Part 2

[Sidenote: Jer. 44:11-13, 22] 'Therefore thus saith Jehovah of hosts, the God of Israel: "Behold, I set my face against you for evil to cut off the remnant of Judah in the land of Egypt, and they shall fall by the sword and by famine; they shall die, small and great, and they shall be an object of execration, of astonishment, of cursing, and of reproach. For I will punish those who dwell in the land of Egypt, as I have punished Jerusalem, by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence, so that none of the remnant of Judah, who have gone into the land of Egypt to reside there, shall escape or be left to return to the land of Judah, to which they have a desire to return; for none shall return except as fugitives. And they who escape the sword shall return from the land of Egypt to the land of Judah, few in number; and all the remnant of Judah, who have gone into the land of Egypt to sojourn there shall know whose word shall be confirmed, mine or theirs."'

I. The Significance of the Destruction of the Hebrew State. The destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. resulted in a mighty Transformation of the life and thought of Israel. It marked the final Overthrow of the old Hebrew kingdoms, and the gradual rise of that new and important factor in human history known as Judaism. For over three centuries the Jews who survived the great catastrophe were helpless under the rule of the great world powers which in succession conquered southwestern Asia. For the great majority of the Jewish race it represented the beginning of that long exile which has continued until the present. Scattered from the desert of Sahara to the distant land of China, and from the Black Sea to the Indian Ocean, the different groups of exiles quickly began to adapt themselves to their changed surroundings and to absorb the new knowledge and the powerful influences which gradually transformed their beliefs and ideals. While their vision was vastly broadened by this contact, the danger and horror of being completely engulfed in the great heathen world bound the faithful more closely together, and in time made Judaism the solid, unbreakable rock that has withstood the assaults and the disintegrating forces of the ages. At first the survivors of the great catastrophe were stunned by the blow that had shattered their nation. They lived only in their memories of the past and in their hopes for the future. At last, in the long period of misery and enforced meditation, they began not only to accept but also to apply the eternal principles proclaimed by their earlier prophets. Thus amidst these entirely new conditions they gained a broader and deeper faith and were still further trained for the divine task of teaching mankind.

II. The Book of Lamentations. After describing the destruction of the little kingdom established at Mizpah under Gedaliah, the Hebrew historical records suddenly become silent. This silence is due to the fact that there was little of external interest to record. The real history of this tragic half-century is the record of the anguish and doubts and hopes in the hearts of the scattered remnants of the race. The little book of Lamentations expresses dramatically and pathetically the thoughts of the people as they meditated upon the series of calamities which gathered about the great catastrophe of 586 B.C. Like the ancient Torah, or five books of the Law, it contains a quintet of poems. These are very similar in theme and form to many of the psalms of the Psalter. In the first four the characteristic five-beat measure, by which the deep emotions, especially that of sorrow, were expressed, is consistently employed. Each of these four is also an acrostic, that is, each succeeding line or group of lines begins with a succeeding letter of the Hebrew alphabet. This acrostic form was probably adopted in order to aid the memory, and suggests that from the first these poems were written to be used in public. Even so the Jews of Jerusalem to-day chant them on each of their sabbaths beside the foundation walls of the great platform on which once stood their ruined temple. Although the artificial character of these poems tends to check the free expression of thought and feeling, it is possible to trace in them a logical progress and to feel the influence of the strong emotions that inspired them.

III. Authorship and Date of the Book. In theme and literary form these poems are so strikingly similar to Jeremiah's later sermons that it was almost inevitable that tradition should attribute them to the great prophet of Judah's decline. This tradition, to which is due the position of the book of Lamentations in the Greek and English Bibles, cannot be traced earlier than the Greek period. The evidence within the poems themselves strongly indicates that they were not written by Jeremiah. It is almost inconceivable that he would subject his poetic genius to the rigid limitations of the acrostic structure. Moreover, he would never have spoken of the weak Zedekiah, whose vacillating policy he condemned, in the terms of high esteem which appear in Lamentations 4:20. These poems also reflect the popular interpretation of the great national calamity, rather than Jeremiah's searching analysis of fundamental causes. A careful study of Lamentations shows that chapters 2 and 4 were probably written by one who was powerfully influenced by Ezekiel's thought. They both follow in their acrostic structure an unusual order of the Hebrew alphabet, differing in this respect from chapters 1 and 3. They have so many close points of contact with each other that it is safe to say that they are both from the same author. They reveal an intimate familiarity with events immediately following the destruction of Jerusalem and were probably written between 580 and 561 B.C., when Jehoiachin was liberated. Chapters 1 and 3 follow the regular order of the Hebrew alphabet and apparently represent the work of a later author or authors. Chapter 1 is full of pathos and religious feeling and is closely parallel in thought to such psalms as 42 and 137. Chapter 3 is a poetic monologue describing the fate and voicing the contrition of the righteous within the Judean community. Chapter 5, on the contrary, is in the three-beat measure and lacks the acrostic structure of the preceding chapters. Its style and point of view are so different from those of the preceding chapters that it must be the work of another author, who probably lived in the Persian period.

