But our prayers often outrun themselves in the utterance and Jeremiah's too carried with it its denial. My people—that I might leave my people—this, it is clear from all that we have heard from him, his heart would never suffer him to do. And so gradually we find him turning with deeper devotion to the forlorn hope of his ministry, his fate to feel his judgment of his people grow ever more despairing, but his love for them deeper and more yearning.

From the year of Carchemish onward he appears not again to have tried or prayed to escape. Through the rest of the reign of Jehoiakim they persecuted him to the edge of death. Prophets and priests called for his execution. He was stoned, beaten and thrust into the stocks. The king scornfully cut up the roll of his prophecies; and the people following their formalist leaders rejected his word. With the first captivity under Jehoiakim all the better classes left Jerusalem, but he elected to remain with the refuse. When in the reign of Sedekiah the Chaldeans came down on the city and Jeremiah counselled its surrender he was again beaten and was flung into a pit to starve to death. When he was freed and the besiegers gave him the opportunity, he would not go over to them. Even when the city had fallen and her captors hearing of his counsel offered him security and a position in Babylonia, he chose instead to share the fortunes of the little remnant left in their ruined land. When they broke up it was the worst of them who took possession of his person and disregarding his appeals hurried him down to Egypt. There, on alien soil and among countrymen who had given themselves to an alien religion, the one great personality of his time, who had served the highest interests of his nation for forty years, reluctant but unfaltering, and whose scorned words, every one, had been vindicated by events, is with the dregs of his people swept from our sight. He had given his back to the smiters and his cheeks to them who plucked out the hair; he had not hidden his face from the shame and the spitting. He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. He was taken from prison and from judgment and cut off from the land of the living; and they made his grave with the wicked, though he had done no violence neither was deceit in his mouth. It is the second greatest sacrifice that Israel has offered for mankind.

If Jeremiah thus of his own will suffered with his people, and to the bitter end with the worst of them, was he also conscious of suffering for them? After his death, when the full tragedy of his life came home to his people's heart, the sense of the few suffering for the many, the righteous for the sinners, began to be articulate in Israel—remarkably enough, let us remember, in the very period when owing to the break-up of the nation the single soul came to its own and belief in the responsibility of every man for his own sins also emerged and prevailed. Of the influence of the example of Jeremiah's spiritual loneliness, combined with his devotion to his sinful people, in developing these doctrines of individualism and self-sacrifice for others there can be no doubt. The stamp of his sufferings is on every passage in that exilic work "Isaiah" XL-LXVI, which presents the Suffering Servant of the Lord and declares the atoning virtues of His Agonies and Death.

But it is not clear that Jeremiah ever felt anything of this about himself; if he did so he has refrained from uttering it. Yet he must have been very near so high a consciousness. His love and his pity for his sinful people were full. He can hardly have failed to descry that his own spiritual agonies which brought him into so close a personal communion with God would show to every other man the way for his approach also to the Most High and Holy and his reconciliation with his God. Again he was weighed down with his people's sins; he bore on his heart the full burden of them. He confessed them. The shame which the people did not feel for them, he felt; and he painted the curse upon them in words which prove how deeply the iron had entered his own soul. He had a profound sense of the engrained quality of evil,(741) the deep saturation of sin, the enormity of the guilt of those who sinned against the light and love of God.(742) A fallacy of his day was that God could easily and would readily forgive sin, that the standard ritual might at once atone for it and comfortable preaching bring the assurance of its removal. He denied this, and affirmed that such things do not change character; that no wash of words can cleanse from sin, no sacraments, however ancient, can absolve from guilt.(743) That way only strict and painful repentance can work; repentance following the deep searching of the heart by the Word and the Judgments of God and the agony of learning and doing His Will.(744) To its last dregs he drank the cup of the Lord's wrath upon His false and wilful nation; he suffered with them every pang of the slow death their sins had brought upon them. And yet he was most conscious of his own innocence when most certain of his fate. The more he loyally gave himself to his mission the more he suffered and the nearer was he brought to death. The tragedy perplexed him,

Why is my pain perpetual, My wound past healing?(745)

The only reply he heard from heaven was the order to stand fast, for God was with him to deliver—but that more troubles awaited him. And beyond this what is there to answer the staggering Prophet save that if a man have the Divine gifts of a keener conscience and a more loving heart than his fellows, there inevitably comes with such gifts the obligation of suffering for them. Every degree in which love stands above her brethren means pain and shame to love though as yet she bear no thorn or nail in her flesh. This spiritual distress Jeremiah felt for the people long before he shared with them the physical penalties of their sins. Just there—in his keener conscience, in his hot shame for sins not his as if they were his, in his agony for his people's estrangement from God and in his own constantly wounded love—lay his real substitution, his vicarious offering for his people.

Did Jeremiah ever conceive the far-off fulness of the travail thus laid upon his soul, the truth that this vicarious agony of a righteous man for the sins of others is borne by God Himself? To that question we have only fragments of an answer. In his discourses, both earlier and later, when he talks directly in the Name of the Deity—when the Deity speaks in the first person—the words breathe as much effort and passion as when Jeremiah speaks in his own person. The Prophet is very sure that his God is Love, and he hears that love utter itself in tones of yearning for the love of men, and even of agony for their sin and misery. There is, too, a singular prayer of his which is tense with the instinct, that God would surely be to Israel what Jeremiah had resolved and striven to be—not a far-off God who occasionally visited or passed through His people, but One in their midst sharing their pain; not indifferent, as he fears in another place,(746) to the shame that is upon them, but bearing even this. The prayer which I mean is the one in XIV. 8, 9, which recalls not only the terms but the essence of Jeremiah's longing to escape from his people, and lodge afar with wayfaring men, aloof and irresponsible.

O Hope of Israel, His Saviour In time of trouble. Why be like a passenger through the land, Or the wayfaring guest of a night? Yet Lord Thou art in our midst, Do not forsake us.(747)

I may be going too far in interpreting the longing and faith that lie behind these words. But they come out very fully in later prophets who explicitly assert that the Divine Nature does dwell with men, shares their ethical warfare and bears the shame of their sins. And the truth of it all was manifested past doubt in the Incarnation, the Passion and the Cross of the Son of God.

But whether Jeremiah had instinct of it, as I have ventured to think from his prayer, or had not, he foreshadowed, as far as mere man can, the sufferings of Jesus Christ for men—and this is his greatest glory as a prophet.



Lecture VIII.

GOD, MAN AND THE NEW COVENANT.

We have followed the career of Jeremiah from his call onwards to the end, and we have traced his religious experience with its doubts, struggles, crises, and settlement at last upon the things that are sure: his debates with God and strifes with men, which while they roused him to outbursts of passion also braced his will, and stilled the wilder storms of his heart. There remains the duty of gathering the results of this broken and gusty, yet growing and fruitful experience: the truths which came forth of its travail, about God and Man and their relations. And in particular we have still to study the ideal form which Jeremiah, or (as some questionably argue) one of his disciples, gave to these relations: the New Covenant, new in contrast to God's ancient Covenant with Israel as recorded and enforced in the Book of Deuteronomy.



