It may have been when the defeat of Necho's arms had driven the people with renewed zeal to the Yahwe-cult in the temple that Jeremiah appeared with an oracle predicting the destruc tion of the great sanctuary in whose inviolabil ity they believed (vii, lff).
In 605 Baruch is said to have written in a roll from the mouth of Jeremiah all the words that Yahwe had spoken to him. The reason for this procedure was probably not that Jeremiah was unacquainted with the art of writing, as Buttenwieser thinks, or as a man of letters found it convenient to dictate to his private secretary from a note-book kept by him for many years, as is generally supposed, but rather, as Stade has pointed out, that he was an inspired oracle-giver whose utterances in a state of ecstacy might be written down by another. The new word of Yahwe contained, no doubt, the substance of many an oracle in the past, but the burden of its message was that the enemy from the north, long ago an nounced by Yahwe, now distinctly named as the king of Babylon, would come and destroy the land and its inhabitants (xxxvi, 29). When the roll was the following year cut up and burned by Jehoialdm, Jeremiah hid himself, but continued to denounce the king, e.g., for his failure to pay his workmen, and to predict for him an evil death. Nor did he think that Yahwe would help Jehoiachin, who was act ually deported in 597. In the time of Zede kiah (597-586), he strenuously opposed the Egyptian party which advocated independence, and finally persuaded the king to open rebel lion against Nebuchadnezzar. Another prophet, Hananiah, announced in the name of Yahwe that Jehoiachin and the exiles would return in two years; Jeremiah declared that the exile would last 70 years, and is said to have threat ened Hananiah with death within a year. In 587. when Nebuchadnezzar temporarily raised the siege of Jerusalem, Zedekiah requested the prophet to consult Yahwe. and received the advice to surrender. At this time his indigna tion was aroused by the reduction to slavery again of freedmen emancipated at the approach of the Chaldr.airs. As he counseled desertion to the enemy, and by his speeches ((weakened the hands of the men of he was im prisoned, and an attempt was apparently made to put him to death. When the city was cap tured he was allowed to remain in Palestine with his people. How long he survived the fall of Jerusalem is not known. After the murder of Gedaliah he is said to have been forced to accompany a number of fugitives into Egypt, and to have predicted at Daphne the conquest of Egypt by Nebuchadnezzar, the massacre or deportation of its people,. the burn ing of its temples and the destruction of an the Jews in Migdol Daphne, Memphis and Upper Egypt. The Elephantine papyri, discov ered in 1904, have revealed the fact that there was a Jewish military colony on the island opposite Syene, having a temple of its own in 526 and continuing its existence throughout the Sth century. It probably was brought into
the country by Psammetichus I. This colony was certainly not destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar. We possess no evidence of a conquest of Egypt by this king. The account of Nesu Hor, gov ernor of Syene, was once supposed to allude to it, but it is now generally recognized that it refers to a rebellion of Libyan, Greek and Syrian garrisons in the cataract district. A badly mutilated cuneiform inscription from the 37th year of Nebuchadnezzar mentions a con flict with a king of Egypt of whose name only the syllable sti is legible. Wiedemann and others thought that the original text must have told of a raid into Egypt. But Maspero, 'His toire anciennei (1899) and Breasted, of Egypt) (1905) seem to be right in maintain ing that no inference can be drawn except the dispatch by Amasis of naval and land forces to meet the Chaldaeans and a probable loss of Syrian territory. We now know that the colony at Elephantine was not annihilated or carried away by Nebuchadnezzar, and that it continued to worship other gods besides Yahwe in a temple which was not destroyed even by Cam byses, but ruined by the priests of Chnub from Syene in 411. It may have been broken up when Egypt recovered its independence in 404; and it is not improbable that a later Palestinian writer, knowing that there had been exiles in various parts of Egypt in the time of Jeremiah, but as ignorant in regard to the history of the Jews of Elephantine as the modern world was until 1904, supposed that the earlier colonies had been destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, and put upon the lips of the prophet oracles an nouncing their doom. Some interpreters who, like Duhm, are strongly convinced that as a whole these oracles• cannot have come from Jeremiah, nevertheless assume a small genuine nucleus. If they are right, Jeremiah's latest prognostications were no more destined to a literal fulfilment than some of the earlier ones. Most students recognize to-day that his great ness as a prophet does not depend upon the accuracy with which he was able to foretell future events. History does not record when, where and in what manner he died. According to a legend preserved by Tertullian, Jerome, Epiphanius and Isidore of Pelusium, he was stoned to death by his people in Daphnes:, while others relate that he was brought from Egypt to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar or returned with Baruch to Palestine. In 2 Macc. 4ff, he is said to have hidden the tabernacle, the ark and the altar of incense in Mount Nebo, and in 2 Macc. xv, 12ff he appears to Judas Maccabzus, presenting him with a sword. Numerous other stories have been collected by Neumann ('Jeremias von Anathoth,) 1856) and Ginzburg ((Jewish 1904).