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To Dawn

Good fiction is about a character with a story. Not a story with a character, which would be journalism, nor a story with incidental characters, that would be history. There are two ways to go about fiction either you reduce the story to anything that strictly pertains to the character which means the character is the undisputed hero or heroine in either a tragic or comical predicament or you let the character roam underneath the Gothic arches of a story that is larger than the protagonists private destiny. History as well has many features of good fiction it is a story from real life supposedly true to the facts. But why are we doing history? The answer commonly given seems selfevident, yet if you think of it, it must be a fallacy to think that history could be educating or prevent us from making the same mistake twice. As every politician will tell you, we always do the same mistake twice! So, why this interest in our past and why this ostentatious disregard for history when a teacher is foisting it upon us at school, which would be the flipside of the same coin? Could it be that even the teacher doesnt know? What are we really doing when we tell stories with some or other person acting the hero or villain? Is it because it projects an image, something we like to identify with or express our disdain could it be a display of our own identity, whether as an individual or as the member of a nation or race? As for Jeremiah, I still feel for the man. To me Jeremiah was a kindred spirit, driven, but a tad too weak willed and impressionable, inquisitive to a point and far too stubborn for his own good, a pawn in the hands of greater forces, without even knowing it.

Like everybody else, Jeremiah lived under the strictures of his culture, a culture, however, with fewer accoutrements and far more settled in its ways than ours. Riding the wave of common cynicism modern man has learned to accept that our civilization moves into a new phase every other two years (yesterday I would have said five, but I was wrong). Back then communication was exceedingly slow and restricted to the small circle of personal acquaintances and friends. People drew comfort from the resilient cycle of famine and bumper crops nothing could ever change. Only the rare individual, often unbeknown to himself, would set changes in motion. Solon of Athens (638 558 BC) issued a bill of rights, Sappho of Lesbos (631 572 BC) became the first poet with a personal voice and the inquisitive Thales of Miletus (624 546 BC) laid the foundation of Euclidian geometry and was the first to experiment with electricity. His prodigious student Anaximander (611 547 BC) reasoned that man, because of his prolonged infancy, could not have originated and survived in his present form, therefore must have sprung from a different species, and that ultimately all life had generated from the oceans. In other words, Anaximander was the first to propose evolution. Nothing of this meant anything to Jeremiah. He never heard of it, he never thought of it. He was a man of means, like Thales. Although he did not lend on interest (Jeremiah 15: 10-21) he had no qualms to exploit a profitable opportunity when it presented itself (Jeremiah 32: 7-12; 39: 11). Thales was a man of the same fiber. Expecting a bumper crop of olives he bought and rented all the oil presses in the land and used his monopoly to make a

killing. But thats where the comparison ends. On balance, Jeremiah was not living a productive life. Where was his contribution to greater knowledge, to the arts, to philosophy? He even didnt raise a family. His only asset was a strong social conscience, but that wasnt all that unusual for the period; the propaganda of the regime in Chaldea abounded in slogans of social justice for the disenfranchised. Later Cyrus, the Prince of Persia picked up on it and a copy of his proclamation still graces the entrance to the United Nations building in New York. The structure of the Book Jeremiah is a florilegium of prophesies loosely rubricated under the headings of famine, (Jeremiah 14: 2-6), exile (Jeremiah 28: 13-17), the House of David (Jeremiah 33: 24-26), worship in the high places (Jeremiah 44: 18), poverty (Jeremiah 5: 4-5). There is little regard for chronology and context. Even before copies of the manuscript reached the postexilic editor, there were lacunae from physical damage. Trying to establish a semblance of chronological coherence, the editors inserted here and there a gloss about the alleged circumstance of a prophecy, which is only adding to the confusion. In Chapter 27 the editor resolutely puts together prophesies from occasions ten years apart. Jeremiahs prayer in chapter 32, spoken in the first person, is ending in a lacuna that has resisted the best intentions of Ezras editorial team to fill in grafts from other parts of the manuscript (Jeremiah 32: 17-23). After Baruch or an anonymous refugee had taken the book to the rabbis in Babylon, the text went through at least two more editions, the first edition from the 560s BC, was followed by a more thorough overhaul from sometime after 458

BC. What makes Jeremiahs book so remarkable, however, is the surprisingly rich referential material surrounding it. The compilations of Herodotus and Josephus from sources lost to us supplement many of the original, although fragmentary cuneiform chronicles of Assyria and Chaldea; there are excavated epigraphs and the still existing correspondence of Hebrew officials written on potshards. One of these correspondents was the very man who held Jeremiah captive in Lachish; he mentions the prisoner by name. All these materials fall neatly in sync with Jeremiahs book. A rare coincidence! It has allowed us to establish the context of the prophet Hananiahs announcement, apparently out of the blue, that the exiles shall be repatriated, with which Jeremiah initially seemed inclined to agree. Why? Because both prophets were privy to a piece of information the Bible in its typical fashion prefers not to impart on us. Facts can be so misleading, said Hauptsturmfhrer Landa in his interrogation, but rumors always lead to somewhere, and the simple fact here was, King Nebuchadnezzars military had staged a coup. We know about this mutiny in some detail. King Nebuchadnezzar had assembled his troops for a military exercise. Some of his generals and God knows who in the kings family thought to take this opportunity and assassinate their king, making it look like an accident. Nebuchadnezzar, however, the text says, by accident, absented himself and his loyal guards from the main body of his army

during a march at nighttime. Against their best intentions, the would-be assassins couldnt find him. But they did see him four days later cantering into the camp on horseback, together with his guards and the executioner. By then he was fully informed of their plot and knew who to single out and make an example of him; the entire army stood by and watched. Given the extend of the purges and show trials in the follow-up, Hananiah and his clique could very well have been involved, albeit from a distance. Only after Jeremiahs handler the Chaldean collaborator Baruch had received information of the mutinys collapse, his asset came out with the iron yoke and conveyed a death threat to his antagonist. A word of thanks: Without the editorial scholarship that has gone into the small print of the middle column in the Oxford Bible, it would not have been possible for me to establish the timeline of the events and synchronize it with the other sources accessible to me. All things considered, Jeremiah seems to be the best-documented and most authentic character in the entire Bible, and that includes the sorry appendix, the socalled New Testament. michael sympson

Run through the streets of Jerusalem and seek in the public places if you can find a man who is seeking the truth. And though they say Yahweh lives, surely they swear falsely. Jeremiah 5: 1-2

rophesy ran in his family for centuries, but only Hilkiah rose to the station of the high priest in Solomons temple the man who once a year drew a veil over his face and with one hand feeling his way along the wall, entered the cobwebbed Holiest of Holies for a very personal conversation with God. We know two of his sons by name. When Gemariah, came home with hay-stalks still sticking to his hair, his younger brother could feel a sudden chill in the air when his father, without raising his voice, asked for the girls name. But Gemariah said he didnt know. His younger brother was more of an introvert. The high priest groomed him to become his successor. In this Hilkiah would fail. Jeremiah (643 560 BC) grew up in Anathoth, a little town in the territory of Benjamin, just a brisk hours walk to the northeast of Jerusalem. He was four or five and sitting sideways on the parapet of the roof garden with a view on the sprawling estates of the family, when his nanny pointed to a quickly approaching cloud of dust; it announced the arrival of a mounted messenger. He came from Jerusalem and what he had to say he whispered into the ear of Jeremiahs father.

The boy couldnt hear what was said; yet the expression on his fathers face troubled him. We write the year 639 BC; the servants of King Amon had conspired against him and slew the king in his own house (II Kings 21: 23-24) and yet the high priest received this news with a smile. One step short of joining the quilt of Assyrian magistracies encircling the Hebrews Namath, Byblos, Damascus, Sidon, Tyre, Haran, Megiddo, Samaria and Ashdod the state of Judah ransomed a precarious token independence with a hefty tribute to the Assyrians. Only towards the wastelands west of the Jordan, the territories of Amman, Moab and Edom maintained a genuine autonomy; Assyria wasnt interested. The grandees of Judah routinely married their daughters into the royal harem in Jerusalem. Their princes and bastards filled with seed royal positions at court and in the guards, even in the temple. This incestuous network of kinsmen was meant to create a united front against any opposition to the House of David. It did, however, not protect against the strife between factions within the House and at the board of advisors. For the boys in the high priests family it was a proud tradition that the House of David owed its existence to a distant ancestor of their own blood: the prophet Abiathar. Abiathar had provided the fugitive David with food and shelter when it was dangerous to do so (I Samuel 22: 21-23). As his reward he received the estates of Anathoth and became a priest at the Ark.

The estates remained a fief of the family, even when the body of the fair damsel Abishag the Shunammite could no longer keep King David warm (1 Kings 1: 4) and the aged Abiathar committed the grievous blunder of punting the wrong horse in the race for succession. He expected the legitimate prince to take the place of King David. Instead Solomon, the son of a Hittite concubine, seized the throne in a last minute coup and became king (I Kings 1: 25). Abiathar was fortunate. The new regime graciously allowed him to retreat to his own estates albeit under house arrest (I Kings 2: 26-27). In this age of unbridled tyranny, you as a commoner were reduced to the squeak of a mouse and expected to grovel before the bigwigs as your slave, your servant, your handmaiden (J. L. Starkey, The Ostraca of Lachish). There was only one source of potential opposition to the throne: itinerant prophets with no mandate from the authorities, but carrying vials of oil in their bundles, and not just for frying an omelet. Should a pretender rise against the throne, his bid was usually assisted by one of these popular demagogues, who poured oil over his head with the promise of divine sanction. It was a matter of mutual interest. In order for such freelance prophet to muster the temerity of announcing the word of the Lord came also unto me, he needed protection or at least a safe place to hide preferably somewhere across the border. Nevertheless, at any given time, prophets by the hundreds, raised the volume in shouting matches with

disagreeing colleagues (II Chronicles 18: 5). It was not easy to stand out against this level of noise. Prophesying became something of a freak show. The aristocratic Isaiah, who in an official function was a speaker of the regime, drew attention on himself with indecent exposure in public (Isaiah 20: 2) a bit risqu in a country where uncovering ones nakedness was prosecuted as a felony (Exodus 20: 26, 28: 42; Levi 18: 619). And the screwy Ezekiel even made it a habit of baking his bread over a fire from his own dung and walk through walls when he could have taken the open door (Ezekiel 4: 12ff). The alleged popularity of the House of David had been a mere myth from the outset and King Solomon as well was not all that mighty as the biblical record is telling us. How else could the prophet Ahijah have mustered the courage to move against the dynasty and anoint Jeroboam as king over ten of the twelve Hebrew tribes (I Kings 11: 29-37), if he didnt have the support of popular sentiment? It established the prosperous House of Omri in Israel and Samaria, leaving the ageing king of Judah reduced to the state of a petty prince: a dirty old man dictating garrulous letters to his overlord in Egypt while ogling the tits and pretty faces in an amply stocked harem. But even a petty prince can hatch a scheme. In 842 BC, another prophet, Elisha, took his cue from Jerusalem and anointed a rebel against the House of Omri. Elishas protge went on to massacre the ruling house to the last man and woman (II Kings 9: 12-37; 10: 1-14).