IV. Its Real Character. The purpose of the book of Lamentations was evidently, (1) to give appropriate expression to the feelings of the Jews who survived the destruction of Jerusalem, 586 B.C.; (2) to drive home the great lessons taught by their past history, and thus to arouse true repentance; and (3) to kindle in turn hopes regarding their future. Through them Jeremiah and Ezekiel live and speak again, but from the point of view of the people. These tragic poems also throw contemporary light upon the horrors of the final siege and capture of Jerusalem and upon the fate of those who survived.

V. Numbers and Fortunes of the Jews Who Remained in Palestine. The Jews actually carried into captivity constituted only a small part of the total population of Judah (cf. Section XC:ii). The peasants and the inhabitants of the towns outside Jerusalem remained undisturbed, except as some of them were doubtless drafted into the army which under Zedekiah undertook to defend Jerusalem against the Chaldeans. From the later record of Nehemiah's work the names of many of these towns can be determined. In the north were Jericho, Geba, Mizpah, Anathoth, and Kirjath-jearim; in the centre, Netophah and Bethlehem; and in the south Tekoa, Keilah, and Bethzur. The lot of these, who are later known as the people of the land, was pitiable indeed. There are many references in Lamentations and Ezekiel to the persecutions to which they were subjected by their malignant foes, the Moabites and Ammonites on the east and the Philistines on the west. Even more cruel and aggressive were the Edomites, who had suffered many wrongs at the hands of the Hebrews. It was probably about this time that this half-nomadic people began to be driven northward by the advance of the Nabateans, an Arab people who came from the south. Dislodged from their homes, the Edomites took advantage of the weakness of the Jews and seized southern Judah, including the ancient capital Hebron. The doom which Ezekiel pronounces upon the Edomites in 25[12] is because of the revenge that they wreaked upon the Jews at this time. It is significant that Ezekiel's sermons in the period immediately following the fall of Jerusalem contain dire predictions of divine vengeance upon all these foes. After the overthrow of Gedaliah's kingdom, the Jews who remained in Palestine appear to have been left wholly without defences or defenders. Ezekiel, in 33:23-29, speaks of those who inhabit the waste places in the land of Israel, who live in the strongholds and the caves. Some of them appear to have turned robbers. Foreign settlers came in from every side and in time intermarried with the natives and led them into idolatry. Ezekiel sternly condemns their immorality and apostasy.

From the references in Jeremiah 41:5 and Ezra 3:3 it is clear that even during this reign of terror many of the people continued to offer sacrifices to Jehovah at the great altar cut in native rock which stood before the ruins of their temple in Jerusalem. Priests were also doubtless found in the land to conduct these services. The ancient feasts, however, with their joyous merrymaking and the resulting sense of divine favor, were no longer observed. Instead, the people celebrated in sackcloth and ashes the fasts commemorating the successive stages in the destruction of their city (Zech. 7:3-7). While their lot was pitiable and their character seemingly unpromising, these people of the land were important factors in the re-establishment of the Judean community.

VI. Fortunes of the Jews in Egypt. The narrative in Jeremiah states definitely that the large proportion of those who had rallied about Gedaliah after his death found a temporary asylum on the eastern borders of Egypt. Here they were beyond the reach of Chaldean armies and within the territory of the one nation which offered a friendly asylum to the Jewish refugees. Most of this later group of exiles settled at the towns of Tahpanhes and Migdol. The latter means tower and is probably to be identified with an eastern outpost, the chief station on the great highway which ran along the southeastern shore of the Mediterranean directly to Palestine and Syria.

The excavations of the Egypt Exploration Fund at Tahpanhes, which was the Daphnae of Herodotus, has thrown much light upon the home of this Jewish community. The town was situated in a sandy desert to the south of a marshy lake. It lay midway between the cultivated delta on the west and what is now the Suez Canal on the east. Past it ran the main highway to Palestine. Its founder, Psamtik I, the great-grandfather of Hophra, had built here a fort to guard the highway. Herodotus states that he also stationed guards here, and that until late in the Persian period it was defended by garrisons whose duty was to repel Asiatic invasions (II, 30). Here the Ionian and Carian mercenaries, who were at this time the chief defence of the Egyptian king, were given permanent homes. By virtue of its mixed population and its geographical position, Tahpanhes was a great meeting place of Eastern and Western civilization. Here native Egyptians, Greek mercenaries, Phoenician and Babylonian traders, and Jewish refugees met on common ground and lived side by side. It corresponded in these respects to the modern Port Said.

