089. I. The Remnants Of The Jewish Nation In The Land Of Egypt

I THE REMNANTS OF THE JEWISH NATION IN THE LAND OF EGYPT The deportations of 597 and 586 B. C. carried only a fraction of the total population of Judah to Babylon. Of those who survived the horrors of the sword, of famine, and of pestilence, probably the greater number were found in the land of the Nile. Egypt had encouraged the Judeans repeatedly to revolt against Babylon, and thus had lured the southern Hebrew kingdom on to its final ruin, as it had the northern a century earlier; and yet of all the nations of the earth it alone offered a friendly asylum to the Jews in the hour of their mortal agony. It was also easily accessible from Palestine and therefore doubly attractive to exiles seeking a place of refuge where they might abide until the storm was over and they could return to their beloved land. As early as 597 B. C. a large proportion of the race had already found homes in Egypt (Jeremiah 24:8 b). When, in 586 B. C., it became evident to every enlightened citizen of Judah that the final disaster was imminent undoubtedly thousands more joined them there. A little later, when the Jewish kingdom, which had been established with its capital at Mizpah, came to an untimely end because of the treacherous murder of its governor Gedaliah, the survivors, notwithstanding the earnest exhortations of Jeremiah, turned to Egypt. The prospect of living in a land where they should” see no war, nor hear the sound of the trumpet, nor have hunger of bread” (Jeremiah 42:14) was too strong a temptation to be resisted. Jeremiah’s warnings that these evils would overtake them there, and his assurances that the Babylonians would treat them justly if they remained in Judah, were of no avail. The nobles and military commanders of the little Jewish state, with the men, women, and children, with the princesses of the royal Judean house, with Jeremiah and his scribe Baruch, migrated as a body to Egypt. At Tahpanhes, the classical Daphnæ and the modern Defenneh, on its easternmost borders, the colony established itself. In many ways the location of their new place of abode must have been satisfactory to the Jews, for their former homes could be reached by a journey of a day or two, and they were right on the great highway which ran from Egypt to Palestine and the East. The population of Tahpanhes, as we learn from Herodotus and the results of the excavations which have been made in its ruins, was exceedingly cosmopolitan. While the reigning Pharaohs of Egypt had a royal residence in this eastern outpost of their empire, which they probably visited at rare intervals, Greek and Semitic influences were probably stronger in the life of the city than the native Egyptian. Thus the Jews did not come into very close contact with the religion of the new land of their adoption, and were free to worship unmolested the gods whom they pleased. The dangers which threatened their faith, as Jeremiah’s sermons indicate, came not from without, but from within. They had few religious teachers, for most of the priests and prophets of their nation had been carried away by the Babylonians. The refugees in Egypt, therefore, were the rank and file of the nation. Their faith was that of the masses, which, as has been noted in the study of the earlier prophets, differed widely from that of their inspired religious guides. They had never outgrown the old heathen superstitions, and the reactionary reigns of Jehoiakim and Zedekiah had confirmed them in the imperfect faith of their fathers. In their ignorance they also interpreted the disaster which had cast down their nation as evidence of Jehovah’s weakness and neglect. Hence it was natural that in their blindness they should endeavor to win the favor of the old Semitic gods. The Queen of Heaven, whose worship had been prevalent in Jerusalem in the days of Jehoiakim, was one of the most popular of these heathen deities. Herodotus states that this cult was common among the Assyrians and Arabs, and identifies the Queen of Heaven with the Assyrian goddess of love Ishtar, the Greek Aphrodite (i. 131). The prominence of the Jewish women in her worship (Jeremiah 44:17) tends to confirm this identification. For nearly half a century Jeremiah had preached unceasingly, in the face of apathy and bitter opposition, against the sins of his people. The sweeping misfortunes which had overtaken them were due entirely to their failure to heed his plain warnings. Contrary to his advice his associates had gone to Egypt. Their attitude toward him was one of contempt and defiance. Tradition asserts that they ultimately put him to death. Certainly from a human point of view by his life-long martyrdom he had nobly earned a quiet old age; but, while he was human, he was also a divinely commissioned prophet, so that, as long as his countrymen made mistakes and sinned, he could not keep silence. His latest sermons reflect the same supreme devotion and zeal and courage as do those of his youth.

He probably recognized that, although the mind and soul of his race were in Babylon, its physical strength, which was equally essential for the national reconstruction to which the true prophets looked forward with certainty, was to be sought in Egypt. There were found thousands of Jews able and eager to return and join the struggling few who had remained behind in Judah in reviving the body politic, whenever conditions seemed favorable. Of all the exiles in Egypt, of those located at Migdol, Memphis, and Pathros (southern Egypt), as well as at Tahpanhes, Jeremiah was the pastor, just as Ezekiel was of those in the East. The brief record of his work in Egypt introduces us to a most important, but otherwise unwritten, chapter of Jewish history. Without his faithful ministrations men might not have been found equal to the supreme sacrifice which was demanded of those unknown patriots who first came back without resources and without influence to rebuild the waste places of Judah.