    good word toward you, in causing you to return to this
+    place. For I know the thoughts that I think toward you,'
+    saith the Lord, 'thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give
+    you hope in your latter end.
+
+   "'And ye shall call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto
+    me, and I will hearken unto you. And ye shall seek me and
+    find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.
+
+   "'And I will be found of you,' saith the Lord, 'and I will
+    turn again your captivity, and I will gather you from all
+    the nations, and from all the places whither I have driven
+    you,' saith the Lord; 'and I will bring you again unto the
+    place whence I caused you to be carried away captive.'"
+
+Jerusalem, however, swarmed with false prophets who took themselves
+seriously. They prophesied the immediate fall of Babylonia; they
+promised the people that within two years the very Temple vessels that
+Nebuchadrezzar had carried away would be restored and Judah
+rejuvenated in its ancient glory.
+
+Politicians, too, became active. Zedekiah, urged on by them, was
+making alliances with the little countries about Judah, with Edom,
+Moab, Ammon, Tyre, and Sidon, for the purpose of rebellion against
+Babylon; and behind them all was Pharaoh Hophrah, who came to the
+throne of Egypt in 589, and who immediately turned his eyes to
+Babylon, hoping to accomplish what Pharaoh Necho had failed to do.
+
+Jeremiah denounced both prophets and politicians most bitterly. When
+ambassadors from the neighboring states came to Jerusalem, to consult
+with Zedekiah and to receive a message from the Egyptian king that he
+was ready to send an army to assist them against Babylon, Jeremiah
+appeared in the Market Place with thongs and yokes around his neck and
+on his arms. He sent a yoke to each of the foreign ambassadors, with a
+message to all of them advising that they permit the yoke of Babylon
+to remain around their necks, resting assured that the rebellion was
+doomed to failure.
+
+In the Market Place Jeremiah was met by Hananiah, one of the false
+prophets. Hananiah tore the yoke from Jeremiah's neck, broke it over
+his knee and exclaimed:
+
+   "Thus saith the Lord:
+
+   "'So will I break the yoke of the king of Babylon from the
+    neck of all the nations.'"
+
+Jeremiah answered:
+
+   "Thus saith the Lord:
+
+   "'Thou hast broken the yoke of wood, but I will make a yoke
+    of iron. I will put a yoke of iron on the necks of all these
+    peoples that they may serve the king of Babylon.'"
+
+And to Zedekiah he sent the following message:
+
+   "Bring your neck into his yoke and serve the king of Babylon;
+    for these prophets prophesy a lie to you. 'I have not sent
+    them,' saith the Lord, 'and they prophesy in My name falsely,
+    that they might drive you out, and that ye might perish,
+    together with the prophets who have prophesied falsely to you.'"
+
+But Jeremiah's efforts were all in vain. That same year, 589, the
+rebellion broke out. Nebuchadrezzar did not delay long. He poured his
+trained veterans into Palestine. They marched through the country with
+the ease and assurance of a brook running along in its smooth course.
+Within a few months they were before Jerusalem and, in 588, besieged it.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XIX.
+
+                       _A Friend in Need._
+
+
+Zedekiah sent messenger after messenger into Egypt, urging, pleading,
+begging Hophrah to come to his assistance.
+
+Jeremiah cried that it was too late; that Hophrah would not come.
+
+   "Pharaoh, king of Egypt, is but a noise; he hath let the
+    appointed time pass by."
+
+Hophrah, however, did finally bestir himself. Word came to Jerusalem,
+and it reached the besieging forces, that a vast army of Egyptians was
+on the march northward. To the surprise of all, Nebuchadrezzar
+withdrew from Jerusalem.
+
+The Jerusalem prophets were jubilant. They saw their hopeful forecasts
+all fulfilled and Judah once more independent. But Jeremiah knew
+better. He held out no such false hopes:
+
+   "Behold, Pharaoh's army, which has come out to help you,
+    shall return to Egypt. Then the Chaldeans shall come back
+    and fight against the city and shall take it and burn it
+    with fire.
+
+   "Do not deceive yourselves with the idea that the Chaldeans
+    will depart from you; for they shall not depart. For though
+    ye had smitten the whole army of the Chaldeans that fight
+    against you, and there remained but wounded men, yet would
+    these arise up each in his tent, and burn this city with fire."
+
+Although this sounds like a trumpet call of doom, Jeremiah was not
+without hope. The course of events, as he saw it, included the fall of
+Judah at the hands of Nebuchadrezzar; but he hoped also for a later
+rehabilitation of the land and rebuilding of the capital.
+
+Jeremiah pinned his faith on the exiles in Babylonia and the certainty
+of their return to Judah. To picture his hope vividly, he determined
+to purchase his family estate in Anathoth. While Jerusalem was
+celebrating the withdrawal of the Babylonian troops and awaiting the
+coming of Hophrah's army, Jeremiah, with this in mind, started
+for Anathoth.
+
+At the gates of the town, however, he was arrested and brought back to
+Jerusalem in chains. He was accused of high treason, of having spied
+out Jerusalem, and of attempting to escape to the Babylonians with the
+secrets. Without trial he was sentenced to prison and jailed in the
+guard house of the Temple garrison.