1. God.

Among the surprises which Jeremiah's own Oracles have for the student is the discovery of how little they dwell upon the transcendent and infinite aspects of the Divine Nature. On these Jeremiah adds almost nothing to what his predecessors or contemporaries revealed. Return to his original visions and contrast them with those, for example, of Isaiah and Ezekiel.

Isaiah's vision was of the Lord upon a Throne, high and lifted up, surrounded by Seraphim crying to one another, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of Hosts! the whole earth is full of His Glory! And their voices rocked the Temple and filled it with smoke. Here are a Presence, Awful Majesty, Infinite Holiness and Glory, blinding the seer and crushing his heart contrite. Or take the inaugural vision of Ezekiel—the storm-wind out of the North, the vast cloud, the fire infolding itself, the brightness round about and out of the midst thereof as the colour of amber; the rush and whirl of life that followed, wheels and wings and rings full of eyes; and over this the likeness of a firmament of the colour of the terrible ice and the sound of wings like the noise of many waters, as the Voice of the Almighty and above the firmament a Throne and on the Throne the Appearance of a Man, the Appearance of the likeness of the Glory of the Lord. And I, when I saw it, fell upon my face.

In the inaugural visions of Jeremiah there is none of this Awfulness—only What art thou seeing Jeremiah? the branch of an almond tree ... a caldron boiling. That was characteristic of his encounters and intercourse with the Deity throughout. They were constant and close, but in them all we are aware only of a Voice and an Argument. There is no Throne, no Appearance, no Majesty, no overwhelming sense of Holiness and Glory, no rush of wings nor floods of colour or of song.(748) Jeremiah takes for granted what other prophets have said of God. But the Deity whose Power and Glory they revealed is his Familiar. The Lord talks with Jeremiah as a man with his fellow.

For this there were several reasons, and first the particular quality of the Prophet's imagination. His native powers of vision were not such as soar, or at any rate easily soar, to the sublime. He was a lyric poet and his revelations of God are subjective and given to us by glimpses in scattered verses, which, however intimate and exquisite, have not the adoring wonder of his prophetic peers.

Again there were the startled recoil of his nature from the terrible office of a prophet in such times, and those born gifts of questioning and searching which fitted him for his allotted duty as Tester of his people,(749) but which he also turned upon the Providence and Judgments of the Lord Himself.(750) His religious experience, as we have seen, was largely a struggle with the Divine Will, and it left him not adoring but amazed and perplexed. Such wrestling man's spirit has to encounter like Jacob of old in the dark, and if like the Patriarch it craves the Name, which is the Nature, of That with which it struggles, all the answer it may get is another question, Wherefore askest thou after My Name? Morning may break, as it broke on Jacob by Jabbok with the assurance of blessing or as on Jeremiah with a firmer impression of the Will not his own; but no strength is left to glory in the Nature behind the Will. There is a horrified breathlessness about his lines—

Thou wast stronger than I and hast conquered, The Lord is with me as a Mighty and Terrible.(751)

From his struggles he indeed issues more sure of God and finally more trustful in Him, as is testified by his fair song on the beauty and fruitfulness of faith, beginning

Blessed the wight that trusts in the Lord, And the Lord is his trust.(752)

But even here is none of the awe and high wonder which fall upon Israel through other prophets. Lyrist as he is and subjective, Jeremiah dwells not so much upon the attributes of God on which faith rests as upon the effects of faith in man.

Again by the desperate character of the times he was starved of hope, the hope by which the Apostle says we are saved, which not only braces the will but clears the inner eyes of men and liberates the imagination. As the years went on he was ever more closely bound to the prediction of his people's ruin, and, when this came, to the sober counsel to accept their fate and settle down to a long exile in patience for the Lord's time of deliverance. As we have seen, his intervals of release from so grim a ministry were brief, and his Oracles of a bright future but few. Even in these he does not rise, like the Evangelist of the Exile whom he inspired, to exultation in the Almighty Power of God or to visions of vast spaces of the Divine Providence, or of Israel's service wide as the world. His happy peasant-heart is content to foresee his restored people tending their vineyards again, enjoying their village dances and festivals, and sharing with their long divided tribes the common national worship upon Sion.(753)

Like those of all the prophets Jeremiah's most immediate convictions of God are that He has done, and is always doing or about to do, things.(754) From the first Yahweh of Israel had been to the faith of his people a God of Deeds. He delivered them from Egypt, led them through the desert, ever ready to avenge them on any who molested them, and He had brought them to a land of delight.(755) By his creative and guiding Word, always clear and potential,(756) He had planted them and built them up to be a nation. These were the proofs of Him—ever operative, effective and victorious both over their foes and over every natural obstacle which their life encountered. And being the Living God He still works and is ready to work, would His people only seek where!(757) He is awake, watching over His Word to perform it and controlling the nations.(758) It is He who has made the earth and gives it to whom He will,(759) who prepares the destroyers of His people, who calls for the kingdoms of the North, even for the far Scythians beyond the edge of the world, to execute His purposes.(760) He brings the King of Babylon against Jerusalem, and recalls the Chaldeans to their interrupted siege of the city, gives it into their hands and Himself banishes its people.(761) He moulds the nations for his own ends, and if they fail Him, decrees their destruction.(762) His Word builds and plants but also pulls up and tears down.(763) He is always near to guide or to argue with nations and individuals, and to give directions and suggestions of practical detail to His servants for the interpretation and fulfilment of His purposes.(764)

It was all this activity and effectiveness, with their sure results in history, which distinguished Him from other gods, the gods of the nations, who were ineffective, or as Jeremiah puts it unprofitable—no-gods, nothings and do-nothings, the work of men's hands, lies or frauds, and mere bubbles.(765) On this line Jeremiah's monotheism marks a notable advance; for alongside of faith in the Divine Unity and Sovereignty there had lingered even in Deuteronomy a belief in the existence of other gods.(766) With Jeremiah every vestige of this superstition is gone, and other gods consigned to limbo once and for all.

Yet Jeremiah's monotheism, like that of all the Hebrew prophets, is even more due to convictions of the character of the God of Israel. We have seen how he dwells on the Divine Love, faithful and yearning for love in return, pleading and patient even with its delinquent sons and daughters;(767) but equal to this is his emphasis on the righteousness of the Most High, by all His deeds working troth, justice, and judgment on the earth, which are His delight and the knowledge of which is man's only glory.(768) He demands from His people not sacrifices, which He never commanded to their fathers, nor vows but a better life, justice between man and man, and care for the weak and the innocent.(769) To know Him is to do justice and right.(770) Because the present generation have fallen away from these, and practise and love falsehood, slander, impurity, treacherous and greedy violence, therefore God, being justice and truth, must judge and condemn them: What else can I do?(771) The ethical necessity of the doom of the people is clear to the Prophet from a very early stage of his ministry,(772) and throughout, though his heart struggles against it. But, if possible, even more abhorrent to God than these sins against domestic and civic piety in themselves, is the fact that they are committed in the very face of His Love and despite all its pleading. With Jeremiah as with Hosea the sin against love is the most hopeless and unpardonable, and this people have sinned it to the utmost.