In the seclusion of Anathoth, young Jeremiah pulled from his fathers library every scrap of the prophets ever put in writing. His favorite story was the legend of the prophet Elijahs personal encounter with God. A great and strong wind had rent the mountains, and broke to pieces the rocks, but He was not in the wind, or in the earthquake after the wind, or in the fire after the earthquake. Then there was a sudden silence and Elijah pulled a veil over his face. A still small voice spoke to him (I Kings 19: 11-13). Rocking back and forth Jeremiah would sit in the heat of noon and strain his inner ear for a whisper of this voice from beyond. When we compare their work, we realize that the Samarian prophet Hosea (765 725 BC) had made an impression on the young Jeremiah. The phrasing and heady mix of uninhibited metaphor in Hoseas uncouth fulminations against his own wife struck a chord with the inexperienced teenager. The woman, we are told, had a colorful past and Hosea promised her for the whoredom of her tits to strip her naked and kick her into the wilderness as in the day she was born (Hosea 2: 3). The young Jeremiah was resolved to never take a wife, nor have sons or daughters (Jeremiah 16: 2) and throughout his life we hear of not a single relationship with a woman. Perhaps his true feelings made him look somewhere else entirely. The inexperienced teenager never realized that Hosea was a man acquainted with jealousy who suffered from frequent bouts of a frustrated libido. To the young

Jeremiah the uninhibited imagery of whoredom was a purely verbal exercise; rhetorical dope that offered some relief from the teasing his childhood peers used to inflict on him (Jeremiah 12: 6). His father, the guide of his youth, (Jeremiah 3: 5), thought the time had come to prepare his boy for the tasks ahead and instruct Jeremiah in the history and politics of his country. But Hilkiah was not always sure what to make of the boys questions. When for instance Jeremiah asked about the justice in the confrontation between Judahs good king Amaziah, who did right in the eyes of the Lord (II Kings 13: 25), and the baddy in this story, Israels king Jehoash (801 786 BC) who did evil in the eyes of Yahweh (II Kings 13: 11). Was it not wickedness that had prevailed? The good king was taken captive, his daughters carried away, and the treasures pilfered from the temple (II Kings 14: 8-14). The high priest shrugged off the query. Did the Lord not avenge his servant? Did the Assyrians not conquer Samaria? Were the defenders not impaled alive, with their limbs torn off (II Kings 17: 1-6, 24; 18: 7-9), eventually? Too late for King Amaziah and for his daughters, Jeremiah thought; what kind of justice was this anyway, to wipe out innocents in retribution for the sins of their fathers? Was Yahweh not supposed to be the God of the Hebrews? And if so, how could he be so callous and promote a stinking foreigner, the Assyrian king Sargon II (722 705 BC), as the rod of his indignation

(Isaiah 10: 6) against his own people?

With a shrug the high priest explained to Jeremiah that it was this very incident, which had set Judahs policy makers on a course to voluntarily approach Assyria. Since the days of King Solomon the regime in Jerusalem had sought security in an alliance with Egypt (I Kings 3: 1). And should Jerusalem forget, Egypt would send a reminder (I Kings 14: 25). But when in 738 BC the Assyrians invaded Israel and imposed heavy tributes, King Menahem of Israel made gestures to recover his losses from his neighbor in the south. Egypt, Judahs traditional protector, no longer pulled her customary weight in the region, so in 732 BC Judahs king Ahaz sent envoys to the King of Assyria, saying, I am your servant and your son, come up, and save me out of the hands of the king of Syria and the king of Israel, which rise up against me. And Ahaz took the silver and gold from the temple and the treasures of the king's house, and sent it for a present to the king of Assyria. And the king of Assyria listened to him and went up against Damascus, and took it. And king Ahaz went to Damascus to meet Tiglathpileser king of Assyria (II Kings 16: 7-10). It was an admission of Judahs dependency and added another stone to the mounting difficulties of Israel. So, in 725 BC, in an act of desperation or lured by promises that could never be kept, the regime in Samaria gave in to advances from Egyptian diplomats.

The king of Israel suspended his tributes to Assyria and signed a treaty with Egypt. A smart move by the Egyptians, a bad idea for Israel! The pharaohs had fallen on hard times and frantically raised obstacles to the military buildup of Assyria. Three years after signing the treaty, Samaria fell to the Assyrians, and the conqueror carried more than twenty-seven thousand Israelites into exile (II Kings 17: 1-6, 24; 18: 7, 9). During the campaign Assyrias king Shalmaneser V passed away and in the heart of Mesopotamia a new player perhaps with a little encouragement from Egypt entered the scene. In 721 BC Chaldea seceded from the Assyrian empire. The Assyrians broke up operations in Palestine immediately. Refugees from Samaria began flooding in to the kingdom of Judah. They had a hard time forgetting that their brothers in the South had aided the enemy. Many of the new arrivals were of the skilled and educated and looked down on the uncouth rednecks in the South. It was this infusion of fresh blood and thrift that Judahs king Hezekiah (715 687 BC) so urgently needed to restore wealth and prosperity for his impoverished domains (II Chronicles 2: 32). For the first time Chaldea, struggling to survive the Assyrian reprisals, stretched out her feelers to Palestine. His advisors on the council and the prophet Isaiah stood by and frowned, but King Hezekiah saw no harm in volunteering information about his finances and his military capabilities to the Chaldean

delegates (II Kings 20: 12-13, 14-18); it did preserve the peace, didnt it? Another delegation arrived at Jerusalem, this time from Egypt. The ebony-black Ethiopian Tirhakah and his African warriors had seized the throne of the pharaohs in 689 BC (II Kings 19: 9). His envoys came to the King of Judah with exactly the same questionnaire as the Chaldeans. In the capital of Assyria, King Hezekiahs communications with Chaldea and Egypt didnt pass unnoticed. Despite of Hezekiahs appeasing advances on the tribute (II Kings 18: 14-16), King Sennacherib of Assyria (704 681 BC) laid siege to Jerusalem. Surprisingly the siege was lifted within days. Isaiah says, because the Assyrian ruler heard a rumor, and returned to his own land (Isaiah 37: 7). What kind of rumor that was we can only guess: on his return to Nineveh his own sons assassinated King Sennacherib when he entered the temple to worship before an image of himself. A different version speaks of some kind of catastrophe during the siege, that, literally over night, had smote in the camp of the Assyrians, one hundred and eighty-five thousand: and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses (Isaiah 37: 36-38). The figure is as ludicrous as the rising corpses: 180,000 men was the total of Assyrias standing reserves, from which the Assyrians in any one of their campaigns never levied more than 50,000 troops. It was a negotiated withdrawal and it was costly. The hapless King Hezekiah, whose militia and elite troops had deserted him, could only watch his daugh-

ters, concubines and musicians, male and female, been carried away into Assyrian captivity. He lost territory and was forced to dismantle his fortresses and on top of it continued paying an impossibly exorbitant tribute to be delivered annually: thirty talents of gold, eight hundred talents of silver, precious stones, antimony, couches inlaid with ivory, elephant hides, ebony- and boxwood not to mention the personal messenger King Hezekiah was expected to send as his proxy in order to deliver the tribute and to do obeisance as a slave (James B. Pritchard, The Ancient Near East, Princeton UP 1958, pp.200-201). An absolutely crippling burden if the figures can be trusted, which is always a problem with the old sources. In 671 BC, the Assyrian armies invaded and occupied Egypt. Hezekiahs only son and successor, King Manasse (687 642 BC) apparently managed to improve relations with Assyria, yet this did not prevent his detention in the Assyrian capital for arrears in the tribute. After years of cruel treatment he returned to his country (II Chronicles 33: 11-13) and still lived to see the Assyrians voluntary withdrawal from Egypt in 652 BC. The occupation had tied up too many of Assyrias troops, stretching them thin elsewhere. It was cheaper and less odious to the natives to entrust a puppet pharaoh with the Assyrian interests on the Nile. In Judah, a similar policy moved the Assyrians to support Manasses son, King Amon (641 639 BC). Yet after the retreat of the Assyrian armies a cabal

of courtiers took it as the sign from heaven to rid Judah of this patsy to a foreign power and thats why Jeremiah saw the death of a king bring a smile to his fathers face. Soon enough the smile faded away as Assyrias lobby at the royal court fomented open rebellion. Everywhere in Judah the people of the land dragged officials and even princes of the royal blood down from their mounts and slew all them that had conspired against King Amon (II Kings, 21: 23). To restore public order and that soon became critical nobody, not even the Assyrian sympathizers, would have wanted to give the foreign power a pretext to intervene. In the meantime it was anarchy. Because of the high priests annual communications with the numinous, the superstitious mob refrained from attacking him, but only just. Seeking safety in numbers, a clique of likeminded courtiers, Ahikam, Achbor, Shaphan the scribe, and Asahiah closed ranks around Hilkiah and the chamberlains wife, the sorceress pardon: prophetess Huldah (II Kings 22: 14), a woman of great influence. Could it be this was the group, which had engineered the assassination of King Amon in the first place? We shall never know, yet the slow pace of this cabal to gain or regain a foothold on the royal board is suggestive of not just a few liabilities in need of getting ironed out. Only after twelve more years (sic!), which is by 624 BC, Hilkiahs cabal finally gained full control

