They shall not lament for him,
but with the burial of an ass shall he be buried!
Dragged and cast out of the gates of Jerusalem!”
From that time forward Jeremiah was forbidden to enter the courts of the temple or ever to approach the royal house again.
VIII
IN THE FIFTH YEAR of Jehoiakim, Nebuchadnezzar returned to the coast of the Great Sea with a massive force. He destroyed the Philistine city of Ashkelon and, like the Assyrians before him, deported its citizens.
In the winter of that year, the people of Jerusalem and Judah proclaimed a fast, and on the coldest day they gathered at the temple of the Lord.
While they were preparing for prayer, a small man climbed to the roof of a storeroom in the inner court, a man bent and studious. He lifted an open scroll before his eyes and began to read. As he read, one of the king’s officials recognized the words. He had heard them before, and he knew who had spoken them. He rushed to the house of the king, to the rooms of the royal secretary, and said, “Baruch the son of Neriah is reading to the people from a scroll. The words are the words of the prophet Jeremiah!”
Immediately the royal secretary ordered the small man to come to his chambers. So Baruch came in both shy and afraid.
“Who wrote these words?” the secretary asked.
Baruch said, “I did.”
“How did you come to write them?”
“Jeremiah told me to.”
“Why?”
“Because Jeremiah cannot come to the house of the Lord, but the Lord still wants his prophet’s words to be heard in that place. So he sent me.”
“Tell us,” said the secretary, “how did you write all these words?”
“Jeremiah spoke, and I wrote his words with ink on the scroll.”
The secretary gazed kindly on the small shy man, then he said, “Leave the scroll with me. The king will have to hear it. But you and Jeremiah, go and hide and let no one know where you are.”
Baruch vanished.
The secretary then gave the scroll to a man named Jehudi and sent him to a room in the palace where the king sat warming himself. Incense filled the air. A fire burned in the brazier before Jehoiakim. Jehudi said, “I have been sent to read to you from this scroll.”
The king frowned, but he said, “Go ahead. Read.”
Jehudi read: The Lord says,
Warn the nations,
they are coming!
Besiegers from the north ride against Judah,
because she has rebelled against me.
Your ways and your doings,
have brought this upon you!
This is your doom! It is bitter!
It pierces your very heart—
Jehudi had not read more than three or four columns when King Jehoiakim leaped from his seat, seized the scroll and a knife, cut off the part that had just been read, and threw it into the fire.
He handed the scroll back to Jehudi, who was stunned and silent. “Go on! Go on!” said the king. “What else does the braying fool have to say?”
Shaking, now, Jehudi read:
Amend your ways, and I will let you dwell in this place. Do not trust in these deceptive words: THIS IS THE TEMPLE OF THE LORD, THE TEMPLE OF THE LORD, THE TEMPLE OF THE LORD!
Again Jehoiakim leaped forward, cut off the words that had been read, threw them into the fire, and commanded Jehudi to read on.
So one read and the other burned the words of Jeremiah, until they had all been burned to ash.
“There,” said the king. “The prophet’s words have warmed me. Now they are consumed. What harm can they do anymore?”
But the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah where he and Baruch were hiding.
Take another scroll. Write on it all the former words. And concerning the king who burned them, add this: His dead body shall be cast out to the heat by day and the frost by night. And I shall bring upon his offspring all the evil that I have pronounced against them, but they would not hear.
IX
FOR FOUR YEARS Jehoiakim paid tribute to Babylon. But in the fourth year of his subservience, Pharaoh Neco of Egypt had regained enough military might to meet an advance of the Babylonian armies in the deserts south of Judah. A tremendous battle between the empires was engaged. It made the grey desert a field of bloody mud and flesh. There were heavy losses on both sides, but Neco stopped Nebuchadnezzar—and Jehoiakim, when he heard that Babylon had revealed some vulnerability, chose then to rebel. He withheld his tribute from Nebuchadnezzar and wrote Neco letters of smiling alliance.