As a woman is false to her fere, Have ye been false to me.(773)

Hence most deeply springs the Wrath of the Lord, a Wrath on which Jeremiah broods and explodes more frequently and fiercely than any other prophet: I am full of the rage of the Lord; the glow of His wrath; take the cup of the wine of this fury at My hand and give all nations to whom I send thee to drink of it; the fierce anger of the Lord shall not turn until He have executed it.(774) And He does execute it. God's Wrath breaks out in His spurning of His nation, in the hot names He calls it, adulteress and harlot, and in hating it.(775) He will not relent nor pardon it, nor listen to prayer for it.(776) He says, I must myself take vengeance upon them. I shall not spare nor pity them.(777) They will reel in the day of their visitation. He will feed them with wormwood and drug them with poison; He will suddenly let fall on them anguish and terrors; He will take His fan and winnow them out in the gates of the land and as the passing chaff strew them on the wind of the desert; the garden-land withers to wilderness and its cities break down at His presence and before His fierce anger; He will make Jerusalem heaps and cast out the people before His face. He will give them to be tossed among the nations for a consternation, a reproach and a proverb, for a taunt and a curse, in all places whither He drives them: and will send after them the sword, the famine, and the pestilence till they be consumed.(778)

The modern mind deems arbitrary such immediate linking of physical and political disasters with the Wrath of God against sin. But we have to ponder the following. The Prophet was convinced of the ethical necessity of that Wrath and of its judgments on Judah—he was convinced before they came to pass and he predicted them accurately, from close observation of the political conditions of his world and the character of his people. Granted these and God's essential and operative justice, the connection was natural: _What else can I do?_ It was clear that Judah both deserved and needed punishment and equally clear that the boiling North held the potentialities of this, which were gradually shaping and irresistibly approaching. Moreover, as Jeremiah insists, and as the history both of nations and individuals has frequently illustrated, there is a natural sequence of disaster upon wrong-doing. _Be thy scourge thine own sin! Thy ways and thy deeds have done to thee _ these things. Is it Me they provoke, saith the Lord, Is it not themselves to the confusion of their faces? Wherefore have these things come upon thee?—for the mass of thy wickedness._(779) As St. Paul says _the wages of sin_, not the judge's penalty on sin but the thing it naturally earns, _is death_. Now one of Jeremiah's most acute and convincing experiences as the _Tester_ of his people,(780) is his observation of how all this worked out upon his own generation. Not only were the war, the pestilence, and the captivity, which were about to fall upon Jerusalem, directly and obviously due to the perjury and stupid pride of her rulers; but, as he more subtly saw, the immorality of the whole people had been disabling them, for years before, from meeting these or any disasters except as sheer punishment without place for repentance. Their previous troubles had failed to sober or humble them or rouse them. _They would not accept correction_, he says of them more than once.(781) To the Prophet's warnings that God will judge them, they answer carelessly or defiantly _Not He!_ Instead of yielding to the power which lies in all adversity to cleanse the heart and brace the will they became incapable of shame, indifferent to consequences, and so past praying for.(782) And in this they were fortified by the specious dreams and lies of their false prophets, continued to sin, and so fell to their doom, abashed at last but unassoilable.(783) If at any time they were startled by disaster, this found them too enfeebled even for repentance by their habitual insincerity or self-indulgence; which made them incapable of truth even under pain, and of a real conversion to God.(784) All this is discovered to us by the eyes and the mouth of Jeremiah. What in it is arbitrary? The record is awful, nothing like it in literature. Yet every step is real. We follow a master of observation.

But perhaps the chief glory of our Prophet is that while thus delivering, as no other prophet so fully or so ethically does, the just wrath of God upon sin, he reveals at the same time that His people's sin costs God more pain than anger. This no doubt Jeremiah learned through his own heart. As we have seen, with his whole heart he loved the people whom he was called to test and expose, and that heart was wracked and torn by thoughts of the Doom which he had to pronounce upon them. So also, he was given to feel, was the heart of their God. In the following questions there is poignant surprise; an insulted, a wounded love beats through them.

What wrong found your fathers in Me, That so far they broke from Me? Have I been a desert to Israel, Or land of thick darkness? Why say my folk, "We are off, No more to meet Thee!" Can a maiden forget her adorning Or her girdle the bride? Yet Me have My people forgotten Days without number.(785)

So, too, when the deserved doom threatens, and in hate He has cast off His heritage, His love still wonders how that can be—

Is My heritage to Me a speckled wild-bird With the wild-birds round and against her? Is Israel a slave, Or house-born serf? Why he for a prey?(786)

All the desolation of Judah is on Him alone: no man lays it to heart, upon Me is the waste.(787) And what we have seen to be the most human touch of all, the surprise of an outraged father at feeling, beneath His wrath against a prodigal son, the instincts of the ancient love which no wrath can quench,

Is Ephraim My dearest son, The child of delights? That as oft as against him I speak I must think of him still!(788)

That these instincts are so scattered rather increases their cumulative effect.

Thus whether upon the Wrath or upon the Love of God Jeremiah speaks home to the heart of his own, and of our own and of every generation which loves lies and lets itself be lulled by them. Sin, he says, is no fiction nor a thing to be lightly taken.(789) Time for repentance is short; doom comes quickly. Habits of evil are not carelessly parted with, but have their long and necessary consequences moral and physical. No wash of words nor worship nor sacrament can cleanse the heart or redeem from guilt. It is not the flagrant sinner whom he chiefly warns, but those who harden themselves softly. And—very firmly this—forgiveness is not easily granted by God nor cheaply gained by men; God has not only set our sins before His face but carries them on His heart. And therefore, in view both of the Just Wrath of the Most High and of His suffering Love, only repentance can avail, the repentance which is not the facile mood offered by many in atonement for their sins, but arduous, rigorous and deeply sincere in its anguish. All of which carries our prophet, six centuries before Christ came, very far into the fellowship of His sufferings.

I have already spoken sufficiently of Jeremiah's other original contributions to theology, on the Freedom and the Patience of the Providence of God, and his hope that God would be to Israel what the prophet had bravely tried to be—no transient guest but a dweller in their midst.(790) The titles for God which we may assume to have first come from himself are few, perhaps only three: The Fountain of Living Waters, the Hope of Israel and the Saviour thereof in time of trouble, and Hasidh, or Loyal-in-Love,(791) a term elsewhere applied only to men. Sometimes, but not nearly so often as the copyists of our Hebrew text have made him do, he uses the title Yahweh of Hosts, doubtless in the other prophets' sense of the forces of history and of the Universe (the original meaning having been the armies of Israel), sometimes he borrows the deuteronomic Yahweh thy God, or a similar form. But most often (as the Greek faithfully shows us) it is simply the personal name Yahweh (Jehovah) by which he addresses or describes the Deity: significant of the long struggle between them as individuals.

Passing now from the world of nations to the world of nature we observe how little the genuine Oracles of Jeremiah have to tell us of the Divine Power over this; yet the little is proclaimed with as firm assurance as of God's control of the history of mankind. Both worlds are His: the happenings in the one are the sacraments, the signs and seals, of His purposes and tempers towards the other: the winter blossom of the almond, of His wakefulness in a world where all seems asleep; the sun by day and the moon and stars by night, of His everlasting faithfulness to His own.(792) All things in nature obey His rule though His own people do not; it is He who rules the stormy sea and can alone bring rain.

