Published as an eBook by Faunus Press, Vancouver, Bos-

ton, Paris, London, Cologne, Shanghai, Singapore

Copyright Gondola Press Ltd. 2011, all rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, digital, mechanical, or otherwise, without the writ-
ten permission of the publisher.
A Faunus Book
Cover design michael sympson
Typeface Gentium Book Basic. This is a digital edition de-
signed for electronic reading devices








To Dawn



































Preface
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. From a quick poll on Jeremiah, I have learned,
that he isnt the most popular character with the Eng-
lish, hell, he wasnt popular even with his own people,
but I cant help feeling 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 stric-
tures of his culture, a culture, however, with fewer ac-
coutrements 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
mostly restricted to the circle of personal acquain-
tances and friends and to the rumors of traveling mer-
chants on the fairs. People drew comfort from the re-
silient cycle of famine and bumper crops nothing
could ever change. Only the rare individual, often un-
intentionally, 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 per-
sonal 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 prodi-
gious student Anaximander (611 547 BC) reasoned that
man, because of his prolonged infancy, could not have
originated and survived in his present form, (not the
first pair of humans anyway) and therefore must have
sprung from a different species acting as the new
kinds foster-parent, and even speculated that ulti-
mately all life had generated from the oceans. In other
words, Anaximander was the first to propose evolu-
tion and mutations, albeit not by looking at fossils but
as the logical conclusion from a piece of pretty obvi-
ous reasoning.
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 this 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 so unusual; even the propaganda of the re-
gime in Babylon abounded in slogans of social justice
for the disenfranchised. Later Cyrus, the Prince of Per-
sia 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), and of course the inevitable
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 in-
serted here and there a gloss about the alleged cir-
cumstance of a prophecy, which has added only to the
confusion. In Chapter 27 the editor resolutely puts to-
gether 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 close the gap
with grafts from other parts of the manu-
script (Jeremiah 32: 17-23).
After Baruch or some other 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, al-
though fragmentary cuneiform chronicles of Assyria
and Chaldea; there are excavated epigraphs and the
still existing correspondence of Hebrew officials writ-
ten 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 oppor-
tunity to open a window to historical details of a spe-
cific period way back in very ancient times.
To give an example it allows establishing the histori-
cal context to the prophet Hananiahs sudden an-
nouncement that the exiles shall be repatriated, with
which Jeremiah initially seemed inclined to agree.
Why? How?
Because both prophets were privy to a piece of in-
formation the Bible in its typical fashion of pretending
self-referential autonomy prefers not to impart on us.
What the good book fails to tell us is that the top-brass
in King Nebuchadnezzars military had staged a coup.
We know of this mutiny in some detail.
The Great King had assembled his troops for a mili-
tary exercise. Some of his generals and God knows
who in the royal family thought to take this opportu-
nity and assassinate their king, making it look like an
accident. Nebuchadnezzar and his loyal guards, how-
ever, during a march at nighttime lost directions and
became separated from the main body of his army.
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 standing to
attention and watching. This was followed by more
purges and show trials in the upper echelons of the
civil service the king took no chances.
When establishing a timeline, we realize that only
after Jeremiahs handler the Chaldean collaborator
Baruch had received information of the mutinys col-
lapse, his asset came out with the iron yoke and con-
veyed the notorious 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 ac-
cessible to me. All things considered, Jeremiah seems to be
the best-documented and most authentic character in the
entire Bible.
michael sympson
March 1, 2014
















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
I.
rophesy ran in his family for centuries, but only
Hilkiah rose to the station of 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.
Whether he carried with him a mop and a bucket, we
dont know, the cleaners on staff of the temple were
not permitted to enter, ever. Gods private apartment
was a place of centuries of inconceivable filth.
We know two of Hilkiahs 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. Gemariah pre-
tended not to know what his father meant. But Hilkiah
P
was not the man to take these things lightly. He had
plans, and the demands of pregnant peasant girls were
no part of it.
Jeremiah, the younger brother was more of an in-
trovert. Giving up on his older son, the high priest de-
cided to groom the boy to become his successor. In
this, too, 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. The boy was four
or five, dangling his little feet sitting sideways on the
parapet of the roof garden. The wheat nodded its ears
under a beating Sun and from the distance of the
sprawling estates a slight breeze carried the bleating
of the herds. Suddenly Jeremiahs nanny pointed to a
quickly approaching cloud of dust; it announced the
arrival of a mounted messenger. He came from Jerusa-
lem and what he had to say he whispered into the ear
of Jeremiahs father.
The boy couldnt hear what was said; yet the ex-
pression 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 re-
ceived this news with a guarded smile.
One step short of joining the quilt of Assyrian mag-
istracies encircling the Hebrews Namath, Byblos,
Damascus, Sidon, Tyre, Haran, Megiddo, Samaria and
Ashdod the state of Judah ransomed a precarious to-
ken independence with a hefty tribute to the Assyri-
ans. 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 in-
cestuous 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 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 exis-
tence 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). For his involvement with
Davids conspiracy Abiathar received the estates of
Anathoth and became a priest at the Ark. The estates
remained a fief of the family, even when the aged Abi-
athar had committed the grievous blunder of punting
the wrong horse in the race for the succession to the
kingdoms throne. The naked body of the fair damsel
Abishag the Shunammite could no longer keep King
David warm (1 Kings 1: 4) and like most people, Abiathar
was expecting the legitimate contender, Prince Adoni-
jah, to become the next king. He even joined the circle
of Adoniahs counselors. The military, however,
seemed reluctant to commit, it should have been a
warning sign. With the help of Nathan the prophet, an
obscure Solomon, the son of a Hittite concubine,
seized the throne in a last minute coup (I Kings 1: 25).
