its energies on its Tyrian policy. Necho
certainly possessed the sympathies of the Tyrians, who had transferred
their traditional hatred of the Assyrians to the Chaldaeans. He could
also count with equal certainty on the support of a considerable party
in Moab, Ammon, and Edom, as well as among the Nabataeans and the Arabs
of Kedar; but the key of the whole position lay with Judah--that ally
without whom none of Necho's other partisans would venture to declare
openly against their master. The death of Josiah had dealt a fatal blow
to the hopes of the prophets, and even long after the event they could
not recall it without lamenting the fate of this king after their own
heart. "And like unto him," exclaims their chronicler, "was there no
king before him, that turned to the Lord with all his heart and with
all his soul and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses;
neither after him arose there any like him."*

* 2 Kings xxiii. 25.

The events which followed his violent death--the deposition of Jehoahaz,
the establishment and fall of the Egyptian supremacy, the proclamation
of the Chaldaean suzerainty, the degradation of the king and the misery
of the people brought about by the tribute exacted from them by their
foreign masters,--all these revolutions which had succeeded each other
without break or respite had all but ruined the belief in the efficacy
of the reform due to Hilkiah's discovery, and preached by Jeremiah
and his followers. The people saw in these calamities the vengeance of
Jahveh against the presumptuous faction which had overthrown His various
sanctuaries and had attempted to confine His worship to a single temple;
they therefore restored the banished attractions, and set themselves to
sacrifice to strange gods with greater zest than ever.

A like crisis occurred and like party divisions had broken out around
Jehoiakim similar to those at the court of Ahaz and Hezekiah a century
earlier. The populace, the soldiery, and most of the court officials,
in short, all who adhered to the old popular form of religion or were
attracted to strange devotions, hoped to rid themselves of the Chaldaeans
by earthly means, and since Necho declared himself an implacable enemy
of their foe, their principal aim was to come to terms with Egypt.
Jeremiah, on the contrary, and those who remained faithful to the
teaching of the prophets, saw in all that was passing around them
cogent reasons for rejecting world