4; for when it is there said that
all Judah and Jerusalem are to be given up to destruction because
of Manasseh, it is not presupposed that his guilt has been already
borne and atoned for by himself.
To justify the fact of Josiah's defeat and death at Megiddo, there
is attached to him the blame of not having given heed to the words
of Necho from the mouth of God warning him against the struggle
(xxxv. 21, 22). Contrariwise, the punishment of the godless
Jehoiakim is magnified; he is stated to have been put in irons by
the Chaldaeans and carried to Babylon (xxxvi. 6)--an impossibility
of course before the capture of Jerusalem, which did not take place
until the third month of his successor. The last prince of
David's house, Zedekiah, having suffered more severely than all
his predecessors, must therefore have been stiff-necked and
rebellious (xxxvi.12, 13),--characteristics to which, according to
the authentic evidence of the prophet Jeremiah, he had in reality
the least possible claim.
It is thus apparent how inventions of the most circumstantial kind
have arisen out of this plan of writing history, as it is
euphemistically called.
Pages:
449
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469
470
471
472
473