Abiathar was fortunate. He and Nathan had been
colleagues on King Davids board of advisors. The new
regime graciously allowed him to retreat to his own
estates albeit under house arrest (I Kings 2: 26-27).
The incident reveals a feature, typical for Hebrew
policies. In an era of unbridled tyranny, you as a com-
moner were reduced to the squeak of a mouse and ex-
pected to grovel before the bigwigs as your slave,
your servant, your handmaiden (J. L. Starkey, The Ostraca
of Lachish). But in the kingdom of the Hebrews there was
a halfway legitimate source of potential opposition to
the throne: itinerant prophets carried vials of oil in
their bundles, and not just for frying an omelet.
Whenever a pretender rose against the throne, his
bid was usually assisted by one of these popular dema-
gogues: he would pour oil over the claimants head
and promise divine sanction for his actions. It was a
give and take. In order for such freelance prophet to
muster the temerity and announce 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. And although it may not have been
the refugees intention, his exile could become a pre-
text in the policies of a foreign power. It was a risky
game and the rewards uncertain. Nevertheless, at any
given time, prophets by the hundreds, raised the
volume in shouting matches with the regime and 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 ris-
qu in a country of which the rabbis of a later period
want us to believe that uncovering ones nakedness was
prosecuted as a felony (Exodus 20: 26, 28: 42; Levi 18: 6-19).
Luckily Isaiah and his contemporaries didnt know of
such laws. Neither did the screwy Ezekiel, who 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
was not at all that almighty ruler of the biblical re-
cord. Solomons coup had set an example. The gran-
dees in the land began to dream of royal regalia. And
some not only dreamed. In plain sight Ahijah pulled
out from his bundle a vial of oil and anoint his em-
ployer Jeroboam as king over the Hebrews. Jeroboam
knew he had substantial support to risk such a move,
but even he may not have expected the true extent of
popular dissatisfaction with the House of David. Im-
mediately ten of the twelve tribes (I Kings 11: 29-37) se-
ceded from Solomons dominions and submitted to
Jeroboams rule. The new regime chose Samaria as the
capital of the kingdom of Israel; the epigraph on an
Assyrian stele still testifies for the opulence and pros-
perity of the House of Omri.
Without as much as firing a single shot, King Solo-
mon found himself reduced to the state of a petty
prince. Jerusalem remained his capital and legend de-
picts him as an alchemist and dirty old man, dictating
garrulous letters to his overlord in Egypt, while leer-
ing at the tits and pretty faces in a well-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. Assured of divine sanction, Elishas protge
went out to slay the ruling house in Samaria down to
the last man and woman (II Kings 9: 12-37; 10: 1-14).
The architect of this massacre was the apprentice
of one of young Jeremiahs favorite heroes. From his
fathers bookcase, Jeremiah pulled every scrap of the
prophets ever written on leather and papyrus. His fa-
vorite story was the legend of the prophet Elijahs per-
sonal 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 si-
lence 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 consider the work of Jeremiah, we realize
that of all the prophets available in his fathers study,
the Samarian prophet Hosea (765 725 BC) was the one
leaving the most enduring 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 teen-
ager. Hoseas wife, we are told, had a colorful past and
her husband 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). Whether roused by Hoseas
rhetoric or out of feelings Jeremiah still didnt under-
stand nor would have admitted to, if he had, the teen-
ager resolved never to 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. Per-
haps his true feelings made him look somewhere else
entirely, but what the inexperienced teenager never
realized was, that his role model Hosea was a full-
blooded man acquainted with jealousy who had suf-
fered 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 in-
stance Jeremiah asked about the justice in the con-
frontation 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 any-
way, 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 cal-
lous 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 Jeru-
salem 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 Is-
rael.
So, in 725 BC, in an act of desperation or lured by
promises that could never be kept, the regime in Sa-
maria 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. But the dominos kept
falling. 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, however,
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 em-
pire. 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 edu-
cated 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 im-
poverished domains (II Chronicles 2: 32).
For the first time Chaldea, struggling to survive the
Assyrian reprisals, stretched out her feelers to Pales-
tine. His advisors on the council and the prophet
Isaiah stood by and frowned, but King Hezekiah saw
no harm in volunteering information about his fi-
nances 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 Jerusa-
lem, 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 en-
voys came to the King of Judah with exactly the same
questionnaire as the Chaldeans.
In the capital of Assyria, King Hezekiahs communi-
cations with Chaldea and Egypt didnt pass unnoticed.
Despite of Hezekiahs appeasing advances on the trib-
ute (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 dif-
ferent version speaks of some kind of catastrophe dur-
ing 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 must have been a negotiated withdrawal and it
was costly. The hapless King Hezekiah, whose militia
and elite troops had deserted him, could only watch his
daughters, concubines and musicians, male and female,
been carried away into Assyrian captivity. He lost ter-
ritory 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 box-
wood 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, biblical and otherwise.
In 671 BC, the Assyrian armies invaded and occu-
pied 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 occu-
pation 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 Ma-
nasses 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.



















II.
oon enough the smile faded away as Assyrias
lobby at the royal court fomented open rebel-
lion. 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). In the
scramble for restoring public order, however, nobody,
not even the Assyrian sympathizers, would have
wanted to give the foreign power a pretext to inter-
vene directly.
