rs relapsed
into an idolatry as rank as that under Ahaz or Manasseh;(310) while
others, more thoughtful but not less bewildered, conceived doubts of the
worth of righteousness. And these tempers were embittered by the cruel
selfishness of the new monarch and his reckless injustice. To the taxes
required for the tribute to Egypt he added other exactions in order to
meet his extravagance in enlarging and adorning his palace. The crime,
with which Jeremiah charges him in the following lines, is one to which
small kings in the East have often been tempted by their contact with
civilisations richer than their own. On Judah Jehoiakim imposed the cruel
corvee, which in our day Ismail Pasha imposed upon Egypt.

Woe to who builds his house by injustice, XXII. 13
His storeys by wrong,
Who forces his fellows to serve for nothing,
And pays not their wage.
Who saith,(311) 14
I will build me an ampler house
And airier storeys,
Widen my windows, panel with cedar,
And paint with vermilion,
Wilt thou thus play the king, 15
Fussing with cedar?
Thy sire, did not he eat and drink,
And do justice and right,
And judge for the poor and the needy? 16
Then was it well!(312)
Was not this how to know Me?--
Rede of the Lord.
But thine eyes and thy heart are on nought 17
Save thine own spoil,
And on shedding of innocent blood,
Doing outrage and murder.

Josiah had enjoyed what was enough for him in sober, seemly parallel to
his faithful discharge of duty; his son was luxurious, unscrupulous,
bloody, and withal petty--_fussing with cedar_, and cutting up the
Prophet's roll piece by piece with a pen-knife! Jeremiah and Baruch's
sarcastic notes on Jehoiakim find parallels in Victor Hugo's "Chatiments"
of Napoleon III.: "l'infiniment petit, monstreux et feroce;" "Voici de
l'or, viens pille et vole ... voici du sang, accours, viens boire, petit,
petit!"

XXII. 18. Therefore, thus saith the Lord of Jehoiakim, son of
Josiah, King of Judah.

Mourn him they shall not, "Woe brother!"
"Woe sister!"
Nor beweep him, "Woe Lord!"
Or "Woe Highness!"
With the burial of an ass shall they bury him, 19
Dragged and flung out--
Out from the gates of Jerusalem.

Such a prophet to such a king must have been intolerable, and through the
following years Jeremiah was pursued by the royal hatred. Ther