The History of Antiquity, Vol. 3 (of 6)

The prophecy of Jeremiah was fulfilled. The Egyptians were defeated. Invested once more, Jerusalem was pressed more severely than ever.649 The lines of the Chaldæans ran even to the walls of the city,650 but the defenders were unwearied. The houses and even the buildings of the palaces were in part pulled down in order to strengthen the shattered walls, or build new portions.651 That Jeremiah under such circumstances continued to preach the abandonment of the siege, and subjection to the Chaldæans, roused at length the captains. They demanded his death from the king: "He weakeneth the hands of the men of war that remain, and the hands of the people: he seeketh not the welfare of the Jews, but the hurt."652 As Zedekiah allowed them to do with Jeremiah according to their pleasure, they seized him, brought him for custody to the hill of Zion, and there caused him to be thrown into the well of the prison. But there was only mud in the well, and when an Ethiopian eunuch of the king interceded with him for the prophet, Zedekiah gave command that Jeremiah should be taken out of the well, and confined in the court of the prison.653

Meantime "the famine prevailed in the city;" the distress rose to the highest pitch. "The priests and the elders," so we are told in the Lamentations, "sought food in vain: the sword destroys without, the famine within. The people sought food with sighs, and whatsoever a man had of price he gave for food. The children and the sucklings swooned; they cried to their mothers, where is corn and wine, when they swooned as the wounded in the streets of the city, when their soul was poured out into their mothers' bosoms. Better was it for those who were slain with the sword than for those who were slain with hunger; the hands of pitiful women have sodden their children for food."654 At length the Chaldæans, whose attack was directed to the most accessible part, the north side of the city, succeeded in taking the suburb surrounded by the outer wall.655 Having gained possession of this, they directed their efforts against the middle gate, which guarded the entrance into the city beside the fortress of Millo (p. 128). Led by Nergal Sarezer, and Sarsechim, the captain of the eunuchs, the Babylonians took the middle gate in the night by storm, and firmly established themselves there. Zedekiah despaired of being able to maintain the city any longer, with the motley crowd of soldiers weakened by hunger, and the inhabitants who doubtless suffered still more in numbers and strength. He attempted to break through with his army. He succeeded in passing the lines and gaining the open country, but the Chaldæans in pursuit came up with the troop which had so boldly broken out in the plain of Jericho. The troop was dispersed; a part, including Zedekiah, was captured, the rest escaped. The inhabitants, even after the king and army had left the city, stubbornly defended themselves in the various parts – in the citadel and the temple – so that some weeks elapsed before the city was completely in the hands of the Babylonians (July, 586 B.C.). The siege had lasted one year five months and seven days.656

The first rebellion of the Jews had been punished by Nebuchadnezzar by the dethronement and abduction of the king, by carrying away the influential people and the army of Jerusalem, and by disarming the city. These arrangements had not been sufficient to secure the obedience of the little country. For the future Egypt was no longer to find confederates in Southern Syria, and support in Jerusalem. The stubborn resistance of the Jews was to be broken; an end must be put for ever to their intrigues with Egypt. Zedekiah, who was placed on the throne by Nebuchadnezzar himself, and swore obedience to him, was not to escape the punishment of this breach of faith. Nebuchadnezzar was not with the besieging army; he was at Riblah, on the Orontes, the grassy plain where Necho had pitched his camp after the battle of Megiddo. Thither Zedekiah was brought. In his presence were first executed the captive leaders of the Jews, and among them his own sons. Then his eyes were put out; he was laden with chains, and carried away to Babylon. There he died in prison.657 The punishment of Jerusalem was carried out by Nebusaradan, the chief of the body-guard of Nebuchadnezzar. The high priest, Seraiah, together with the second priest, Zephaniah, the overseers of the temple, a number of public officers, and sixty of the most distinguished men in the city, were also taken to Riblah, and put to death, seventy-two in number.658 The brazen pillars at the entrance to the temple, and the brazen sea (II. 182, 184), all the vessels and furniture of the temple which still remained, and everything that was to be found of value in the palace, was carried off to Babylon.659 The Chaldæan army levelled the walls; city, palace, and temple were burned to the ground. The inhabitants who survived were carried away, "except the poor people who had nothing;" even from the country the richer men were carried away with their wives and children, and only the common people left behind.660 Over the remnant of the population a Jew, Gedaliah, the son of Ahikam (p. 317), who must previously have given proof of his Chaldæan sentiments, was placed as viceroy. He took up his abode in Mizpeh, where a Babylonian garrison remained.661