In the meantime it was anarchy. Because of the
high priests annual communications with the numi-
nous, 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 originally had
S
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 sug-
gestive 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 branch in the royal house, which hitherto had
served the Assyrians so well, would accede 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 re-
lief. 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 inter-
ested Jeremiah. 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 ti-
tle to the house from which they suffered eviction
(Jeremiah, Lamentations). Many lived in bondage, not un-
der the yoke of aliens but enslaved by their own peo-
ple. They were like orphans and fatherless and
found bread for their hunger, by laboring without rest
for the foreigner (Jeremiah 34: 9-11).
In the oppressive heat of the day, the peasants
empty gaze scanned the skies for the coming and go-
ing of the stork, the traditional sign of a change in the
seasons. Theirs was a life of hardship, close to the
needs as the Roman poet Virgil has put it (Virgil, Geor-
gics), 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 un-
der 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), how Yahweh
had assailed her in his chariot of fire, slaying the mon-
ster. After which the Elohim, the hosts of Heaven,
stretched out the skies like a tent cloth and from Te-
homs 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? An-
thropomorphic? Well, what use is there for a God if he
doesnt think, feel and communicate like a human?
Jeremiah recalled what a 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? (Although the naked girl waiting
for Marduks command next door to the sanctuary,
probably had a brush handy to at least dust the sofa
from time to time. The hygiene of the Gods in Babylon
was slightly better.)
The man who knew all the answers for this conver-
sation sat right before Jeremiah, but Hilkiah didnt
comment on this matter with a single word. Except for
him and a few extremists, there was nobody in Judahs
society who did not prostrate to Yahweh in conjunc-
tion with other, somewhat more visible deities.
In Jerusalem, Tammuz, and his mother, the queen
of heaven, Ashtoreth (Ezekiel 8: 14) occupied appart-
ments on the same premises as Yahwehs male prosti-
tutes (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 car-
ried 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 Adonis (the Hellenistic equivalent of
Tammuz) 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 had once been 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 symme-
try to the tribal council on earth, would convene with
his seventy siblings in heaven (I Kings 22: 19-22; Psalms 82:
1-6). Initially this Yahweh had just been a late arrival in
the nursery of his father El, the strutting bull, the
creator of the world. Over the centuries Yahweh rose
from the obscurity of a tribal idol, perhaps not even
indigenous to the Hebrews (Numbers 31: 7-11), and gradu-
ally assumed a profile comparable to the Nordic Thor,
and then, in blatant violation of a whole wad of his
own commandments if the rabbis can be trusted
married 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).
Yahwehs incestuous consort remained a Goddess
of great influence. This latent conflict between urban
matriarchy and the free roaming shepherds of the
plains could explain the stories of simmering blood
feuds and sometimes downright genocidal killing-
sprees between the Hebrew tribes in the Book of Judges
(Judges 21: 17-21), and for the longest time it was a free
for all who would come out on top. 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 herself was a priestess of Asherah
(I Kings 15: 13).
In 627 BC, the summons of his father finally tore
Jeremiah away from his musings on ancient mythol-
ogy. The long awaited moment had arrived. The high
priest 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 tale from the Arabian Nights.
The youngest of the contenders was initially banished
from the scene yet returned in triumph and estab-
lished 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), this episode was a Godsend. The Assyrian
regime was too occupied with its own affairs to pay
any attention.
The high priest Hilkiah, received communications
from Nabopolassar; the time had come for a reshuffle
of the deck. And Hilkiahs son was to deliver the open-
ing salvo.
Still only fifteen, Jeremiah addressed the public
with a cocky and well-coached performance, introduc-
ing 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 na-
tions and kingdoms, to root out, and to destroy, to build and
to plant (Jeremiah 1: 5-10).
We have come to think of a prophet as somebody
foretelling the future. That was not the way of the an-
cients. For a glimpse at what the immortals held hid-
den 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 commis-
sions for casting spells and pronounce blessings old-
fashioned 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 an-
nounced what shall happen, not what will happen. It
was meant to be not so much a prognosis, than a
magical act of intervention.
The classic example is the curse Ezekiel had laid on
the Phoenician city of Tyre. For some reason this city
had always been a favorite with aspiring apprentice
prophets, although the frequency of the rehearsals
doesnt inspire confidence, apparently even the big
stars like Isaiah couldnt swear the city into surrender-
ing. So, in the year 589 BC, the Babylonian ruler com-
missioned Ezekiel to have his shot. It was a classic per-
formance: 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 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).
From the sound of it, Lord God must have had a
few too many on that day. The siege went on for six-
teen years; in the end Ezekiel himself was charged
with the unpleasant task of reporting that the city just
refused to yield.
To Jeremiah things came much easier. The son of
Hilkiah was the appointed speaker of the regime; his
father was the spiritual chief of the country, the nobil-
ity thought of him as one of their own; and Assyria?
Assyria was occupied with her own problems. No sur-
prise here then, that Jeremiah gained the reputation
of a mighty prophet. The young man had everything
going for him; the royal court kept the door wide open
and Jeremiah became friends with Prince Zedekiah,
the kings brother. There was not a whole lot of ex-
travagance at Jerusalems court, but on a young man
from rural Anathoth, it left an impression!
Despite of being the capital of Judah and despite of
her traditions as a religious center predating even
King David dancing naked in the streets (incurring the
disapproval of his wife), 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 repre-
sented little more than a mountain fortress overseeing
a tightly packed suburban area on a narrow ledge
stretching west later known as the Ophiel. The set-
tlement sheltered barely nine thousand people; the
Chaldean deportation figures allow for a realistic es-
timate (Jeremiah 52: 28-30). Only during the festivals this
number could swell to twenty thousand, with visitors
pitching their tents outside of the gate.
