, sank into the deep mire. Here he
would soon have died of hunger and misery; but the king, feeling some
misgivings in regard to what he had done, lest it might really be a
true prophet of God that he had thus delivered into the hands of his
enemies, inquired what the people had done with their prisoner; and
when he learned that he had been thus, as it were, buried alive, he
immediately sent officers with orders to take him out of the dungeon.
The officers went to the dungeon. They opened the mouth of it. They
had brought ropes with them, to be used for drawing the unhappy
prisoner up, and cloths, also, which he was to fold together and place
under his arms, where the ropes were to pass. These ropes and cloths
they let down into the dungeon, and called upon Jeremiah to place them
properly around his body. Thus they drew him safely up out of the
dismal den.

These cruel persecutions of the faithful prophet were all unavailing
either to silence his voice or to avert the calamities which his
warnings portended. At the appointed time, the judgments which had
been so long predicted came in all their terrible reality. The
Babylonians invaded the land in great force, and encamped about the
city. The siege continued for two years. At the end of that time the
famine became insupportable. Zedekiah, the king, determined to make a
sortie, with as strong a force as he could command, secretly, at
night, in hopes to escape with his own life, and intending to leave
the city to its fate. He succeeded in passing out through the city
gates with his band of followers, and in actually passing the
Babylonian lines; but he had not gone far before his escape was
discovered. He was pursued and taken. The city was then stormed, and,
as usual in such cases, it was given up to plunder and destruction.
Vast numbers of the inhabitants were killed; many more were taken
captive; the principal buildings, both public and private, were
burned; the walls were broken down, and all the public treasures of
the Jews, the gold and silver vessels of the Temple, and a vast
quantity of private plunder, were carried away to Babylon by the
conquerors. All this was seventy years before the conquest of Babylon
by Cyrus.

[Illustration: RAISING JEREMIAH FROM THE DUNGEON.]

Of course, during the time of this captivity, a very considerable
portion of the inhabitants of Judea remained in their native land. The
deportation of a whole people to a foreign land is imposs