Page 7 - The Prophet-statesman a Drama of Daniel

CHAPTER I

JERUSALEM IN DECLINE

It was dark in Jerusalem, and with the settling of this early night of winter upon

the Holy City, there was a growing sense of uneasiness among those who wended their
way through the narrow streets to their homes. They had heard in the gates the
announcements of heralds who had come from the hills of Gilead to bring warnings to
the court of King Jehoiakim that the columns of the Babylonian conqueror,

Nebuchadnezzar, were marching upon the city of Jerusalem.

There was ample cause for uneasiness and even more. For since the accession of
Jehoiakim to the throne, (after the brief three-months reign of his brother), there had

been visible deterioration in the condition of the Kingdom of Judah. The reforms in
administration and worship initiated by the good King Josiah were rapidly disappearing
and being succeeded by a state of corruption in government and a general disintegration
in public morals. There had been a restoration of the idolatry in the city and province

that had been rampant in the days of Amon and Manasseh, but had been ruthlessly
uprooted in the reign of Josiah.

The profligate young king, Jehoiakim, cared for nothing but his own pleasure. He

surrounded himself with effete weaklings who secured and maintained the royal favor
by the usual means adopted by such political parasites―fawning flattery of the sensual
young king and assistance to him in gratifying his every whim.

Lavish functions for his favorites, the lords and the ladies of the court, dissipated
the nation’s resources. Immoral, pagan orgies replaced the temple worship and the
sacrifices of the altar. In this headlong moral decline the priests who should have been
the leaders in righteousness, took a prominent part. The army, built by Josiah into a

powerful unit of national defense, also fell into a state of decay, as its chief captains
participated in the voluptuous pleasures of the court.

The prophet Jeremiah had raised a solitary voice in protest against the growing
evils and to warn of the approaching destruction from the armies of Babylon unless
there should be a turning to Jehovah in repentance.

Ridiculed by some as an alarmist, a croaking pessimist, an evil harbinger, others

of the dissolute courtiers plotted against his life.