be loyal to Babylonia and to resume their former peaceful occupations. The land had not been devastated, and many gladly returned from their hiding-places in Moab, Edom and Ammon. But discontented survivors of the royal family under Ishmael intrigued with Baalis, king of Ammon. The plot resulted in the murder of Gedaliah and an unsuccessful attempt to carry off various princesses and officials who had been left in the governor’s care. This new confusion and a natural fear of Babylonia’s vengeance led many to feel that their only safety lay in flight to Egypt, and, although warned by Jeremiah that even there the sword would find them, they fled south and took refuge in Tahpanhes (Daphnae, q.v.), afterwards forming small settlements in other parts of Egypt. But the thread of the history is broken, and apart from an allusion to the favour shown to the captive Jehoiachin (with which the books of Jeremiah and Kings conclude), there is a gap in the records, and subsequent events are viewed from a new standpoint (§ 20).
The last few years of the Judaean kingdom present several difficult problems.
(a) That there was some fluctuation of tradition is evident in the case of Jehoiakim, with whose quiet end (2 Kings xxiv. 6 [see also Lucian]; 2 Chron. xxxvi. 8 [Septuagint]) contrast the fate foreshadowed in Jer. xxii. 18 seq., xxxvi. 30 (cf. Jos. Ant. x. 6, 2 seq.). The tradition of his captivity (2 Chron. xxxvi. 6; Dan. i. 2) has apparently confused him with Jehoiachin, and the latter’s reign is so brief that some overlapping is conceivable. Moreover, the prophecy in Jer. xxxiv. 5 that Zedekiah would die in peace is not borne out by the history, nor does Josiah’s fate agree with the promise in 2 Kings xxii. 20. There is also an evident relation between the pairs: Jehoahaz and Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin and Zedekiah (e.g. length of reigns), and the difficulty felt in regard to the second and third is obvious in the attempts of the Jewish historian Josephus to provide a compromise. The contemporary prophecies ascribed to Jeremiah and Ezekiel require careful examination in this connexion, partly as regards their traditional background (especially the headings and setting), and partly for their contents, the details of which sometimes do not admit of a literal interpretation in accordance with our present historical material (cf. Ezek. xix. 3–9, where the two brothers carried off to Egypt and Babylon respectively would seem to be Jehoahaz and his nephew Jehoiachin).
(b) Some fluctuation is obvious in the number, dates and extent of the deportations. Jer. lii. 28–30 gives a total of 4600 persons, in contrast to 2 Kings xxiv. 14, 16 (the numbers are not inclusive), and reckons three deportations in the 7th (? 17th), 18th and 23rd years of Nebuchadrezzar. Only the second is specifically said to be from Jerusalem (the remaining are of Judaeans), and the last has been plausibly connected with the murder of Gedaliah, an interval of five years being assumed. For this twenty-third year Josephus (Ant. x. 9, 7) gives an invasion of Egypt and an attack upon Ammon, Moab and Palestine (see Nebuchadrezzar).
(c) That the exile lasted seventy years (? from 586 B.C. to the completion of the second temple) is the view of the canonical history (2 Chron. xxxvi. 21; Jer. xxv. 11, xxix. 10; Zech. i. 12; cf. Tyre, Isa. xxiii. 15), but it is usually reckoned from the first deportation, which was looked upon as of greater significance than the second (Jer. xxiv. xxix.), and it may be a round number. Another difficulty is the interpretation of the 40 years in Ezek. iv. 6 (cf. Egypt, xxix. 11), and the 390 in v. 5 (Septuagint 150 or 190; 130 in Jos. x. 9, 7 end). A period of fifty years is allowed by the chronological scheme (1 Kings vi. 1; cf. Jos. c. Ap. i. 21), and the late book of Baruch (vi. 3) even speaks of seven generations. Varying chronological schemes may have been current and some weight must be laid upon the remarkable vagueness of the historical information in later writings (see Daniel).
(d) The attitude of the neighbouring peoples constitutes another serious problem (cf. 2 Kings xxiv. 2 and 2 Chron. xxxvi. 5, where Lucian’s recension and the Septuagint respectively add the Samaritans!), in view of the circumstances of Gedaliah’s appointment (Jer. xl. 11, see above) as contrasted with the frequent prophecies against Ammon, Moab and Edom which seem to be contemporary (see Edom; Moab).
