Chapter XXXIX. Eupolemus Concerning the Prophet Jeremiah

BESIDES this, as Polyhistor has made mention of the prophecy of Jeremiah, it would be a most unreasonable thing for us to pass it over in silence. Let this then also be set down:

[POLYHISTOR] ‘Then Jonachim: in his time prophesied Jeremiah the prophet. He was sent by God, and found the Jews sacrificing to a golden image, the name of which was Baal.

‘And he foreshowed to them the calamity which was to come. Jonachim then attempted to burn him alive: but he said that with that fuel they should cook food for the Babylonians, and as prisoners of war should dig the canals of the Tigris and Euphrates.

‘When Nebuchadnezzar, king of the Babylonians, had heard of the predictions of Jeremiah, he summoned Astibares, the king of the Medes, to join him in an expedition. And having taken with him Babylonians and Medes, and collected a hundred and eighty thousand infantry and a hundred and twenty thousand cavalry, and ten thousand chariots, he first subdued Samaria, and Galilee, and Scythopolis, and the Jews who lived in the region of Gilead; and afterwards took Jerusalem, and made Jonachim, the king of the Jews, a prisoner. And the gold that was in the temple, and the silver and brass, they chose out and sent to Babylon, except the Ark and the tables that were in it: but this Jeremiah retained.’