over foreign policies and the treasury (II Kings 22: 7). As it was, the rebellion in the country as well as Assyrias readiness to act on the slightest provocation could only be appeased if a legitimate prince from the same royal house that hitherto had served the Assyrians so well acceded to the throne (II Chronicles 34: 33). The choice fell on a mere boy of nine years. His mother, Jedidah, was a blood relative and Hilkiah devoted all his energies to the grooming of the royal teenager. No surprise then, when King Josiah (648 609 BC) is on record for doing what was right in the sight of the Lord (II Kings 22: 2), a duty, which also required him to breed like a rabbit. And breed he did; except for his brother Zedekiah, all the remaining kings of Judah were sons of Josiah. For now the young Jeremiah breathed a sigh of relief. The civil war had abated and his father was far too busy with his affairs in Jerusalem to make life difficult for his son here in Anathoth. The teenager used his freedom to go out and visit the mud-hovels of the sharecroppers and shepherds. His older brother had told Jeremiah the going rate for a commoners daughter fifteen pieces of silver, and an homer of barley yet it was not the girls that interested him. He rather sat at the fire of a farmhand and watched him burn incense to the Queen of Heaven, and pour out drink offerings to her. The man explained it was what their forebears had been doing since times immemorial, even our kings, and our princes (Jeremiah 44: 18). Inundated up to their eyeballs with

generation-old debts, the poor in Judah neither had an inheritance to turn it to the strangers, nor held a title to the house from which they suffered eviction (Jeremiah, Lamentations). Many lived in bondage, not under the yoke of aliens but enslaved by their own people. They were like orphans and fatherless and found bread for their hunger, by laboring without rest for the foreigner (Jeremiah 34: 9-11). Their empty gaze scanned the skies for the coming and going of the stork, the traditional sign of a change in the seasons in a country of oppressive heat at day and freezing cold at night. Theirs was a life of hardship, close to the needs as the Roman poet Virgil has put it (Virgil, Georgics), finding refreshment only in an amorphous mix of fertility cult and hero-worship. The prophet Isaiah used to wrinkle his aristocratic nose over the ways of humble folks: They wank themselves into a frenzy he says, and copulate under every green tree. He even accused them of slaying their children under the rocks and pour drink offerings to the smooth stones of the stream (Isaiah 57: 5-6). Jeremiah on the other hand was barely a teenager and still growing into the mold of his station; for him it was a thrill to listen to the peoples folklore. On the rare weekend, when his father stayed over in Anathoth, Jeremiah gave the high priest a taste of the tales hed picked up from the peasants. He retold the story of Tehom, the scaly dragon of the primordial water-world (Genesis 1: 2). Yahweh assailed her in his chariot of fire and slew the monster.

After which the Elohim, the hosts of Heaven, stretched out the skies like a tent cloth and from Tehoms carcass shaped the Sun, the Moon and the stars (Psalms 74: 14-15; 89: 9-10; Isaiah 51: 9-10). (A story very similar to the creation myth of the Vikings.) The high priest shook his head. Hilkiah was not given to exploring the mysteries of the Universe and spooled off the usual sales pitch: Every man is brutish in his knowledge and confounded by the graven image, he said, with the axe they cut a tree, deck it out with silver and gold; fasten it with nails. It is a workmans handiwork, it doesnt speak and they carry it on their shoulders, because it will not walk (Jeremiah 10: 3-5). His son was not so sure. Images were symbols, not the object of worship, right? And what does brutish mean anyway? Anthropomorphic? Well, what use is there for a god if he doesnt think, feel and communicate like a human? Jeremiah recalled what a traveling merchant from Babylon once had told him about the temple of Marduk. The inner sanctum was reputed to contain nothing else but an empty couch (Herodotus Clio, 181-182). Was this really so different to the unfurnished Holiest of Holies in Solomons temple? The man who should have known the answer to that, sat right before him, but Hilkiah didnt say a word. Except for him and a few extremists, there was nobody in Judahs society who did not prostrate to Yahweh in conjunction with other, slightly more visi-

ble deities. In Jerusalem, Tammuz, and his mother, the queen of heaven, Ashtoreth (Ezekiel 8: 14) occupied mansions on the same premises as Yahwehs male prostitutes (II Kings 23: 7). A thousand years later, in the 5th century AD, a Christian traveler reported that the women of Bethlehem yes that Bethlehem still carried every year a pole adorned with wreaths to the next river and sent it afloat, weeping and beating their bared breasts until from the distance a young man in the garb of a shepherd would announce the arrival of the resurrected god and then disappear amidst the grazing herds (Jerome Letters). Like their neighbors, the people in Judah were steeped in their traditional polytheism with shrines and high places dotting the countryside, some of them going way back to the days of the conquest (2 Kings 18: 4) preceding even the cult center in Shiloh, now on Assyrian territory, the place where Yahweh had set his name at first (Jeremiah 7: 12). Shiloh was once the shrine at which the chiefs of the Hebrews tribal confederacy used to gather. The belief was, that at Shiloh Yahweh, in a kind of symmetry to the tribal council convened with his seventy siblings (I Kings 22: 19-22; Psalms 82: 1-6). Initially just a late arrival to his father, El, the creator of the world, Yahweh rose from the obscurity of a tribal idol, perhaps not even indigenous to the Hebrews (Numbers 31: 7-11), and gradually assumed a profile comparable to the Nordic Thor. Yet this was just the beginning. One can only

wonder what it must have taken him not only to obliterate the memories of his sixty-nine siblings but even the strutting bull himself, his own father, and then, in blatant violation of a whole wad of his own commandments marry his own mother Asherah, she who gives birth to the gods (Zeev Herzog, Deconstructing the Walls of Jericho: biblical myth and archaeological reality. 2001, Prometheus 4: 72-93). It might explain the stories of simmering blood feuds between the tribes in the Book of Judges, which at times could flare up in open warfare and even genocide (Judges 21: 17-21). After the holy incest, Yahwehs new consort remained a goddess of great influence. Asherahs four hundred prophets dined at the table of Israels Queen Jezebel (I Kings 18: 19) and across the border, the mother of King Asa of Judah was her priestess (I Kings 15: 13). In 627 BC the moment came the young Jeremiah had been waiting for: the high priest Hilkiah had sent his son a missive to pack his bundle and meet him in Jerusalem. The discontent between three claimants to the imperial throne had plunged Assyria into civil war. The chronicle reads like a fairytale from the Arabian Nights. The youngest of the contenders was initially banished from the scene yet returned in triumph and established his rule with magnanimity, even paid for the hotel bills of his exiled opponents. For the leader of the Chaldean separatists, Prince Nabopolassar of Uruk (625 605 BC), the episode was a godsend. The Assyrian regime was too occupied with its own affairs to pay any attention. The high priest Hilkiah, probably

in communication with Nabopolassar, thought the time had come for a reshuffle of the deck. His son was to deliver the opening salvo. With a cocky and well-coached performance, Jeremiah, still only fifteen, addressed the public, introducing himself and his credentials: The word of God came to me, saying, before I formed you in the belly I knew you, and I ordained you a prophet to the nations. Then said I, ah, my Lord! How can I speak: I am a child. But the Lord said to me, dont say you are a child; you shall go where I send you and speak what I command you to say. Then Yahweh put forth his hand and touched my lips and said behold my words are in your mouth. This day I have set you over nations and kingdoms, to root out, and to destroy, to build and to plant (Jeremiah 1: 5-10). We use to think of a prophet as somebody foretelling the future. That was not the way of the ancients. For a glimpse at what the immortals held hidden in their lap, they would go to their local shrine, pay the priest a fee and ask for an omen (I Samuel 9: 9; 14: 35-46, 15: 11, 23). Prophets on the other hand, as in the tale of Balaams Ass (Numbers 22), received their commissions for casting spells and pronounce blessings oldfashioned sorcery under a different name. Elijah the Tishbite was a veritable Merlin in search for his King Arthur (I Kings 17, 18, 19, 21; II Kings 1, 2), but all he had to work with was King Ahab (874 853 BC). A prophet announced what shall happen, not what will happen. It was meant to be not so much a prognosis, than an act of intervention.

The commission Ezekiel received from the Chaldean ruler is a classic example. In the year 589 BC Ezekiel was asked to put a curse on the Phoenician city of Tyre. For some reason this city had always been the favorite object for curses by aspiring apprentice prophets, perhaps because it proved so unyielding to their magic. Ezekiel was no exception: Behold, I shall bring Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, the king of kings, against Tyre, with horses and chariots, and with many soldiers, he said, and continued with a ringing delivery: He shall set up a siege and raise a roof of shields against you. He shall direct his battering rams against your walls, and with his axes he shall break down your towers. He shall enter your gates as a city that has been breached and with your mighty pillars fallen to the ground. The hoofs of his horses shall trample your streets and he shall kill your people with the sword, plunder your riches, loot your merchandise and destroy your pleasant houses. Your stones and timber shall be cast into the midst of the waters, and the music of your songs, and the sound of your lyres shall be heard no more. I shall make you a barren rock. You shall become a place for the lonely fisherman and never be rebuilt, for I am the Lord; I have spoken, says the Lord God (Ezekiel 26: 7-14). The siege went on for sixteen years; Ezekiel himself would later admit that the city never fell. In Jerusalem the son of Hilkiah was appointed to speak for the regime in an official capacity; he had the priesthood by his side and Assyria seemed in decline. This made it easy for him to gain and sustain his reputation as a mighty prophet. The young man had every-