+
+But this was not sufficient for the princes who had trumped up this
+charge against Jeremiah. They came to Zedekiah and charged that, by
+his speeches and actions, he was undermining discipline in the army
+and weakening the spirit of the people. They demanded that he be put
+to death.
+
+Zedekiah, always weak and uncertain, replied, "Behold, he is in your
+hands." But they dared not kill Jeremiah outright.
+
+   "Then took they Jeremiah and cast him into the cistern that
+    was in the Court of the Guard; and they let down Jeremiah
+    with cords. And in the cistern there was no water, but mire;
+    and Jeremiah sank in the mire."
+
+There was one person in the Court of the Guard who might have drawn
+Jeremiah right up out of the cistern where he had been left to die,
+had he not feared the wrath of the princes. It was Ebed-melech, the
+old, faithful friend. The Ethiopian was not afraid to die; but he felt
+that it would be useless to attempt to spirit Jeremiah away, for both
+would surely be caught. He cast about for some other means to save him
+whom he loved only as he had loved Josiah, the friend of his youth.
+
+Had Ebed-melech known, however, that Jeremiah was sunk thigh-deep in
+mud, and that he had given himself up to die, he would have acted more
+quickly. It was on the second evening that he stole quietly out of the
+palace and up to the Court of the Guards. With great care, so as not
+to be discovered, he crawled to the cistern prison and leaned his gray
+head on the rim to listen. Jeremiah was praying:
+
+   "O Lord, Thou knowest.
+    Remember me and visit me.
+    Know that for Thy sake I have suffered reproach.
+    Thy words were found, and I did eat them,
+    And Thy words were unto me a joy and the rejoicing of my heart;
+    For I am called by Thy name.
+    O Lord, God of hosts, why is my pain perpetual?"
+
+Yes! There was no mistake about it--Jeremiah wanted to die! Hot tears
+coursed down Ebed-melech's cheeks as he listened. Then he whispered a
+hurried word of hope to the prisoner and was off for the palace as
+fast as his old legs could carry him.
+
+Twice he was stopped by the guards, but each time quickly released.
+Everyone knew Ebed-melech, his story of Josiah's escape, his
+privileges in the palace. He was a fixture at the court, and people
+said that he would never die.
+
+Arrived at the palace, he demanded to see the king. Brought into the
+presence of Zedekiah he asked to speak to him alone. When both were
+left alone, he fell at Zedekiah's feet. Pointing to the door through
+which several princes had just gone out, he said:
+
+   "My Lord, the King!
+
+   "These men have done evil in all that they have done to
+    Jeremiah, the prophet, whom they have cast into the pit. He
+    is like to die in the place where he is."
+
+Raising his head and looking straight into the king's eyes, he pleaded
+for the life of Jeremiah. He spoke very fast, his grey head shaking
+and his lips trembling. At last he finished his impassioned speech,
+prostrated himself before Zedekiah and kissed the hem of his robe.
+
+Zedekiah graciously yielded to Ebed-melech's pleading and sent three
+men with him to raise Jeremiah out of the cistern. More dead than
+alive, Jeremiah was again taken to the guard house. Ebed-melech was
+given free access to his cell at all times.
+
+A few days later Zedekiah requested Ebed-melech to bring Jeremiah to
+him, secretly. Rumor had it that Pharaoh Hophrah had halted in his
+march northward, because the Babylonians had lifted the siege, and was
+returning to Egypt. Zedekiah, therefore, wanted to know from Jeremiah:
+
+   "Is there any word from the Lord? Conceal nothing from me."
+
+Jeremiah answered him:
+
+   "If I declare it to you, will you promise not to put me to
+    death? And if I give you counsel, you will not hearken to me."
+
+But Zedekiah wanted to hear. Vacillating as he was, he hoped that
+perhaps this time Jeremiah would bring him a message of assurance. So,
+he swore to him, saying:
+
+   "As the Lord liveth, who hath given us this life, I will not
+    put you to death; neither will I give you into the hands of
+    these men."
+
+Thereupon Jeremiah fearlessly delivered his final message to the king:
+
+   "They have betrayed thee; they have overcome thee, thy
+        familiar friends!
+    They have caused thy feet to sink in the mire; they turn back!
+    They shall also bring out all your sons to the Chaldeans.
+    You yourself shall not escape out of their hands,
+    But shall be taken by the hand of the king of Babylon;
+    And this city shall be burned."
+
+Zedekiah did not tear and rage as his brother, Jehoiakim, would have
+done at such a message. He did not possess enough energy or
+determination for that. In a hopeless sort of voice he simply sent
+Jeremiah back to the guard house, where Ebed-melech continued looking
+after him.
+
+Once more Jeremiah proceeded to give practical evidence of his faith
+in the future of Judah, if the country would only submit to Babylonian
+rule; or, if king and princes and false prophets persisted in pushing
+the country to its fall, of his faith in the Babylonian exiles, who,
+he truly believed, would return and build up Judah again.
+
+Therefore, with the assistance of Ebed-melech and Baruch, who was a
+frequent visitor to his master, Jeremiah arranged for and purchased
+the family property near Anathoth from his uncle, Hananel, and turning
+the deed over to Baruch, said to him:
+
+   "Take this purchase deed and put it in an earthen vessel,
+    that it may remain for years to come. For, thus saith the
+    lord, 'Houses and fields and vineyards shall yet again be
+    bought in this land.'"