By comparison, the excavations of ancient Samaria
reveal a thriving metropolis of merchants with thirty-
five thousand houses, palaces and shrines, clustering
next to the international highways.
King Solomons temple was in urgent need of re-
furbishment and King Josiah decided on a facelift for
the entire city. 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 auto-
biography of Moses, written in a script that should I
say of course? wasnt yet invented when the He-
brews 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
would 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 most an-
cient sections in the Jewish Bible Judges, Prophets, the
Books of Kings this is the first mentioning of Moses.
King Josiahs propaganda machine staged the dis-
covery in an opulent ceremony, it seemed the pinna-
cle of Jeremiahs public career. He was still only in his
twenties, a cerebral figure, standing tall before the
people, although uncomfortable with his voice, a key
too high he felt, lacking in sonority.
He announced to the men of Judah, and to the deni-
zens 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 per-
form 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 in-
terpret and revise the received text, only to reinter-
pret their own interpretations later on.
They still keep doing this.












III.
ing Josiahs ambitious building program was
running out of funds. The regime therefore
turned its attention to the shrines in the coun-
try. For centuries, the high places had hoarded valu-
able offerings.
In the name of religious reform, the kings troopers
vandalized the rural shrines, murdered their priests
and desecrated ancient tombs (II Kings 23: 5-16). The in-
timidated populace was made to watch the temple
prostitutes burn alive and their valuables auctioned
off (II Kings 23: 6). If they didnt know already, the politi-
cians on the advisory board realized they had
groomed a monster with nothing but Huldahs pro-
nouncements standing between them and the zeal of
the King (Josephus, Antiquities X, 4: 2). It made Josiahs re-
gime odious, perhaps not with the bigoted hagiogra-
phers of posterity, but certainly with the people who
had to live through his rule.
The deportations were still a thing of the future,
but people began leaving the country on their own ac-
K
cord, joining the refugees from Samaria. In the capital
cities of Mesopotamia and among the Ionian colonies
of Asia Minor emerged a new cosmopolitan Jewry.
Their spiritual leaders condemned the House of David
and denounced monarchy as an infringement on Yah-
wehs 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).
Amidst all this broil of testosterone and casuistic
wit something passed almost unnoticed that should
have been alarming news of the first order: the troops
of the separatists had occupied the ancient city of
Babylon and King Nabopolassar made her the capital
of his brand-new empire.
Babylon was the largest and richest city on the
planet, people communicated in six languages, it was
the great emporium at the end of the caravan trail
from India, she was home to a stock exchange per-
haps even the first of its kind in the known world
and now became a royal residence: a true metropolis
and a mighty fortress. The Chaldeans were here to
stay. In 614 BC, the regime in Babylon signed a pact
with the Medes, a branch of Persian archers on horse-
back with imperial ambitions of their own, and two
years later Assyrias capital Nineveh fell to the coali-
tion and was destroyed.
The Assyrians took it on the chin and without delay
reconstituted the dynasty with Harran as the new
capital, which, however, was captured as well, just
three years afterwards. The Assyrian forces in the field
remained inexorable. Together with his Egyptian asso-
ciate, the Assyrian marshal Ashur-Uballit II marched
to regain Harran. This, temporarily, created 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.
His troops crossed the border to ancient Samaria
and set out on a sortie towards Bethel (II Kings 23: 15).
There was no resistance. It looked like 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. Although beaten
the combined forces of Egypt and Assyria remained in-
tact and retreated in good order, taking defensive po-
sitions in the Syrian Desert with headquarters in Car-
chemish as the new capital. It wasnt over yet.
In all haste, King Josiah terminated his crusade be-
fore the retreating forces could catch up with him.
Then another blow fell against the Assyrians. In
Egypt the old pharaoh had passed away and Prince
Necho acceded to the throne. The new pharaoh gave
in to the overtures (and the money) of Babylonian di-
plomacy. He renounced his coalition with Assyria and
in 608 BC signed an agreement with Chaldea to march
against Carchemish as the southern arm of a pincer
movement. At the same time Chaldeas forces would
bear 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.
Diplomats from Carchemish arrived in Jerusalem
bringing one last bargaining chip to the table: the
province of Samaria. Judah and Samaria would be re-
united again under the House of David! The glory-days
of King Solomon 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).
Yet it was not to be; and how could it?
We dont know whether at this point Hilkiah was
still alive the records no longer mention his name.
The Assyrian offer would have been his dream come
true, and may have blinded even him to assess the
danger in such offering. The state of Judah was in no
position to take on any of the big players, not even the
Assyrians, nor could it afford to court the retribution
of a rejected party by accepting offers from the other
side. Whether neutrality was really an option we dont
know, but this much was certain, without the high
priests political acumen and authority, the politicians
on the advisory board could only lose leverage on a
monarch who had never been conspicuous for his en-
dowment with brains. King Josiah refused to see that
he was a mere pawn in the game of a foreign power in
decline. He made a fatal choice. In 606 BC, when Phar-
aoh 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 and received a fatal wound in battle; his ser-
vants 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 and per-
plexed he lamented: We looked for peace and a time of
health but nothing good came out of it (Jeremiah 8: 15). For
Assyria things worked out just fine: Babylon cancelled
her campaign and recalled her troops; for now.





IV.
n Jerusalem, Josiahs oldest son had acceded to the
throne, yet Pharaoh Necho had other plans. He de-
ported 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).