Even the stork in the heavens Knoweth her seasons, And dove, swift and swallow Keep time of their coming. But My people—they know not The Rule of the Lord.

I have set the sand as a bound for the sea, An eternal decree that cannot be crossed. Are there makers of rain 'mong the bubbles of the heathen? Art Thou not He? ... all these Thou hast made.(793)

After all neither Nature nor the courses of the Nations but the single human heart is the field which Jeremiah most originally explores for visions of the Divine Working and from which he has brought his most distinctive contributions to our knowledge of God. But that leads us up to the second part of this lecture, his teaching about man. Before beginning that, however, we must include under his teaching about God, two elements of this to which his insight into the human heart directly led him.

First this great utterance of the Divine Omnipresence:

I am a God who is near, Not a God who is far. Can any man hide him in secret, And I not see him? Do I not fill heaven and earth?— Rede of the Lord.(794)

These verses have been claimed as the earliest expression in Israel of the Divine Omnipresence.(795) Amos, however, had given utterance to the same truth though on a different plane of life.(796)

Second, and partly in logical sequence from the preceding, but also stimulated by thoughts of the best of Judah(797) banished to a long exile, Jeremiah was the first in Israel to assure his people that the sense of God's presence, faith in His Providence, His Grace, and Prayer to Him were now free both of Temple and Land—as possible on distant and alien soil, without Ark or Altar, as they had been with these in Jerusalem. See his Letter to the Exiles, and recall all that lay behind it in his predictions of the ruin of the Temple, and abolition of the Ark, and in his rejection of sacrifices.(798) To Deuteronomy exile was the people's punishment; to Jeremiah it is a fresh opportunity of grace.



2. Man and the New Covenant.

In the earliest Oracles of Jeremiah nations are the human units in religion, Israel as a whole the object of the Divine affection and providence. To his age worship was the business of the nation: public reverence for symbols and institutions, and rites in which the individual's share was largely performed for him by official representatives. The prophets, and Jeremiah himself at first, dealt with the people as a moral unity from the earliest times to their own. The Lord had loved and sought, redeemed and tended them as a nation. As a nation they fell away from Him and now they were wholly false to Him. When Jeremiah first urges them to return, it is of a public and general repentance that he speaks, as Deuteronomy had done; and when his urgency fails it is their political disappearance which he pronounces for doom.

But when the rotten surface of the national life thus broke under the Prophet he fell upon the deeper levels of the individual heart, and not only found the native sinfulness of this to be the explanation of the public and social corruption but discovered also soil for the seed-bed of new truths and new hopes. Among these there is none more potent than that of the immediate relation of the individual to God. Jeremiah never lost hope of the ultimate restoration of Israel. Nevertheless the individual aspects of religion increase in his prophesying, and though it is impossible to trace their growth with any accuracy because of the want of dates to many of his Oracles, we may be certain that as he watched under Josiah the failure of the national movements for reform, inspired by Deuteronomy, and under Jehoiakim and Sedekiah the gradual breaking up of the nation, and still more as his own personal relations with the Deity grew closer, Jeremiah thought and spoke less of the nation and more of the individual as the object of the Divine call and purposes.

One has travelled by night through a wooded country, by night and on into the dawn. How solid and indivisible the dark masses appear and how difficult to realise as composed of innumerable single growths, each with its own roots, each by itself soaring towards heaven. But as the dawn comes up one begins to see all this. The mass breaks; first the larger, more lonely trees stand out and soon every one of the common crowd is apparent in its separate strength and beauty.

It seems to me as I travel through the Book of Jeremiah that here also is a breaking of dawn—but they are men whom it reveals. There is a stir of this even in the earliest Oracles; for the form of address to the nation which has begun with the singular Thou changes gradually to You, and not Israel but ye men of Israel are called to turn to their God.(799) As the Prophet's indictments proceed his burden ceases to be the national harlotry. He arraigns separate classes or groups,(800) and then, in increasing numbers, individuals: brother deceiving brother and friend friend; adulterers each after the wife of his neighbour; the official bully Pashhur, Jehoiakim the atrocious and petty in contrast to his sire the simple and just Josiah, the helpless and ridiculous Sedekiah, the bustling and self-confident Hananiah(801)—with the fit word and in sharp irony Jeremiah etches them separately, in the same vividness as the typical figures of the harlot watching for her prey like the Arab robber in the desert, the fowler crouching to fling his net, the shepherds failing to keep their scattered flocks, the prophets who fling about their tongues and rede a rede of the Lord.(802) Jeremiah has answered the call to him to search for the man, the men beneath the nation.(803)

Then there are his readings of the heart of man into which he more deeply thought than any other prophet of Israel: his revelation of the working of God in the soul of man, its Searcher, its only Guide and Strength; his stress upon individual responsibility and guilt, and on the one glory of man being his knowledge of God and the duty of every man to know God for himself and not through others; and his song of the beauty of the personal life rooted in faith, evergreen and yielding its fruit even in seasons of drought. Such passages increase in the Oracles of Jeremiah. Not ceasing to be the patriot, the civic conscience of his people, he busies himself more with the hearts, the habits, the sins and the duties towards God of its individuals. Like Christ he takes the deaf apart from the multitude and talks to him of himself.

O Lord, Who triest the righteous, Who seest the reins and the heart.(804)

False above all is the heart, Sick to despair, Who is to know it? I, the Lord, searching the heart And trying the reins, To give to each man as his ways, As the fruit of his doings.(805)

Can any man hide him in secret And I not see him?(806)

In those days they shall say no more: The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the teeth of the children are set on edge. But every one shall die for his own iniquity, every man that eateth sour grapes his teeth shall be set on edge.(807)

Speak to all Judah all the words I have charged thee.... Peradventure they will hearken and turn every man from his evil way.(808)

He that would boast in this let him boast, Insight and knowledge of Me.(809)

Lord, I know—not to man is his way, Not man's to walk or settle his steps.(810)

Blessed the man that trusts in the Lord And the Lord is his trust! He like a tree shall be planted by water, That stretches its roots to the stream; Unafraid at the coming of heat, His leaf shall be green; Sans care in the season of drought He fails not in yielding his fruit.(811)

The individual soul rooted in faith and drawing life from the Fountain of Living Water, independent of all disaster to the nation and famine on earth—could not be more beautifully drawn.

Now all this advance by Jeremiah from the idea of the nation as the human unit in religion—Deuteronomy's ideal and at first his own—to the individual as the direct object of the Divine Grace and Discipline was promoted, we have seen, by the dire happenings of the time, the unworthy conduct of the people, their abandonment by God, the ruin of the State and of the national worship—which cut off individuals from all political and religious associations, leaving to each (in Jeremiah's repeated phrase) only his life, or his soul, for a prey.(812) But all these could have furthered the advance but little unless Jeremiah had felt by bitter experience his own soul searched and re-searched by God—

But Thou, Lord, hast known me, Thou seest and triest my heart towards Thee—(813)

unless through doubt and struggle he himself had won into the confidence of an immediate and intimate knowledge of God. At his call he had learned how a man could be God's before he was his mother's or his nation's—God's own and to the end answerable only to Him. He had proved his solitary conscience under persecution. He had known how personal convictions can overbear the traditions of the past and the habits of one's own generation—how God can hold a single man alone to His Will against his nation and all its powers, and vindicate him at last to their faces. In all this lay much of the vicarious service which Jeremiah achieved for his own generation; what he had won for himself was possible for each of them. And sure it is that the personal piety which henceforth flourished in Israel as it had never flourished before, weaving its delicate tendrils about the ruins of the state, the city and the altar, and (as the Psalms show) blooming behind the shelter of the Law like a garden of lilies within a fence of thorns, sprang from seeds in Jeremiah's heart, and was watered by his tears and the sweat of his spiritual agonies.

