The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD in the tenth year of Zedekiah king of Judah, which was the eighteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar. For then the king of Babylon's army besieged Jerusalem, and Jeremiah the prophet was shut up in the court of the prison, which was in the king of Judah's house. For Zedekiah king of Judah had shut him up, saying, "Why do you prophesy and say, `Thus says the LORD: "Behold, I will give this city into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall take it; and Zedekiah king of Judah shall not escape from the hand of the Chaldeans, but shall surely be delivered into the hand of the king of Babylon, and shall speak with him face to face, and see him eye to eye; then he shall lead Zedekiah to Babylon, and there he shall be until I visit him," says the LORD; "though you fight with the Chaldeans, you shall not succeed"'?" And Jeremiah said, "The word of the LORD came to me, saying, `Behold, Hanameel the son of Shallum your uncle will come to you, saying, "Buy my field which is in Anathoth, for the right of redemption is yours to buy it."' Then Hanameel my uncle's son came to me in the court of the prison according to the word of the LORD, and said to me, `Please buy my field that is in Anathoth, which is in the country of Benjamin; for the right of inheritance is yours, and the redemption yours; buy it for yourself.' Then I knew that this was the word of the LORD. So I bought the field from Hanameel, the son of my uncle who was in Anathoth, and weighed out to him the money- seventeen shekels of silver. And I signed the deed and sealed it, took witnesses, and weighed the money in the balances. So I took the purchase deed, both that which was sealed according to the law and custom, and that which was open; and I gave the purchase deed to Baruch the son of Neriah, son of Mahseiah, in the presence of Hanameel my uncle's son, and in the presence of the witnesses who signed the purchase deed, before all the Jews who sat in the court of the prison. Then I charged Baruch before them, saying, `Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: "Take these deeds, both this purchase deed which is sealed and this deed which is open, and put them in an earthen vessel, that they may last many days." For thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: "Houses and fields and vineyards shall be possessed again in this land."' Now when I had delivered the purchase deed to Baruch the son of Neriah, I prayed to the LORD, saying: `Ah, LORD GOD! Behold, You have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and outstretched arm. There is nothing too hard for You. You show lovingkindness to thousands, and repay the iniquity of the fathers into the bosom of their children after them- the Great, the Mighty God, whose name is the LORD of hosts. You are great in counsel and mighty in work, for your eyes are open to all the ways of the sons of men, to give everyone according to the fruit of his doings. You have set signs and wonders in the land of Egypt, to this day, and in Israel and among other men; and You have made Yourself a name, as it is this day. You have brought Your people Israel out of the land of Egypt with signs and wonders, with a strong hand and an outstretched arm, and with a great terror; You have given them this land, of which You swore to their fathers to give them- "a land flowing with milk and honey." And they came in and took possession of it, but they have not obeyed Your voice or walked in Your law. They have done nothing of all that You commanded them to do; therefore You have caused all this calamity to come upon them. Look, the siege mounds! They have come to the city to take it; and the city has been given into the hand of the Chaldeans who fight against it, because of the sword and famine and pestilence. What You have spoken has happened; there You see it! And You have said to me, O LORD God, "Buy the field for money, and take witnesses!"- yet the city has been given into the hand of the Chaldeans.' Then the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah, saying, "Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh. Is there anything too hard for Me? Therefore thus says the LORD: `Behold, I will give this city into the hand of the Chaldeans, into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and he shall take it. And the Chaldeans who fight against this city shall come and set fire to this city and burn it, with the houses on whose roofs they have offered incense to Baal and poured out drink offerings to other gods, to provoke Me to anger; because the children of Israel and the children of Judah have done only evil before Me from their youth. For the children of Israel have provoked Me only to anger with the work of their hands,' says the LORD. For this city has been to Me a provocation of My anger and My fury from the day that they built it, even to this day; so I will remove it from before My face because of all the evil of the children of Israel and the children of Judah, which they have done to provoke Me to anger- they, their kings, their princes, their priests, their prophets, the men of Judah, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And they have turned to Me the back, and not the face; though I taught them, rising up early and teaching them, yet they have not listened to receive instruction. But they set their abominations in the house which is called by My name, to defile it. And they built the high places of Baal which are in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire to Molech, which I did not command them, nor did it come into My mind that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin. Now therefore, thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, concerning this city of which you say, `It shall be delivered into the hand of the king of Babylon by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence': `Behold, I will gather them out of all countries where I have driven them in My anger, in My fury, and in great wrath; I will bring them back to this place, and I will cause them to dwell safely. They shall be My people, and I will be their God; then I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear Me forever, for the good of them and their children after them. And I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from doing them good; but I will put My fear in their hearts so that they will not depart from Me. Yes, I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will assuredly plant them in this land, with all My heart and with all My soul.' For thus says the LORD: `Just as I have brought all this great calamity on this people, so I will bring on them all the good that I have promised them. And fields will be bought in this land of which you say "It is desolate, without man or beast; it has been given into the hand of the Chaldeans." Men will buy fields for money, sign deeds and seal them, and take witnesses, in the land of Benjamin, in the places around Jerusalem, in the cities of Judah, in the cities of the mountains, in the cities of the lowland, and in the cities of the South; for I will cause their captives to return,' says the LORD."