JEREMIAH FELT AS old as he looked. His stomach hurt continually. It refused most foods tougher or sharper than a porridge of boiled barley grain. For that reason he took no pleasure in eating and he never could put flesh on his bones. He was skeletal and nervous and sleepless—and he hated his condition.
More than that, Jeremiah hated his office. He would rather have been a priest like his father, or a shopkeeper like the brothers who had disowned him long ago.
But God had set prophecy within him like an interior fire. Its furnace was his stomach, its flue his eyes and all his senses. He couldn’t strip himself of the office as if it were a clothing. Prophecy was in him night and day. Prophecy caused him to despise unrighteousness and to cry aloud his despising. But he loved the people whom he blamed, so prophecy caused him agonies on their behalf. Prophecy tore him in two, and he hated it.
At forty-seven Jeremiah was as exhausted as a man of sixty-seven. Yet all the cords within him were drawn so tight that when Nebuchadnezzar laughed in Babylon, the prophet was bruised in Jerusalem.
The Lord said to Jeremiah, Go out and buy a potter’s flask, an expensive vessel with a neck so slender it could never be mended if it breaks.
Jeremiah said, “I am tired. I am so tired, O Lord, of knowing and not knowing—knowing so much of the dangers of my people, yet never knowing enough. Why should I buy a potter’s flask?”
Buy it, said the Lord, then gather some elders and some priests and take them out to the Potsherd Gate above the valley of the Son of Hinnom.
When Jeremiah moved, his joints ached. Now, walking with an erratic rhythm, he went to the potter’s house and interrupted the artisan at his wheel. He purchased a delicate decanter, then went out to find Ahikam the son of Shaphan, a man who had shown him kindness ever since he had been arrested in the temple gate.
Kindness: Ahikam steadfastly gave Jeremiah kindness, reverence, honor—but not love. Not comfort. The prophet was denied such gentle human consolations, for the Lord had commanded him never to marry, never to have sons or daughters.
With Ahikam, now, Jeremiah gathered priests and elders and led them to the Potsherd Gate at the southeast corner of the city.
There the Lord spoke, increasing the fire in Jeremiah’s bowels and causing him to sigh.
But no one heard the sighing. God spoke in Jeremiah’s voice:
I am bringing such evil on this place that the ears of those who hear it will tingle. Because the people have forsaken me, this place shall be called the valley of Slaughter, for they will fall here by the sword of their enemies. I will make the city a horror, a thing to be hissed at—
Jeremiah drew back his hand and hurled the potter’s flask down into the valley, where it shattered.
And the Lord said:
Exactly so will I break this people and this city, that it may never be mended again!
One of the priests, a man named Pashur, spat on the ground at Jeremiah’s feet. “This is why we left our sacred duties,” he sneered, “to hear you curse Jerusalem? Cursings work, Jeremiah. Cursings work, you foul-tempered destroyer of every good thing. Why don’t you throw yourself down into the valley of Hinnom and die?”
Pashur, the chief officer of the temple, scowled and stalked away. The other priests went with him.
Even Ahikam was troubled by the prophecy. “I love the city,” he said.
Jeremiah said, “I do, too. Ahikam, I love Jerusalem with all my
heart. That’s the horror of the prophecy.”
But Ahikam could only shake his head in sad confusion and leave Jeremiah alone in the Potsherd Gate.
The Lord said, Follow those priests. Follow them right up to the temple.
Jeremiah said, “O Lord, let it be. I have never lent nor borrowed nor defaulted nor begged, yet everyone in the land curses me. Let it be, O Lord.”
Stand in the court of my house, the Lord said, and prophesy!
Slowly Jeremiah limped up the temple Mount. He entered the inner court where pilgrims were slaughtering beasts for sacrifice and priests were carrying the offering to the altar and smoke was ascending from the broiling meat to heaven.
And through the prophet’s piping voice, the Lord, the God of Israel, declared:
Behold, I am bringing upon this city the evil I have pronounced against it, because you’ve stiffened your neck, refusing to hear my words—
“Enough of cursings!” someone bellowed. “Enough of your wretched cursings, you vulture!”
