cording to that which has proceeded out of thy mouth; forasmuch as the Lord hath taken vengeance for thee of thine enemies, the children of Ammon.' But after a pause she added, Let this thing be done for me: let me alone two months, that I may go up and down upon the mountains, and bewail my virginity, I and my fellows.' Her father of course assented; and when the time expired she returned, and, we are told, he did with her according to his vow.' It is then added that it became a custom in Israel, that the daughters of Israel went yearly to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite three days in the year.' The victory over the Ammonites was followed by a quarrel with the proud and powerful Ephraimites on the west of the Jordan. This tribe was displeased at having had no share in the glory of the recent victory, and a large body of men belonging to it, who had crossed the river to share in the action, used very high and threatening language when they found their services were not required. Jephthah, finding his remonstrances had no effect, re-assembled some of his disbanded troops and gave the Ephraimites battle, when they were defeated with much loss. The victors seized the fords of the Jordan, and when any one came to pass over, they made him pronounce the word Shibboleth [an ear of corn], but if he could not give the aspiration, and pronounced the word as Sibboleth, they knew him for an Ephraimite, and slew him on the spot. Jephthah judged Israel six years, during which we have reason to conclude that the exercise of his authority was almost if not altogether confined to the country east of the Jordan. Volumes have been written on the subject of Jephthah's rash vow; the question being whether, in doing to his daughter according to his vow,' he really did offer her in sacrifice or not. The negative has been stoutly maintained by many able pens, from a natural anxiety to clear the character of one of the heroes in Israel from so dark a stain. But the more the plain rules of common sense have been exercised in our view of biblical transactions, and the better we have succeeded in realizing a distinct idea of the times in which Jephthah lived and of the position which he occupied, the less reluctance there has been to admit the interpretation which the first view of the passage suggests to every reader, which is, that he really did offer her in sacrifice. The explanation which denies this maintains that she was rather doomed to perpetual celibacy; but to live unmarried was required by no law, custom, or devotement among the Jews: no one had a right to impose so odious a condition on another, nor is any such condition implied or expressed in the vow which Jephthah uttered. The Jewish commentators themselves generally admit that Jephthah really sacrificed his daughter; and even go so far as to allege that the change in the pontifical dynasty from the house of Eleazar to that of Ithamar was caused by the high-priest of the time having suffered this transaction to take place. It is very true that human sacrifices were forbidden by the law. But in the rude and unsettled age in which the judges lived, when the Israelites had adopted a vast number of erroneous notions and practices from their heathen neighbours, many JEREMIAH things were done, even by good men, which the law forbade quite as positively as human sacrifice. Again, Jephthah vows that whatsoever came forth from the door of his house to meet him shall surely be the Lord's, and I will offer it up for a burnt-offering,' which, in fact, was the regular way of making a thing wholly the Lord's. Afterwards we are told that he did with her according to his vow,' that is, according to the plain meaning of plain words, offered her for a burntoffering. Then follows the intimation that the daughters of Israel lamented her four days every year. People lament the dead, not the living. The whole story is consistent and intelligible, while the sacrifice is understood to have actually taken place; but becomes perplexed and difficult as soon as we begin to turn aside from this obvious meaning in search of recondite explanations. Professor Bush, in his elaborate note on the text, maintains with us that a human sacrifice was all along contemplated. But he suggests that during the two months Jephthah might have obtained better information respecting the nature of vows, by which he would have learned that his daughter could not be legally offered, but might be redeemed at a valuation (Lev. xxvii. 2-12). This is possible, and is much more likely than the popular alternative of perpetual celibacy; but we have serious doubts whether even this meets the conclusion that he did with her according to his vow.' Besides, in this case, where was the ground for the annual lamentations' of the daughters of Israel, or even for the 'celebrations' which some understand the word to mean? JEREMIAH (raised up or appointed by God), was the son of Hilkiah, a priest of Anathoth, in the land of Benjamin [ANATHOTH]. Jeremiah was very young when the word of the Lord first came to him (ch. i. 6). This event took place in the thirteenth year of Josiah (B.c. 629), whilst the youthful prophet still lived at Anathoth. It would seem that he remained in his native city several years, but at length, in order to escape the persecution of his fellow townsmen (ch. xi. 21), and even of his own family (ch. xii. 6), as well as to have a wider field for his exertions, he left Anathoth and took up his residence at Jerusalem. The finding of the book of the law five years after the commencement of his predictions, must have produced a powerful influence on the mind of Jeremiah, and king Josiah no doubt found him a powerful ally in carrying into effect the reformation of religious worship (2 Kings xxiii. 