Jeremiah 22:10

THE ELEGY ON SHALLUM

‘Weep ye not for the dead, neither bemoan him: but weep sore for him that goeth away: for he shall return no more, nor see his native country.’

Jeremiah 22:10

This exquisite little elegy, which was sung for many years in the city of Jerusalem, has a music and a pathos which even the least instructed and least thoughtful reader can hardly fail to recognise. Quite apart from their meaning, the mere words have a charm. They sound like a song. The very tone and rhythm of them might well move a sensitive heart to pensive reflection. Musical in themselves, they readily ally themselves with music; and, indeed, there is one of Mendelssohn’s ‘Songs without Words,’ to which they go as naturally as though he had had these words in his mind when he wrote the song. Who was ‘the dead’ man for whom no lament was to be sung? Of whom did the prophet speak as ‘him that goeth away’? and where did he go? and what was the tragic fate that overtook him? and what was there in him and in his fate that a whole nation should lament and bemoan him?

There were two political parties in Jerusalem, the one heathen, the other Hebrew. Each was headed by a son of Josiah. Eliakim, the elder son, was at the head of the heathen party; Shallum, a younger son, was at the head of the party which stood faithful to the laws and traditions of Israel. At first, while the memory of Josiah was still fresh, and his servants held the reins of power, they had no great difficulty in placing Shallum, although he was a younger son, on the throne of his father. Dissolute and oppressive, a doer of evil, Shallum was nevertheless lavish and ambitious, qualities which commonly win popular liking and applause. Moreover, unworthy as he was of the honour, he was the head and leader of the national, the patriotic party. Raised to the throne by the national party, Shallum naturally set himself strongly against making terms with Egypt; ‘ his voice was all for war.’ By some unexplained stratagem, however, he was enticed into visiting the Egyptian camp in Syria. Here he was treacherously seized, thrown into chains, and sent a prisoner into Egypt. And so, after a reign of only three months, he disappears from history in the darkness of an Egyptian dungeon, in which, ‘bound in misery and iron,’ he sadly wore away his life.

I. In the prophet’s conception, this was a far worse fate than death, a fate worthy of a far more passionate lamentation.—And, therefore, he bids the people cease their lamentations for Josiah, and sing an elegy for Shallum, his son. ‘Weep ye not for the dead, neither bemoan him: but weep ye sore for him that goeth away: for he shall return no more, nor see his native country.’ And he assigns as a reason for his command, and a sufficient reason: ‘For thus saith the Lord, touching Shallum the son of Josiah, king of Judah, who reigned instead of Josiah his father, who went forth out of this place; He shall not return hither any more: but he shall die in the place whither they have led him captive, and shall see this land no more.’

The brief reign of Shallum was the last gleam of hope that lit up the sky of Israel. Even to us, few figures are more pathetic than that of the last real king of Israel languishing in an Egyptian dungeon, and perishing perchance on the very spot in which his great ancestor, Joseph, had slept and dreamed. If we read Jeremiah’s words as though they were written on the dungeon wall of that poor discrowned king, or inscribed on his tomb, we can hardly fail to be touched and moved by their pathos: ‘Weep ye not for the dead, neither bemoan him: but weep ye sore for him that goeth away: for he shall return no more, nor see his native country.’ What a tenderness there is in the words! and what an ardent undying patriotism!

II. But is there nothing more? Is there no ‘present truth,’ no eternal truth, in these words? no lesson, no consolation for us?—Surely there is, and it lies on the very surface of the words. Do not we weep for our dead? We need, then, to hear the injunction, ‘Weep ye not for the dead, neither bemoan them.’ Are not those whom we love sometimes carried away by divers lusts, and bound by them—carried away by them as into ‘a far country,’ where only too surely they ‘come to want’? And do we always lament their sins as much as we should lament their death, and more? If not, we too need to lay to heart the injunction, ‘Weep ye for them, rather than for the dead, for them who “go away,” away from God, away from virtue, away from peace, into that land of darkness from which it is so hard to return.’

We none of us believe that death is the greatest of evils. You would almost laugh at me if I were to ask, Do you weep and lament with equal passion when a friend, a child or parent, a husband or wife, falls into sin? If sin is more terrible to you than death, how is it that you are not more terrified by it? How is it that you are not more zealous to avert it, to save men from it, to do your part towards stamping it out of the world?

Call men to a crusade against death, in which there was even the faintest hope of victory, and who would not join it? But call them to a crusade against sin, in which there is not only the hope, but the assurance, of ultimate victory, and of victory over death as well as over sin; and who offers himself for this war? Do you? Do I? I think we may begin to have some hope of ourselves when we find that we really fear sin more than death, not for ourselves alone, but for others, and are more hurt to see them do a wrong action than to see them expire, and are even more prone to weep and lament over the guilty than over the dead.

Illustration

‘If faith were perfect in us, if love were perfect, we should not weep for the dead who die in the Lord, for to die in the Lord is to live in the Lord. Sorrow for the pious dead is selfish sorrow, and shows that we are thinking more of ourselves than of them, more of our loss than of their gain, more of the winter of our loneliness and discontent than of the summer of their joy. If you would weep unselfish tears, the tears of love, weep not for those who have gone away from you to be with God; but weep ye sore for those who have gone away from God, though they are still with you. Weep for the sinful, for the lost, who wander through the “far country,” seeking rest, and finding none; seeking food, and finding none.’