thing going for him, his standing opened doors to the royal court and he became friends with Prince Zedekiah, the kings brother. Jeremiah wouldnt know better at the time, but the royal court in Jerusalem was a place of modest opulence! Despite of being the capital of Judah and despite of a history as religious center even before King David incurred the disapproval of his wife for dancing naked in the streets, Jerusalem could only be reached by exiting from the main road between Egypt and Syria. The traveler then trekked through rough terrain for a whole day. Cut off from the seaboard and sidelined by the arteries of trade, Jerusalem represented little more than a mountain fortress overseeing a tightly packed suburban area the Ophiel on a narrow mountain ledge stretching west. The settlement sheltered barely nine thousand people; the Chaldean deportation figures allow for a realistic estimate (Jeremiah 52: 28-30). During the festivals this number could swell to twenty thousand, with the visitors pitching tents outside of the gate. Even by the standards of the day, this rustic seat of bureaucrats and royal guards was a rather unremarkable town. By comparison, the excavations of ancient Samaria reveal a thriving metropolis of merchants with thirtyfive thousand houses clustering next to the international highways. King Josiah set out to give Jerusalem a facelift and to repair and refurbish King Solomons temple. The populace was told of an ancient book pulled out

from underneath the debris of the crumbling temple, where it had allegedly lain hidden for centuries. The book was supposed to be the autobiography of Moses, written in a script that wasnt yet invented when the Hebrews had left Egypt. A small detail, not to mention the occasional reference to events in Judges and Kings, which the real Moses could not have known, but who was there to notice? Especially since the prophetess Huldah was backing the pious fraud with her prestige (II Kings 22: 7-14). Biblical scholars identify this novelistic exercise with the book Deuteronomy; the rabbis in Ezras inspired team have built the entire Torah around this book if I am not mistaken, of the oldest sections in the Jewish Bible, Judges, Prophets, the Books of Kings, this is the first mentioning of Moses. King Josiahs propaganda machine staged the discovery in an opulent ceremony, it seemed the pinnacle of Jeremiahs public career. He was still only in his twenties, a cerebral figure, standing tall before his audience although uncomfortable with his voice, a key too high he felt, lacking in sonority. He announced to the men of Judah, and to the denizens of Jerusalem, that the God of Israel says: cursed be the man that does not obey the words of this covenant. You shall be my people, and I will be your God, that I may perform the oath which I have sworn to your fathers, to give them a land flowing with milk and honey, as it is this day. And in a pronounced way the king turned and looked at the prophet, as if answering on behalf of his people: So be it, oh Lord (Jeremiah 11: 2-5). Yet what

seemed a good idea at the time a written agreement with Yahweh in return for his help was to haunt the custodians of the faith when the divine partner failed to deliver. It compelled the rabbis to interpret and revise the received text, only to reinterpret their own interpretations later on. They still keep doing this. King Josiahs ambitious building program was running out of funds. The regime therefore turned its attention to the shrines in the country. For centuries, the high places had hoarded valuable offerings. In the name of religious reform, the kings troopers vandalized the rural shrines, murdered their priests and desecrated ancient tombs, crushing every form of resistance (II Kings 23: 5-16). The intimidated populace was made to watch the temple prostitutes burn alive, their valuables auctioned off (II Kings 23: 6). If they didnt know already, the politicians in Hilkiahs circle realized they had groomed a monster with nothing but Huldahs pronouncements standing between them and the zeal of the King (Josephus, Antiquities X, 4: 2). It made Josiahs regime odious, perhaps not with the bigoted hagiographers of posterity, but certainly with the people who had to live through his rule. There werent deportations yet, but people left the country in droves, joining the refugees from Samaria. In the capital cities of Mesopotamia emerged a new cosmopolitan Jewry most of them hostile to the House of David in Jerusalem. Their spiritual leaders condemned the House of

David and denounced monarchy as an infringement on Yahwehs dominion: A king, they said, will take the sons of the people, and appoint them for himself, his chariots, and his horsemen. He will appoint captains over the people and levy their labor to reap the kings harvest, forge the kings armor and build his chariots. Kings will take our daughters to be confectionaries, cooks and bakers, and take the best from our fields, vineyards and olive groves and give it to their servants (I Samuel 8: 7, 11-18). The people involving themselves in this broil of testosterone and casuistic wit barely paid any attention to what should have been alarming news of the first order: that the Chaldean separatist Nabopolassar had occupied the ancient city of Babylon and made it the capital of his brand-new empire. Babylon was the largest and richest city on the planet, multilingual, the great emporium at the end of the caravan trail from India, stock exchange of the known world perhaps even the first of its kind and royal residence: a true metropolis and a mighty fortress. In 614 BC, Chaldea signed a pact with the Medes and, two years later, Assyrias capital Nineveh fell to the coalition and was destroyed. The Assyrians took it on the chin and without delay the dynasty reconstituted itself in Harran, which, however, was captured as well, just three years afterwards. The Assyrian forces in the field remained inexorable. Together with his Egyptian associate, the Assyrian marshal AshurUballit II marched to regain Harran, creating in his wake a political vacuum in Palestine. King Josiah

seized the moment with high hopes to reunite the two Hebrew territories and restore the fortunes of the House of David. He set out on a sortie towards Bethel across the border of Samaria (II Kings 23: 15). It seemed the end game, but Jeremiahs announcement and Yahweh said to me, Israel has redeemed herself. Go and proclaim to the north: return, you backsliding Israel! I will not keep my anger for ever (Jeremiah 23: 13) was premature. In all haste, King Josiah terminated his crusade before the retreating forces of Egypt and Assyria could catch up with him. Although defeated again, the Assyrians took up positions in the Syrian Desert to recuperate and in the meantime made Carchemish the new capital. It wasnt over yet. Giving in to overtures from Babylon, a new pharaoh, Necho, thought it safe to renounce his coalition with Assyria and in 608 BC signed an agreement to march against Carchemish as the southern arm of a pincer movement, while the Chaldean forces bore down from the North. Facing the prospect of a simultaneous attack, Assyria needed to slow down the Egyptian army to face one attacker at a time. Assyrias diplomats arrived in Jerusalem with one last bargaining chip: the province of Samaria. Judah and Samaria would be reunited again under the House of David! The days of King Solomon in his glory would return. The offer was received with jubilation: Again I will

build you, o virgin of Israel, you shall again be adorned and go forth in merry dances. You shall plant vines upon the mountains of Samaria, and the watchmen upon the mount Ephraim shall cry, arise and let us go to Zion. Behold, I will gather them from the North Country and the coasts of the earth, even the blind and the lame, the women and her that travails with child. I let them walk by the rivers in a straight way and they shall not stumble: for I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn (Jeremiah 31: 1-9). It was not to be; and how could it? We dont know whether Hilkiah lived to see his politics come to fruition the records no longer mention him yet without the high priest, the politicians on the kings advisory board could only lose leverage on a monarch who was never conspicuous for his endowment with brains. King Josiah refused to see that he was the mere pawn in the game of a foreign power in decline. Instead, in 606 BC, when Pharaoh Necho went up against the king of Assyria to the river Euphrates, King Josiah went against him (II Kings 23: 29). The pharaoh gave fair warning and sent ambassadors saying, what have I to do with you, king of Judah? I come not against you this day (II Chronicles 35: 21). King Josiah would not listen, received a fatal wound in battle and his servants carried him dead from Megiddo. Within a single day Egypt regained her traditional influence over the region and Jeremiah had become the mouthpiece for a lost cause. Heartbroken, he lamented: We looked for peace and a time of health but nothing good came out of it (Jeremiah 8: 15).

In Jerusalem, Josiahs oldest son acceded to the throne, yet Pharaoh Necho had other plans. He deported Judahs king to Egypt, where he died in exile (Jeremiah 22: 11-12), and in his stead another son of Josiah King Eliakim was put in charge to exact the silver and the gold of the people, a hundred talents of silver, and one talent of gold (II Kings 23:7 33-37). Feeling his isolation, Jeremiah came to the realization that Prophets prophesy falsely and priests rule by their own means and my people love to have it so. Woe on us! The day goes away and the shadows lengthen (Jeremiah 5: 31; 6: 4). He left Jerusalem and the royal court. He again mingled with the lowly and disenfranchised whose skin was black like an oven. King Eliakims taskmasters levied the undernourished little ones from their emaciated mothers in the mud hovels for hard labor in the mines; four- and five-year-old midgets, maggotlike crawling through the claustrophobic shafts. They looked up to a swinging basket of food lowered down only in exchange for a basket of ore going up. No ore, no food. The familiar sight of children gather wood, and the fathers kindle fire, and the women knead their pathetic little cakes to Ashtoreth, the queen of heaven, and pour drink offerings (Jeremiah 7: 18) brought tears to his eyes. Surely, he said, these are poor; they are foolish. I will go to the great men and speak to them (Jeremiah 5: 45). Yet, in the eyes of his peers, Jeremiah was merely putting himself on the wrong side of the fence; and he was outraged about their indifference: Wicked men:

laying in wait to set a trap and catch you. As a cage is full of birds so are their houses full of deceit: thats how they became great and rich. They put on fat, they shine, and damn them, they ignore the rights of the orphans and needy, and yet they prosper, troop in into the brothels every day and like horses lift their heads from their feed in the morning and neigh after the neighbors wife (Jeremiah 5: 7-8, 27-28). Jeremiah had his first run-in with the law. On the day of King Josiahs funeral he positioned himself at the center of the temples court and screamed that the Lord shall make this house as desolate as Shiloh, and this city a curse to all nations on earth (Jeremiah 26: 6). Considering our present situation in the Middle East, he got that spot on, but in 606 BC nobody cared to listen. A riot broke out. Jeremiah had no choice but throw himself at the mercy of the kings guards. Not something he would have wanted to do! Only weeks earlier, an otherwise unknown commoner Urijah, son of Shemaiah had expressed unasked for opinions and was forced to seek asylum in Egypt. Jerusalem sent commissioner Elnathan after the fugitive, asking the Egyptian authorities to extradite Urijah. The authorities in Egypt saw no reason why they shouldnt comply with the request. Egyptian imigration apprehended the man and handed him over to Elnathan. Urijah was executed (Jeremiah 26: 20-23). Fortunately, Jeremiah was no ordinary commoner. Ahikam, the old friend of his father, still pulled some weight at the royal court (Jeremiah 26: 14-24). The prophet was permitted to retire to his estates in Ana-