"O daughter of Zion, let thy tears flow like rivers day and night" – so the Jews lamented – "give thyself no rest. The kings of the earth, and all the inhabitants of the world would not have believed that the besieging army could have entered into the gates of Jerusalem. Jehovah hath cast off his altar, and abhorred his sanctuary. The stones of the sanctuary are poured out in the top of every street. The Lord hath thrown down from heaven to earth the beauty of Jerusalem, and remembered not his footstool in the day of his anger. He hath poured out his fury like fire upon the tabernacle of the daughter of Zion.662 The elders of the daughter of Zion sit upon the ground and keep silence; they cast dust upon their heads; they are girded with sackcloth. The virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads to the earth. They that go by strike the hands together, and shake the head over the daughter of Jerusalem. Is this the city which was called the garland of beauty, the joy of the whole earth? Thy enemies shoot out their lips at thee; hiss and say: We have swallowed her up: this is the day that we looked for; we have done it. The gates are desolate; the ways to Zion mourn; no one cometh to the festival. Behold and see, all ye that pass by, if there is any sorrow like unto my sorrow.663 Our possession is fallen to strangers, our houses to aliens; we are orphans without a father; our mothers are like widows. Servants rule over us; they weaken our wives and virgins: they hang up the captains: they honour not the faces of the elders; we have drunken our water for money; our wood is sold to us. The young men grind the mill-stones, and the children fall under the wood.664 The punishment of my people is greater than the punishment of Sodom.665 All mine enemies rejoice at my trouble, and laugh at my overthrow, but thou, Jehovah, will bring the day when they will be as I am; do to them as thou hast done to me.666 Our fathers have sinned and are not; we have borne their iniquities. Take us again to thee, Jehovah; is it right that thou shouldest utterly throw us away and be so wroth with us?"667

Jeremiah was still a prisoner in the court of the citadel when the Chaldæans forced their way into it. With the rest of the inhabitants of Jerusalem he had been taken to Ramah, in order to be carried away into Babylonia from thence, when Nebusaradan, at the command of Nebuchadnezzar, to whom in the interim Jeremiah's conduct must have been known, caused his fetters to be taken off, and gave him the choice whether he would remain or go to Babylonia. It was in his power to go where he would: if he went to Babylonia he would not be neglected there. Jeremiah answered that he wished to remain in the land. Nebusaradan then gave him maintenance and a present, and put him in the hands of the viceroy, Gedaliah, to convey him to his house at Anathoth.

Gedaliah exercised his new authority in a spirit of conciliation; he attempted to establish order and peace. If Nebusaradan, before his departure from the conquered city, had given the unoccupied fields and vineyards before the gates to the people "who had nothing," Gedaliah summoned his countrymen who had fled to the Ammonites, Moabites, and Edomites, back to Mizpeh, "and they gathered summer fruits and wine in great abundance." He also entered into negotiations with the chieftains and their soldiers, who with Zedekiah had broken through the lines and escaped the defeat at Jericho, in order to put an end to their plundering in the land; he offered to give up to them the places of which they had taken possession; if they would dwell there and serve the king of Babylon it would be well with them.668 The greater number accepted these proposals, and put themselves under the rule of Gedaliah, whose wise arrangements had their effect, and seemed to promise further success. Jeremiah himself remained at Mizpeh with Gedaliah, to whose action his advice, counsel, and influence could give considerable support.669 Two months had not passed since the capture of Jerusalem, and already a number of men out of Samaria, Shechem, and Shilo, ventured to go to the ruins of Jerusalem with frankincense and meat-offerings, in order to sacrifice at the holy place, the seat of the temple.