Jeremiah looked and saw Pashur the priest running at him, with purple rage. He himself, he didn’t run. He stood still in the courtyard, mute and sad, until Pashur closed the distance and delivered an astounding blow to Jeremiah’s chest—a hit so hard his heart stopped and his vision went red and buzzing filled his ears. Through a pink haze he saw Pashur’s fist draw back and then drive forward, into his forehead. His head snapped back. He opened his mouth hugely, trying to suck air into his lungs, but he was falling now. His knees had surrendered. As he went down he noted distinctly each punch he received: his throat, his shoulder, his back, his back—but then he had passed into unconsciousness.
Jeremiah awoke at dusk, unable to move his body. He was in a sitting position, yet hanging backward as if he had been trying to lie down. His arms were drawn out before him, his legs widely separated. Wind blew through his hair. The voices of many people surrounded him. And laughter.
Slowly he realized that he was locked in public stocks. He sat forward in order to ease his wrists, then pressed his forehead against the rough wood between them.
Dusk. The night descended. The people left for their houses. Jeremiah was in the north gate of the temple, bowed and alone. Stars dusted the entire sky, and he hated them. Someone passed behind him singing a cheerful song, and he hated it.
His body was a mass of bruises. His bones felt broken.
“Cursed be the day on which I was born,” Jeremiah said, rocking and bumping his skull against the wooden frame of the stocks. “Cursed be the man who announced my birth. Curse him because he did not kill me in the womb.”
Frail Jeremiah, his stomach eaten by his angers and his passions, now raised his face to heaven and cried out: “O Lord, you have deceived me and I was deceived!” His voice echoed in the empty courts of the temple. “You are stronger than I am!” he shouted. “You have prevailed. I never did sit with merrymakers. I always sit alone because your hand is upon me—but now my pain is unceasing, O Lord God! Why was I born? For toil and sorrow and mortal shame?”
Jeremiah was shaking his stocks so violently that his wrists were torn and began to bleed. “You, Lord,” he screamed. He was beside himself. “You are to me like a deceitful stream in the desert, all dried up when I am dying for water!”
But the Lord said, If you return, I will restore you and you will stand before me—if you utter what is precious and not what is worthless.
The next day when Pashur came to release Jeremiah from the stocks, the prophet said to him, “The Lord no longer calls you Pashur, but Terror On Every Side, because he plans to make you a terror to yourself and to all your friends. And this, sir, is what the Lord says:
I will give all Judah into the hand of the king of Babylon. He shall carry them captive to Babylon and slay them with the sword. And you, Pashur, will go into captivity, and there you shall die, and there you shall be buried, you and all to whom you have prophesied falsely.”
So said the Lord. So said Jeremiah, whose stomach was not relieved by that saying nor by any other—an aging, dyspeptic man at forty-seven.
IIN THE SECOND YEAR after Jehoiakim withheld tribute from Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar appeared in the north with troops and chariots as countless as the locusts.
He swarmed south toward Jerusalem, consuming cities as he came. It was the winter of the year. It snowed in Jerusalem. One morning the people awoke to a dazzling whiteness, cold air, a perfect calm, and a king as still as a monument. Someone had killed him and left his body lying outside the gate, face up, frozen, pale, and dusted with snow. The oil in his beautiful beard also had frozen.
Egypt did not leave its borders or try to help the kingdom of Judah. Where Nebuchadnezzar marched he caused a black route in white snow. Soon the armies of Babylon drew the black route around Jerusalem like a noose, and then they sat down and ate and waited.
Desperately the people anointed Jehoiachin, son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah—though no one could go out to tell the nation that it had a new king, because the city was surrounded and under siege.
And Jeremiah the prophet sang a song for the sake of the people. His voice was neither harsh nor whining. He stood in the cold, in the Sheep Gate, singing as if it were a lullaby.
Hear and give ear.
