Hence the voice of Jeremiah was drowned.  Even the prophets of his day had become men of the world.  They fawned on the rich and powerful whose favor they sought, and prophesied “smooth things” to them.  They were the optimists of a decaying nation and a godless, pleasure-seeking generation.  They were to Jerusalem what the Sophists were to Athens when Demosthenes thundered his disregarded warnings.  There were, indeed, a few prophets left who labored for the truth; but their words fell on listless ears.  Nor could the priests arrest the ruin, for they were as corrupt as the people.  The most learned among them were zealous only for the letter of the law, and fostered among the people a hypocritical formalism.  True religious life had departed; and the noble Jeremiah, the only great statesman as well as prophet who remained, saw his influence progressively declining, until at last he was utterly disregarded.  Yet he maintained his dignity, and fearlessly declared his message.

In the meantime the triumphant Necho, after the defeat and dispersion of Josiah’s army, pursued his way toward Damascus, which he at once overpowered.  From thence he invaded Assyria, and stripped Nineveh of its most fertile provinces.  The capital itself was besieged by Nabopolassar and Cyaxares the Mede, and Necho was left for a time in possession of his newly-acquired dominion.

Josiah was succeeded by his son Shallum, who assumed the crown under the name of Jehoaz, which event it seems gave umbrage to the king of Egypt.  So he despatched an army to Jerusalem, which yielded at once, and King Jehoaz was sent as a captive to the banks of the Nile.  His elder brother Eliakim was appointed king in his place, under the name of Jehoiakim, who thus became the vassal of Necho.  He was a young man of twenty-five, self-indulgent, proud, despotic, and extravagant.  There could be no more impressive comment on the infatuation and folly of the times than the embellishment of Jerusalem with palaces and public buildings, with the view to imitate the glory of Solomon.  In everything the king differed from his father Josiah, especially in his treatment of Jeremiah, whom he would have killed.  He headed the movement to restore paganism; altars were erected on every hill to heathen deities, so that there were more gods in Judah than there were towns.  Even the sacred animals of Egypt were worshipped in the dark chambers beneath the Temple.  In the most sacred places of the Temple itself idolatrous priests worshipped the rising sun, and the obscene rites of Phoenician idolatry were performed in private houses.  The decline in morals kept pace with the decline of spiritual religion.  There was no vice which was not rampant throughout the land,—­adultery, oppression of foreigners, venality in judges, falsehood, dishonesty in trade, usury, cruelty to debtors, robbery and murder, the loosing of the ties of kindred, general suspicion of neighbors,—­all the crimes enumerated by the Apostle Paul among the Romans.  Judah in reality had become an idolatrous nation like Tyre and Syria and Egypt, with only here and there a witness to the truth, like Jeremiah, the prophetess Huldah, and Baruch the scribe.