* * * * *

We are now come to a confluence of the streams we have been tracing—the prophecy of the New Covenant. This occupies no incongruous place, following hard as it does upon that of the eating of sour grapes—individual inspiration upon individual responsibility. But we cannot off-hand accept it as Jeremiah's own; the critical questions which have been with us from the beginning embarrass us still.

The collection of Oracles to which that of the New Covenant belongs, Chs. XXX, XXXI, was not made till long after Jeremiah's time; it includes, as we have seen, several of exilic or post-exilic origin.(814) But so do other chapters of the Book, in which nevertheless genuine prophecies of Jeremiah are recognised by virtually all modern critics. The context therefore offers no prejudice against the authenticity of the prophecy of the New Covenant, XXXI. 31-34. But the form and the substance of this have raised doubts, so honest and reluctant as to deserve our consideration. Duhm starts his usual objection that the passage is in prose and a style characteristic of the late expanders of the Book. We may let that go, as we have done before, as by itself inconclusive;(815) the prophecy may not have come directly from Jeremiah's mouth but through the memory of a reporter of the Prophet, Baruch or another. More deserving of consideration is the criticism which Duhm, with great unwillingness, makes of the terms and substance of the prophecy. He objects to the term covenant: a covenant is a legal contract and could hardly have been chosen for the frame of his ideal by so pronounced an anti-legalist as Jeremiah. The passage "promises a new Covenant—not a new Torah but only a more inward assimilation of the Torah by the people, and emphasises the good results which this will have for them but betrays no demand for a higher kind of religion. If one does not let himself be dazzled by the phrases new covenant and write it on the heart then the passage tells us of the relation of the individual no more than Deuteronomy has already regarded as possible, XXX. 11 ff., and desirable, VI. 6-8: namely, that every man should be at home in the Law and honestly follow it." He continues: "it is impossible for me to hold any longer to the Jeremian origin of the passage. I find in it only the effusion of one learned in the Scriptures who regards as the highest ideal, that every one of the Jewish people should know the Law by heart."

But in his resolve "not to let himself be dazzled" has not Duhm gone to the opposite extreme and seriously under-read the whole spirit of the passage—besides showing as usual undue apprehensiveness of the presence in the text of a legalist at work?(816) The choice of the term covenant for the frame of his ideal was not unnatural to Jeremiah nor irrelevant to his experience and teaching. Formally the term may mean a legal contract; but it is open to a prophet or a poet to use any metaphor for his ideals and transform its mere letter by the spirit he puts into it; and after all covenant is only a metaphor for a relation which was beyond the compass of any figure to express. Yet it was a term classical in Israel and most intelligible to the generation whom Jeremiah was addressing. Its associations, especially as he had recalled them,(817) had been those not of the Law but of Love. It was not a contract or bargain but an approach by God to His people, an offer of His Grace, a statement of His Will and accompanied by manifestations of His Power to redeem them. One might as well charge Jesus with legalism in adopting a term sanctioned by God Himself, and so historical, sacred and endeared to the national memory. Nor need Torah, or Law, be taken as Duhm takes it in its sense of the legal codes of Israel, but in its wider meaning of the Divine instruction or revelation. Further the epithet New applied to Covenant was most relevant to the Prophet's and his people's recent sense of the failure of the ancient covenant, as restated and enforced in Deuteronomy. In spite of the excitement caused by the discovery of the Book in which it was written, and the recital of its words throughout the land, the Old Covenant had failed to capture the heart of the people or to secure from them more than the formal and superstitious observance of the letter of its Torah. Was it not a natural antithesis to predict that His Torah would be set by God in their inward parts and written on their hearts? How else (will Duhm tell us?) than by such phrases could the Prophet have described an inward and purely spiritual process? To say as Duhm does that the phrases only mean that common men would learn the Law of God "by heart" (auswendig), is, whoever their author may have been, to travesty his meaning. Finally, all the phrasing of the New Covenant is in harmony with the rest of the Prophet's teaching. He had spoken of God's will to give His people a new heart to know Him;(818) he had taught religion as the individual's direct knowledge of God;(819) he had won this himself from God directly without help from his parentage, his fellow-prophets or priests or any others; he had most bitterly known also how weak the word of one man is to teach his countrymen this knowledge and that it can only come by the inward operation of God Himself upon their spirits; and he had made as clear as ever prophet did that God's pardon for sin was the first, the necessary preliminary to His other gifts. Nor is the fact that the New Covenant is to be a national one alien to his teaching: Jeremiah never lost hope of his nation's survival and restoration.

Thus the passage on the New Covenant brings together all the strands of Jeremiah's experience and doctrine and hopes, shaken free from the political debris of the times, into one fair web under a pattern familiar and dear to the people. The weaving, it is true, is none of the deftest, but whether this is due to the aged Jeremiah's failing fingers or to the awkwardness of a disciple, the stuff and its dyes are all his own.

Lo, days are coming—Rede of the Lord—when I will make with the House of Israel and with the House of Judah a New Covenant, not like the Covenant which I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by their hand to bring them forth from the land of Egypt, which My Covenant they brake and I rejected them(820)—Rede of the Lord. But this is My(821) Covenant which I will make with the sons(822) of Israel after those days—Rede of the Lord—I will set My Law in their inward part and on their heart will I write it, and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to Me a people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour and every man his brother saying, Know thou(823) the Lord! For they shall all know Me from the least even to the greatest;(824) for I will forgive their guilt and their sin will I remember no more.

This is, as has been said, a prophecy of Christianity which has hardly its equal in the Old Testament.(825) It is the Covenant which Jesus Christ the Son of God accepted for Himself and all men and sealed with His own blood.

And yet not even in this prophecy of Jeremiah, in which the individual soul is made to feel that God created it not for its family nor its state nor its church but only for Himself, is there any breath of a promise for it after death. The Prophet's eyes are still sealed to that future. The soul must be content that her strength and peace and hope are with God.



Appendix I.

MEDES AND SCYTHIANS (PP. 73, 110).

It is very difficult, if not impossible, to give a correct account of the national and racial movements which, along with the moral conditions in Judah, called forth Jeremiah's Oracles of judgment in the years immediately following his call in 627-626 B.C. But the following facts are well founded. In or about 625 the Medes were defeated in an attack upon Assyria and their king Phraortes was killed, but at the same time Asshurbanipal died, and his weaker successor was compelled to recognize the virtual independence of Nabopolassar, the Chaldean in Babylon. Cyaxares (624-585), the son of Phraortes, soon after his succession to his father—say between 624 and 620—led a second Median assault upon Assyria and besieged Nineveh, but had to retire because of the onset from the north of the Scythians, the Ashguzai of the Assyrian monuments, probably the Ashkenaz or Ashkunza (?) of the Old Testament. And then it was not for some years that Cyaxares felt himself strong enough by his alliance with Nabopolassar for a third Median invasion of Assyria which culminated in the capture and destruction of Nineveh.