1-25). During the reign of this monarch we may readily believe that Jeremiah would be in no way molested in his work; and that from the time of his quitting Anathoth to the eighteenth year of his ministry, he probably uttered his warnings without interruption, though with little success (see ch. xi.). Indeed, the reformation itself was nothing more than the forcible repression of idolatrous and heathen rites, and the reestablishment of the external service of God, by the command of the king. No sooner, therefore, was the influence of the court on behalf of the true religion withdrawn, than it was evident that no real improvement had taken place in the minds of the people. Jeremiah, who hitherto was at least protected by the influence of the pious king Josiah, soon became the object of attack, as JEREMIAH he must doubtless have long been the object of dislike to those whose interests were identified with the corruptions of religion. We hear nothing of the prophet during the three months which constituted the short reign of Jehoahaz; but in the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim' the prophet was interrupted in his ministry by the priests and the prophets,' who with the populace brought him before the civil authorities, urging that capital punishment should be inflicted on him for his threatenings of evil on the city unless the people amended their ways (ch. xxvi.). The princes seem to have been in some degree aware of the results which the general corruption was bringing on the state, and if they did not themselves yield to the exhortations of the prophet, they acknowledged that he spoke in the name of the Lord, and were quite averse from so openly renouncing His authority as to put His messenger to death. It appears, however, that it was rather owing to the personal influence of one or two, especially Ahikam, than to any general feeling favourable to Jeremiah, that his life was preserved. In the fourth year of Jehoiakim B.C. 606) he was commanded to write the predictions which had been given through him, and to read them to the people. As he was at that time shut up,' and could not himself go into the house of the Lord (ch. xxxvi. 5), he deputed Baruch to write the predictions after him, and to read them publicly on the fast-day. These threatenings being thus anew made public, Baruch was summoned before the princes to give an account of the manner in which the roll containing them had come into his possession. The princes, who, without strength of principle to oppose the wickedness of the king, had sufficient respect for religion, as well as sagacity enough to discern the importance of listening to the voice of God's prophet, advised both Baruch and Jeremiah to conceal themselves, whilst they endeavoured to influence the mind of the king by reading the roll to him. The result showed that their precautions were not needless. The bold self-will and reckless daring of the monarch refused to listen to any advice, even though coming with the professed sanction of the Most High. Having read three or four leaves, he cut the roll with the penknife and cast it into the fire that was on the hearth, until all the roll was consumed,' and gave immediate orders for the apprehension of Jeremiah and Baruch, who, however, were both preserved from the vindictive monarch. Of the history of Jeremiah during the eight or nine remaining years of the reign of Jehoiakim we have no certain account. At the command of God he procured another roll, in which he wrote all that was in the roll destroyed by the king, and added besides unto them many like words' (ch. xxxvi. 32). In the short reign of his successor Jehoiachin or Jeconiah, we find him still uttering his voice of warning (see ch. xiii. 18; comp. 2 Kings xxiv. 12, and ch. xxiii. 24-30), though without effect. It was probably either during this reign, or at the commencement of the reign of Zedekiah, that he was put in confinement by Pashur, the chief governor of the house of the Lord.' He seems, however, soon to have been liberated, as we find that they had not put him into prison' when the army of Nebuchadnezzar commenced the siege of Jerusalem. The Chaldæans drew off their army for a time, on the report of help coming from Egypt to the besieged city; and now feeling the danger to be imminent, and yet a ray of hope brightening their prospects, the king entreated Jeremiah to pray to the Lord for them. The hopes of the king were not responded to in the message which Jeremiah received from God. He was assured that the Egyptian army should return to their own land, that the Chaldæans should come again, and that they should take the city and burn it with fire (ch. xxxvi. 