Back to text.And these were the ones who came up from Tel Melah, Tel Harsha, Cherub, Addan, and Immer; but they could not identify their father's house or their genealogy, whether they were of Israel: the sons of Delaiah, the sons of Tobiah, and the sons of Nekoda, six hundred and fifty-two; and of the sons of the priests: the sons of Habaiah, the sons of Koz
, and the sons of Barzillai, who took a wife of the daughters of Barzillai the Gileadite, and was called by their name. These sought their listing among those who were registered by genealogy, but they were not found; therefore they were excluded from the priesthood as defiled. And the governor said to them that they should not eat of the most holy things till a priest could consult with the Urim and Thummim.
Back to text.In the one hundred and fifty-first year (of the Greek kingdom) Demetrius the son of Seleucus (one of Alexander's generals who ruled Syria, from whence came Antiochus Epiphanes, who set up the first `abomination of desolation'), came out from Rome and went with a few men to a seaside town and became king there. And it happened when he sought to enter the royal city of his forefathers, that the troops seized Antiochus and Lysias, to bring them before him. When the matter was made known to him, he said, "Do not let me see their faces." So the soldiers killed them, and Demetrius took his seat upon his royal throne. And all the lawless and ungodly men of Israel came to him, and Alcimus who wished to be high priest was their leader. And they accused the people to the king, and said, "Judas and his brothers have destroyed all your Friends, and have scattered us out of our land. So now send a man in whom you have confidence, and let him go and see all the damage he has done to us and to the king's country, and let him punish them and all their helpers." And the king chose Bacchides, one of the king's Friends, who was governor of the country beyond the river, and was a great man in the kingdom, and faithful to the king. And he sent him and the ungodly Alcimus, and assured him of the high priesthood, and ordered him to take vengeance on the Israelites. And they set forth and came with a strong force to the land of Judah, and he sent messengers to Judas and his brothers, with a peaceful message, but in guile. But they paid no attention to their message, for they saw that they had come with a strong force. And a body of scribes gathered before Alcimus and Bacchides, to ask for justice. The foremost among the Israelites that asked for peace from them were the Hasideans, for they said, "A priest of the blood of Aaron has come with the forces, and he will not do us any wrong." And he talked peaceably with them, and made oath to them, saying, "We will not attempt to injure you or your friends." And they trusted him. And he arrested sixty of them and killed them in a single day, just as he said who wrote, "The flesh and blood of your saints they scattered around Jerusalem, and they had no one to bury them."
Back to text.At this time Herod became the first foreigner to be king of the Jewish nation, fulfilling the words of Moses:
There shall not be wanting a ruler from Judah,
Nor a leader sprung from his loins,
Until he come for whom it is reserved.Moses adds that he will be the expectation of the Gentiles. There could be no fulfillment of the prediction as long as they were free to live under rulers of their own race, beginning with Moses himself and continuing to Augustus's reign; in his time the first foreigner, Herod, was entrusted by the Romans with the government of the Jews. Josephus informs us that he was an Idumaean on his father's side and an Arab on his mother's; but according to Africanus - and he was no ordinary historian - the best authorities say that Antipater, Herod's father, was son of a certain Herod of Ascalon, one of the `temple-slaves' of Apollo. This Antipater was taken prisoner by Idumaean bandits when a small child, and remained in their hands because his father was too poor to put down his ransom. He was brought up in their ways and later befriended by Hyrcanus, the Jewish high priest. His son was the Herod of our Saviour's time.