The Assyrians appear to have been in touch with the Ashguzai for over a century and for a shorter time probably in alliance with them; which alliance was the cause of the Scythian advance to the relief of Nineveh from its siege by the Medes circa 724-720 (see Winckler Die Keilinschriften v. das alte Testament, 3rd ed., pp. 100 ff.). About the same time must be dated the Scythian advance through Western Asia to the borders of Egypt, which Herodotus (I. 103-104, IV. 1) reports. Professor N. Schmidt (Enc. Bibl., art. "Scythians") supposes that this advance was due to the same Scythian-Assyrian alliance, in order to preserve the Assyrian territories from the arms of Psamtik of Egypt, who had since 639 been besieging Ashdod; and he holds that this hypothesis explains the absence of any record of violence by the Scythians on their southern campaign, except at Ashkelon. This precarious hypothesis apart, we have the facts that no Biblical chronicler records any invasion of Judah and Benjamin by the Scythians, and yet that the early Oracles of Jeremiah, generally attributed to the alarms which the advance of such barbarian hordes would excite in Judah, do closely fit the Scythians (with a few exceptions that may be due to the prophet's adaptation in 604 of his earlier Oracles to the new enemy out of the north, the Chaldeans).

There, are, however, modern writers who claim that the Oracles in question were originally composed not in view of the Scythian, but of the Chaldean invasion of Palestine. So George Douglas (The Book of Jeremiah, London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1903), who, while assigning Jeremiah's call to 627, relegates the two visions and all the Oracles in the first part of the book to the years following Jehoiakim's accession to the Jewish throne in 608; cp. Winckler, Geschichte Israels, I. pp. 112 f. and F. Wilke (Alttestamentliche studien R. Kittel zum 60 Geburtstag dargebracht, 1913), quoted by John Skinner, Prophecy and Religion, pp. 42 f. n. 2. This would be an easy solution but for the insuperable objections to it that the Oracles in question far more closely fit the Scythian, than the Chaldean, invasion; and that Jer. I. 2, as distinctly covers prophecies of Jeremiah in the days of Josiah as v. 3 does his prophesying under Jehoiakim.

POSTSCRIPT.

The date of Nineveh's fall has hitherto been accepted as 607-606 B.C. But in July of this year (1923) Mr. C. J. Gadd described to the British Academy a Babylonian tablet, which dates the fall in the fourteenth year of Nabopolassar's reign in Babylon. This year was 612 B.C., if it be right to reckon the reign from 626-25 B.C.; but as remarked above, p. 175, Nabopolassar became in that year officially not king but only viceroy. Dependent as I was on a newspaper summary of Mr. Gadd's lecture I could therefore do no more than offer for the fall of Nineveh the alternative dates, 612 and 606; see above p. 175 and compare p. 162.



Appendix II.

NECOH'S CAMPAIGN (PP. 162, 163).

In addition to the accounts in the Books of Kings and Chronicles of Pharaoh Necoh's advance into Asia in pursuance of his claim for a share of the crumbling Assyrian Empire there are two independent records: (1) Jeremiah XLVII. 1—and Pharaoh smote Gaza—a headline (with other particulars) wrongly prefixed by the Hebrew text, but not by the Greek, to an Oracle upon an invasion of Philistia not from the south but from the north (see above, pp. 13, 61); (2) by Herodotus, II. 159, who says that "Necoh (Nekos) making war by land on the Syrians defeated them at Magdolos and after the battle took Kadutis, a great city of Syria." Magdolos is probably Megiddo, unless it stands for Megdel, which, as well as Rumman (= Hadad-rimmon, the scene of the mourning for Josiah, Zech. XII. 11) lies near Megiddo. If, as is usually held, Kadutis be Gaza, Herodotus has reversed the proper order of Necoh's two actions; but Kadutis also suggests hak-Kodesh, the holy, an epithet of Jerusalem (Jerusalem, I. 270) which would suit Herodotus' order, for it was after Megiddo that Necoh became master of Jerusalem and Judah. The suggestion, though worth mentioning, is doubtful; the epithet is late, exilic and post-exilic; and Herodotus' phrase took Kadutis is hardly equivalent to became paramount there as Necoh became paramount in Jerusalem.



INDEX OF TEXTS.

Genesis— xlix. 27; 69

Exodus— xxi. 1-6; 235

Leviticus— vi. 5; 152 xix. 27; 206 xxvi. 34 f.; 8

Numbers— xxx. 2, 12; 313

Deuteronomy— iv. 19; 136, 195 xvii. 3; 195 xviii. 6; 135 xxxii. 13; 222

Judges— i. 16; 193 iv. 17; 194 v. 4; 222 24; 194 xi. 36; 313

I. Samuel— x. 2; 302 xv. 6; 193 22; 156

I. Kings— ii. 26 f.; 67

II. Kings— x. 15, 23; 193 xxii. 12 ff.; 174 20; 259 xxiii. 5, 13; 195 8 ff.; 135 10; 196 28-30; 163 31; 66, 232 xxiv. 1-16; 176 6; 259 8, 15; 213 17; 232 18; 66 xxv. 7; 270 18; 246 21; 236

I. Chronicles— ii. 55; 193

II. Chronicles— xxxv. 20; 162 xxxvi. 21-23; 8

Ezra— i. 1 f.; 8

Nehemiah— xiii; 20 15-22; 221

Psalms— v. 9; 122 xv; 232 xxiii; 9 xxvi-xxviii; 9 l. 13, 14; 158 li. 16, 17; 158

Isaiah— vi; 351 x. 28-32; 70 xv. f.; 20 xl. ff.; 8, 20 xliv. 28; 8 lii, liii; 7 lvi. 2-7; 221 lviii; 20 13 f.; 221 lx. 5; 302