thoth, albeit under house arrest. I was like a lamb brought to the slaughter, he says, and I knew not that they had devised devices against me, saying, let us cut him off from the land of the living, that his name may be no more remembered. The men of Anathoth, seek my life and say prophesy not in the name of God, that you die not by our hand (Jeremiah 11: 18-23). I plead with you my Lord; let me talk with you of your judgments. Wherefore does the way of the wicked prosper? Wherefore are all they happy that deal very treacherously? You have planted them, and now they have taken root: they grow, they bring forth fruit: you are near in their mouth, and far from their reins. How long shall the land stay in mourning, and the herbs wither in the field, for the wickedness of the people? Even my brothers, and the house of my father, even they have dealt treacherously (Jeremiah 12: 1-6). Woe is me, my mother, that you have born me a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth! I have neither lent on interest, nor men have lent to me on interest; yet every one of them does curse me. You, Lord, said it should be well with my remaining life; the enemy shall entreat me in the time of evil. Lord, know that for your sake I have suffered reprimand. Because of you I was made to eat your word; I sat alone because of your hand on me. Will you be to me altogether as a liar, like water running through the fingers (Jeremiah 15: 10-21)? Oh Lord, you have deceived me. Since I spoke I cried violence and spoil; your word exposed me to reproach and made me the butt of ridicule. Then I said I would not make mention of you, nor speak any more in your name. Your word was shut up in my bones

and I was weary with forbearing. I heard the defaming of many; saw fear on every side. Report, say they, or we shall report you. All my familiars watch for my halting, saying, he may be enticed, and we shall prevail against him and take our revenge on him. Cursed be the day wherein I was born: cursed be the man who brought tidings to my father, saying, a son is born to you instead of slaying me from the womb (Jeremiah 20: 14-18). If he was honest, at least to himself, he could not deny the truth of what the poor people were saying; that since weve stopped burning incense to the queen of heaven, and pour out drink offerings to her, we live in misery, consumed by famine and the sword (Jeremiah 44: 18). He could no longer evade the realization that it was not for man to seek God in his own heart, because the heart is deceitful above all things; who can know it? (Jeremiah 17: 9) I have heard the prophets say, I have dreamed, I have dreamed. Yes, they prophesy out of their own hearts deceit. Say every one to his neighbor, what has Yahweh answered? Has he spoken? And dont even mention the burden of the Lord: every mans word shall be his own burden, a reproach never to be forgotten (Jeremiah 23: 11-40). Among the expatriates, Ezekiel took a different approach. In his view, God had plans that did not include the Hebrews: If the prophet be deceived when he has spoken a thing, I the Lord have deceived that prophet. I gave my people statutes that were not good, and judgments whereby they should not live; and I polluted them in their own gifts, that I might make them desolate (Ezekiel 14: 9, 20: 25-26). Some god you got there! (Jeremiah 13: 13-14; 14: 11-

Skepticism was in the air and Deutero-Isaiah was about to formulated the new doctrine of an entirely alien deity, a visitor from deep space with his own agenda: I form light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil: I am God, and there is none else, and my thoughts are not your thoughts (Isaiah 45: 6-7; 55: 8). Bad news for his chosen people! Yet just as most families with an abusive father they remained loyal, lamenting and suffering but never doing anything about it; the story of the Jews! In 605 BC, just one year after his triumph over Judah and the Assyrians, Pharaoh Necho miscalculated. In Babylon a new king had ascended to the throne, King Nebuchadnezzar II (630 562 BC). He seemed young and inexperienced. Apparently nobody told the pharaoh that the Chaldean king had earned his spurs as a more than capable general in his fathers army. Pharaoh Necho, in a complete turnaround changed sides again and went to the assistance of the Assyrian regime in Carchemish. As the senior partner in a renewed coalition with what the pharaoh envisioned to become an Assyrian buffer state, he reckoned, Egypt could extend her influence well into Mesopotamia. He lost everything. King Nebuchadnezzars army cut down the combined forces of Egypt and Assyria to the last man. It was a complete rout to the bitter end. It lasted three days. Jeremiah had been permitted to return to Jerusalem, yet his bitter comment, You also shall be as ashamed of Egypt, as you were ashamed of
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Assyria (Jeremiah 2: 37), was stating the obvious again why should anybody care listening to this drivel? Was it not a good thing that Pharaoh king of Egypt had become but a noise; and has passed the time appointed? Was Egypts loss not Judahs gain? Were the tributes to Egypt not rescinded? So what was this old washerwoman complaining about? That the mauled Egyptians had become a target for predatory powers like a very fair heifer, everybody could see but when and how the destruction coming from the north is coming was not supposed to be open for casting unpatriotic spells. Give it a rest man and stop repeating your bloody it is coming! Settle down and make yourself useful for a change (Jeremiah 46: 11, 17, 20). What the critics had in mind was the resettlement of a tribe of fugitive Nomads, the Rechabites, which had fled from the Chaldean revenue officers, seeking refuge in Judea and better terms with the taxman in Jerusalem. The royal board of advisors expected Jeremiah to broker a deal the Rechabites were known to be skilled horsemen (Jeremiah 35: 1-19). King Eliakims need for cavalrymen, however, was none of Jeremiahs concerns (Josephus, Antiquitates Judaicae 10: 89-95); even he could see how such deal was certain to rub the new superpower of the North the wrong way. Instead Jeremiah gave his people an earful of the same old, same old: The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron upon your heart, and upon the horns of your altars. Hear ye kings of Judah, and inhabitants of Jerusalem; the Lord of the armies says he will bring evil upon this place, which whoso-

ever hears it, his ears shall tingle (Jeremiah 17: 1-3, 19: 3). That did it! The royal court had just about enough of Jeremiahs swearing in foreign tongues; Jeremiah was clapped in for another night in the stocks on a misdemeanor charge. Not that the cooler did him any good; on his release he remained unapologetic (Jeremiah 20: 1-4). He was in his forties and even the dwindling number of friends among his peers considered Jeremiah a garrulous old man, who acted beneath his station. Then, in 604 BC, something happened. The prophet was about to climb the stairs to his quarters in Jerusalem when he saw a stocky man with strong shoulders stepping out of the shade from underneath the arched stairway. Jeremiah recognized the quick, toothy smile. He had seen this guy before. Baruch, the son of Neriah made no secret of his Chaldean partisanship (Jeremiah 43: 2-3). He acted as the spokesman for the expatriates in the Diaspora and was known for his contacts to officials at the Babylonian court (Jeremiah 39: 11-12). Baruch had followed perhaps was instructed to follow the prophets dissolute activities and now offered Jeremiah what he needed most: direction, friendship, someone to ease that weight of the world from his shoulders. In retrospect Jeremiah appears as a Chaldean sympathizer all along, and it is true, the policies of his father had put him in the position of a Chaldean patsy, but I see no evidence that before Baruch had recruited

him, the prophet was anybodys partisan except that of Judah and the House of David. Only now he served a foreign cause and not at all unreservedly. He still was connected to members of the royal house and in the eyes of his Chaldean handler this made him an asset. This and the book Jeremiah held hidden under his pillow. For many years, Jeremiah used to jot down in private the words that I have spoken (Jeremiah 30: 2; Talmud BT Baba Bathra 14b). An expensive hobby in those days, when a single sheet of papyrus was costing the equivalent of thirty to forty dollars in modern US money. Jeremiahs notes formed the raw material for the first autobiography in the literature of the West; St. Augustine (354 430 AD) modeled on it his own Confessions, but without Baruchs insistence to put it all together in a book with all the words of the Lord from the mouth of the prophet (Jeremiah 36: 2-5), this may never have materialized. I am not sure whether Baruch had been completely honest with Jeremiah when he recruited the prophet. Jeremiah didnt need convincing that the outrage against the poor in the land had resulted in a debt of sin towards God, but to actually swallow the pitch of the Babylonian propaganda and proclaim with a straight face that King Nebuchadnezzar of all people was the chosen one who held Gods mandate to bring justice to the disenfranchised (A.K. Grayson, Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles, 1975) was a different matter altogether. Baruch also knew of a Zionist faction among the

expatriates who firmly believed God, or at least the overlord in Babylon as a trade-off for their return from exile would cast away the seed of Jacob and David, so not to be rulers over the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob ever again (Jeremiah 33: 24-26). This couldnt sound kosher to Jeremiah. He was a dyed in the wool royalist, and remained so for all his life. He insisted that even if this place shall become a pasture for the shepherds to rest their flocks, the days shall come that I will cause David to grow a branch of righteousness, Judah shall be saved, and Jerusalem shall dwell safely; David shall never want a man to sit on the throne of the house of Israel (Jeremiah 33: 12). So to him his fulmination against the conspiracy among the men of Judah and Jerusalem, according to which, the house of Israel and the house of Judah have broken the deal God had offered their fathers and went to serve other gods, was still more or less a quarrel within the family, nothing to involve an outsider, whoever he might be. So when the Lord, says, I will bring them evil, which they shall not escape; and though they cry to me, I will not listen (Jeremiah 11: 10-11), it was spoken in the spur of the moment, He did not really mean it, or did he? In Baruchs editorial intervention, however, we hear a very different voice. It is much more inflammatory, even downright treasonous: Who is the wise man, that may understand why the land is perishing? The Lord says, because they have walked after the imagination of their own heart, therefore I will scatter them among the heathen, and I will send the consuming sword. Therefore

take the cup of fury from my hand, and give to drink from it to all nations. I will consume the nation and the kingdom that will not serve Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, with the sword, the famine, and with pestilence. But nations that bring their neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon, those shall remain in their land, says the Lord, and they shall prosper (Jeremiah 9: 12; 25: 15-32; 27: 8-11). The book got ready for a reading in public. Jeremiah himself, after his brushes with the law, was under a gag order, so the task fell to Baruch. It was a well-chosen occasion, a religious festival with visitors from all over the country. The reading at the temple gate caught the attention of members of the royal council: Gemariah the son of Shaphan the scribe, Michaiah his son, Elishama the scribe, Delaiah the son of Shemaiah, Commissioner Elnathan, Jehudi the son of Nethaniah, Zedekiah the son of Hananiah, and all the princes (Jeremiah 36: 9, 11-19). They quickly arranged for a second reading behind closed doors. The councilors realized they had to inform the king. Knowing the master they were serving only too well, they had, however, the decency to advise Baruch and his companion to lay low for a while. King Eliakim ordered the book to be delivered to his winter residence. Sitting next to the fire, the king interrupted the reading after every other three sheets and had them cut off from the scroll and burned on the hearth, the first recorded act of literary censorship (Jeremiah 36: 11-

