rom Sheba, and sweet cane, the
goodly, from a far country? Your burnt-offerings are not acceptable,
nor your sacrifices pleasant unto me," chap. vi. 20. Towards the end of
Josiah's reign, the approaching judgment of God upon Judah became more
perceptible. The former Asiatic dominion of the Assyrians passed over
entirely to the Chaldeans, whose fresh and youthful strength so much
the more threatened Judah with destruction, that from the Assyrians
they had inherited the enmity to Egypt, on account of which Judah
obtained great importance in their eyes. According to the announcement
of the prophets generally, and of Jeremiah especially, who, at his very
vocation, had it assigned to him as his main task to announce the
calamity from the North, it was by the Chaldeans that the deadly stroke
should be inflicted upon the people implicated in the conflicts of
these hostile powers; but it was the Egyptians who inflicted upon them
the first severe wound. Josiah fell in the battle with Pharaoh Necho.
The people, conscious of guilt, were, by his death, filled with a
fearful expectation of the things that were to come. They had
forebodings that they were now standing at the boundary line where
grace and anger separate (compare remarks on Zech. xii. 11); and these
forebodings were soon converted into bitter certainty by experience.
Jehoiakim ascended the throne, after Jehoahaz or Shall um, had, after a
short reign, been carried away by the Egyptians. He stood to his father
Josiah in just the same relation as did the people to God, in reference
to the mercy which He had offered to them in Josiah. A more glaring
contrast (see its exhibition in chap. xxii.) can hardly be imagined.
Throughout, Jehoiakim shows himself to be entirely destitute not only
of love to God, but also of the fear of God; he furnishes the complete
image of a king whom God had given in anger. He [Pg 366] is a
blood-thirsty tyrant, an exasperated enemy to truth. At the beginning
of his reign, some influence of Josiah's spirit is still seen. The
priests and false prophets, rightly understanding the signs of the
time, came forward with the manifestation of their long restrained
hatred against Jeremiah, in whom they hate their own conscience. They
bring against him a charge of life and death, because he had prophesied
destruction to the city and temple; but the rulers of the people acquit
him, chap. xxvi. This influence, however, soon ceased. The king became
the centre a