Jeremiah— i.; 9, 28, 30, 42, 50, *78-88* 1-3; 9 5; 67 6; 82, 318 9 f.; 355 10; 14, 83, 319 11 f.; 351, 365 12 f.; 355 13-15; 62 17 f.; 14, 333 ii, iii; 355, 357 ii-xxv; 10 ii. 1-37; *91-98* 1-3; 44 2; 104 5; 106, 356, 362 5-8; 49 8; 355 9; 356 f. 11-13; 346, 356 13; 364 14 f.; 39, 40, 362 14-17; 47 17; 14, 105 18; 81 19; 12, 14, 360 21 f.; 107, 346 23 f.; 68 25; 346, 360 26; 18 28; 76 29; 12 30; 360 31; 47, 106, 346, 355, 362 32 ff.; 45 35; 346, 357, 363 37; 358 iii; 18 1-25; *98-103* 1-6; 52, 358 2; 77, 370 3; 358, 365 5; 40 6-18; 18 6 ff.; 358 20; 358 21-25; 361 22; 107 25; 107 iv. 1-4; *103* 3 f.; 43, 70, *108*, 346, 361 5-8; *112* 6; 355 8; 358 9 f.; *113*, 332 11-22; *114*, *115* 11-14; 60, 68, 69 15-18; 60, 72 18; 360 23-28; 61, *116* 28; 358 29-31; 45 f., *117*, *118* v. 1-9; *119*, *120*, 134 1-6; 48, 357, 369 1; 370 3; 360 4; 12 6; 69 7-9; 357, 358, 369 10-14; *120*, *121* 13; 18 14; 84 15-17; *122*, 355 18 f.; *122*, *123* 20-31; *123-125*, 357 22; 365 24; 365 26; 370 29; 358 31; 343, 346, 360 vi. 1-8; *125-127* 9-15; *127-129* 11; 319, 330, 358 13-15; 200 15; 359 16-21; *129*, *130* 22-26; *130*, *131* 26; 359 27-29; *132-134*, 352 27-30; 360 vii-x; 17 vii. 1-15; *147-151*, 346 1-28; 18 3 ff.; 346, 357 12-15; 72 14; 367 15; 359 16-20; *195* 16; 358 19; 360 21-23; *155-159*, 346, 367 28 ff.; 50 30 ff.; 165, *195* viii.; 50 1-3; *196* 4-12; 196, *198-200* 5; 13 7; 69 8 f.; *153*, *154*, 155, 369 10-12; 13, 261, 359, 360 13; *200* 14-ix. 1; 63 f., *200-202* 16; 12 19; 356 21; 12 22; 69 ix.; 50 1; *202* 2-9; *202-204* 2 f.; *341*, *342* 3, 7; 230 4 f.; 369 9; 358 10-12; 204 11; 359 13-16; 204, 208 15; 359 17 ff.; 58, 205 20-22; 58, *205*, *206*, 241 22 f.; 49 23-26; 18, *206*, *207* 24; 357, 371 x. 1-16; 18, 20, 207, 352 6-8; 13 11; 18 17 f.; *207* 19-22; *207-209*, 241, 370 23 f.; 49, *209*, 372 25; *209*, *210* xi.; 30, 42 1-5; 18 1-8; 28, *143-145*, 155, 377 6-8; 13, 17, 18 13; 76 14; 358, 360 15, 16; *151-153*, 210, 346 18 ff.; 28 18-23; *323* f. 20; 330, 371 21; 146 22 f.; 329 xii. 1-6, 28; *339*, *340*, 351 1-2; *160*, *161*, 356 3; 14, 329, 373 5; 332 7-9; 362 7-13; *210-212* 8; 385 9; 230 11; 230, 362 xiii. 1-17; 28 1-11; *183-185* 1; 356 12-14; 55, 185, 358 15, 16; *59* 17; *212* 18, 19; *213* 20-27; *213-215* 22; 360 23; 108, 346 24; 359 25; 361 xiv; 50 1 ff.; *56** f.* 8 f.; 57, *348*, 364 11-16; *50** f.*, 360 12; 346 17-18; 51, *215* 19-22; *216*, *217* 21; 348 22; 356, 365 xv. 1-9; 52, 358 1-4; *217* 5-9; *217*, *218* 7 f.; 359 10; 319 10-21; *324-326* 13, 14; 13 15; 330 18 f.; 332, 347 xvi. 2-9; *326*, *327* 5-9; *219* 10-13; 219, 327 12; 346 14, 15; 18, 219 16-18; 219 19, 20; 220, 356 xvii. 1-4; 13, *220*, 346 5 ff.; *53** f.*, 353 7 f.; 372 9, 10; *108*, *109*, 371 13; 364 14-18; *328* 16; 237 18; 329 19-27; 20 xviii; 82 xviii. 1-12; 28, *185-190*, 355, 360 1; 356 7-10; 84 13-17; *221*, *222* 11 f.; 361 15; 356 17; 359 18-23; *328** f.* 20 f.; 332 xix; *191* xix-xx. 6; 223 1; 356 xx. 1-6; *191*, *192* 2; 321 3 f.; 369 7; 82, 318, 353 7-18; 223 7-12; *330*, *331* 8; 318 9; 319 11; 353 12; 371 14-18; *331*, *332* xxi. 1-10; 223, 267, *268* 7; 358 9; 229, *277-280* 11, 12; 223 13, 14; 223 xxii-xxiii. 8; 16 xxii. 1-5; 223 6 f.; *223*, *224* 8 f.; 224 10; *164* 11 f.; 223 13-17; *166*, *167*, 223, 369 15 f.; 75, 357 18 f.; *167*, *168*, 259, 321 20-30; *224-226* 25 f.; 355 26; 213 xxiii. 1-8; 20 7, 8; 18, 219 9-32; *253-258* 9-40; 16 14, 17, 22; 261 14-17; 361 15; 359 19, 20; 18, 358 21; 265 23 f.; 366, 371 27; 260 28; 264 31; 265, 370 32; 259 xxiv; 28 1; 356 1-9; *238-241*, 309 7; 378 8 ff.; 355 9 f.; 359 xxv; 22 1-11, 13; *179-181* 9; 355 12-14; 20, 181 13-15; 14, *181*, 358 15-38; *182* 26; 20 xxvi; 10, 147, *168-174* 1-9; 18 2; 165, 371 6; 72 13; 357 14, 15; 264 xxvii-xxxv; 10 xxvii, xxviii; 247 xxvii; 234, *248-250* 1; 13 2; 356 5, 6; 355 7; 13 9; 361 12-14; 13 17-22; 13 18; 264 xxviii; 10, 28 2-17; *251-253* 6; 264 xxviii. 11; 264 15; 361, 369 17; 322 xxix; 40 1-23; *241-245* 4-13; 367 14; 13 15; *245* 16-20; 13 21-23; *245*, 261 24-32; *246-247*, 322 29; 237 xxx-xxxiii; 286 xxx, xxxi; 293, 374 f. xxx. 2; 293 5-9; *294**, **295* 10, 11; 13, 295 12-15; *295* 15; 13 16-17; *296* 22; 13 23, 24; 18, 358 xxxi; 30, 42, 286 1-6; *297-300* 6; 141 7-14; 20 7-9; *300**, **301* 10-14; *301**, **302* 15; 47, 70 15-17; *303**, **304* 18-22; *304**, **305* 20; 363 23-28; *305**, **306* 29, 30; 307, *371* 31-34; 307, *375-380* 35 f.; 365 xxxii; 10, 28, 286 1-5; *286*, 355 6-15; 285, 356 6-25; *287-289* 12; 12 16-25; 237 26-44; *289* 30; 356 xxxiii; *289-291* 1; 290 4-13; 290 14-26; 13, 289 xxxiv. 1-7; 267, *268-270* 2; 355 8-22; 235, *273-275* 22; 355 xxxv; *193**, **194* 2; 356 xxxvi-xlv; 10 xxxvi; 17, *22** ff.*, 26, *178**, **179* 2; 82, 356 9; 165 28; 356 32; 89, 110 xxxvii. 3-10; 267, *270**, **271* 5, 7; 234 11; 234 11-21; *275**, **276* 17-21; *284* xxxviii. 1-3; *276-280* 2; 229, 277 4-6; *280**, **281* 7-13; *281* 14-28; *282-285* 19 ff.; 321 22; 369 28; 285, 291 xxxix. 3, 14; *291*, 292 4-13; 13, 291 7; 270 14; 174 15-18; *281**, **282* 18; 229 xl-xliv; 17, 18 xl. 1-6; *291**, **292* 5, 6; 174 xli, xlii; *307-309* xliii. 1-7; *310* 8-13; *310* xliv. 1-14; *311**, **312* 15-28; *312-316* 30; 234 xlv; 17, *226-229* 5; 27, 322 xlvi-li; 10, 14, 20, 181 xlvi. 26; 13 27 f.; 13 xlvii. 1; 13, 384 2, 3; *61* xlviii. 40-47; 13, 20 xlix. 7-22; 20 34-39; 20 l. 1-58; 20 li. 59; 234 60; 20 lii; 10, 20 28-30; 13