When a man of such antecedents came to be king of the Jews, at the door already, in accordance with the prophecy, was the expectation of the Gentiles, for with him the succession from Moses of Jewish rulers and governors came to an end. Before their captivity and removal to Babylon they were ruled by kings, Saul and David being the first. Before the kings the government was in the hands of rulers known as judges, who came to the fore after Moses and his successor Joshua. After the return from Babylon they maintained continuously an aristocratic and oligarchic constitution, priests being in complete control. This lasted until Pompey, the Roman commander, arrived and besieged Jerusalem with the utmost vigour. He defiled the holy places, going right into the innermost sanctuary of the temple. The man who had continued the succession of his ancestors till that time and was both king and high priest, Aristobulus by name, he dispatched as a prisoner to Rome together with his children. To Hyrcanus, Aristobulus's brother, he transferred the high priesthood, and he made the whole Jewish nation from then on tributary to Rome. As soon as Hyrcanus, the last to whom fell the high-priestly succession, was taken prisoner by the Parthians, Herod, as I have said, was the first foreigner to be entrusted by the Roman senate and the Emperor Augustus with the Jewish nation. It was without question in his time that the advent of Christ occurred; and the expected salvation and calling of the Gentiles followed at once, in accordance with the prophecy.
As soon as the rulers and leaders from Judah - those of Jewish stock - came to an end, not surprisingly the high priesthood, which had passed in regular succession, generation by generation, was plunged into immediate confusion.For this, too, you have a reliable witness in Josephus, who informs us that when entrusted with the kingdom by the Romans Herod no longer appointed high priests of the ancient stock but assigned the office to nonentities, and that a policy similar to Herod's regarding the appointment of priests was adopted by his son Archelaus, and after him by the Romans, when they took over the government of Judaea. The same writer informs us that Herod actually locked up the sacred vestment of the high priest and kept it under his own seal, no longer permitting the high priests to have charge of it. His example was followed by his successor Archelaus, and after him by the Romans.
Back to text.Thus says the LORD: "Go and get a potter's earthen flask, and take some of the elders of the people and some of the elders of the priests. And go out to the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, which is by the entry of the Potsherd Gate; and proclaim there the words that I will tell you, and say, `Hear the word of the LORD, O kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem. Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will bring such a catastrophe on this place, that whoever hears of it, his ears will tingle. Because they have forsaken Me and made this an alien place, because they have burned incense in it to other gods whom neither they, their fathers, nor the kings of Judah have known, and have filled this place with the blood of the innocents (they have also built the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings to Baal, which I did not command or speak, nor did it come into My mind), therefore behold, the days are coming," says the LORD, "that this place shall no more be called Tophet or the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter. And I will make void the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem in this place, and I will cause them to fall by the sword before their enemies and by the hands of those who seek their lives; their corpses I will give as meat for the birds of the heaven and for the beasts of the earth. I will make this city desolate and a hissing; everyone who passes by it will be astonished and hiss because of all its plagues. And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and everyone shall eat the flesh of his friend in the siege and in the desperation with which their enemies and those who seek their lives shall drive them to despair."' Then you shall break the flask in the sight of the men who go with you, and say to them, `Thus says the LORD of hosts: "Even so I will break this people and this city, as one breaks a potter's vessel, which cannot be made whole again; and they shall bury them in Tophet till there is no place to bury. Thus I will do to this place," says the LORD, "and to its inhabitants, and make this city like Tophet."'"