+
+Events that followed, however, seemed to mock his enthusiasm and his
+hope. The rumor of Hophrah's return to Egypt was verified--and
+Nebuchadrezzar was still encamped at Riblah.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XX.
+
+                    _In the Midst of Despair._
+
+
+The year 586!
+
+What a terrible year it was for Jerusalem and Judah--and Jeremiah!
+
+Oh, the famine, the misery, the horrors within Jerusalem when the
+Babylonians besieged the city for the second time.
+
+Oh, the carnage, the massacre, the hopeless destruction when the
+Babylonians finally captured Jerusalem and burned the Temple!
+
+On the ninth day of the fourth month the first breach was made in the
+outer walls of Jerusalem by Nebuzaradan, the commander of
+Nebuchadrezzar's body guard, who led the besieging forces.
+
+True to his character of weakling, Zedekiah, with his nobles, at this
+first sign of danger to the city, fled from Jerusalem through the
+king's gardens and the south gate, by night. When the news of the
+king's departure reached the Babylonians, Nebuzaradan, with a chosen
+troop, followed immediately in hot pursuit. The whole renegade lot
+were captured in the plains of Jericho. Thrown into chains, they were
+sent to Riblah, to Nebuchadrezzar, while Nebuzaradan returned to his
+command, to push the final capture of Jerusalem with an energy equal
+to that with which his master had destroyed Nineveh.
+
+Two terrible tragedies were being enacted at about the same time, in
+Jerusalem and at Riblah. Nebuchadrezzar timed his performances at
+Riblah with the news that was brought to him from the doomed Jerusalem.
+
+On the day when the report of the capture of the second defenses
+reached Riblah, Nebuchadrezzar gathered all his court in the market
+place, which had been transformed into a festive arena. Zedekiah, his
+sons and the Judean princes of the blood, in full regalia, were
+enthroned on platforms, on one side of the arena. Nebuchadrezzar and
+his courtiers were enthroned in full state on the other.
+
+Zedekiah and his people, who had heard no news from the besieged
+capital, were greatly astonished at this whole procedure. They were
+soon to understand, however. At a given signal heralds entered and
+announced the report from the front. Following this came
+Nebuchadrezzar's body guard leading the lesser Judean nobles in
+chains; and, at a command given by a Babylonian officer from
+Nebuchadrezzar's platform, these were slaughtered before the eyes of
+Zedekiah, and of his sons and princes, in cold blood.
+
+When the news was brought that Jerusalem had finally fallen, a second
+festival was held in Riblah in the same way. To all appearances,
+Zedekiah and his sons were the royal guests of the royal
+Nebuchadrezzar at a great royal celebration. It was noticeable,
+however, that the Judean princes of the blood were missing from the
+side of their king and his sons.
+
+At the proper time the heralds announced the tidings from before
+Jerusalem, the Judean princes were marched into the center of the
+festive throng--and beheaded.
+
+Finally, on the eighth day of the fifth month, the month of Ab, news
+came to Riblah that on the day before, the seventh of Ab, the
+destruction of the city had begun. The report stated that the little
+garrison in the Temple was holding out, but that Nebuzaradan hoped to
+finish up his work and burn the Temple on the day after; that is, on
+the ninth day of Ab.
+
+Nebuchadrezzar took it for granted that Nebuzaradan's estimate of
+events was correct. Just at about the time, therefore, that
+Nebuchadrezzar calculated the Temple ought to be burning, on the ninth
+day of Ab, the final horror in Riblah began.
+
+This time Zedekiah sat alone on his platform, a hopeless, shrunken
+figure, the mockery of a king. His heart told him the tragedy that he
+was about to behold; but he did not know what terrible thing the
+Babylonian had prepared for the climax.
+
+Zedekiah's sons, mere boys, were brought into the open space before
+Nebuchadrezzar. Rings had been pierced through their noses and they
+were led by chains, like animals. A loud fanfare announced their coming.
+The trumpet notes were like so many sword points in Zedekiah's heart.
+
+The young princes, too, knew what awaited them. Innocent of any crime,
+they marched bravely to their fate. One after another they laid their
+heads on the block, brave descendants of King David.
+
+Zedekiah saw the executioner's axe rise--and fall; and again; and again!
+
+His heart stopped beating. His brain was numb. His body was without
+feeling. He never knew just when he was led from his mock throne, nor
+by whom, nor where he was led to. He did not hear the jeers and
+howling of the blood-infuriated Chaldeans, nor the commands given him
+by his captors, nor the words addressed to him by Nebuchadrezzar himself.
+
+All at once he felt a severe pain in his head, a shock through his
+entire nervous system, a red-fire-like blur before his eyes--and he
+was blind forever. The eyes that, for the last time, had looked upon
+the writhing bodies of his headless children had been pierced out by
+the royal spear in Nebuchadrezzar's hand!
+
+In Jerusalem the tragedy was less studied and, therefore, the carnage
+was much greater. Imprisoned in the guard house, Jeremiah did not know
+the worst; but he surmised it.
