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 fromthe Assyrian army. Instead, he sent Eliakim, who was Governor of theRoyal Palace, Shebnah, the Secretary of State, and Joah, theChancellor 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, 'Whatconfidence is this which you cherish? You, indeed, think, asimple 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, evenupon Egypt, which, if a man lean on it, will go into hishand and pierce it. So is Pharaoh King of Egypt to all whotrust 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 nothethe 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 hewill not be able to deliver you out of my hand.'
"Neither let Hezekiah make you trust in God by saying, 'Godwill surely deliver us, and this city shall not be giveninto 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 meAnd 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 ofNisroch, in Nineveh, he was attacked by his own sons and killed, andEsarhaddon, one of his sons, succeeded him on the throne of Assyria.
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 thetop 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."
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 aland 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.
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.
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 benNebat, in the year 937, B. C. E., when he rebelled from Rehoboam, KingSolomon'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 betweenIsrael 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."
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 transgressionAnd 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, "mypeople," 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 whattrue religionis 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 abargainbetween 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 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.
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.
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.