Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

SERMON XXI.

MANASSEH AND JOSIAH; ZEPHANIAH AND HABAKKUK.

LINCOLN'S INN. 3RD SUNDAY AFTER EASTER.—May 2, 1852.

HABAKKUK, II. 4.

Behold his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him; but the just shall live by his faith.

THERE is a tradition that Isaiah survived Hezekiah and suffered death in the days of Manasseh. Even the manner of his death has been determined; it has been said that the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews refers to him when he speaks of some having been sawn asunder. A vague rumour of this kind cannot be of the least help in determining the application of a prophecy, and there are no words in the book of Isaiah which warrant us in extending any part of it beyond the time denoted by the opening verse. The belief that he became a martyr arose from the improbability that any righteous man could be suffered to live in the days of Manasseh.

These days are described to us as darker than any which had preceded them in the kingdom of Judah. "The king did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, after the abominations of the heathen whom the Lord cast out before the children of Israel. For he built up again the high

Serm. XXI.] THE YEARS AFTER HEZEKIAH.

361

places which Hezekiah his father had destroyed, and he reared up altars for Baal, and made a grove as did Ahab king of Israel, and worshipped all the host of heaven and served them. And he built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the Lord. And he made his son pass through the fire, and observed times and used enchantments, and dealt with familiar spirits and wizards Moreover Manasseh shed innocent blood very much till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another."-2 Kings, c. xxi. vv. 2–16.

[ocr errors]

This state of things must have lasted a long time. He was but twelve years old when he began to reign, so that the violent change may not have begun at once, though it is quite possible that some of the counsellers, who had brought vain oblations and been very active on the new moons and Sabbaths during the reign of the father, may have cultivated all the superstitious and idolatrous tendencies that were ripening in the mind of the son, and may have encouraged him to set up groves and high-places even during his minority. However as he reigned fifty and five years, this supposition is hardly necessary to account for the extent and completeness of the reaction. Nor will any attentive reader of Isaiah and Micah feel astonished by it. They, especially the last, enable us to see the seeds of all corruption in a period of health. The lying prophet, the drunken priest, may have been hidden, even may have been externally reformed, in the later golden years of Hezekiah; but the soil, out of which they had grown and which had cherished them, was sure to produce the like weeds afterwards whenever the diligent culture was withdrawn from it, even if their growth was not fostered and quickened by the hands which should have extirpated them.

362

MANASSEH A CAPTIVE.

[Serm.

We do not hear of any special prophet at this time. Probably there was no one then whose visions were committed to writing, no one perhaps whose visions extended beyond the immediate evil and its coming punishment. Mere simple denunciations such as we heard of among the early seers of Israel, may have supplied the place of the winding discourse and the song that rose from the depths of earth to the heights of Heaven. This we should infer from the words in the Book of Kings; "The Lord spake by His servants the prophets saying, Because Manasseh king of Judah hath done these abominations, and hath done wickedly above all that the Amorites did which were before him, and hath made Judah also to sin with his idols: therefore thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Behold I am bringing such evil upon Jerusalem and Judah, that whosoever heareth of it, both his ears shall tingle. And I will stretch over Jerusalem the line of Samaria and the plummet of the house of Ahab, and I will wipe Jerusalem as a man wipeth a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down. And I will forsake the remnant of mine inheritance and deliver them into the hand of their enemies, and they shall become a prey and spoil to all their enemies, because they have done that which was evil in my sight and have provoked me to anger, since the day their fathers came out of Egypt even unto this day."-2 Kings, c. xxi. vv. 10–15.

The immediate accomplishment of this prediction is thus recorded in the 2nd Book of Chronicles, c. xxxiii.: "Wherefore the Lord brought upon them the captains of the host of the king of Assyria, which took Manasseh among the thorns, and bound him with fetters and carried him to Babylon." Babylon which had revolted from the Assyrian empire had again become a portion of it. That empire was exhibiting

XXI.]

HIS BABYLONIAN EXPERIENCE.

363 in its latter days all its ancient character. But its former capital was beginning to be threatened by the Medes. Babylon, the old glory of the Chaldees, soon to become the centre of a new Chaldæan empire, having recovered from the effects of its siege, was probably the centre of Asiatic religion and civilization. Manasseh would find himself surrounded there by the gods of whom he had set up images in Jerusalem; he would see that in its perfection which he had tried to imitate on a poor and insignificant scale. And he would be under the rod with which he had wished to scourge his subjects. This was the kind of lesson which all the prophets had prepared their kings for. They had dallied with idolatry; there was something in it especially attractive, it seemed so much more passionate, devout, sympathetic than that worship which the law of their fathers had prescribed. Their taste would be gratified. They should experience this worship in the length and depth and breadth of it. They had dallied with tyranny; what old decrees and statutes had power to bind them, the rulers of the land? what obligations had they to their serfs and bondsmen? No remedy can be effectual for such thoughts, but that which is said to have been tried upon the Sicilian masters in the days of Timoleon, the becoming serfs and bondsmen themselves. In this case we are told it was effectual. Manasseh humbled himself, turned to the Lord God of Israel, was brought back to Jerusalem another man. Probably he was able to effect a very partial cure of the evils which he had caused and of the confusion from which the land must have been suffering during his captivity. The short reign of his son is represented as not less corrupt than the greater part of his own had been; it was ended by conspiracy and assassination. Josiah, a boy of

364

ZEPHANIAH, (C. I.)

[Serm.

eight years old, was left. There may have been a promise of good in himself from his childhood; but the first years of his reign must have exhibited all the crimes and miseries which had been ripening for more than half a century.

To this period the prophet Zephaniah belongs. In the opening of his book, we are told that the word of the Lord came to him in the days of Josiah the son of Amon. We have a right to suppose that they were his earliest days, for this book does not allude to any symptoms of reformation. The sentences with which it commences are all indicative of coming woes and present idolatry. "I will utterly consume all things from off the land, saith the Lord. I will consume man and beast; I will consume the fowls of the heaven, and the fishes of the sea, and the stumblingblocks with the wicked. And I will cut off man from off the land, saith the Lord. I will also stretch out my hand on Judah and upon all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and I will cut off the remnant of Baal from this place and the name of the Chemarims with the priests. And them that worship the hosts of heaven upon the house-tops, and them that worship and swear by the Lord and that swear by Malcham, and them that are turned back from the Lord, and them that have not sought the Lord nor have enquired for him." All these different classes of evil-doers-the prophets, priests, and devotees of the old Phoenician worship; those of the new Sabæan or Babylonian worship; those who had nominally adhered to the worship of Jehovah but secretly swore by some other name; those that without any forms of false religion had become utterly indifferent, heartless, unbelieving, are warned that a day of the Lord is at hand, a great sacrifice to which He had bidden His guests. There is a vagueness in the prophet's description of the

« AnteriorContinuar »