In the hearts of the great majority fierce resentment must have been raging against the destroyers of Jerusalem and the temple, against the conquerors of Judah. If Nebuchadnezzar could not be reached, his viceroy was in the land. A distinguished man of the Jewish stock had submitted to be the servant of the deadly enemy. This traitor and servant could be found. Ishmael, a man of the royal blood, and of the family of David,670 one of the fugitives, came with ten men to Mizpeh. He put on the appearance of submission. Gedaliah invited him to the banquet, at which with his associates he cut down Gedaliah, the Chaldæans, and the Jews who were present. The king's daughter and others who had been placed in Gedaliah's care, the Jews who were assembled at Mizpeh, followed Ishmael. He acted in union with Baalis, the king of Ammon, with whom he had intended to take refuge. But the other chieftains, who had made their peace with Gedaliah, pursued after him, overtook him at the pool of Gibeon, and took away the prisoners from him; Ishmael himself escaped to the king of Ammon.

The chiefs of the Jews, who were assembled at Mizpeh, were afraid that Nebuchadnezzar would still avenge on them the murder of Gedaliah. They resolved to fly to Egypt. Jeremiah was to entreat Jehovah, and declare his will to them. After ten days the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, and he spake: "Be not afraid of the king of Babylon, for I am with you, saith Jehovah, unto whom ye sent me to present your supplication. I am with you to help you, and deliver you from the hand of the king of Babylon. If ye will not obey the voice of Jehovah, your God, saying: We will go into the land of Egypt, where we shall see no war nor hear the sound of the trumpet, nor have hunger of bread; the sword which ye feared shall overtake you there in the land of Egypt, and the famine whereof ye were afraid shall follow close upon you, and there shall ye die. Jehovah hath spoken to you, ye remnant of Judah. Go ye not into Egypt; know certainly that I have admonished you this day." The warning voice was in vain. With the captains at their head, the fugitives who had assembled at Mizpeh, and the king's daughters, men and women, and all whom Nebusaradan had left behind with Gedaliah, set out to Egypt. Jeremiah and Baruch also followed, apparently under compulsion.

The fate which the Assyrians had prepared for the state of the ten tribes 136 years previously had now fallen on the kingdom of Judah. The temple was destroyed with the metropolis, and with the temple the last hope of the nation was gone; the remainder of the community, founded under Joshua's guidance 700 years previously, was annihilated; the sanctuaries were in the hands of the conqueror. Like the Israelites, the nation of Judah was now shattered and torn asunder. By the canals in Egypt, and by the waters of Babylon, on the Chaboras in Mesopotamia, and on the mouths of the Nile, lingered the fugitives and exiles.671 Nothing remained to them but the remembrance of David's glory, and sorrow for the fall of Israel. But the longer duration which was allowed to the kingdom of Judah had borne good fruits. It had given the Jews time to strengthen and deepen their religious and national feeling. It was not merely that the throne of Judah remained in the possession of the descendants of David, or that the kingdom of Judah possessed a highly revered centre in the temple, and thus had maintained a strong organisation of the priesthood; in the sufferings and struggles of the last seventy years these priests, in connection with the prophets, and filled with their views, had learned to regard the faith in Jehovah in a more inward manner, and plant it more deeply in the hearts of the people. They had given a legal basis to the worship of Jehovah, and exalted it to be the recognised religion of the state. If by this means the state gained nothing in regard to external power and security, an inestimable treasure was gained in regard to the confirmation and development of religious feeling. There was hardly any fear that the captive and fugitive Jews would lose themselves in the foreign nations among whom they dwelt, like the Israelites, who had been transplanted to Assyria and Media, or that they would give up their national faith. Behind the punishment induced by the sins of the people, the prophets had proclaimed the restoration of the purified Israel. The punishment had burst upon them, they did not doubt that the restoration would come. If Asshur had fallen, the hour of Babylon might strike; Jeremiah had already fixed the time for it. Thus the destruction of their state and their shrines did not make the Jews despair of the help of their God, or cause them to fall from their faith. Those who remained behind, no less than those who were driven out, cherished the hope of Jehovah's help as deeply as they felt the pain of the fall of Jerusalem.