7, 8). The princes, apparently irritated by a message so contrary to their wishes, made the departure of Jeremiah from the city, during the short respite, the pretext for accusing him of deserting to the Chaldæans, and he was forthwith cast into prison. The king seems to have been throughout inclined to favour the prophet, and sought to know from him the word of the Lord; but he was wholly under the influence of the princes, and dared not communicate with him except in secret (ch. xxxviii. 14, 28); much less could he follow advice so obnoxious to their views as that which the prophet gave. Jeremiah, therefore, more from the hostility of the princes than the inclination of the king, was still in confinement when the city was taken. Nebuchadnezzar formed a more just estimate of his character and of the value of his counsels, and gave a special charge to his captain Nebuzar-adan, not only to provide for him but to follow his advice (ch. xxxix. 12). He was accordingly taken from the prison and allowed free choice either to go to Babylon, where doubtless he would have been held in honour in the royal court, or to remain with his own people. We need scarcely be told that he who had devoted more than forty years of unrequited service to the welfare of his falling country should choose to remain with the remnant of his people rather than seek the precarious fame which might await him at the court of the king of Babylon. Accordingly he went to Mizpah with Gedaliah, whom the Babylonian monarch had appointed governor of Judæa; and after his murder sought to persuade Johanan, who was then the recognised leader of the people, to remain in the land, assuring him and the people, by a message from God in answer to their inquiries, that if they did so the Lord would build them up, but if they went to Egypt the evils which they sought to escape should come upon them there (ch. xlii.). The people refused to attend to the divine message, and under the command of Johanan went into Egypt, taking Jeremiah and Baruch along with them (ch. xliii. 6). In Egypt the prophet still sought to turn the people to the Lord, from whom they had so long and so deeply revolted (ch. xliv.); but his writings give us no subsequent information_respecting his personal history. Ancient traditions assert that he spent the remainder of his life in Egypt. According to the pseudo-Epiphanius he was stoned by the people at Taphnæ, the same as Tahpanhes, where the Jews were settled. It is said that his bones were removed by Alexander the Great to Alexandria. Jeremiah was contemporary with Zephaniah, Habakkuk, Ezekiel, and Daniel. None of these, however, are in any remarkable way connected with him, except Ezekiel. The writings and character of these two eminent prophets furnish | JERICHO entering the Promised Land; and the account which the spies who were sent by them into the city received from their hostess Rahab, tended much to encourage their subsequent operations, as it showed that the inhabitants of the country signal miracles which had marked their course from the Nile to the Jordan. The strange manner were greatly alarmed at their advance, and the in which Jericho itself was taken must have strengthened this impression in the country, and Israelites, who pronounced an awful curse upon appears, indeed, to have been designed for that effect. The town was utterly destroyed by the whoever should rebuild it; and all the inhabitants family (Josh. ii. 6). In these accounts Jericho is repeatedly called the city of palm-trees;' which were put to the sword, except Rahab and her shows that the hot and dry plain, so similar to the land of Egypt, was noted beyond other parts country, but which was and is less common in the of Palestine for the tree which abounds in that land of Canaan than general readers and painters suppose. It has now almost disappeared even from the plain of Jericho, although specimens remain in the plain of the Mediterranean coast. The style of Jeremiah corresponds with this view of the character of his mind; though not deficient in power, it is peculiarly marked by pathos. He delights in the expression of the tender emotions, and employs all the resources of his imagination to excite corresponding feelings in his readers. He has an irresistible sympathy with the miserable, which finds utterance in the most touching descriptions of their condition. He seizes with wonderful tact those circumstances which point out the objects of his pity as the objects of sympathy, and founds his expostulations on the miseries which are thus exhi-up, for massacre after his death. bited. His book of Lamentations is an astonishing exhibition of his power to accumulate images of sorrow. The whole series of elegies has but one object-the expression of sorrow for the forlorn condition of his country; and yet he presents this to us in so many lights, alludes to it by so many figures, that not only are his mournful strains not felt to be tedious reiterations, but the reader is captivated by the plaintive melancholy which pervades the whole. The genuineness and canonicity of the writings of Jeremiah in general are established both by the testimony of ancient writers, and by quotations and references which occur in the New Testament. The principal predictions relating to the Messiah are found in ch. xxiii. 