Back to text.Thus says the LORD my God, "Feed the flock for slaughter, whose owners slaughter them and feel no guilt; those who sell them say, `Blessed be the LORD, for I am rich'; and their shepherds do not pity them. For I will no longer pity the inhabitants of the land," says the LORD. "But indeed I will give everyone into his neighbor's hand and into the hand of his king. They shall attack the land, and I will not deliver them from their hand." So I fed the flock for slaughter, in particular the poor of the flock. I took for myself two staffs: the one I called Beauty, and the other I called Bonds; and I fed the flock. I dismissed the three shepherds in one month. My soul loathed them, and their soul also abhorred me. Then I said, "I will not feed you. Let what is dying die, and what is perishing perish. Let them that are left eat each other's flesh." And I took my staff, Beauty, and cut it in two, that I might break the covenant which I had made with all the peoples. So it was broken on that day. Thus the poor of the flock, who were watching me, knew that it was the word of the LORD. Then I said to them, "If it is agreeable to you, give me my wages; and, if not, refrain." So they weighed out for my wages thirty pieces of silver. And the LORD said to me, "Throw it to the potter"- that princely price they set on me. So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the house of the LORD for the potter. Then I cut in two my other staff, Bonds, that I might break the brotherhood between Judah and Israel. And the LORD said to me, "Next, take for yourself the implements of a foolish shepherd. For indeed I will raise up a shepherd in the land who will not care for those who are cut off, nor seek the young, nor heal those that are broken, nor feed those that still stand. But he will eat the flesh of the fat and tear their hooves in pieces.
Woe to the worthless shepherd,
Who leaves the flock!
A sword shall be against his arm
And against his right eye;
His arm shall completely wither,
And his right eye shall be totally blinded."
Back to text.Again the word of the LORD came to me, saying, "As for you, son of man, take a stick for yourself and write on it: `For Judah and for the children of Israel, his companions.' Then take another stick and write on it, `For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim, and for all the house of Israel, his companions.' Then join them one to another for yourself into one stick, and they will become one in your hand. And when the children of your people speak to you, saying, `Will you not show us what you mean by these?'- say to them, `Thus says the Lord GOD: "Surely I will take the stick of Joseph, which is in the hand of Ephraim, and the tribes of Israel, his companions; and I will join them with it, with the stick of Judah, and make them one stick, and they will be one in My hand."' And the sticks on which you write will be in your hand before their eyes. Then say to them, `Thus says the Lord GOD: "Surely I will take the children of Israel from among the nations, wherever they have gone, and will gather them from every side and bring them into their own land; and I will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king over them all; and they shall no longer be two nations, nor shall they ever be divided into two kingdoms again. They shall not defile themselves anymore with their idols, nor with their detestable things, nor with any of their transgressions; but I will deliver them from all their dwelling places in which they have sinned, and will cleanse them. Then they shall be My people, and I will be their God. David My servant shall be king over them, and they shall all have one shepherd; they shall also walk in My judgments and observe My statutes, and do them. Then they shall dwell in the land that I have given to Jacob My servant, where your fathers dwelt; and they shall dwell there, they, their children, and their children's children, forever; and My servant David shall be their prince forever. Moreover I will make a covenant of peace with them, and it shall be an everlasting covenant with them; I will establish them and multiply them, and I will set My sanctuary in their midst forevermore. My tabernacle also shall be with them; indeed I will be their God, and they shall be My people. The nations also will know that I, the LORD, sanctify Israel, when My sanctuary is in their midst forevermore."'"
I think it's appropriate to include the bibliography here, since I've borrowed from these sources.
Bibliography for Dividing AsunderAllegro, John M., The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, Bantam Books, NY 1971
Allegro, John M., The Treasure of the Copper Scroll, Doubleday, Garden City, NY 1960
Armstrong, Herbert W., The United States and Great Britain in Prophecy, Worldwide Church of God USA 1980 (I include this because I was looking for clues in other books that Jeremiah sent the king's daughters to Ireland like he says. So I was leafing through the book of Jeremiah in the New KJV Bible which has topic headings on every page, and I read over chapter 32 "Jeremiah Buys A Field," which I remember thinking was pretty banal, akin to "Ezekiel Walks His Dog," or "Obadiah Brushes His Hair," and soon after I read that quote in Amos Elon's book about title deeds to contested real estate, and then I began formulating this book.)
Baigent, Michael and Richard Leigh, The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception, Summit Books, NY, 1991 (This is a good one because it opens so casually by stating that an item in the newspaper regarding selling biblical manuscripts "might be regarded as a coded message" and then they give examples of just what type of coded message in case we lack the imagination: "to mask an arms deal, for example, or something involving espionage," which just slightly suggests a desire on their part to read Three Days of the Condor into everything they see- no doubt due to their run-in with Monsieur Plantard a few years back.)