Jerusalem fell nineteen years after the battle of Karchemish. Step by step Nebuchadnezzar had overcome Syria. First Arpad, Hamath and Damascus had succumbed, then the Ammonites, Moabites and Edomites. After Judah had recognised his supremacy in the year 600 B.C., the rebellion on which Jehoiakim ventured three years afterwards had brought upon that country a severe punishment, and a condition of greater dependence. Four years afterwards, 593 B.C., the cities of the Phenicians were reduced except Tyre. The second rebellion of Judah was followed by the annihilation of the country. The prophets of the Jews looked forward to the war of Nebuchadnezzar against Egypt – to the punishment for the campaign which Hophrah had undertaken against Syria, and which had compelled Nebuchadnezzar to raise the siege of Jerusalem. Ezekiel, who was among the Jews carried away with Jechoniah in 597 B.C., and with part of them had received a habitation on the Chaboras beyond the Euphrates, proclaimed the destruction and fall of Egypt. "Egypt," he says, "has been a staff of reed to the house of Israel. When they took hold of thee by the hand then thou didst break, and rend all their shoulder; and when they leaned upon thee, thou didst break and madest their loins to totter. Thou wast as a dragon in the seas, and camest forth in thy rivers. The sword of the king of Babylon shall come upon thee. By the swords of the mighty will I cause thy multitudes to fall: and I will water with thy blood the land wherein thou swimmest, even to the mountain; I will destroy all the beasts thereof from beside the great waters; neither shall the foot of man, nor the hoof of beasts, trouble them any more. Go down to them that are sunk in the pit, and be thou laid with the uncircumcised."672 The same fortune was announced to the Pharaoh Hophrah and his land by Jeremiah among the emigrants at Tachpanhes673 on the Pelusiac arm of the Nile: "Behold, I will give Pharaoh Hophrah, king of Egypt, into the hand of his enemies, and into the hand of them that seek his life, as I gave Zedekiah, king of Judah, into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, his enemy, that sought his life. Behold, I will send and fetch Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, my servant. At the entrance of Pharaoh's house, in Tachpanhes, he will spread out his royal pavilion, and he will come and smite the land of Egypt, and deliver to death such as are for death, and to captivity such as are for captivity, and to the sword such as are for the sword. And I will kindle a fire in the houses of the gods of Egypt, and he shall burn them and carry them away captive, and he shall break the pillars of Bethshemesh (the obelisks of Heliopolis), and the houses of the gods of Egypt shall he burn with fire."674

Nebuchadnezzar did not fulfil these expectations. He was not a conqueror who sought to press on beyond all bounds, and extend his power further and further. On the contrary, he sought to keep his empire within the natural boundaries, and not go beyond the desert which separated him from Egypt. The subjugation of Syria was not complete so long as Tyre did not obey his authority. He directed his arms not against Hophrah but against Tyre. It was difficult to reach the island city without a fleet. Nevertheless Ezekiel looked forward to the speedy success of the Babylonians, and the immediate fall of the great trading city. Tyre will fall because she rejoiced over the fall of Jerusalem, because she cried: "I shall be full, since thou art desolate."675 He describes in a lively manner how Nebuchadnezzar will set up his battering-rams against the walls of Tyre; how he will throw down their towers with his engines of war; will cast up a trench against them, and raise the shield upon them.676 He sees the island already changed into a naked rock for spreading out nets.677 These prophecies also were not fulfilled in their whole extent. The siege, after the capture of the old city, was no more than a blockade from the mainland, a cutting off of all intercourse of the city towards the coast, such as had once before been carried on in the time of Shalmanesar IV. and Assurbanipal of Assyria (pp. 83, 166), and now as then it was only feebly sustained from the sea by the ships which the subject neighbour-harbours had to furnish. Nebuchadnezzar's troops are said to have remained thirteen years before Tyre. The blockade was brought to an end, as it seems, in the year 573 B.C., by an arrangement in which the Tyrians recognised the supremacy of the king of Babylon. "A heavy service," says the prophet Ezekiel, "has Nebuchadnezzar compelled his army to perform against Tyre. Every head is bald, and every shoulder peeled, and there is no wages in his army for Tyre." The Tyrians, as it seems, allowed Nebuchadnezzar to elect their king. Ethbaal, king of Tyre, resigned the throne, and Nebuchadnezzar set up Baal in his place.678