+
+He had not seen Ebed-melech or Baruch for several days. He did not
+know what progress the siege was making. No one had time to stop and
+speak with him. Even food was no longer brought to him. In his
+loneliness and helplessness, he turned to God:
+
+   "There is none like unto Thee, O Lord!
+    Thou art great and Thy name is great in might.
+    Who should not fear Thee, O King of the nations?
+    The Lord is the true God.
+    He is the living God and an everlasting King.
+    He hath made the earth by His power;
+    He hath established the world by His wisdom;
+    By His understanding hath He stretched out the heavens.
+    O Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself;
+    It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.
+    O Lord God, correct me, but in judgment,
+    Not in Thine anger, lest Thou bring me to nothing."
+
+Finally came the seventh day, and then the ninth day of Ab! He heard
+the shouts and the clang of hand-to-hand fighting. The thick prison
+walls could not shut out the curses of hating, contending men, the
+shrieks of the wounded, the prayers and moans of the dying.
+
+On the night of the seventh day of Ab he knew that the Babylonian had
+entered Jerusalem. The red sky told him that the city was burning. On
+the next day, he judged from the noises and commands within the
+garrison that preparations were being made for the last stand.
+
+All that day and all that night long he heard the fighting on the
+Temple Mount. He pictured to himself every step of the retreating,
+beaten Judeans and the oncoming, victorious Babylonians.
+
+On the morning of the next day, the fatal ninth of Ab, the oppressive
+heat told him that the Temple was on fire. Through the day, the
+shouting and the fighting died slowly away. Jeremiah knew that the end
+had come for his beloved fatherland--and for himself. His presence in
+the guard house had been accidentally or purposely forgotten!
+
+At sunrise the next day, he was suddenly aroused from his aimless,
+mental wanderings by the noisy marching of troops. They passed his
+prison without stopping. He shouted, but they did not hear him. He
+could not see who they were, but surmised that they must be Babylonians.
+
+Several hours passed and once more he heard the heavy steps of troops.
+This time he shouted at the top of his feeble voice and pounded the
+iron bars. They halted. Several were dispatched to the guard house.
+They broke open the door and brought forth a gray-headed, gray-bearded,
+unkempt little man, whose face and bearing showed the horrors he had
+been through.
+
+The soldiers made sport of him, but the commander did not permit them
+to kill a helpless old man. Instead, he sent Jeremiah, through the
+ruins of the Temple and the city, with hundreds of others, to the
+prisoners' camp at Ramah, five miles north of Jerusalem.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXI.
+
+                  _Lamentations and a Vain Hope._
+
+
+It is said that ties of true friendship are often stronger than ties
+of blood. Of such stuff were the ties made that bound together the
+families of Hilkiah, the priest, and Shaphan, the scribe. Hilkiah and
+Shaphan labored hand in hand with King Josiah in his reforms.
+Shaphan's sons, Ahikam and Gemariah, came to the assistance of
+Hilkiah's son, Jeremiah, when the latter was in sorest need. Now a
+grandson of Shaphan, Gedaliah, son of Ahikam, was to give a temporary
+haven to the weary Jeremiah.
+
+The whole of the Shaphan family followed in the footsteps of their
+noble ancestor. Both Ahikam and Gemariah belonged to the Prophetic
+Party; though, unlike Jeremiah, they took the course of least
+resistance and continued in favor with the royal house.
+
+Nebuchadrezzar, who kept himself informed concerning the political
+leanings of the leading families in Jerusalem, therefore believed that
+if he raised a scion of Shaphan's family to the governorship of Judah,
+the country would remain loyal and leave him to his peace in
+upbuilding Babylon.
+
+Accordingly, Ahikam's and Gemariah's families were spared during the
+general slaughter in Jerusalem, and Gedaliah, Ahikam's son, was made
+governor of Judah when the victorious Babylonians had finished their
+work in the land.
+
+There was still another person whom Nebuchadrezzar had given orders to
+spare--Jeremiah. Nothing would have pleased Nebuchadrezzar better than
+for Jehoiakim and Zedekiah to have followed the counsel of Jeremiah.
+Therefore, the prophet was not only to be saved from the carnage, but
+he was to be rewarded.
+
+Nebuzaradan had strict orders to find Jeremiah. In fact, the troop
+which Jeremiah had heard in the garrison and that accidentally saved
+him was in search of him at the time.
+
+Nebuzaradan knew that Jeremiah was alive, through Baruch. Baruch had
+been captured and thrown into chains on the seventh day of Ab. When he
+heard that the Babylonians were searching for Jeremiah to save him, he
+informed them that he was imprisoned in the garrison.
+
+The captain of the troop had no idea that the emaciated old man was a
+prophet; but he thanked his stars that he had not permitted his
+soldiers to slay the poor fellow. He complimented himself when, at
+Ramah, he discovered that he had Jeremiah in his keeping and was
+complimented by the commander-in-chief when he brought Jeremiah to
+Nebuzaradan's tent.
+
+While in the prisoners' camp, Jeremiah could not get out of his mind's
+eye the picture of devastation that he had beheld while passing
+through Jerusalem. He kept entirely away from his fellow prisoners. He
+wanted, and needed, to be alone. It was during these days he composed
+his Lamentations on Jerusalem:
+
+   "How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people?