19),

(and we all of course know what happens next when the authorities throw books on a pile and put a match to it). The king ordered the arrest of Baruch and Jeremiah, but the two were nowhere to be seen for the entire year. Putting their forced vacation to good use, the prophet and his handler tried to recover the lost manuscript from memory (Jeremiah 36: 21-26), and this is the text that after extensive editing has found its way into the Bible. Baruch added many like words (Jeremiah 36: 32), which of course can mean anything and everything, leaving subsequent editors with ample license to amend and rewrite. Had Jeremiah fallen silent after King Josiahs debacle, who knows, we probably wouldnt even remember his name. King Eliakim was in no forgiving mood, but his advisors felt they had better things to do than give chase to a certified nutcase. There was a growing sense of encirclement. Every year King Nebuchadnezzar conducted another campaign into surrounding territories. Egypt, still reeling from the disaster at Carchemish, could do little but watch. Yet the old crocodile still had teeth, albeit only dentures and rather expensive ones at that, i.e. mercenaries from Greece and Libya. In 600 BC, Nebuchadnezzar invaded Egypt with every intention to stay. The Pharaohs soldiers of fortune, however, stood their ground and the Babylonian

king received a wound in battle. The Chaldean chronicles of course report a victory, yet the fact remains, the Babylonian King of Kings withdrew from Egyptian soil and in the following season, instead of commencing another campaign, stayed put. The pharaohs spies, however, reported that the Chaldean king continued gathering chariots and horses in great numbers (A.K. Grayson). In a number of sharp actions against the sheiks in the Arabian desert, King Nebuchadnezzar licked his raw recruits into shape for bigger things to come: Scouring the desert they took much plunder from the Arabs, their possessions, animals and gods (A.K. Grayson, II Kings 24: 1), says the kings chronicler. After a long absence, Jeremiah dared showing his face in public again. During the famine of 598 BC he dutifully extended his prayers on behalf of the land: Judah mourns, and the cry of Jerusalem rises to heaven. The nobles have sent their little ones to the waters and they return with their vessels empty and cover their heads in shame. The ground is chapt, there is no rain in the earth, and the plowmens head is sinking. The hind has calved in the field and forsook it, because there is no grass. Oh Lord, although we have sinned against you, help us for your names sake (Jeremiah 14: 2-6). Yet God had other things on his mind and through his Chaldean handler he told the prophet: Pray not for this people (Jeremiah 14: 11). To compound the problems, the king of Judah died. His successor, King Coniah inherited a country where people crowded the garbage dumps for food like buzzing clouds of flies.

If King Nebuchadnezzar needed any invitation, this was it; the handler received orders to unleash his prophet. The message was direct and to the point: Say to king and queen, humble yourselves and sit down, for your principalities shall come to an end. The cities of the south shall be shut for good and Judah carried away captive, all of it (Jeremiah 13: 16). And do not lament Eliakim king of Judah, he shall be dragged to the gates of the city and cast out of Jerusalem like the carcass of an ass. And as I live, Coniah, his son I will give into the hand of assassins. After this opening salvo, King Nebuchadnezzars troops occupied Jerusalem on the 16th of March 597 BC, facing no resistance. The Chaldeans deported the king, the queen, the eunuchs, the princes of Judah and Jerusalem, and three thousand of the carpenters, and the smiths (Jeremiah 29: 2). There were more deportations still to come, but this was the most severe. The period of exile commences from here. King Coniah checked in into a Babylonian prison (II Kings 24: 15-18). Like every other inmate, the dethroned king fell in line for his daily ration; we still have a clay tablet recording his allowances (James B. Pritchard, The Ancient Near East, Princeton UP, 1958, Vol. I, p. 205). In his stead the Chaldean ruler installed Zedekiah (597 586 BC) on the royal throne, an old friend of Jeremiah. The prophet himself was not among the deportees, yet his elder brother was. Jeremiah asked him to deliver a missive to the expatriates in Babylon. This letter is a testimony to the incessant and increasingly bitter squabbling between the Jewish fac-

tions: To the priests, and to the prophets, and all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had carried captive from Jerusalem to Babylon. The God of Israel says that Ahab the son of Kolaiah, and Zedekiah the son of Maaseiah prophesy a lie in his name! He will make them a curse to all the captives of Judah in Babylon, and people shall say: the Lord make you like Zedekiah and like Ahab, whom the king of Babylon roasted in the fire for villainy and their adultery with their neighbors wives, and for their lying words spoken in Gods name. To Shemaiah the Nehelamite, the Lord says: because you have sent letters to the people at Jerusalem, and to Zephaniah the son of Maaseiah the priest, and to all the priests, saying, the Lord has made you priest instead of Jehoiada the priest, and that you should officiate in the house of the Lord, and that every man who makes himself a prophet should be put in the stocks, tell us, why have you not reproved the prophet of Anathoth? For his dispatch to us in Babylon says this captivity is going to be long and therefore we should build houses and plant gardens and eat their fruit (Jeremiah 29: 1-3, 8-14, 20-32). Among the expatriates, the call for the abolition of the monarchy became increasingly dogmatic, and not only because it was considered a political tradeoff. Similar sentiments echoed all around the Mediterranean. In Athens, a certain Solon (638 558 BC) issued a bill of rights; the first to give equal rights to all citizens and eliminate birth as qualification for holding office. No law should pass without a majority vote in the democratic assembly; in the trials a jury of peers would pass their verdict against which the defendant could appeal in the assembly. In Italy the

could appeal in the assembly. In Italy the magistrates of a provincial town expelled the Etruscan viceroy, abolished the monarchy and began the long march towards world dominion. Everywhere we see the signs of a new era, but for Jeremiah, the Sun seemed to be setting. He was the last of the Hebrews, rooted in the soil and unwavering in his loyalty to the House of David. Baruch, on the other hand, was the new type, the cosmopolitan Jew. To him the days were gone where the fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the childrens teeth are set on edge. From now on, every one shall receive his own reward (Jeremiah 31: 29-30). And from this day on home was wherever a synagogue opened the door. Because of exile the worshippers of Yahweh gained the religious monopoly by default. Cut off from the physical presence of their shrines, the exiles were left with little else but belaboring semantics and the law: And I will give them a heart to know me, and they shall be my people, and return to me with their whole heart (Jeremiah 24: 7) chimed the rabbis. The Torah is the product of exile and after, and exile is a prominent leitmotif in this book. Adam and Eve are driven out of Paradise, Cain is a fugitive from homicide, Noah takes to the ships, and Lot barely escapes from the destruction of Sodom. On a more pleasant note there is the story of Abraham who leaves behind friends and the comforts of the city on his own free will. The story with the greatest appeal to

the expatriates in Babylon, Khorasan and Egypt was the novella of Joseph, who rises from bondage in a foreign country and receives recognition and advancement, never to return to the land of his forebears, in fact has invited his brothers to join him and enjoy his prosperity (Genesis 11: 28 ff.). Who did all this put together? We can be fairly certain nothing of this had existed before exile in Babylon except perhaps for some of the prophets and the Book of the Judges. The rabbis of Amsterdam excommunicated the philosopher Spinoza (1632 1677) for his assumption (Baruch Spinoza, A Theologico-Political Treatise, Book 3) that Ezra was the mastermind, perhaps even the singlehanded author of the Pentateuch and The Books of Kings. There is a tale relating to the Hebrew Scriptures in chapter fourteen of the now apocryphal 4th Esdras: In the calamity of the capture and destruction of the Holy City in 586 BC, the Temple of Solomon was destroyed as well, together with the entire collection of the sacred Rolls of Scriptures, so that not a scratch remained to tell the tale of Hebrew history and its religion. This irreparable loss affected the chosen people throughout the Babylonian captivity. But upon their return to the restored City of God, over a century later, Yahweh, we are told in 4th Esdras, inspired Ezra and commissioned him to reproduce the sacred lost Books very much in the fashion of Huldas pious fraud. Accordingly Ezra, employing five scribes, dictated to them (from inspired memory Joseph Smith and the Book Mormon come to mind) the

contents of the lost sacred books, and in just forty days and nights reproduced a total of ninety-four sacred books, of which he designated twenty-four as the sacred canon, the remaining seventy being termed esoteric and reserved for the use of only the wisest. Now we don't need to believe the story, but the necessity that caused the concoction of such a tale is a telling fact: at some point, say in 458 BC, Jewish scripture was in very bad shape and its recovery called for desperate measures. However, even an Ezra would have been in no position to contravene custom and tradition. Whatever texts may have failed to escape the conflagration of 588 BC, it is fair to assume that at least some scribes of the archive had escaped and joined their fellowmen in exile. It is also fair to assume that these custodians of tradition made every effort to restore at least portions of their heritage from memory learning things by rote was very much in the spirit of the time. So what might have been Ezras role in all this? Ezra was a Zionist and ideologue. He collected and put in order whatever material was available and by doing so he became the father of Judaism. Later generations without even blinking have accepted the truth of Ezdras inspired fable. Such luminaries of the Christian church as Tertullian, St. Ambrose, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Eusebius, and St. Jerome held it to be canonical. The story lost credit only when the Christian ayatollahs of the so-called reformation took their cue from the Catholic inquisition and began burning alive

their fellow reformers over such arcane matters as the trinity while the coarser of their lot between two chapters of libel against peasants and Jews supervised the drowning of a five-year-old devils-child in the Zwickauer Mulde. What we use to call the Bible is a product of this period; without the editorial acumen to provide the printing houses with a textus receptus and to translate it for the public at large we would still depend on unreliable manuscripts rich in errors and ambiguous in variations. So it was very much in the spirit of this idiosyncratic mix of cruelty and rough and ready scollarship that a certain Rabbi Levita (1549) put his editorial touch to the legend: now the fable was made to say that Ezra simply united into one volume the twenty-four books, which until that time had circulated separately, and divided them into the three great divisions now recognized as the Law, the Prophets, and the Hagiographies or holy writings. Before one raises his hands in protest consider this: neither in Judges nor in the prophets such a central figure for the Jewish faith as Moses is even mentioned. Whatever this may suggest to us, the edict of King Cyrus in 538 BC had given permission for the exiles to repatriate to their homeland, to rebuild Jerusalem and the temple, and live according to the statutes of Nehemiah and Ezra; yet the Great Kings offer did not entail political independence. It did not even entail statehood, and two hundred years later there were renewed deportations under Artaxerxes Ochus (359 338 BC). Accordingly the form of government in Jerusalem