Probably in remembrance of the Jewish colony that once lived here, the ruins of the fort still bear an Arab name which means The Palace of the Jew's Daughter. The term palace is not altogether inappropriate, for apparently the fort was occasionally used as a royal residence. Many wine-jars, bearing the seals of Psamtik, Hophra, and Amasis, have been found in the ruins. In the northwestern part of these ruins has been uncovered a great open-air platform of brickwork, referred to in Jeremiah 43:8-10. It was the place of common meeting found in connection with every Egyptian palace or private home. When Amasis, in 564 B.C., came to the throne of Egypt he withdrew the privileges granted by his predecessors to foreigners. The Greek colonists were transferred to Naukratis, and Tahpanhes lost most of its former glory. About this time, if not before, the great majority of the Jewish refugees, who had settled in these frontier towns, probably returned to Palestine to find homes in its partially depopulated towns.

Ezekiel from distant Babylon appears to have regarded the Jews in Egypt with considerable hope (Ezek. 29:21). But Jeremiah, who knew them better, was keenly alive to their faults. In their despair and rage many of them evidently rejected the teachings of the prophets and became devotees of the Aramean goddess, the Queen of Heaven, mentioned in the recently discovered Aramean inscription of Zakar, king of Hazrak (cf. Section LXV:vii). Jeremiah's closing words to them, therefore, are denunciations and predictions that they should suffer even in the land of Egypt, at the hand of Nebuchadrezzar, the same fate that had overtaken their fellow-countrymen at Jerusalem. Both Jeremiah and Ezekiel (Ezek. 30) predicted that Nebuchadrezzar would invade and conquer Egypt. In 568 B.C. his army actually did appear on the borders of Egypt; but how far he succeeded in conquering the land is unknown. The complete conquest of Egypt certainly did not come until the Persian period under the leadership of the cruel Cambyses.

VII. The Jewish Colony at Elephantine. Jeremiah and Ezekiel also refer to the Jewish colonists at Memphis and at Pathros, which is the biblical designation of upper Egypt. Many of the colonists who had settled there had doubtless fled before the conquests of Jerusalem. The presence of a great number of Jews in Egypt at a later period indicates that even at this early date more exiles were probably to be found in Egypt than in Babylon. Recent discoveries on the island of Elephantine in the upper Nile, opposite the modern Assuan, have thrown new light upon the life of these Jewish colonists. These records consist (1) of a series of beautifully preserved legal documents written in Aramaic on papyrus and definitely dated between the years 471 and 411 B.C. They include contracts between the Jews residing on the island of Elephantine regarding the transfer of property and other legal transactions. They contain many familiar Jewish names, such as Zadok, Isaiah, Hosea, Nathan, Ethan, Zechariah, Shallum, Uriah, and Shemaiah. They indicate that by the earlier part of the Persian period a large and wealthy colony of Jewish traders and bankers was established on this island. They appear to have lived in a community by themselves, but in the heart of the city, side by side with Egyptians, Persians, Babylonians, Phoenicians, and Greeks, whose property In some cases joined their own. The Jews had their own court which ranked equally with the Persian and Egyptian law courts. Even native Egyptians, who had cases against the Jews, appeared before it. The names of Arameans and Arabs also appear in its lists of witnesses. From these contemporary documents it is clear that the Jews of upper Egypt enjoyed great privileges and entered freely into the life of the land. Ordinarily they married members of their own race; but the marriage of a Jewess with a foreigner is also reported. He appears, however, to have been a proselyte to Judaism, Another Jewess married an Egyptian and took oath by the Egyptian goddess Sati, suggesting that she had nominally at least adopted the religion of her husband. One Hebrew also bears the suggestive name of Hosea, the son of Petikhnum (an Egyptian name meaning _Gift of the god Khnum_).

VIII. The Temple of Yahu at Elephantine. These Aramaic legal documents also contain many references to Yahu (the older form of Yahweh or Jehovah), the god worshipped by the Jews, and to Yahu's temple situated on King's Street, one of the main thoroughfares of the city. These references have been signally confirmed by a most remarkable letter recently discovered by the Germans at this site. It was written in November of the year 408 B.C., by the members of the Jewish colony at Elephantine to Bagohi (the Bagoas of Josephus), the Persian governor of Judah. It states, among other things, that "Already in the days of the kings of Egypt our fathers had built this temple in the fortress of Elephantine. And when Cambyses (529-522 B.C.) entered Egypt he found this temple built, and, though the temple of the gods of Egypt were all at that time overthrown, no one injured anything in this temple." It further states that recently (in the year 411 B.C.), in the absence of the Persian governor in Egypt, the foreigners in Elephantine had stirred up a certain minor official to instruct his son, who was commander of a neighboring fortress, to destroy the Jewish temple.