1-8; xxx. 31-40; xxxiii. 14-26. JER'ICHO, a town in the plain of the same name, not far from the river Jordan, at the point where it enters the Dead Sea. It lay before the Israelites when they crossed the river, on first rebuilt [HIEL], and became a school of the prophets (Judg. iii. 13; 1 Kings xvi. 34; 2 Kings Notwithstanding the curse, Jericho was soon and it was eventually fortified by the Syrian ii. 4, 5). Its inhabitants returned after the exile. general Bacchides (Ezra ii. 34; Neh. iii. 2; 1 Macc. ix. 50). Pompey marched from Scythopolis, along the valley of the Jordan, to Jericho, and thence to Jerusalem; and Strabo speaks of the castles Thrax and Taurus, in or near Jericho, Great, in the beginning of his career, captured and sacked Jericho, but afterwards strengthened as having been destroyed by him. Herod the and adorned it, when he had redeemed its revenues from Cleopatra, on whom the plain had been be stowed by Antony. He appears to have often resided here, probably in winter: he built over the city a fortress called Cypros, between which and the former palace he erected other palaces, and called them by the names of his friends. Here also was a hippodrome or circus, in which the same tyrant, when lying at Jericho on his death-bed, caused the nobles of the land to be shut but his bloody intention was not executed. The palace at this place was afterwards rebuilt more He died here; magnificently by Archelaus. By this it will be our Saviour was a great and important city—proseen that the Jericho which existed in the time of foundation. It was once visited by him, when he bably more so than it had ever been since its lodged with Zaccheus, and healed the blind man (Luke xviii. 35-43; xix. 1-7; Matt. xx. 29-34; the head of one of the toparchies, and was visited by Vespasian before he left the country, who Mark x. 46-52). Jericho was afterwards made stationed there the tenth legion in garrison. Eusebius and Jerome describe Jericho as having that it was afterwards rebuilt. The town, howbeen destroyed during the siege of Jerusalem, on account of the perfidy of the inhabitants, but add close of the seventh century, describes the site as ever, appears to have been overthrown during the without human habitations, and covered with Mohammedan conquest; for Adamnanus, at the corn and vines. The celebrated palm-groves JERICHO still existed. In the next century a church is mentioned; and in the ninth century several monasteries appear. About the same time the plain of Jericho is again noticed for its fertility and peculiar products; and it appears to have been brought under cultivation by the Saracens, for the sake of the sugar and other products for which the soil and climate were more suitable than any other in Palestine. Ruins of extensive aqueducts, with pointed Saracenic arches, remain in evidence of the elaborate irrigation and culture of this fiue plain-which is nothing without water, and everything with it-at a period long subsequent to the occupation of the country by the Jews. It is to this age that we may probably refer the origin of the castle and village, which have since been regarded as representing Jericho. The place has been mentioned by travellers and The village now regarded as representing Jericho is supposed to date its origin from the ninth century, It bears the name of Rihah, and is situated about the middle of the plain, six miles west from the Jordan, in N. lat. 31° 57', and E. long. 35° 33'. Dr. Olin describes the present village as the meanest and foulest of Palestine.' It may perhaps contain forty dwellings, formed of small loose stones. The most important object is a square castle or tower, which Dr. Robinson supposes to have been constructed to protect the cultivation of the plain under the Saracens. It is thirty or forty feet square, and about the same height, and is now in a dilapidated con- which over the plain by canals and aqueducts dition. did once, and might still, cover it with abundRihah may contain about two hundred inha-ance. One of these fountains is called by the bitants, who have a sickly aspect, and are reckoned vicious and indolent. They keep a few cattle and sheep, and till a little land for grain as well as for gardens. A small degree of industry and skill bestowed on this prolific soil, favoured as it is with abundant water for irrigation, would amply reward the labour. But this is wanting; and everything bears the mark of abject, and, which is unusual in the East, of squalid poverty. There are some fine fig-trees near the village, and some vines in the gardens. But the most distinguishing feature of the whole plain is a noble grove of trees which borders the village on the west, and stretches away northward to the distance of two miles or more. This grove owes its existence to the waters of one of the fountains, the careful distribution of Be natives Ain es-Sultan, but by pilgrims the the declivity at the back of Ain es-Sultan, Under the mountains on the western confine of the plain, about two miles west of Rihah, and just where the road from Jerusalem comes down into