Baigent, Michael, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln- Holy Blood, Holy Grail, Dell Publishing Co., NY, 1983 (The classic modern detective story, with M. Plantard as either the head of an international secret society bent on reinstating the Merovingian dynasty, or an innocent bystander with a good ability to play along.)
Elon, Amos, The Israelis: Founders and Sons, Bantam Books, NY, 1972 (The quotation on page 372 triggered this book.)
Freedman, David Noel, ed., The Anchor Bible Dictionary, Doubleday, NY, 1992 (Volume 3, p 43, 686)
Gaster, Theodor H., The Dead Sea Scriptures, Anchor Books, NY, 1976 (pages 533-36 on the copper scroll. He words his description of the locations around Israel so closely to the wording at the end of Jeremiah 32 it's uncanny he didn't see this himself.)
Goodspeed, Edgar J., trans., The Apocrypha, Vintage Books, NY, 1959 (1 & 2 Maccabees, pp. 373-493)
Interpreter's Bible, The, Abingdon Press, Nashville, 1956 (vol. 5 p 794)
Leesser, Isaac, trans., The Holy Scriptures, Carefully Translated After the Best Jewish Authorities, Hebrew Publishing Co., NY, 1909 (specifically p 793)
Lehmann, Manfred P., "Where the Temple Tax was Buried," Biblical Archaeology Review, Nov/Dec 1993 (pp 38-43)
McCarter, P. Kyle, Jr., "The Mysterious Copper Scroll: Clues to Hidden Temple Treasure?" Bible Review, August 92 (pp 34-41,63-4)
The New King James Version of The Holy Bible, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, 1990
Schonfield, Hugh J., The Passover Plot, Bernard Geis Associates, NY
Schonfield, Hugh J., The Secrets of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Random House, NY, 1959
The Sciences mag., NY Academy of Sciences, March/April 1993 (p 8)
Shanks, Hershel, ed., Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls, Random House, NY, 1992 (specifically, "The Temple Scroll: The Longest Dead Sea Scroll" Yigael Yadin, pp 87-112; "The Mystery of the Copper Scroll" P. Kyle McCarter, pp 227-244)
Strong, James, Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, 1990
Unger, Merrill F., The New Unger's Bible Handbook, Moody Press, Chgo, 1984 (specifically p 293, though it was a lot more help than just that)
Williamson, G.A., tr. Eusebius, The History of the Church from Christ to Constantine, Augsburg Publishing House, Minneapolis, 1965
Andrae, Tor, Mohammed, The Man and His Faith (Harper & Row, NY, 1955).
Barnstone, Willis, The Other Bible- Ancient Esoteric Texts HarperSanFrancisco, 1984, 669-679)
Ben-Gurion, David, Israel: A Personal History (Funk & Wagnalls, Inc., New York, 1971, pp xviii-xix).
Bryant, Barry, The Wheel of Time Sand Mandala- Visual Scripture of Tibetan Buddhism (1992, Harper San Francisco xi, 141, 181).
Dawood, N. J., tr., The Koran (Penguin Books Ltd., Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England, 1974 Revised edition, p 382).
Faisal, Shaikh Daoud Ahmed, Al-Islam: The Religion of Humanity (Published by the Islamic Mission of America, Brooklyn, 1950, pp 7-100. )
Finegan, Jack, Light from the Ancient Past (Princeton University Press, 1946, pages 19-20).
Graves, Robert, The Greek Myths (George Braziller Inc, NY, 1957, pp 27-45).
Gribetz, Judan, Edward L. Greenstein and Regina S. Stein, The Timetables of Jewish History: A Chronology of the Most Important People and Events in Jewish History (Simon & Schuster, NY, 1993, p 30).
Mann, Thomas, Joseph And His Brothers (Alfred A. Knopf, NY, 1973).
Peres, Shimon, Battling For Peace (1995, Random House, NY, pp 286-287).
Sarna, Nahum M., Understanding Genesis (Schocken Books, New York, 1966, page 75)