THE FALL OF JERUSALEM
B.C. 586
"In that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all nations."
"An end is come, the end is come; it awaketh against thee: behold the end is come."
"Behold yon sterile spot Where now the wandering Arab's tent Flaps in the desert blast; There once old Salem's haughty fane Reared high to heaven its thousand golden domes, And in the blushing face of day Exposed its shameful glory."
- SHELLEY
AFTER the siege had lasted for a year and a half, all but one day, at midnight the besiegers made a breach in the northern city wall. It was a day of terrible remembrance, and throughout the exile it was observed as a solemn fast. Zechariah 8:19
Nebuchadrezzar was no longer in person before the walls. He had other warlike operations and other sieges on hand-the sieges of Tyre, Asekah, and Lachish-as well as Jerusalem. He had therefore established his headquarters at Lachish, and did not superintend the final operations against the city. But now that all had become practically hopeless, and the capture of the rest of Jerusalem was only a matter of a few days more, Zedekiah and his few best surviving princes and soldiers fled by night through the opposite quarter of the city. There was a little unwatched postern between two walls near the king's garden, and through this he and his escort fled, hoping to reach the Arabah, and make good his escape, perhaps to the Wady-el-Arish, which he could reach in five hours, through the wilds beyond the Jordan. The heads of the king and his followers were muffled, and they carried on their shoulders their choicest possessions. But he was betrayed by some of the mean deserters, and pursued by the Chaldaeans. His movements were doubtless impeded by the presence of his harem and his children. His little band of warriors could offer no resistance, and fled in all directions. Zedekiah, his family, and his attendants were taken prisoners, and carried to Riblah to appear before the mighty conqueror. Nebuchadrezzar showed no pity towards one whom he had elevated to the throne, and who had violated his most solemn assurances by intriguing with his enemies. He brought him to trial, and doomed him to witness with his own eyes the massacre of his two sons and of his attendants. After he had endured this anguish worse than death, his eyes were put out, and, bound in double fetters, he was sent to Babylon, where he ended his miserable days. To blind a king deprived him of all hope of recovering the throne, and was therefore in ancient days a common punishment. The LXX adds that he was sent by the Babylonians to grind a mill. This is probably a reminiscence of the blinded Samson. But thus were fulfilled with startling literalness two prophecies which might well have seemed to be contradictory. For Jeremiah had said, - Jeremiah 34:3
"Thine eyes shall behold the eyes of the King of Babylon, and he shall speak with thee mouth to mouth, and thou shalt go to Babylon."
Whereas Ezekiel had said, Ezekiel 12:13 -
"I will bring him to Babylon, the land of the Chaldaeans; yet shall he not see it, though he shall die there."
Henceforth Zedekiah was forgotten, and his place knew him no more. We can only hope that in his blindness and solitude he was happier than he had been on the throne of Judah, and that before death came to end his miseries he found peace with God.