before Judas Maccabeus was a so-called theocracy, and there were many who insisted that it should stay that way even after the Hasmoneans rose to power. The ideal of national exclusiveness and priestly control holding the mind in chains had long before the Roman period developed, under the government of the Seleucids, the so called Mosaic theocracy, a clerical corporation with the high-priest at its head, which, acquiescing in foreign rule and renouncing the formation of a state, guarded the distinctiveness of its adherents, and dominated them under the aegis of the protective power (Mommsen). But these early Zionists needed something to believe in and the many Jews living permanently in the Diaspora needed it even more. The Torah became the portable country of the expatriate Jew and whatever the nature of Ezras editing, he has put his stamp on everything written into it. But this was still music from the future. We are still in the year 595 BC. Wild rumors circulate of a conspiracy in King Nebuchadnezzars military. The Great King is fleeing into the mountains; the Great King is dead. In Jerusalem the prophet Hananiah is the official speaker of the royal court; if anybody knows what we dont, it must be he. Hananiah announces that God is about to break the yoke of Babylon within the space of two full years one can only wonder how he came to this figure. He promises the return of the captives, of the royal princes and even of the sacred vessels carried away from the temple. Jeremiah, giving way to his true feelings, is seen to nod with approval; it seemed he was privy to the same

information as Hananiah: In the presence of all the people the prophet said to Hananiah, amen, the Lord do so and perform your words which you have prophesied. But, as a seasoned politician, Jeremiah doesnt leave without a piece of friendly advice: Nevertheless hear this: The prophets of old prophesied war, evil and pestilence. The prophet who prophesies peace, him shall we remember. And Jeremiah went his way (Jeremiah 28: 1-11). His Chaldean handler was not amused. Baruch made a few inquiries: he learned of the purges in the Chaldean military after the attempted coup had collapsed. King Nebuchadnezzar was very much alive and hell-bent on finding out who else was involved. Baruch arranged for a showdown in public between the two voices of God, and dont we all enjoy it when prophets call each other names? Jeremiah flung an iron yoke at the feet of the flustered Hananiah, a considerable feat of muscle power; these things are heavy. The shouting match commenced, and Hananiah probably knew beforehand that he was about to lose this round: Yahweh has not sent you, said Jeremiah, but you make these people trust in a lie. Thus says the God of Israel, I have put a yoke of iron upon the neck of all nations; they shall serve Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon. To this Jeremiah added a personal touch he later learned to regret: Hear now, Hananiah, the Lord will cast you off from the face of the earth: this year you shall die, because you have taught rebellion against the Lord. The Lord? Which lord? The one up high, or

the one in Babylon? Oddly enough, Hananiah died the same year in the seventh month. Hananiahs family was not to forget this and held Jeremiah responsible (Jeremiah 28: 13-17). In 593 BC, Nebuchadnezzar himself took charge of a punitive strike and ordered a second wave of deportations. The Chaldean propaganda machine went into overdrive: I will acknowledge them that are carried away captive, I have sent them out of this place for their own good (Jeremiah 24: 1-6). Feeling the heat, King Zedekiah gave Jeremiah a hearing for what could very well be called the first Jewish bill of rights: Execute righteousness and deliver the spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor: do no wrong, do no violence to the stranger, the fatherless, nor the widow, neither shed innocent blood. Woe unto him who uses his neighbors service without wages, and gives him not for his work (Jeremiah 22: 2-5). In spite of opposition from his own advisers, all of them men of wealth, who lived in houses with large chambers, ceiled with cedar, and painted with vermilion (Jeremiah 22: 13-15), King Zedekiah issued a writ of manumission, proclaiming that every man should let his Hebrew servants, men and women, go free (Jeremiah 34: 7-11). For Jeremiah this seemed his finest achievement and for the following four years Zedekiah observed the commitment; then, to Jeremiahs amazement and dismay, he rescinded his manumission orders. The wellinformed Ezekiel is telling us what happened: Know ye not what these things mean? The king of Baby-

lon has taken Zedekiah and accepting his oath made an alliance with him. He removed the mighty of the land to prevent rebellion so that the kingdom might continue. Yet Zedekiah sent ambassadors to Egypt, asking for horses and soldiers. Shall he prosper? Shall he escape who does such things? As I live, says the Lord, surely he shall die in the place where the king dwells whod raised him and whose oath he has despised and whose alliance he broke. Neither shall Pharaoh with his mighty army come to his aid. As I live, says the Lord, surely it was my oath he has despised and my alliance he broke; I shall make him pay (Ezekiel 17: 12-21). In Egypt a new pharaoh had ascended to the throne (Jeremiah 44: 30). Apparently, behind the back of the Chaldean regime, there were negotiations and promises made neither side could really afford to make or keep. Nevertheless the Egyptian military deployed reserves to Migdol on the Sinai. King Zedekiah threw all his resources into the fortified strongholds of Lachish, Azekah and Jerusalem, and waited for the Egyptian army to make their move. It never came. The hands of the Egyptian high command were tied. Substantial detachments, stationed in Cyrene (modern Aswan), were keeping a constant watch on Libya. A war in the East was a luxury Egypt just could not afford, and King Nebuchadnezzar knew it. He wasted no time and established headquarters in Riblah, Lebanon, thirty-five miles northeast of Baalbek. Unopposed the Chaldean cavalry took possession of Judahs open countryside, cutting

off all supplies to the cities. King Nebuchadnezzars general began siege operations under the walls of Jerusalem in 588 BC. Jeremiah was beside himself; first to see his own brainchild, the writ of manumission repealed, and now this: I have set my face against this city for evil, and not for good. For your treachery, says the Lord, I proclaim my kind of liberty for you, the sword, the pestilence, and the famine; the king of Judah, the princes, the eunuchs, and the priests, I will give into the hand of their assassins: and their corpses shall be meat for the vultures (Jeremiah 21: 1-10; 34: 17-21). The people taking cover from the missiles of the siege engines didnt appreciate to be told the obvious again and grabbed for stones to throw it, not at the Chaldean soldiers but at Jeremiah. King Zedekiah saw no other way but to take the furious prophet into protective custody. Kept under arrest, the bitterly disappointed Jeremiah at last occupied his mind with more worldly matters. In the general panic real estate prices had begun dropping through the floor. Everybody seemed to be selling. Jeremiah, on the other hand, was buying. As a noted Chaldean partisan, he could expect that the new masters would authenticate his titles on recently acquired real estate. Although held in custody, he managed not only to transact business but commanded access to a considerable amount of silver bullion, a testament to the prophets actual standing and wealth (Jeremiah 32: 8-9). Baruch even brokered deals on behalf

of the regimes exiled opposition (Jeremiah 32: 42-44). The investment, however, didnt look so smart anymore when reports arrived in Jerusalem of new Egyptian troop movements on the Sinai. The Chaldean general wasted no time. He broke camp to confront the Egyptian mercenaries. As if on cue, news reached the Egyptian commander of troubles on the Libyan border. After a brief standoff, the pharaohs expensive contingents returned to Egypt without firing a single shot. In the lull before the return of the Chaldean army, King Zedekiah released the prophet from custody. Wedged in among screaming fugitives, mules and carriages, Jeremiah scrambled to hitch a ride for his home in Anathoth. Either at the city gate of Jerusalem, or when passing the walls of Lachish, he was recognized by a captain of the guards, a relative of the late prophet Hananiah. He arrested Jeremiah as a Chaldean collaborator and after giving the prophet a sound caning, he asked the authorities in Jerusalem what else he should do with him (J. L. Starkey, The Ostraca of Lachish). Snapped in iron, the prophet passed into the custody of another personal enemy, Jonathan the scribe. King Zedekiah hesitated to intervene. Jeremiahs jailer spoke for a voluble faction at his court and the king needed all the support he could muster. The whereabouts of Baruch at this point are uncertain.

At last, remembering his friendship with the prophet for all we know, in this incestuous environment of the royal court, the two could have been blood relatives the king arranged a meeting. Jeremiah pleaded for his life and King Zedekiah had him moved to the prisons courtyard with orders to supply him with food from the royal purse (Jeremiah 32: 2-16). Certain of nothing but utter uncertainty, Jeremiah saw no reason why he should hold back with his feelings: Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh: is there any thing too hard for me? (Well, for starters, how about stopping the Chaldean war machine?) The Babylonians shall set fire to this city, and burn it (Jeremiah 32: 27-29). A defeatist outburst like this was exactly what Jeremiahs enemies at court were counting on. They informed the king and Zedekiah duly withdrew his protection. The jeering courtiers roped down the struggling Jeremiah into the prisons cesspool. The kings eunuch, Ebedmelech the Ethiopian watched from a distance. He asked for an audience with the king and Zedekiah changed his mind again, even had as many as thirty men (sic?!) to spare, who pulled the prophet out of his hole with old cast clouts and old rotten rags propped under his armpits. Nobody mentions a bath. For the last time in the lives of both, King Zedekiah had a word in private with Jeremiah (Jeremiah 38: 1-14). He impressed on the prophet to keep this conversation confidential; the monarch was worried about the Jews that are fallen to the Babylonians. I am afraid, once they deliver me into their hand, they will