From one day to the next, Jeremiah was no longer
center-stage, but it took him a long time to adjust to
the realization that Prophets prophesy falsely and priests
rule by their own means and my people love to have it so
(Jeremiah 5: 31; 6: 4). Taking leave from the royal court, all
of a sudden nobody seemed to miss him. Once again he
mingled with the lowly and disenfranchised whose
skin was black like an oven. To fulfill the obligations
towards Egypt, King Eliakims taskmasters visited the
mud hovels and from their emaciated mothers levied
the undernourished little ones for hard labor in the
mines: four- and five-year-old midgets, maggot-like
crawling through the claustrophobic shafts. They
looked up to a swinging basket of food lowered down
I
only in exchange for a basket of ore going up.
For Jeremiah it was a familiar sight to see
the children gather wood, and the fathers kindle fire, and
the women knead their pathetic little cakes to Ashtoreth, the
queen of heaven; watching on the faces the expression
of resignation when pouring 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: 4-5). 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 in-
difference: 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). The steaming 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 the politics in the Middle
East of the present, he got that spot on, but in 606 BC
nobody was interested. 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 com-
moner Urijah, son of Shemaiah had expressed un-
asked 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 imi-
gration 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 Anathoth and
remain there 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 Ana-
thoth, 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? Where-
fore 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 wicked-
ness 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 nei-
ther 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 vio-
lence 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).
He was honest enough to see the truth in what the
poor people he met 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).
A realization dawned on him 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) Jeremiah said: I have heard the prophets
say, I have dreamed, I have dreamed. Yes, they prophesy out
of their own hearts deceit. And he went around asking:
Say every one to his neighbor, what has Yahweh answered?
Has he spoken? Then added in utter disgust: And dont
even mention to me the burden of the Lord: every mans
word shall be his own burden, a reproach never to be forgot-
ten (Jeremiah 23: 11-40). Skepticism was in the air; in
Rome two augurs were seen of suddenly look up from
the entrails and double with laughter. In order to up-
hold the proposition of a living God, Deutero-Isaiah
formulated the new doctrine of an entirely alien deity:
I form light, and create darkness; I make peace, and cre-
ate evil: I am God, and there is none else, and my thoughts
are not your thoughts (Isaiah 45: 6-7; 55: 8). From which the
speaker of the expatriates, Ezekiel, the old sorcerer,
drew the logical conclusion: 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 (Eze-
kiel 14: 9, 20: 25-26).
Some God you got there!
Behold, I will fill all the inhabitants of this land, even
the kings that sit on Davids throne, and the priests, and the
prophets, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, with drunk-
enness. And I will dash them one against another, even the
fathers and the sons together, says the Lord, I will not pity,
nor spare, nor have mercy, but destroy them. When they
fast, I will not hear cry, and when they offer burnt offering
and an oblation, I will not accept them. (Jeremiah 13: 13-14; 14:
11-12) This was the one promise God would keep with
his chosen people.
At Auschwitz he leaned at the Gate with the in-
scription Labor sets you free and just twiddled his
thumbs. I heard the rabbis in the camp had put God on
trial and passed a guilty verdict. Yet just as in most
families with an abusive father, loyalty prevailed: the
story of the Jews!
Back in 605 BC the Babylonians gathered in the
streets and watched the state-funeral for King
Nabopolassar.
It was the end of a brilliant rule. The successor was
his son King Nebuchadnezzar II (630 562 BC). The for-
eign diplomats in his court reported to their govern-
ments that he gave the impression of an inexperi-
enced young man.
In Egypt, only one year after their coalition with
Chaldea, Pharaoh Necho or his advisors saw this as a
sign that their hour had come: in a complete turn-
around the regime on the Nile changed sides again and
went to the assistance of the Assyrians in Carchemish.
As the now senior partner in a renewed coalition with
what the pharaoh envisioned to become an Assyrian
buffer state, his policymakers reckoned, Egypt could
extend her influence well into Mesopotamia. Appar-
ently nobody told the pharaoh that the new king in
Babylon had been earning his spurs as a more than ca-
pable general in his fathers army. Pharaoh Necho lost
everything.
Chaldeas army and her Persian allies cut down the
combined forces of Egypt and Assyria to the last man.
It was a complete rout; the pursuit by the Persian
archers continued for three days.
Under the auspices of the present crises Jeremiah
was permitted to return to Jerusalem, yet his bitter
comment, You also shall be as ashamed of Egypt, as you
were ashamed of Assyria (Jeremiah 2: 37), again stated the
obvious to people who truly had enough of bad news.
And the politicians on the advisory board had a differ-
ent perspective altogether.
Was Egypts loss not Judahs gain? Was it not a good
thing that Pharaoh king of Egypt had become but a
noise; and has passed the time appointed? Were the
tributes to Egypt not rescinded? So what was the point
of Jeremiahs complaint? That the mauled Egyptians
had become a target for predatory powers like a very
fair heifer, everybody could see but the how and
when of the destruction coming from the north was
not supposed to be a subject for casting unpatriotic
spells. Screaming on the top of your voice that it is
coming. it is coming! (Jeremiah 46: 11, 17, 20) wasnt of any
help for anybody. How about Jeremiah would employ
his energies for something useful for a change!
What his critics had in mind with useful was the
resettlement of a tribe of fugitive Nomads, the Rechab-
ites. They were on the run from the Chaldean revenue
officers, seeking refuge in Judea. The royal court ex-
pected 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); as a politician of the ancient regime even he
could see how such deal was certain to rub the new
superpower of the North the wrong way.