+    She is become as a widow, that was great among the nations!
+    She that was a princess among the provinces is become a tributary!
+    She weepeth sore in the night and her tears are on her cheeks;
+    Among all her lovers she hath none to comfort her:
+    All her friends have dealt treacherously with her; they are
+        become her enemies.
+    All that pass by clap their hands at thee:
+    They hiss and wag their head at the daughter of Jerusalem, saying,
+    Is this the city that men called
+          The perfection of beauty,
+          The joy of the whole earth?
+    All thine enemies have opened their mouth wide against thee:
+    They hiss and gnash the teeth: they say,
+    'We have swallowed her up:
+    Certainly this is the day that we looked for; we have found,
+        we have seen it.'"
+
+But Jeremiah, even in this great extremity, was not a man without hope
+for the future. He knew his God and understood that His anger with the
+worst of men or nations does not last forever:
+
+   "This I recall to my mind; therefore have I hope.
+    It is of the Lord's loving-kindnesses that we are not consumed,
+        because his compassions fail not.
+    They are new every morning; great is Thy faithfulness.
+    The Lord is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in Him.
+    The Lord is good unto them that wait for Him, to the soul that
+        seeketh Him.
+    It is good that a man should hope and quietly wait for the
+        salvation of the Lord.
+    It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth;
+    Let him sit alone and keep silence, because He hath laid it
+        upon him;
+    Let him put his mouth in the dust, if so be there may be hope.
+    Let him give his cheek to him that smiteth him; let him be
+        filled full with reproach.
+    For the Lord will not cast off forever."
+
+Jeremiah was not particularly interested when he was ordered to appear
+before Nebuzaradan. It did not really matter to him any longer what
+would happen to him. He had fought a brave fight--and had lost. Life
+or death made no difference now. In fact, he would rather have died at
+the hands of the Babylonians than at the hands of his own people. So,
+he replied listlessly that he was ready.
+
+Even when given clean garments and ordered to bathe and told to
+brighten up and be cheerful, because all would be well with him, he
+could not figure out what it all meant until he was in the tent of
+Nebuzaradan. Then, hope was born anew in his heart, as he listened to
+what the commander had to say to him:
+
+   "The Lord your God pronounced evil upon this place; you have
+    sinned against the Lord and have not obeyed his voice,
+    therefore this thing is come to you.
+
+   "And now behold, I loose you this day from the chains which
+    are upon your hand. If it seem good to you to come with me
+    to Babylon, come and I will look out for you. But if it seem
+    undesirable to you to come with me to Babylon, do not come;
+    but go back to Gedaliah, the son of Ahikam, the son of
+    Shaphan, whom the king of Babylon has made governor over the
+    cities of Judah, and dwell with him among the people; or go
+    wherever it seems right to you to go."
+
+Jeremiah replied, shortly, that he preferred to remain in Judah. A
+clear look again came to his eyes; his shoulders straightened up; he
+carried his head erect once more; he had new work, on the old lines,
+to do.
+
+He also asked a favor--that Baruch, son of Neriah, and Ebed-melech, an
+Ethiopian freedman of the royal house, if alive, should be permitted
+to remain with him.
+
+Both his preference and his request were granted. Baruch was found
+among the living in Riblah and Ebed-melech at the camp in Ramah.
+Nebuzaradan gave Jeremiah provisions and presents and sent him, with
+his two companions, to Gedaliah, who had established his capital at
+the ancient city of Mizpah, on the dividing line between the old
+kingdoms of Israel and Judah.
+
+On his departure from Judah, Nebuchadrezzar had deported with him
+practically the entire population that was of any consequence. He left
+behind only the poorest of vine dressers and farmers.
+
+Gedaliah's position as governor, therefore, seemed to be but an empty
+honor. The country a wilderness, the capital in hopeless ruins, the
+Temple a pile of smoking and smouldering ashes--it was not a picture
+to bring rejoicing to a governor's heart.
+
+But Jeremiah laid a new plan for rehabilitating the land. Neither
+Jerusalem nor the Temple were to be rebuilt, for the present. All
+efforts were to be bent toward building up a new conscience in the
+simple farmers and vine dressers; to fit these for entering a new
+covenant with their God and to make them worthy, indeed, to be
+God's people.
+
+In politics the land was to stand, above all, for faithfulness and
+loyalty to Babylonia. That was what Nebuchadrezzar expected from
+Gedaliah and that was what Gedaliah proposed to do. With the religion
+Nebuchadrezzar never did and never would interfere. Therefore, first
+of all, the new governor issued this proclamation to the remnant that
+remained in Judah:
+
+   "Do not be afraid to serve the Chaldeans. Settle down and
+    be subject to the king of Babylon, and it shall be well with
+    you. As for me, I will dwell at Mizpah, as your representative
+    to receive the Chaldeans who shall come to us; but you gather
+    for yourselves wine and fruits and oil, and put them in
+    your vessels and dwell in your cities of which you have
+    taken possession."
+
+The future again looked bright. Under Gedaliah there was promise of a
+peaceful restoration of Judah.
