t then the Persians and the Medes should
put an end to their servitude, and overthrow the Babylonians; "and that
we shall be dismissed, and return to this land, and rebuild the temple,
and restore Jerusalem." When Jeremiah said this, the greater part
believed him; but the rulers, and those that were wicked, despised him,
as one disordered in his senses. Now he had resolved to go elsewhere,
to his own country, which was called Anathoth, and was twenty furlongs
distant from Jerusalem; [12] and as he was going, one of the rulers met
him, and seized upon him, and accused him falsely, as though he were
going as a deserter to the Babylonians; but Jeremiah said that he
accused him falsely, and added, that he was only going to his own
country; but the other would not believe him, but seized upon him, and
led him away to the rulers, and laid an accusation against him, under
whom he endured all sorts of torments and tortures, and was reserved to
be punished; and this was the condition he was in for some time, while
he suffered what I have already described unjustly.

4. Now in the ninth year of the reign of Zedekiah, on the tenth day of
the tenth month, the king of Babylon made a second expedition against
Jerusalem, and lay before it eighteen months, and besieged it with
the utmost application. There came upon them also two of the greatest
calamities at the same time that Jerusalem was besieged, a famine and
a pestilential distemper, and made great havoc of them. And though the
prophet Jeremiah was in prison, he did not rest, but cried out, and
proclaimed aloud, and exhorted the multitude to open their gates, and
admit the king of Babylon, for that if they did so, they should be
preserved, and their whole families; but if they did not so, they should
be destroyed; and he foretold, that if any one staid in the city, he
should certainly perish by one of these ways,--either be consumed by the
famine, or slain by the enemy's sword; but that if he would flee to
the enemy, he should escape death. Yet did not these rulers who heard
believe him, even when they were in the midst of their sore calamities;
but they came to the king, and in their anger informed him what Jeremiah
had said, and accused him, and complained of the prophet as of a madman,
and one that disheartened their minds, and by the denunciation of
miseries weakened the alacrity of the multitude, who were otherwise
ready to expose themselves to dangers for him, and for their