mock me (Jeremiah 38: 15-19). (Looks to me as if somebody has broken the confidentiality clause here otherwise how would we know?) Holding a perfumed handkerchief to his nose, the king rose and left. Later the courtiers returned and inquired what this conversation had been all about, but this time Jeremiah just sat there and didnt say a word; so eventually they left him alone; stinking and still snapped in iron (Jeremiah 38: 19, 24-28). The next morning news broke that King Zedekiah and his retainers had slipped away from the besieged city. What the people werent told was, that the Chaldean army had blocked every escape route towards Egypt and the seaboard, in case a ship was waiting for the fugitives. One by one Nebuchadnezzars cavalry picked up the escapees. Locked in iron they were sent to the Great Kings headquarters. The king of Babylon was not exactly known for his atrocities, especially not if held against the jewels of cruelty among the rulers of Assyria; King Nebuchadnezzar was approachable; he was popular with the masses. But in this case he felt he had to make an example of the king of Judah. First Zedekiah was made to watch the execution of his sons, then, he himself was blinded. There followed summary executions of Zedekiahs staff: Seraiah the chief priest, and Zephaniah the second priest, and the three keepers of the door, as well as the eunuch, which had the charge of the men of war; seven of the kings bodyguards, the principal

scribe of the armed forces who mustered the people of the land, and threescore of the people who were found in the midst of the city (Jeremiah 52: 24-27). After extensive pillaging Jerusalem was put to the torch, houses, temple, palace and all (Jeremiah 39: 1-9). We are told the King of Kings expressed his concern for Jeremiah, putting his general in charge for the prophets welfare (Jeremiah 39: 11-12). The unknown chronicler undoubtedly heightened the colors a bit, but the fact remains, the Chaldean officials knew the prophet, whether with or without King Nebuchadnezzars personal intervention. Baruchs influence must have been considerable. The Chaldean general Nebuzaradan ordered the prophets release from prison, provided him with funds and handed him over to the care of the newly appointed governor of Judah, Gedaliah, the son of Ahikam, the old friend of Jeremiah and his father. Jeremiah was again a free man. To his credit Jeremiah did not forget past favors and put in a good word with the general for the release of Ebedmelech the Ethiopian (Jeremiah 39: 14, 16-17; 40: 4-6). The Chaldean general was a busy man and under orders to implement a sweeping land reform, designed to win popular support. He evicted the big landowners and forced them to pack up their belongings in a single bundle and to fall in with the columns of deportees from Jerusalem. There still exists a relief chiseled in

rock, depicting the scene: This is the people whom Nebuchadnezzar carried away captive: in the seventh year three thousand Jews and twenty-three; in the eighteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar eight hundred and thirty-two; in the twenty-third year of Nebuchadnezzar, seven hundred forty-five persons: altogether four thousand and six hundred (Jeremiah 52: 28-30). Gedaliah, the new Governor, chose Mizpah King Sauls old lair as his seat of government, a symbolism not lost on surviving members of the House of David. Jeremiah, the Davidian loyalist withdrew from public affairs and returned to his estates in Anathoth. Baruch was already waiting; it was their first reunion since the prophets arrest. Seven months passed in pastoral peace, from the hills the air carried the distant bleating of herds and the new wheat nodded under the sun. It was the autumn of 586 BC. The prophet sat sideways on the parapet of his roof garden and with a frown looked out to a rapidly approaching cloud of dust a mounted messenger. The exhausted horseman cantered into the courtyard. He brought the worst possible news. The new Chaldean governor had made a good impression and was popular with the people (II Kings 25: 2225). Refugees trickled in from every direction paying their respect. Mizpah was on the cusp of becoming the center of a national rebirth. One of the arrivals was the general of Judahs old army, Johanan, the son of Kareah. Gedaliah appointed him as his new chief of se-

curity, but the governor felt he could have done very well without some of the other arrivals, such as the women from the royal harem and their bastards of the seed royal among them a certain Ishmael, the son of Nethaniah and even ten of the princes of the king (Jeremiah 41: 1-3). This Ishmael already had a reputation and Johanan suggested to make the man disappear, just to be on the safe side (Jeremiah 40: 15). Gedaliah heard what he was saying but wouldnt listen; his was a policy of reconciliation. Johanan expressed his skepticism Can the leopard change his spots? (Jeremiah 13: 23) but the governor had made up his mind. Johanan left Mizpah in a huff; apparently nobody took him seriously here. He was to regret this for the rest of his life. Following an invitation to dinner, Ishmael and his thugs murdered Gedaliah in front of the other dinner guests! There is no conjecture even possible whether Ishmael was acting on his own, or whether somebody else had been pulling strings. Too many suspects with a motive and too many motives providing a suspect, but one thing seems certain: this utterly callous assassination stripped the last shred from the already threadbare credibility of the House of David (Jeremiah 41: 1-3). Unable to muster any kind of popular support, Ishmael robbed a passing caravan, murdered the merchants, then burned Mizpah to the ground and took hostages to screen his escape with a human shield

(Jeremiah 41: 5-10).

But Johanan had no intention of making another mistake. His posse caught up with Ishmael, freed the hostages and killed most of Ishmaels men. Only Ishmael himself and a company of ten escaped across the border to Moab, never to be seen or heard of again. Johanan sent summons to the prophet and to what was left of Gedaliahs administration to meet him at Bethlehem. The symbolism is obvious: Bethlehem was home to a shrine of a dying and reborn deity (Jeremiah 41: 11-17). In an age when Yahwehs rule by the sword, the famine and the pestilence had given the Hebrew refugees for a prey in all places whither they went (Jeremiah 44: 13; 45: 6), Jeremiah was the only pillar of the old establishment left standing. More than ever before his unblemished prestige made him an asset for Baruch, but the handler was losing his grip on the no longer docile prophet. Apparently the prophet, or rather Baruch, urged the gathering refugees to throw themselves at the mercy of Chaldea. Johanan had no such illusions: King Nebuchadnezzars interrogators had no reason to be in a forgiving mood. He insisted to seek asylum in Egypt. And since that was the decision, the prophet finally drew the line when Baruch suggested that Jeremiah should take on the role of a second Moses (Jeremiah 42: 215, 22). The prophet raised a sarcastic eyebrow: Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel to you, yes you, Baruch: you seek great things for yourself? Seek them not (Jeremiah 45:

5). The two broke up.

It was long overdue. Jeremiah treated Baruch to a little story: Under the divine injunction not to tarry and not to take food or shelter, he said, a prophet travels to deliver his message to the king. Yet a colleague of him, under the pretense of a divine vision of his own, countermands the instruction and lures the man to his table. The two still sit at their meal when the spirit suddenly seizes the lying host (sic!) and from his mouth issues genuine prophesy. He announces that lions shall eat his guest for his disobedience. And so it happens (I Kings 13). Jeremiah turned his mule to catch up with the others. He didnt look back. You didnt tell the end of your story, Baruch muttered to himself: The prophet who had caused the calamity feels remorse, searches the road for the corpse and buries him in his own tomb. Brother! Then he, too, moved on, turning his mount to the caravan trail from Babylon. After his arrival on the Nile, Egyptian imigration ordered Jeremiah to take a boat downstream to Tahpanhes (now Tell Defenneh) a city in the Nile delta, exclusively reserved for foreign visitors and immigrants (Josephus Antiquitates Judaicae, 10: 180-181). The Egyptian authorities were known to keep a close watch on foreigners and imposed tight curfews. The site is now on the Suez Canal. What happened next remains conjecture. Josephus alleges, that after only five years in exile Jeremiah died a violent death in a riot of his own countrymen. Another rabbinical tradition says that after his victory over Egypt in 567 BC, King Nebuchad-

nezzar had taken Jeremiah (and Baruch) with him to Babylon. The war is a fact of history: in 573 BC, the ageing Nebuchadnezzar was forced to give up his designs on the city of Tyre. There was again the threat of mutiny in his army and his regime faced difficult times the records are sketchy. Then, after six years of trouble an opportunity to balance the books presented itself. In 567 BC, contingents of newly drafted recruits paraded through the streets of the Egyptian cities. Pharaoh Amesis II had seized the throne in a military coup and started a national revival. His dethroned predecessor went to Babylon and asked for asylum. Still smarting from his disappointment under the walls of Tyre the Chaldean monarch told his Jewish court sorcerer in no uncertain terms that now or never was the time to get compensation, or else! Ezekiel scrambled to lay a curse on Egypt: The word of the Lord came to me: Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon made his army labor hard against Tyre, yet neither he nor his army got anything from Tyre (sic!). Therefore I will give the land of Egypt to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon; and he shall carry off its wealth to be the wages for his army (Ezekiel 29: 17-19). Apparently God was feeling generous this day, it wasnt his own money anyway. King Nebuchadnezzars army confronted Pharaoh Amesis on the Sinai. After ogling the opposition from the top of their chariots the two monarchs came to terms in a quick

treaty without casualties. Both sides claimed victory and then parted ways after an exchange of prisoners and undesirables and perhaps an appeasing payment by the Egyptians as their parting gift. Considering how Jeremiah ended the book, there is a possibility the old man was among the people King Nebuchadnezzar repatriated from their exile in Egypt. Then again the (original) ending of the book conveys a taste of disappointment with the regime in Babylon: When youve done reading this book, you shall bind a stone to it, and cast it into the midst of Euphrates, and say, thus shall Babylon sink (Jeremiah 8: 58-64). Not something that could have passed Baruchs editorial eye. Probably a late flourish from the days of Ezras inspired cottage industry. On April 2, 561 BC, Nebuchadnezzars son and successor issued an amnesty for Coniah, the last living king of the Hebrews. After thirty-seven years of captivity, the Chaldean prince spoke kindly unto him, changed his prison garments and allowed him to live out his final days as a pensioner at the royal palace in Babylon (Jeremiah 52: 32-34). Since his own book mentions it, Jeremiah may still have been alive. But where did he outlive his days? Did Coniah, when the prison gates opened, recognize a familiar face in the crowd? Had Jeremiah been permitted to return to Anathoth? Or did he sit on a porch with a view on the Nile, an old man swatting the mosquitoes? One should almost wish it: the Egyptian girls were pretty, the men were tanned and toned, the food was wholesome, the Egyp-

tian physicians the best in the world. He even could have had novels to read the urban novel was invented in Egypt although learning hieroglyphics is for the young. Jeremiah surely missed his collection of books in Anathoth. Or maybe not! Just sat there and watched life passing by. He was pushing the mid eighties when he died.