+
+Jewish refugees in Moab, Ammon and Edom began to return, because they
+looked for a just and benevolent rule from Shaphan's grandson; and
+they would not have been disappointed had not scheming selfishness and
+hateful treachery stepped in to shatter the last possible Judean hope.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXII.
+
+                    _Cowardice and Treachery._
+
+
+Gedaliah had governed in Mizpah seven months when he was pleased to
+welcome back to his fatherland, Ishmael, son of Nethaniah, a Judean
+chieftain of the royal family, who had been driven to Ammon during the
+guerrilla warfare with Babylonia, under Jehoiakim.
+
+A few days later, Johanan, son of Kareah, who was one of the
+governor's chief assistants, came to Gedaliah with the news that
+Ishmael was not sincere in his protestations of loyalty, that he was
+in the employ of Baalis, King of Ammon, and that his mission to Mizpah
+was to put Gedaliah out of the way. Baalis, Johanan reported, was
+contemplating rebellion some time in the future, and did not want in
+Judah a governor faithful to Babylonia. In addition, Johanan said,
+Ishmael was hoping, through the assistance of Baalis, to regain the
+throne of Judah for his family.
+
+Gedaliah, nobleman that he was, refused to suspect Ishmael of
+treachery. On the contrary, a few days later he prepared a great
+banquet in Ishmael's honor and invited, in addition, all the Chaldean
+nobles whom Nebuchadrezzar had left behind in Judah to assist Gedaliah
+in restoring order and in establishing law and government.
+
+Ishmael came with ten followers who had accompanied him from Ammon. At
+a given signal, Ishmael and his ten men fell upon the unsuspecting
+Gedaliah and his Chaldean guests and turned the banquet hall into a
+house of death.
+
+On the next day, word came to Mizpah that eighty men from Shechem,
+Shiloh and Samaria, were coming to Mizpah, on their way to Jerusalem
+to offer sacrifices in the Temple ruins. These men had been selected
+by the survivors in that section of the country to express their
+thanks to God, in this manner, for having been spared by the
+Babylonians.
+
+Ishmael went out to meet them. With tears in his eyes he told them
+that he was a messenger from Gedaliah to welcome them to Mizpah. Once
+in Mizpah, however, these eighty men were slaughtered by the ruthless
+and treacherous cowards from Ammon. Under Ishmael's direction, all the
+dead were thrown into the great reservoir that was built by King Asa
+of Judah at the time when he was at war with Baasha of Israel.
+
+His work completed, Ishmael gathered his men to return to Baalis,
+in Ammon.
+
+Johanan, who had warned Gedaliah of Ishmael's treachery, did not
+propose to let the murderer escape. He gathered up such faithful men
+as he could. By a quick march of two miles to the north, his little
+force confronted Ishmael just outside of Gibeon, on the well-traveled
+road leading to Beth Horon.
+
+Before the little armies came to an engagement, Johanan sent word to
+Ishmael demanding surrender. Ishmael answered with a request for a
+parley on the next morning, which was granted.
+
+During the night, however, Ishmael's men deserted him and went over to
+Johanan. Ishmael, himself, escaped to Ammon, and Johanan did not even
+pursue him. On the next morning all returned to Mizpah.
+
+In Mizpah, Johanan was confronted with a new problem. What would
+happen when the news reached Babylon that all the Chaldean officers in
+Mizpah had been slain? The entire population knew what Nebuchadrezzar's
+vengeance meant. They feared to remain in Judah and, at a council of
+elders called by Johanan, it was determined to leave the fatherland
+altogether and emigrate to Egypt.
+
+Before making a definite move, however, Johanan and the elders sought
+the advice of Jeremiah. They came to the prophet with this petition:
+
+   "Permit us to bring our petition before you that you may
+    supplicate the Lord your God for us, even for all this
+    remnant, for we are left but a few out of many--you yourself
+    see us here--that the Lord your God may show us the way
+    wherein we should walk, and the thing that we should do."
+
+Jeremiah answered them:
+
+   "I have heard you; behold I will pray to the Lord your God
+    according to your words, and whatever the Lord shall answer
+    you, I will declare it to you; I will keep nothing back
+    from you:"
+
+To which the leaders replied:
+
+   "God be a true and faithful witness against us, if we do not
+    according to all the word with which the Lord your God shall
+    send you to us. Whether it be good or whether it be evil, we
+    will obey the voice of the Lord our God, to whom we send you,
+    that it may be well with us, when we obey the voice of the
+    Lord our God."
+
+Jeremiah took ten days to consider the matter. Then the message came
+to him from the Lord his God and he delivered it to Johanan and
+his chieftains:
+
+   "If ye will still abide in this land, then will I build you
+    and not pull you down, and I will plant you and not pluck
+    you, up; for I am sorry for the evil that I have done to you.
+    Be not afraid of the king of Babylon, for I am with you to
+    save you and to deliver you from his hand."
+
+Johanan and the chieftains had hoped that Jeremiah would advise them
+to go to Egypt. They were disappointed. They took time, therefore, to
+discuss the matter further among themselves.
+
+Jeremiah had had experience enough to know what the result would be.
+So he backed up his advice concerning Egypt with a public discourse,
+every line of which breathed hope for the future in Judah.