The Aramaic letter was intended to be sent, together with rich gifts, to influence the powerful Persian governor of Judah, Bagohi, to issue an order permitting the Jews to rebuild their temple. From this letter we learn that the temple of the God Yahu was built of hewn stone with pillars of stone in front, probably similar to those in the Egyptian temples, and had seven great gates built of hewn stone and provided with doors and bronze hinges. Its roof was wholly of cedar wood, probably brought from the distant Lebanon, and its walls appear to have been ceiled or adorned with stucco, as were those of Solomon's temple. It was also equipped with bowls of gold and silver and the other paraphernalia of sacrifice. Here were regularly offered cereal-offerings, burnt-offerings, and frankincense. The petitioners also promised that, if the Persian officials would grant their request, "we will also offer cereal-offerings and frankincense and burnt-offerings on the altar in your name, and we will pray to God in your name, we and our wives and all the Jews who are here, if you do thus until the temple is built. And you shall have a portion before the God Yahu, the God of Heaven, from every one who offers to him burnt-offerings and sacrifices."

Historical students have long been familiar with the fact that late in the Greek period the Jews of Egypt built a temple to Jehovah at Leontopolis, in the Delta (cf. Section CXV:iii); but these recent discoveries open an entirely new chapter in Jewish history. They indicate that probably within a generation after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple, in 586 B.C., the Jewish colonists in Egypt built for themselves far up the Nile, and possibly at other points in this land of their exile, a temple or temples to Jehovah; that they remained loyal to God and the institutions of their race; and that in the midst of cosmopolitan Egypt they preserved intact their racial unity. In the light of these discoveries it is also clear that because of their character and numbers and nearness to Palestine the Jews of Egypt, even at this early period, were a far more important factor in the life and development of Judaism than they have hitherto been considered. These discoveries also afford definite grounds for the hope that from this unexpected quarter much more valuable material will come to illumine this otherwise dark period of post-exilic Jewish history.

Section XCII. EZEKIEL'S MESSAGE TO HIS SCATTERED COUNTRYMEN

[Sidenote: Ezek. 37:1-6] The hand of Jehovah was upon me, and he brought me by the spirit and set me down in the midst of the valley; and it was full of bones. And he caused me to pass by them round about; and, behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley; and, lo, they were very dry. And he said to me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord Jehovah, thou knowest. Again he said to me, Prophesy over these bones, and say to them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of Jehovah. 'Thus saith Jehovah to these bones: "Behold I am about to put breath into you, that ye may live. And I will put sinews on you, and will clothe you with flesh, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, that ye may live; and know that I am Jehovah."'

[Sidenote: Ezek. 37:7-10] So I prophesied as he commanded me: and as I prophesied, there was an earthquake; and the bones came together, bone to its bone. And I beheld, and, lo, there were sinews upon them, and flesh had clothed them, and skin covered them; but there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, 'Thus saith Jehovah: "Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live."' So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood upon their feet, an exceedingly great host.

[Sidenote: Ezek. 37:11-14] Then he said to me, O man, these bones are the whole house of Israel; behold, they say, 'Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are completely ruined.' Therefore prophesy, and say to them, 'Thus saith Jehovah: "Behold, I will open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you into the land of Israel. And ye shall know that I am Jehovah, when I have opened your graves, and raised you from your graves, O my people. And I will put my spirit in you, that ye may live, and I will restore you to your own land: that ye may know that I, Jehovah, have spoken it and performed it," is the oracle of Jehovah.'

[Sidenote: Ezek. 37:15-23] This word also came to me from Jehovah: Do thou, O man, take a stick, and write upon it, JUDAH AND THE ISRAELITES ASSOCIATED WITH HIM: then take another stick, and write upon it, JOSEPH, AND ALL THE HOUSE OF ISRAEL ASSOCIATED WITH HIM. Then join them together, so that they may become one stick in thy hand. And when the children of thy people shall say to thee, 'Wilt thou not show us what this means?' say to them, 'Thus saith Jehovah: "Behold, I am about to take the stick of Joseph, which is in the hand of Ephraim, and the tribes of Israel associated with him; and I will unite them with the stick of Judah, and make them one stick, and they shall be united in my hand."' And let the sticks on which thou writest be in thy hand before their eyes. And say to them, 'Thus saith the Lord Jehovah: "Behold, I am about to take the Israelites from among the nations, whither they are gone, and gather them from all sides, and bring them into their own land: and I will make them one nation in the land, upon the mountains of Israel; and there shall be one king over them all; and they shall be no longer two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any longer; nor shall they defile themselves any more with their idols, nor with their detestable things, nor with any of their transgressions; but I will save them from all their apostasies wherein they have sinned, and will cleanse them; so shall they be my people, and I will be their God."'