the plain, are considerable ruins, extending both on the north and south side of the road. Mr. Buckingham was the first to suspect that these were the ruins of the ancient Jericho. He shows that the situation agrees better with the ancient intimations than does that of the modern village, near which no trace of ancient ruins can be found. Since this idea was started the matter has been examined by other travellers; and the conclusion seems to be that Rihah is certainly not the ancient Jericho, and that there is no site of ancient ruins on the plain which so well answers to the intimations as that now described; although even here some drawback to a satisfactory conclusion is felt, in the absence of any traces of those great buildings which belonged to the Jericho of king Herod. JEROBO'AM, son of Nebat, and first king of Israel, who became king B.C. 975, and reigned 22 years. JEROBOAM sacred and inviolable interests and obligations of the covenant people, by forbidding his subjects to resort to the one temple and altar of Jehovah at Beth-el-the extremities of his kingdom-where Jerusalem, and by establishing shrines at Dan and golden calves' were set up as the symbols of Jehovah, to which the people were enjoined to resort and bring their offerings. The pontificate of the new establishment he united to his crown, in imitation of the Egyptian kings. He was officiating in that capacity at Beth-el, offering: incense, when a prophet appeared, and in the yet far off, in which a king of the house of David, name of the Lord announced a coming time, as i Josiah by name, should burn upon that unholy altar the bones of its ministers. He was then preparing to verify, by a commissioned prodigy, the truth of the oracle he had delivered, when the king attempted to arrest him, but was smitten with palsy in the arm he stretched forth. At the the altar was rent asunder, and the ashes strewed same moment the threatened prodigy took place, far around. This measure had, however, no lay too deep in what he deemed the vital interests abiding effect. The policy on which he acted of his separate kingdom, to be even thus abandoned and the force of the considerations which ciated from the fact that no subsequent king of determined his conduct may in part be appre Israel, however well disposed in other respects, establishment. Hence the sin of Jeroboam the ever ventured to lay a finger on this schismatical son of Nebat, wherewith he sinned and made scribing that iniquity from which no king of Israel to sin,' became a standing phrase in deIsrael departed (1 Kings xii. 25-33; xiii.). He was of the tribe of Ephraim, the son of a widow named Zeruiah, when he was noticed by Solomon as a clever and active young man, and was appointed one of the superintendents of the works which that magnificent king was carrying on at Jerusalem. This appointment, the reward of his merits, might have satisfied his ambition had not the declaration of the prophet Ahijah given him higher hopes. When informed that, by the divine appointment, he was to become king over the ten tribes about to be rent from the upon him the doom which he probably dreaded The contumacy of Jeroboam eventually brought house of David, he was not content to wait pa- beyond all others-the speedy extinction of the tiently for the death of Solomon, but began to dynasty which he had taken so much pains and form plots and conspiracies, the discovery of incurred so much guilt to establish on firm which constrained him to flee to Egypt to escape foundations. His son Abijah being sick, he sent condign punishment. The king of that country his wife disguised to consult the prophet Ahijab. was but too ready to encourage one whose success must necessarily weaken the kingdom which had Israel. The prophet, although he had become who had predicted that he should be king of become great and formidable under David and Solomon, and which had already pushed its fron-with-Come in, thou wife of Jeroboam, for I blind with age, knew the queen, and saluted her¦ tier to the Red Sea (1 Kings xi. 26-40). When Solomon died, the ten tribes sent to call Jeroboam from Egypt; and he appears to have headed the deputation which came before the son of Solomon with a demand of new securities for the rights which the measures of the late king had compromised. It may somewhat excuse the harsh answer of Rehoboam, that the demand was urged by a body of men headed by one whose pretensions were so well known and so odious to the house of David. The imprudent answer of Rehoboam rendered a revolution inevitable, and Jeroboam was then called to reign over the ten tribes, by the style of 'king of Israel' (1 Kings xii. 1-20). The general course of his conduct on the throne has already been indicated in the article ISRAEL, and need not be repeated in this place. The leading object of his policy was to widen the breach between the two kingdoms, and to rend asunder those common interests among all the descendants of Jacob, which it was one great object of the law to combine and interlace. To this end he scrupled not to sacrifice the most not merely that the son should die-for that was threshold on her return; and as the death of than the circumstance of his being the founder |