So Jeremiah continued to give his people an earful
of what they thought was 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 whosoever hears it, his
ears shall tingle (Jeremiah 17: 1-3, 19: 3). And tingle the
ears did! The royal court had just about enough of
Jeremiahs swearing in foreign tongues; on a misde-
meanor charge they had him clapped in for another
night in the stocks
Not that the cooler did him any good; on his release
Jeremiah remained unapologetic (Jeremiah 20: 1-4). He
was in his forties and even the dwindling number of
friends among his peers considered Jeremiah a garru-
lous 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 un-
derneath the arched stairway.




















V.
eremiah recognized the quick, toothy smile. He
had seen this guy before. Baruch, the son of
Neriah made no secret of his Chaldean partisan-
ship (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 (Jeremi-
ah 39: 11-12). Baruch had followed perhaps was in-
structed to follow the prophets dissolute activities
and now offered Jeremiah what he needed most: di-
rection, friendship, someone to ease that weight of
the world from his shoulders.
In retrospect Jeremiah appears as a Chaldean sym-
pathizer all along, and it is true, the policies of his fa-
ther had put him inadvertently in the position of a
Chaldean patsy, but I see no evidence that before Ba-
ruch would recruit him, the prophet had been any-
bodys partisan except that of Judah and the House of
David. Only now he served a foreign cause and not at
all unreservedly.
He still had connections to members of the royal
house and in the eyes of his Chaldean handler this
J
made him an asset. This, and the book Jeremiah held
hidden under his pillow.
For many years, Jeremiah was 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 cur-
rency. Jeremiahs notes formed the raw material for
the first autobiography in the literature of the West;
Later on a certain St. Augustine (354 430 AD) would
model on it his Confessions, but without Baruchs insis-
tence to put together in a book 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.
Sure enough, 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 alto-
gether, at least for Baruchs protg.
Baruch was also familiar with the demands of a Zi-
onist faction among the expatriates, which firmly be-
lieved that 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 re-
mained 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 one of those threats spoken in
the spur of the moment, He did not really mean it,
or did he?
In Baruchs editorial intervention 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, be-
cause 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 re-
main in their land, says the Lord, and they shall prosper
(Jeremiah 9: 12; 25: 15-32; 27: 8-11).
At last the book was ready for a public reading.
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 atten-
tion 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 council-
ors 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 com-
panion 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 know of course 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
rest of the 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 with
all the inevitable inaccuracies this method implies,
this is the text, which after extensive editing has
found its way into the Bible. The question is, when was
it edited and when was it added and by whom?
In the remake of the book Baruch or his editor ad-
mitted to including many like words (Jeremiah 36: 32),
which of course can mean anything and everything,
leaving subsequent editors with ample license to
amend and rewrite even further. On the other hand,
had Jeremiah fallen silent before meeting his Baruch
say on occasion of King Josiahs debacle, who knows,
we probably wouldnt even remember his name.
King Eliakim was in no forgiving mood, yet his ad-
visors felt they had better things to do than give chase
to a certified nutcase and his impresario who was also
known as an agent of the Chaldean foreign office.
Who knows, the man might become useful at some
point or other.
For now political establishment began to feel a
growing sense of encirclement. Every year this King
Nebuchadnezzar conducted another campaign into
surrounding territories, and Egypt still reeling from
the disaster at Carchemish could only stay put and
watch. Yet the old crocodile still had teeth, albeit only
dentures and rather expensive ones at that, dentures
in the shape of mercenaries from Greece and Libya.
In 600 BC, Nebuchadnezzar invaded Egypt with
every intention to stay. The Pharaohs soldiers of for-
tune, however, stood their ground and the Babylonian
king received a wound in battle. The Chaldean chroni-
cles 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 commenc-
ing another campaign, issued orders not to leave the
barracks just yet. The pharaoh remained on his guard.
His spies reported that the Chaldean king continued
gathering chariots and horses in great numbers (A.K.
Grayson). Nebuchadnezzar had learned his lesson and
recruited Greek mercenaries as well. Babylonian
money was just as good as Egypts. In a number of
sharp actions against the sheiks in the Arabian desert,
King Nebuchadnezzar licked his raw recruits into
shape and built confidence for bigger things to come:
Scouring the desert we took much plunder from the Arabs,
their possessions, animals and Gods (A.K. Grayson, II Kings 24:
1), says the kings chronicler.





VI.
fter 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 Jerusa-
lem 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 had 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,
A
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, Co-
niah, his son I will give into the hand of assassins. After
this opening salvo, King Nebuchadnezzars troops oc-
cupied 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 Jerusa-
lem, 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 the Babylonian exile commences
from here.
King Coniah checked in into a Babylonian prison
(II Kings 24: 15-18). Like every other inmate, the de-
throned king fell in with the queue 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 Zede-
kiah (597 586 BC) on the royal throne, the old friend of
Jeremiah. The prophet himself was not among the de-
portees, 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 in-
creasingly bitter squabbling between the Jewish fac-
tions: To the priests, and to the prophets, and all the peo-
ple whom Nebuchadnezzar had carried captive from Jerusa-
lem 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 Je-
hoiada 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 every citizen
and eliminate birth as qualification for holding office.