The conqueror did not come to spoil the city. He left that task to three great officers, -Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard, or chief executioner; Nebushasban, the Rabsaris, or chief of the eunuchs; and Nergalshareser, the Rabmag, or chief of the magicians. They took their station by the Middle Gate, and first gave up the city to pillage and massacre. No horror was spared. Psalms 79:2-3 The sepulchers were rifled for treasure; the young Levites were slain in the house of their Sanctuary; women were violated; maidens and hoary-headed men were slain. "Princes were hanged up by the hand, and the faces of elders were dishonored; priest and prophet were slain in the Sanctuary of the Lord," 2 Chronicles 36:17; Lamentations 2:21; Lamentations 5:11-12 till the blood flowed like red wine from the winepress over the desecrated floor. The guilty city drank at the hand of God the dregs of the cup of His fury. It was the final vengeance. "The punishment of thine iniquity is accomplished, O daughter of Zion. He will no more carry thee away into captivity." Lamentations 4:22 And, meanwhile, the little Bedouin principalities were full of savage exultation at the fate of their hereditary foe. Psalms 79:1 This was felt by the Jews as a culmination of their misery, that they became a derision to their enemies. The callous insults hurled at them by the neighboring tribes in their hour of shame awoke that implacable wrath against Gebal and Ammon and Amalek which finds its echo in the Prophets and in the Psalms. After this the devoted capital was given up to destruction. The Temple was plundered. All that remained of its often-rifled splendors was carried away, such as the ancient pillars Jachin and Boaz, the masterpieces of Hiram's art, the caldron, the brazen sea, and all the vessels of gold, of silver, and of brass. Then the walls of the city were dismantled and broken down. The Temple, and the palace, and all the houses of the princes were committed to the flames. As for the principal remaining inhabitants, Seraiah the chief priest, perhaps the grandson of Hilkiah and the grandfather of Ezra, Zephaniah the second priest, the three Levitic doorkeepers, the secretary of war, five of the greatest nobles who "saw the king's face," Comp. Esther 1:14 and sixty of the common people who had been marked out for special punishment, were taken to Riblah, and there massacred by order of Nebuchadrezzar. With these Nebuchadrezzar took away as his prisoners a multitude of the wealthier inhabitants, leaving behind him but the humblest artisans. As the craftsmen and smiths had been deported, these poor people busied themselves in agriculture, as vine-dressers and husbandmen. The existing estates were divided among them; and being few in number, they found the amplest sustenance in treasures of wheat and barley, and oil and honey, and summer fruits, which they kept concealed for safety, as the fellaheen of Palestine do to this day. Jeremiah 41:8; Jeremiah 40:12 According to the historic Chapter s added to the prophecies of Jeremiah, the whole number of captives carried away from Jerusalem by Nebuchadrezzar in the seventh, the eighteenth, and the twenty-third years of his reign were 4,600. The completeness of the desolation might well have caused the heartrending outcry of Psalms 79:1-13. "O God, the heathen are come into Thine inheritance; Thy holy Temple have they defiled; they have made Jerusalem a heap of stones. The dead bodies of Thy servants have they given to be meat unto the fowls of heaven, and the flesh Of Thy saints unto the beasts of the land. Their blood have they shed like water round about Jerusalem; and there was no man to bury them."
Among the remnant of the people was Jeremiah. Nebuzaradan had received from his king the strictest injunctions to treat him honorably; for he had heard from the deserters that he had always opposed the rebellion, and had prophesied the issue of the siege. He was indeed sent in manacles to Ramah; but there Nebuchadnezzar gave him free choice to do exactly as he liked-either to accompany him to Babylon, where he should be well treated and cared for, or to return to Jerusalem, and live where he liked. This was his desire. Nebuchadnezzar therefore dismissed him with food and a present; and he returned. The LXX and Vulgate represent him as sitting weeping over the ruins of Jerusalem, and tradition says that he sought for his lamentations a cave still existing near the Damascus Gate. Of this Scripture knows nothing. But the melancholy prophet was only reserved for further tragedies. He had lived one of the most afflicted of human lives. A man of tender heart and shrinking disposition, he had been called to set his face like a flint against kings, and nobles, and mobs. Worse than this, being himself a prophet and priest, naturally led to sympathize with both, he was the doomed antagonist of both-victim of "one of the strongest of human passions, the hatred of priests against a priest who attacks his own order, the hatred of prophets against a prophet who ventures to have a voice and a will of his own." Even his own family had plotted against his life at humble Anathoth, Jeremiah 11:19-21 and when he retreated to Jerusalem, he found himself at the center of the storm. Now perhaps he hoped for a gleam of sunset peace. But his hopes were disappointed. He had to tread the path of anguish and hatred to the bitter end, as he had trodden it for nearly fifty years of the troubled life which had followed his call in early boyhood.
"But, in the case of Jerusalem," says Dean Stanley, "both its first and second destruction have the peculiar interest of involving the dissolution of a religious dispensation, combined with the agony of an expiring nation, such as no other people has survived, and, by surviving, carried on the living recollection, first of one, and then of the other, for centuries after the first shock was over."