+
+He tried to show that the old order of things had passed; that the old
+covenant between God and his people had been broken, never to be
+renewed again; that God would enter into a new covenant with them, a
+spiritual covenant, not so much with the whole nation, as with each
+individual. This is Jeremiah's memorable address at Mizpah:
+
+   "Behold the days are coming,
+    That I will sow Israel and Judah with the seed of man and the
+        seed of beast,
+    And as once I watched over them to pluck up and to afflict,
+    So will I be watchful over them to build and to plant.
+
+   "'Behold the days are coming,' saith the Lord,
+    'That I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and
+        the house of Judah,
+    Not like the covenant which I made with their fathers,
+    In the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of
+        the land of Egypt,
+    My covenant which they themselves broke and I was displeased
+        with them;
+    But this is the covenant which I will make with the house
+        of Israel:
+
+   "'After those days,' saith the Lord,
+    'I will put my teaching in their breast and on their heart will
+        I write it;
+    And I will be to them a God and they shall be to me a people.
+    And they shall not teach any more every man his neighbor,
+    And every man his brother, saying, "Know the Lord,"
+    For they shall know me, from the least of them to the greatest;
+    For I will forgive them their iniquities and remember their
+        sins no more.'"
+
+On the day of the meeting to settle finally the question of emigration
+to Egypt, another shocking surprise awaited Jeremiah.
+
+He was accused of being a false prophet; of not having received the
+message against going into Egypt from God, at all. He was accused of
+having conspired with Baruch, who, Jeremiah was told, being of noble
+family, had ambitions to become King of Judah. Finally he was warned
+that Baruch intended to hand all the remnant over to Nebuchadrezzar.
+More than that! It was determined to emigrate to Egypt at once and
+that both Jeremiah and Baruch must accompany the self-exiled.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+                    _Jeremiah, the Martyred._
+
+
+The forcing of Jeremiah into Egyptian exile with the others was the
+stroke that finally broke Jeremiah's heart. Against such stiff-necked
+perversity he could hold out no longer. He submitted, like a lamb,
+this time to be led, literally, to the slaughter.
+
+Judah was destroyed, the Temple burnt, the royal family exterminated,
+the last of the friends of Jeremiah's family dead, the strength and
+nobility of the nation in Babylonian captivity, and now, the miserable
+remnant that was left in Judah, self-exiled to Egypt!
+
+The destination of the emigrants was Tehaphenes, just across the
+boundary from Judah. There was already a small colony of Jews there.
+Being a frontier city on the main road to Jerusalem, Judeans often
+found refuge there from the many destructive armies that swept Judah.
+
+These gave all the emigrants a hearty welcome. Jeremiah might have
+settled down there to pass the remaining years of his life quietly and
+at peace; or, he might have gone to Babylon where Nebuzaradan had
+promised to look after him. The course of events however, bade him
+remain where he now was.
+
+Pharaoh Hophrah still had in mind the conquest of Babylon. But
+Jeremiah had preached all his life that Nebuchadrezzar was God's
+chosen servant for smiting the nations, Egypt among them. He had, many
+times, dared death rather than dare be untrue to God and to his
+mission as a prophet. Therefore, in Tehaphenes, before Pharaoh's
+palace, Jeremiah delivered the following oration:
+
+   "Take great stones in thine hand and hide them in the clay
+    of the pavement which is at the entry of Pharaoh's house in
+    Tehaphenes, in the sight of the men of Judah; and say unto
+    them, Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel:
+    Behold, I will send and take Nebuchadrezzar, the king of
+    Babylon, My servant, and will set his throne upon these
+    stones that I have hid; and he shall spread his royal
+    pavilion over them. And when he cometh, he shall smite the
+    land of Egypt."
+
+Both the Jews and the Egyptians who heard him were thoroughly enraged.
+Their rage swelled into an outcry, and the outcry into an attack upon
+Jeremiah. The very stones of which he spoke were showered upon him by
+the infuriated mob.
+
+Death, that he had often faced but escaped, now came to Jeremiah in
+this way--and Baruch, loving disciple and friend that he was, and
+Ebed-melech, faithful admirer and servant that he was, stood by
+Jeremiah's side to the last, sharing his fate with him.
+
+Through no fault of his own, but as God's chosen servant, speaking
+naught but the word of God as it was revealed to him, Jeremiah had
+been despised, degraded, spat upon, made to suffer for the sins of his
+people and, finally, he was martyred at their hands.
+
+It is held by some that the martyrdom of Jeremiah inspired a later
+prophet to write the following remarkable lines, although most Jewish
+scholars explain these lines as personifying the people of Israel and
+referring to its sufferings:
+
+   "Who would have believed what now we hear?
+    And to whom was the Lord's arm revealed?
+    Why, he grew up like a sapling before us,
+    Like a shoot out of dry ground!
+
+   "He was despised and forsaken of men,
+    A man of pain and familiar with sorrow:
+    Yea, like one from whom men hide their faces,
+    He was despised, and we esteemed him not.
+
+   "Surely our sufferings he himself bore,
+    And our pains he carried;
+    Yet we esteemed him stricken,
+    Smitten of God and afflicted.
+
+   "But he was wounded for our transgressions,
+    Crushed because of our iniquities;
+    The chastisement for our well-being was upon him,
+    And through his stripes healing came to us.