No law should pass without a majority vote in the de-
mocratic assembly; in the trials a jury of peers would
pass their verdict against which the defendant could
lodge an appeal. (The bill was of course never popular
with the noble families, people who like to speak of
themselves as the silent majority, and yet it would
take nothing less but exiling virtually the entire elec-
torate, some 80% of Athens population, to bring, with
the support of a foreign power, the distant heirs of
these blue-blooded bastards back into office.) In Italy
as well, the assembly of a provincial town expelled
their governor, an Etruscan viceroy and proclaimed a
republic, the beginning of the long march towards
world dominion and empire. Even in Africa Phoenician
traders and corporations defended their stock ex-
change with the most powerful navy East of Gibraltar.
Their navigators were the first to sail around the coast
of Africa and explore the Canary Islands.
Everywhere we see the signs of a new era, but for
Jeremiah this was still the old world of tribal alle-
giances and loyalties.
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 upcoming new
type, the cosmopolitan Jew.
For Baruch the days were long gone where the fa-
thers 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 home would be wherever
a synagogue opened the door.
Because of the events of exile the worshippers of
Yahweh had gained the religious monopoly by default.
Cut off from the physical presence of their shrines, the
exiles, if they didnt turn renegades, were left with lit-
tle else but belaboring semantics and the law: And I
will give them a heart to know me, and they shall be my peo-
ple, and return to me with their whole heart (Jeremiah 24: 7)
chimed apologetically the rabbis.
The Torah is the product of exile and the Zionistic
aftermath. Hence we find exile as a prominent leit-
motif in the sacred texts. Adam and Eve are driven out
of Paradise, Cain and Moses are homicidal fugitives,
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. But the story with the greatest appeal to the ex-
patriates everywhere in Babylon, Khorasan and Egypt
was the novella of Joseph. Rising from bondage in a
foreign country he receives recognition and advance-
ment, never to return to the land of his forebears; in
fact he invites the family to follow him (Genesis 11: 28 ff.).
So, who were the people putting together this col-
lection of memories and fiction?
We can be fairly certain that nothing of the Bible
had existed before the Babylonian exile except per-
haps for some of the prophets, the Book of the Judges,
and fragmented portions of the Book of Kings. Later the
rabbis in Amsterdam would excommunicate the phi-
losopher Spinoza (1632 1677) for saying aloud what
Uriel da Costa (1585 1640) and many of the better edu-
cated in the Jewish communities already had quietly
concluded, namely that it had been Ezra and his team
who had masterminded the Pentateuch and even large
sections in the Books of Kings (Baruch Spinoza, A Theologico-
Political Treatise, Book 3), perhaps even were the sole
innovators and authors of these concoctions.
What Spinoza referred to was the in his era still
inspired tale of 4th Esdras, chapter fourteen: Accord-
ingly in the calamities of the capture and destruction
of the Holy City in 586 BC, the Temple of Solomon had
been put to the torch and with it the sacred Rolls of
Scriptures, so that barely a scratch remained to tell
the tale of Hebrew history and its religion. This irrepa-
rable loss affected the chosen people throughout the
Babylonian captivity. But upon their return to the re-
stored City of God, that is over a century later, Yah-
weh, we are told, inspired Ezra to reproduce the sa-
cred lost Books very much in the fashion of Huldas
pious fraud, (what also comes to mind is the Book of
Mormon). As instructed, Ezra, employing five scribes,
dictated to them from inspired memory 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 sa-
cred canon, the remaining seventy being termed eso-
teric and reserved for the use of only the wisest.
Needless to say that by now 4th Ezdras has been
demoted from inspired to apocryphal and we
don't need to believe the story, but the necessities that
has caused the concoction of such a tale from early on
is by itself a telling fact: at some point, say in 458 BC,
Jewish scripture (the sections that one day would be-
come the Christian Old Testament) was in such a bad
state that its recovery had been calling for desperate
measures. (That a very similar story is told about the
Septuagints translation into Greek doesnt inspire
confidence either.)
On the other hand, even the racist Ezra would have
been in no position to contravene what in his time and
age counted as custom and tradition. Whatever texts
failed to escape the conflagration of 588 BC, it is fair to
assume that at least some scribes of the archive had
escaped. It is also fair to assume that these custodians
of tradition made every effort to restore from memory
at least portions of their heritage, although as these
things go, reflecting the needs and requirements of a
changed world. Learning things by rote was very much
in the spirit of the time, reproducing oral lore in a
continually updated guise is the very way oral tradi-
tions used to operate. We know that for a fact from
studies of Homers epics.
So what was Ezras role in all this?
According to the Bible Ezra was a Zionist and ideo-
logue. He rebuilt the holy city, laid the foundations to
the second temple and set up a social experiment of
rigorous eugenics (Ezra 3: 10; 10: 3).
Ezra drew the authority to do so from the decree of
Cyrus and his own concoctions of Holy Writ. Whatever
material was available he collected and put it in order,
and divided them into the three great divisions now
recognized as the Law, the Prophets, and the Hagiogra-
phies, and by doing so, according to Rabbi Levita (1549),
not the nebulous Moses but the very real Ezra became
the father and true founder of Judaism.
Before anybody raises his hand in protest let him
consider that neither in Judges nor in the prophets
such a central figure for the Jewish faith as Moses is
even mentioned.
Yet it wasnt all plain sailing for those ancient Zion-
ists: although the king of Persia in 538 BC had given
permission for the exiles to repatriate to their home-
land, to rebuild Jerusalem and the temple, and live ac-
cording to the statutes of Nehemiah and Ezra, the
Great Kings offer did not entail political independ-
ence. It did not even entail statehood, and two hun-
dred years later there were renewed deportations un-
der Artaxerxes Ochus (359 338 BC). Accordingly the
form of government in Jerusalem before Judas Mac-
cabeus 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 na-
tional 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 theoc-
racy, a clerical corporation with the high-priest at its head,
which, acquiescing in foreign rule and renouncing the for-
mation of a state, guarded the distinctiveness of its adher-
ents, and dominated them under the aegis of the protective
power (Mommsen).