After repeated struggles Nebuchadnezzar had driven the Egyptians out of Syria, had repulsed their attempts to support the rebellions of the Syrians. In addition to the tribes of the Arabs between Libanus and Antilibanus he had brought the states and cities of the Syrians to obedience; he had united under his supremacy the Semitic tribes from the Tigris to the Syrian coast, from the Persian to the Arabian Gulf. Never had the ancient kingdom of Babylon won such power, and taken up such a position. Yet this wide extent of dominion scarcely bore comparison with the empire of the Medes, in concert with which Babylonia had overthrown the Assyrians. But the territory of Babylon between the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf, as compared with the long stretch of the Median Empire, which reached from the Halys to the middle, and to the southern edge of the table-land of Iran, was better rounded off, and the population of Babylonia was more homogeneous. It belonged to one tribe only. These advantages, combined with the profuse fertility and the highly-developed industrial activity of the native land, with the trade and maritime resources of the Phenician cities, could compensate to Babylonia in intensive power the advantage which Media had in extent. For the present the courts of Babylon, Media, and Lydia, were peacefully connected by the ties of relationship.

CHAPTER XV.

NEBUCHADNEZZAR AND HIS SUCCESSORS

Assyria had become known to the Greeks about the time when Tiglath Pilesar II. had reduced Syria to submission, and the cities of the Phenicians were subject to the kings of Asshur —i. e. about the middle of the eighth century B.C. Hence for them the name Assyrians denoted the whole population of Asia from the Syrian coast to the Tigris, and the range of the Zagrus: "Syrians" is merely an abbreviated form of the name "Assyrians." In this sense Herodotus says: "After the fall of Nineveh Babylon was the chief city of the Assyrians."679 As a fact Nebuchadnezzar had united under his dominion the whole of the Semitic tribes on both sides of the Syrian desert. The stubborn resistance of the Phenicians and Hebrews had been broken by repeated campaigns; at least, after the subjugation of Tyre, we hear no more of rebellion by a Syrian tribe against Babylonia.

Nebuchadnezzar was able to complete the work which his father Nabopolassar had commenced by liberating Babylon from Assyria after two centuries of supremacy and one century of dominion, and had secured by it the annihilation of Assyria. The second king of this name on the throne of Babylon – Nebuchadnezzar I. had fought against Assyria with some success in the first half of the 12th century B.C. (II. 37) – he was the true founder of the new kingdom. Berosus is fully justified in saying of him, that he surpassed the achievements of all the earlier kings of the Chaldæans, though the addition that he ruled over Egypt, as well Phœnicia, Syria, and Arabia, is to be ascribed to the vainglory of the Babylonian.680 Nebuchadnezzar was indeed a prince of extraordinary gifts. He proved himself a brave warrior in the great victory which he gained over the Egyptians at Karchemish, and in the subsequent campaigns against the Arabians, Syrians, and Egyptians. The fame of his battles reached the Greeks: we find Hellenic nobles, as Antimenidas of Lesbos, the brother of the poet Alcæus, in his army.681 At Karchemish and in the south of Judah these had an opportunity of measuring themselves against their countrymen in the service of Necho and Hophrah. But Nebuchadnezzar did not allow the successes of his arms to tempt him beyond the limits which he had fixed for himself. He was not a conqueror in the Oriental sense, pressing onward to unlimited dominion. With a clear sense of his power, he placed bounds on his campaigns: as we saw, he refrained from attacking Egypt. His chief care was the secure foundation and continuance of his kingdom, and he clearly recognised the conditions which would promote this aim. The object, which he thus set before himself, he sought to realise with wisdom, with unwearied effort, and the greatest perseverance. He did much to promote the welfare of his kingdom; to encourage agriculture and trade; to improve the communications of Babylon by land and sea. He secured the strongest protection for his land and metropolis by a magnificent and well-considered system of fortifications. He must be numbered among the foremost princes of the ancient East. An engraved stone in the Berlin Museum presents us with a head; the cuneiform letters round it tell us: "To Merodach Nabukudurussur, king of Babylon: in his life he prepared it."682 It is a portrait in profile, quite different from the only other relief of a Babylonian king which has come down to us (I. 302); quite different also from the delineations of the Assyrian kings. Instead of the tall kidaris, and the long curled hair and beard, this head wears a closing helmet with a low ridge. The hair can be seen beneath it, but it does not fall on the neck: the face is smooth and beardless. The lines are round and full, the neck strong. Under the helmet protrudes the forehead, which slightly recedes; the brows are closely knit; there is a look of authority in the eye. The nose is straight and well-formed: the chin is short and round, and slightly elevated. It is the picture of a strong and even imperious will, a firm self-conscious power.