+
+   "All of us, like sheep, had gone astray,
+    We had turned each his own way;
+    And the Lord laid upon him,
+    The guilt of us all.
+
+   "He was sore pressed, yet he resigned himself,
+    And open not his mouth,
+    As a lamb is led to the slaughter,
+    And as a sheep that before her shearers is dumb.
+
+   "Shut out from justice he was hurried away;
+    And as for his fate, who regarded it?--
+    That he was cut off out of the land of the living,
+    Stricken to death for our transgressions.
+
+   "They made his grave with the wicked,
+    And his tomb with the ungodly,
+    Although he had done no violence,
+    Neither was any deceit in his mouth.
+
+   "But the Lord hath pleasure in His servant;
+    He will deliver his soul from anguish;
+    He will let him see and be satisfied,
+    And will vindicate him for his woes."
+
+   (Isaiah LIII.)
+
+
+                        [END OF VOLUME ONE.]
+
+
+
+
+                             SUPPLEMENT
+
+
+                        CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES
+
+[Transcriber's note: the following table was presented across two pages
+ in original text, and cannot be fit into an 80-column format. I have
+ presented it across 160 columns.  As such, it may not display properly
+ on some screens, especially if word wrap is turned on.]
+
+
+     KINGDOM OF        UNITED HEBREW         KINGDOM OF           DAMASCUS             ASSYRIA              EGYPT             BABYLONIA            PERSIA
+       JUDAH              KINGDOM              ISRAEL
+
+                    B.C.E. 12th and
+                      11th Centuries,
+                      Settlement of
+                      Canaan by Children
+                      of Israel
+                    1037 United Hebrew
+                      Kingdom Established
+                    1037 Saul
+                    1017 David
+                     977 Solomon
+
+                      DIVISION OF THE
+                          KINGDOM
+
+     KINGDOM OF       ------937------        KINGDOM OF
+       JUDAH                                   ISRAEL
+
+ 937 Rehoboam                            937 Jeroboam
+ 917 Asa
+                                         913 Baasha
+                                         887 Omri
+ 876 Jehoshaphat                        _Elijah_
+                                         875 Ahab
+                                                                 Ben Hadad II
+                                                                                 860-839 Five
+ 851 Jehoram                             851 Jehoram                               Expeditions
+ 843 Ahaziah                            _Elisha_                                   against Damascus
+ 842 Athaliah                            842 Jehu
+ 836 Joash
+                                                             816 Hazael Defeats
+                                         814 Jehoahaz          Joash
+ 796 Amaziah                             797 Jehoash
+ 782 Uzziah
+  (Azariah)
+_Isaiah_                                 781 Jereboam II                         745 Tiglath-Pileser
+                                        _Amos_                                     III--Two
+                                        _Hosea_                                    Expeditions
+ 735 Ahaz                                                                          against Israel
+_Micah_                                  734 Hoshea                  732           and Judah
+                                                               DESTRUCTION OF
+                                                                DAMASCUS BY      727 Shalmaneser IV
+ 727 Hezekiah                                   722               ASSYRIA        722 Destroys
+                                           DESTRUCTION OF                          Kingdom of
+                                             KINGDOM OF                            Israel
+                                             ISRAEL BY
+ 686 Manasseh                                 ASSYRIA                            722 Sargon
+_Zephaniah_                                                                      711 Expedition
+_Nahum_                                                                            against Judah
+_Jeremiah_
+_Habakuk_                                                                        705 Sennacherib
+                                                                                 701 Expedition
+                                                                                   against Judah
+ 639 Josiah                                                                        and Egypt         700 Shabataka
+
+ 605 Jehoiakim                                                                   681 Esarhaddon
+ 600 Conquered by                                                                675-71 Two
+   Babylon                                                                         Expeditions
+ 597 Zedekiah                                                                      against Judah     672 Necho
+ 597 First Captivity                                                               and Egypt
+   by Babylon
+_Ezekiel_                                                                        668 Ashurbanipal
+_Obadiah_                                                                          Two Expeditions           663
+         586                                                                       against Judah         EGPYT UNDER
+    DESTRUCTION OF                                                                 and Egypt            ASSYRIAN RULE    626 Nabopolassar
+      KINGDOM OF                                                                                                         605 Nebuchadrezzar
+       JUDAH BY                                                                          606
+       BABYLON                                                                      DESTRUCTION OF                       600 Defeats Judah
+_Isaiah II_                                                                           ASSYRIA BY                           in Battle
+ 538 Cyrus Restores                                                                   BABYLONIA                          586 Destroys
+   Captives to Judah                                                                                                       Kingdom of        559 Cyrus
+_Haggai_                                                                                                                   Judah             538 Conquers
+_Zachariah_                                                                                                                                    Babylonia
+_Malachi_                                                                                                                        538         529 Cambyses
+                                                                                                             525             CONQUEST OF
+ 445 Nehemiah                                                                                          EGYPT CONQUERED       BAYBLONIA BY    464 Artaxerxes I
+   Governor of                                                                                            BY PERSIA            PERSIA
+   Jerusalem
+_Joel_
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Stories of the Prophets, by Isaac Landman
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