Be not proud.
For the Lord has spoken.
Give glory to the Lord,
before he brings the darkness,
and your two feet stumble
on the twilight mountains.
But if you will not listen
my soul will weep in secret for your pride;
my eyes will weep bitterly,
running with tears
because the Lord’s flock
has been taken captive.
Three months later the spring arrived and the rains came down and the earth was prepared for planting. But there was no planting that year.
Jerusalem surrendered to Nebuchadnezzar.
The young king Jehoiachin was carried away to Babylon. So, too, were many high officials and the leading citizens of the kingdom. Ahikam the son of Shaphan found Jeremiah sitting on the ground in the Fish Gate. All bone: the prophet was but bone and gristle. Ahikam knelt down before him and said, “I have come to say good-bye.”
“Good-bye.”
“Perhaps we will see each other soon?”
“No,” said Jeremiah. “We will never see each other again.”
Ahikam looked sad. “Never?”
“Never. It is the Lord’s desire that I stay in the dying city. But I will write to you.”
Nebuchadnezzar’s troops took all the treasures of the temple and the wealth of the king’s house. They cut in pieces the golden vessels. They led ten thousand people captive, craftsmen, smiths, soldiers, priests, high officers.
Only those who worked the land were left. They stood by the roadside and watched the long departure.
Nebuchadnezzar appointed a governor to oversee this new province of his empire: Zedekiah, twenty-one years old, an uncle to Jehoiachin, the last son of good King Josiah. The City of David was empty now. But its walls were still standing. Jerusalem had that much: walls and streets and roofs and buildings—and the temple of the Lord. The temple was left.
X
FOUR YEARS PASSED, during which Nebuchadnezzar did not come west. In four years the little kingdoms persuaded themselves that they were large again, and they gathered in Jerusalem to talk with Zedekiah about rebellion.
Envoys from the kings of Edom and Moab and Ammon and Tyre and Sidon met in the great room of House of the Forest of Lebanon, now echoing with emptiness. Suddenly the door flew open. Sunlight cut into the room, and in the midst of the light stood the prophet Jeremiah, encumbered by a heavy apparatus. Where the prophet went, there was the Lord. And now, to the nations the Lord said:
It is I who made the earth with its people and beasts, and I give it to whomever I please. I have given these lands to Nebuchadnezzar, my servant—
What was this thing hanging
from the neck and shoulders of the prophet?
Why, it was a wooden yoke! The yoke-bar of an ox! And leather thongs slung low in front of him, as if Jeremiah had the great throat of a mighty ox. But the man was bone and loose flesh, a shining neck and a great round skull. He could scarcely carry the bar across his shoulders.
But the Lord said:
All the nations must serve Nebuchadnezzar! If any nation will not put its neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon, I will punish that nation with the sword, with famine, and with pestilence!
Just as he came, so the prophet departed. He shut the door behind himself, and the envoys of the nations sat staring at Zedekiah.
“Is he a prophet?” they said.
Zedekiah said, “Yes, but there are other prophets who say other things. Hananiah says that the Lord will never forget his covenant with David, that the Lord will save the City of David.”
“Which prophet speaks the truth?”
“I don’t know,” said King Zedekiah. “I don’t know.”
XI
JEREMIAH WROTE A LETTER to Ahikam and to all the exiles with him.
“Build a house in Babylon,” he wrote. “Plant gardens. Take wives, have sons and daughters, and let them marry, too. Seek the welfare of the city where you are. Pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare is your own.
“For thus says the God of Israel:
Do not let your prophets and your diviners deceive you. When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you again and fulfill my promise
and bring you back to this place.
For I know the plans I have for you, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.”
XII
IN THE NINTH year of Zedekiah’s governance, Ammon and Judah joined together and withheld tribute from Babylon. As had so many of their predecessors, they hoped for help from Egypt. Nebuchadnezzar marched his armies to Judah. They came and laid siege to Jerusalem.
The Book of God: The Bible as a Novel Page 44