(e) Finally, the recurrence of similar historical situations in Judaean history must be considered. The period under review, with its relations between Judah and Egypt, can be illustrated by prophecies ascribed to a similar situation in the time of Hezekiah. But the destruction of Jerusalem is not quite unique, and somewhat later we meet with indirect evidence for at least one similar disaster upon which the records are silent. There are a number of apparently related passages which, however, on internal grounds, are unsuitable to the present period, and when they show independent signs of a later date (in their present form), there is a very strong probability that they refer to such subsequent disasters. The scantiness of historical tradition makes a final solution impossible, but the study of these years has an important bearing on the history of the later Judaean state, which has been characteristically treated from the standpoint of exiles who returned from Babylonia and regard themselves as the kernel of “Israel.” From this point of view, the desire to intensify the denudation of Palestine and the fate of its remnant, and to look to the Babylonian exiles for the future, can probably be recognized in the writings attributed to contemporary prophets.[1]
18. Internal Conditions and the Exile.—Many of the exiles accepted their lot and settled down in Babylonia (cf. Jer. xxix. 4–7); Jewish colonies, too, were being founded in Egypt. The agriculturists and herdsmen who had been left in Palestine formed, as always, the staple population, and it is impossible to imagine either Judah or Israel as denuded of its inhabitants. The down-trodden peasants were left in peace to divide the land among them, and new conditions arose as they took over the ownerless estates. But the old continuity was not entirely broken; there was a return to earlier conditions, and life moved more freely in its wonted channels. The fall of the monarchy involved a reversion to a pre-monarchical state. It had scarcely been otherwise in Israel. The Israelites who had been carried off by the Assyrians were also removed from the cult of the land (cf. 1 Sam. xxvi. 19; Ruth i. 15 seq.). It is possible that some had escaped by taking timely refuge among their brethren in Judah; indeed, if national tradition availed, there were doubtless times when Judah cast its eye upon the land with which it had been so intimately connected. It would certainly be unwise to draw a sharp boundary line between the two districts; kings of Judah could be tempted to restore the kingdom of their traditional founder, or Assyria might be complaisant towards a faithful Judaean vassal. The character of the Assyrian domination over Israel must not be misunderstood; the regular payment of tribute and the provision of troops were the main requirements, and the position of the masses underwent little change if an Assyrian governor took the place of an unpopular native ruler. The two sections of the Hebrews who had had so much in common were scarcely severed by a border-line only a few miles to the north of Jerusalem. But Israel after the fall of Samaria is artificially excluded from the Judaean horizon, and lies as a foreign land, although Judah itself had suffered from the intrusion of foreigners in the preceding centuries of war and turmoil, and strangers had settled in her midst, had formed part of the royal guard, or had even served as janissaries (§ 15, end).
Samaria had experienced several changes in its original population,[2] and an instructive story tells how the colonists, in their ignorance of the religion of their new home, incurred the divine wrath. Cujus regio ejus religio—settlement upon a new soil involved dependence upon its god, and accordingly priests were sent to instruct the Samaritans in the fear of Yahweh. Thenceforth they continued the worship of the Israelite Yahweh along with their own native cults (2 Kings xvii. 24–28, 33). Their descendants claimed participation in the privileges of the Judaeans (cf. Jer. xli. 5), and must have identified themselves with the old stock (Ezra iv. 2). Whatever recollection they preserved of their origin and of the circumstances of their entry would be retold from a new standpoint; the ethnological traditions would gain a new meaning; the assimilation would in time become complete. In view of subsequent events it would be difficult to find a more interesting subject of inquiry than the internal religious and sociological conditions in Samaria at this age.
To the prophets the religious position was lower in Judah than in Samaria, whose iniquities were less grievous (Jer. iii. 11 seq., xxiii. 11 sqq.; Ezek. xvi. 51). The greater prevalence of heathen elements in Jerusalem, as detailed in the reforms of Josiah or in the writings of the prophets (cf. Ezek. viii.), would
- ↑ So also one can now compare the estimate taken of the Jews in Egypt in Jer. xliv. with the actual religious conditions which are known to have prevailed later at Elephantine, where a small Jewish colony worshipped Yahu (Yahweh) at their own temple (see E. Sachau, “Drei aram. Papyrusurkunde,” in the Abhandlungen of the Prussian Academy, Berlin, 1907).
- ↑ Sargon had removed Babylonians into the land of Hatti (Syria and Palestine), and in 715 B.C. among the colonists were tribes apparently of desert origin (Tamud, Hayapa, &c.); other settlements are ascribed to Esar-haddon and perhaps Assur-bani-pal (Ezra iv. 2, 10). See for the evidence, A. E. Cowley, Ency. Bib., col. 4257; J. A. Montgomery, The Samaritans, pp. 46–57 (Philadelphia, 1907).
