6 follow his advice, they answered unblushingly, Thou speakest falsely; the Lord our God has not sent thee to say, Go not into Egypt to sojourn there; but Baruch, the son of Neriah, sets thee on against us, to deliver us into the hand of the Chaldeans, that they might put us to death, and carry us away captives into Babylon.' Then they all forthwith broke up from Bethlehem, men and women and children, and proceeded towards Egypt; nay, they forced the aged prophet and his devoted scribe Baruch to accompany them to the hateful land. At the border town Tahpanhes (Daphne), a fortified city near Pelusium, they stopped, and from thence they gradually spread through many parts of Egypt. But even here they adhered to their old and inveterate superstitions; idolatry flourished among them as it had flourished in Judea; they even gloried in their abominations, and expected to find in them safety and happiness. In vain Jeremiah preached and rebuked and entreated; he was met as before with scorn and derision; and when he died full of years, he saw with sorrow his degenerate countrymen steeped in all the heathen perversities, from which not even the Divine guidance and training of fifteen centuries had been able to wean them. 151. THE JEWS IN BABYLON. [DANIEL I. sqq.; EZEKIEL I. sqq.; ISAIAH XL. sqq. Having followed the history of the small colony of Jews who had been left in Palestine, and who ultimately settled in Egypt, we must return to the far greater number of those who were sent as captives to Babylon with their king Jehoiachin, and to whom later, after the fall of Jerusalem, were added nearly all the remaining inhabitants of Judea. Nebuchadnezzar had taken care to transport to Babylon especially men of ability and genius, artists famous as carvers in wood, and skilled as workers in gold and silver, men who had beautified and enriched Jerusalem; and he desired them now to employ their talents and their arts in adorning his capital Babylon. Anxious to refine the tastes and cultivate the minds of his own subjects, he received youths of remarkable intelligence and knowledge in the royal palace, where they were instructed in the Chaldean language and philosophy, so that they might impart to the Babylonians their own superior learning. So far, therefore, from oppressing the Jews, he made every effort to win their affection for their adopted land and its government. He was shrewd enough to perceive the peculiar character of the conquered people. He must have respected, even if he did not understand, their religious convictions, which had armed them with strength to subdue much more powerful tribes, and to maintain themselves in the midst of warlike enemies for nearly nine hundred years. He must have heard of the glories of king Solomon's reign, the fame of which was spread throughout the East, and was long and fondly cherished. He was, no doubt, familiar with the names of Moses and Isaiah, of Amos, Joel, and Micah; and we have seen how he honoured his great contemporary Jeremiah. Thus the exiles were received and treated with kindness. They lived together in large colonies, preserved many of their old institutions, had their own elders and judges, and even a common chief. They began to found new homes in the foreign land, to entwine its welfare with their own, and to undertake the duties, as they enjoyed the rights, of Babylonian citizens. Yet they could not forget the country of their birth, nor the capital hallowed by their glorious Temple. From the singularly varied and picturesque land of Palestine, from the rugged moun tains and the wooded or vine-clad hills of Judah, they had been transplanted to the flat and monotonous tracts of Chaldea. They may indeed have looked with amazement on Babylon, a city of enormous and almost fabulous extent, covering an area of no less than 225 square miles, with a hundred brazen gates; with the magnificent temple of Bel and the royal palace, a marvel of size and splendour; with the wonderful bridge over the Euphrates, and gardens and fields so extensive that their produce sufficed, in times of war, for the maintenance of a large garrison. Yet despite its singular grandeur and pomp, Babylon seemed strange and dreary to the exiles; they could not suppress a painful longing for their own beautiful home, for their rock-crowned citadel of Jerusalem. A Jewish poet of the time gave thus expression to the common feelings of his contemporaries: 6 By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, and we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that subdued us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy. O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewards thee as thou hast served us.' Many other Psalms originated in this period of bondage. Nor were prophets wanting, eager to fan the flame of patriotism by their lofty eloquence. Among these Ezekiel, who lived in the large Jewish settlement on the river Chaboras, a tributary of the Euphrates, exercised the most powerful influence. To the bold and rapid creations of the earlier Hebrew poets, he adds not merely a vehement and tragical force, peculiar to his own mind, but a vastness and magnificence of imagery drawn from the scenery and circumstances by which he was surrounded.'1 He was of priestly descent, and seems himself to have performed sacerdotal functions at the Temple in Jerusalem. Therefore, his thoughts naturally turned to the re-building of the Sanctuary, and in soaring visions he described the stateliness of the new edifice and the splendour of public worship to be conducted by a pious and revered priesthood. Besides Ezekiel we find another prophet, whose writings have in our Canon been incorporated with those of the great Isaiah of Hezekiah's time, and who is therefore called the second or later Isaiah. He was master of a style the poetic beauty of which is unsurpassed among Hebrew writers; he may be inferior to the elder Isaiah in power and variety, but he equals him in sublimity and ardent patriotism. He taught, admonished, and elevated his countrymen, and as the years of the exile rolled on, he cheered them with the glad pictures of liberty, of return to their old home, and of restoration to their old glory. Men like Ezekiel and the second Isaiah proved that the old spirit of Judah was not crushed, that the old power and culture of mind had not vanished; and it was probably owing to such men that the Jewish captives were treated by their conquerors with kindness and forbearance, and in some cases even with distinction, Such an instance is recorded in the history of Daniel, one of the most remarkable among the youths educated in the royal palace, From an early age he was conspicuous for piety, intelligence, unusual love of learning, and above all for 1 Milman, History of the Jews, vol. i. p. 410. 2 For a fuller account of these prophets, see vol. ii. sincere and ardent attachment to the precepts of his Divine faith. Brought into close contact with the great Chaldean monarch, he was in the eyes of the latter the chief representative of the Jewish people and the Jewish religion. To him it was given to relate and interpret dreams, and to unravel mysteries which baffled the shrewdness of all the magicians of Chaldea. He was therefore raised to an exalted station second only to that of the king himself.' In the year 562, Nebuchadnezzar died, and was succeeded by his son Evil Merodach. The new monarch liberated Jehoiachin, the king of Judah, who had been kept in prison for thirty-seven years; he treated him kindly, assigned to him a high rank at his court, and provided for him with great liberality. Thus the bitterness between the conquerors and the conquered faded more and more away, and the latter had little cause for complaint. When Evil Merodach died, his brother Belshazzar came to the throne (541). In the meantime, eastern Asia had been convulsed by the irresistible progress of a new conquering power-the Persians. They were as yet a simple and hardy race, untainted by luxury and effeminacy. Their fare was rude, and their mode of life almost primitive; they were inured to danger and insensible to fatigue, brave, enterprising, and warlike. They had made themselves the masters of the great kingdom of Media, and were impetuously pressing westward. The next object of their ambition was the magnificent Chaldean empire. Well might the degenerate Babylonians dread such foes. The fall of Babylon is predicted, in a remarkable narrative of the Book of Daniel (ch. v.), by an inscription mysteriously written on the wall of the royal banqueting hall, where king Belshazzar was revelling with his courtiers 1 On the Prophecies of the Book of Daniel, see vol. ii. pp. 193–221. |