In other words, the Torah became the portable
country of the expatriate Jew and even provided the
Jews of the second temple with a national identity (if it
wasnt really the first temple of a new faith we re-
member the prevalence of polytheism before exile).
Be that, as it may, for now we still write the year
595 BC. For the deportees there seemed to appear a
silver lining on the horizon.
Wild rumors circulated 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 was the official speaker of the
royal court; if anybody knew what we dont, it must
have been him.
The people assembled and Hananiah announced
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 promised 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 feel-
ings, was seen to nod with approval; was he privy to
the same information as Hananiah? Whether or not,
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 the seasoned politi-
cian of an ancient regime, Jeremiah didnt leave with-
out 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).
Jeremiahs Babylonian 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 flus-
tered Hananiah, a considerable feat of muscle power;
these things are heavy. The shouting match com-
menced, 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 Nebuchadnez-
zar 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 would Jeremiah hold responsible
(Jeremiah 28: 13-17).
In 593 BC, Nebuchadnezzar himself took charge of a
punitive strike and ordered a second wave of deporta-
tions. 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 and subsequently decreed 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 op-
position 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, proclaim-
ing 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 ut-
ter dismay, he rescinded his manumission orders.
The, as usual, well-informed 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 alli-
ance 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 prom-
ises made neither side could really afford to make or
keep. Nevertheless the Egyptian military deployed re-
serves to Migdol on the Sinai. King Zedekiah threw all
his assets into the fortified strongholds of Lachish,
Azekah and Jerusalem, and waited for the Egyptian
army to make a move.
The move 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, Leba-
non, 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 un-
der 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 while taking cover from the missiles of the
siege engines heard this and grabbed for stones to
throw, and 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 a more
worldly matter.
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 ac-
quired real estate. Although held in custody, he man-
aged not only to transact business but commanded ac-
cess to a considerable amount of silver bullion, a tes-
tament to the prophets actual standing and wealth
(Jeremiah 32: 8-9). Baruch even went so far as brokering
deals on behalf of the regimes exiled opposition
(Jeremiah 32: 42-44).
The investment, however, didnt look so smart
anymore when reports arrived of Egyptian troop
movements on the Sinai.
The Chaldean general wasted no time. He broke
camp to confront with his own mercenaries from
Greece the Greek mercenaries in Egyptian pay. And as
if on cue, news reached the Egyptian high command of
trouble on the Libyan border. After a brief standoff be-
tween soldiers of the same nation, some knowing each
other personally, the pharaohs expensive contingents
marched back to Egypt without firing a single shot.
In the ensuing 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 recog-
nized 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 can-
ing, 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 cus-
tody of another personal enemy, Jonathan the scribe.
This time 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 environ-
ment 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 rea-
son 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 with-
drew his protection. The jeering courtiers roped down
the struggling Jeremiah into the prisons septic tank.
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 wor-
ried 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 handker-
chief to his nose, the king rose and left. Later the
courtiers returned and inquired what this conversa-
tion had been 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 to-
wards Egypt and the seaboard, in case a ship was wait-
ing 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 execu-
tions 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).








VII.
e are told the King of Kings expressed his con-
cern for Jeremiah, putting his general in
charge of the prophets welfare (Jeremiah 39: 11-
12). The unknown chronicler undoubtedly heightened
the colors a bit, but the fact remains, the Chaldean of-
ficials knew the prophet, whether with or without
King Nebuchadnezzars personal intervention. Ba-
ruchs 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 Ahi-
kam, 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 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 sin-
W
gle bundle and then fall in with the columns of de-
portees from Jerusalem. There still exists a relief chis-
eled 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 eight-
eenth 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 pub-
lic affairs and returned to his estates in Anathoth. Ba-
ruch 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 dis-
tant bleating of herds and the new wheat nodded its
ears under the sun.
It was the autumn of 586 BC. The prophet sat side-
ways 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 im-
pression and was popular with the people (II Kings 25: 22-
25). 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 making 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 ex-
pressed 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 is certain: this utterly callous assassina-
tion stripped the last shred of credibility from the al-
ready threadbare reputation of the House of David
(Jeremiah 41: 1-3).
Unable to muster any kind of popular support,
Ishmael robbed a passing caravan, murdered the mer-
chants, then burned Mizpah to the ground and took
hostages to screen his escape behind 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 Ish-
mael 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 the 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 refu-
gees 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 Ba-
ruch, 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: 2-
15, 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 immigration
ordered Jeremiah to take a boat downstream to
Tahpanhes (now Tell Defenneh) a city in the Nile delta,
exclusively reserved for foreign visitors and immi-
grants (Josephus Antiquitates Judaicae, 10: 180-181). The Egyp-
tian 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 af-
ter 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 de-
signs 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 pre-
sented itself.
In 567 BC, contingents of newly drafted recruits pa-
raded through the streets of the Egyptian cities. Phar-
aoh Amesis II had seized the throne in a military coup
and started a national revival. His dethroned prede-
cessor 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 Baby-
lon 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). God was feeling generous; it
wasnt his 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 Baby-
lon: 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. Proba-
bly a late flourish from the days of Ezras inspired cot-
tage industry.
On April 2, 561 BC, Nebuchadnezzars son and suc-
cessor issued an amnesty for Coniah, the last living
king of the Hebrews. After thirty-seven years of cap-
tivity, 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 hi-
eroglyphics 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.
The End