Lamentations; 31, 318

Ezekiel— i; 351 viii; 234 xi. 15; 234 xvi. 59; 232 xvii. 11-21; 232 xix. 14; 233 xxiii. 22; 213 xxix. 3; 234

Daniel; 292

Hosea— vi. 1-4; 217

Joel— ii. 1; 112

Amos— iii. 2; 260 6; 112 v. 25; 158 ix. 2 ff.; 366

Obadiah; 20

Micah— vi. 6-8; 75, 158

Zephaniah— iii. 4; 258

Habakkuk— iii. 7; 72

Matthew— xviii. 23 f.; 189 xxvii. 7; 185

Luke— i. 76; 79 vii. 39 ff.; 189 xiii. 6 ff.; 189 xix; 189

1 Corinthians— i. 17; 157



INDEX OF NAMES AND SUBJECTS.

Ahikam, 157, 174, 291.

Amos, 3, 22, 112, 158, 260.

Anathoth, 66, 67, 287, etc.

Apocrypha, the, 8.

"Arabian Nights," 36.

Ark, the, 101.

Assyria, 66, 77, 175.

Atonement, 7.

Baalim, 76, etc.

Babylonian idolatry, 234.

Ball, C. J., his "The Prophecies of Jeremiah," 9, 93, 184, 203, 210.

Baruch, 4, 8, 23, 26, 82, 178, 227.

Budde, Professor, 38.

Calvin, 278, 283, 315.

Carchemish, battle of, 175.

Chaldeans, the, 110, 121, 122, etc.

Cornill, 7, 38, 82, 166, 184, 190, 222, 268, 269, 276, 287, 298, 299, 301, 312, 329, 375, etc.

Corvee, the, 166.

Covenant, the new, 374 ff.

Dalman: "Palaestinischer Diwan," 36.

Davidson, Dr. A. B., 3, 5, 15, 26, 139, 186, 268, 354.

Deuteronomy, Book of, 135; its cardinal doctrines, 136; alleged connection of Jeremiah with its composition, 139.

Dirge on the drought, 56.

Douglas, G., 15, 145, 382.

Driver: "The Book of the Prophet Jeremiah," 111, 133, 147, 181, 239, 296, 312.

Duhm, Professor, 8, 15, 37, 38, 40, 82, 83, 91, 98, 115, 166, 194, 222, 227, 243, 244, 257, 268, 269, 276, 287, 295, 300, 312, 329, 375, etc.

Ebed-Melech, 281.

Edghill, 159.

Egypt, 77, 105, 234, 310.

Ephraim, 72, 297, 299, 304.

Erbt, 38, 48, 133, 190, 227, 256, 268, 314.

Euphrates, 184.

Ewald, 184, 222, 268.

Farah, Wady, 184.

Freedom, the Divine, 186, 237.

Future Life, no hope of, 138, 240, 334, 340, 380.

Gedaliah, 276, 291, 292; assassination, 307.

Gidroth-Chimham, 308.

Giesebrecht, 38, 48, 147, 155, 181, 227, 257, 268, 287, 312, 380.

Gilead, 68, 69, 201, 224.

Gillies, Rev. J. R., 111, 146, 147, 181, 190, 222, 268, 287, 294, 312, 324, 375.

God, man, and the new covenant, 350.

Grotius, 7.

Hananiah, 251.

Hebrew poetry, 33.

Heine, 36, 40.

Herder, 34.

Herodotus, 73, 206, 382.

Hilkiah, 66.

Hinnom, 185, 191, 195 (Topheth).

Hosea, 4, 44, etc.

Hugo, Victor, 167, 230.

Isaiah, 4, 85, 266, 279, 319, 351.

Ishmael (the fanatic), 307.

Jeconiah (Konyahu), 224.

Jehoahaz, 164.

Jehoiachin, 176 (see Jeconiah).

Jehoiakim, 144, 165, 195.

Jeremiah, personality, 4; biography, 26; as poet, 31; as prose writer, 40; his youth and his call, 66; range of his mission, 79; prophet to the nations, 79; carrier of the Word of the Lord, 83; charge in visions, 84; in the reign of Josiah, 89; his Oracles, 89; alleged pessimism, 108; Oracles on the Scythians, 110; settlement in Jerusalem, 134; alleged connection with the composition of Deuteronomy, 139; attitude to its ethics and to the written law, and to sacrifices, 143; difficulties as to "the Covenant," 144; conspiracy against, 146; address rebuking the people, 147; contrasts to the teaching of Deuteronomy, 153; enmity of the priests, 168; prediction of the ruin of the Temple, 168; the Rolls, 178; address prophesying judgment upon Judah, 179; parables, 183; arrest, 191; Oracles on the Edge of Doom, 195; hopeful prophecies, 236; vision of the good and bad figs, 238; Letter to the Exiles, 241; treatment of the 'prophets' in Jerusalem, 245; removal and restoration of the sacred vessels, 250; controversy with other prophets, 258; his prophesying vindicated by history, 259; arrested and flogged, 275; controversy as to suggested surrender, 276; charged with treason and cast into cistern, 280; rescue by Ebed-melech, 281; appeal by the King, 282; "The Book of Hope," 286; what befel Jeremiah when the city was taken, 291; carried off in chains to Ramah and there released, 292; prophecies of the physical restoration of Israel and Judah, 302; carried off to Egypt, 310; Oracle concerning the Jews in Egypt, 311; the story of his soul, 317; "the Weeping Prophet," 318; voice of pain and protest, 318; his irony and scorn, 321; fluid and quick temper, 332; poet's heart for the beauties of nature and domestic life, 334; no hope of another life, 334; faith in his predestination, 335; sacrifice of self, 341; foreshadowing the sufferings of Christ for men, 349; revelations of God subjective, 352; a God of deeds, 354; Jeremiah's monotheism, 356; brooding on the wrath of the Lord, 358; the love of God, 361; the Divine power in nature, 365; man and the new covenant, 367; readings of the heart of man, 370; the individual as the direct object of the Divine grace and discipline, 372; the prophecy of the new covenant, 374.

Jeremiah (Book of), 9; questions of authorship, 19; the Rolls, 23; Exilic and Post-Exilic additions, 29; poetical passages, 31; critical text, 156; evidence for revelation by argument, 161.

Jerusalem, 113, 125; invested by Nebuchadrezzar, 234; Temple and Palace burned, 235; Jeremiah's activity and sufferings during the siege, 267; his pronouncements of surrender, 267.

Job, Book of, 49.

Johanan-ben-Kareah, 308.

Josiah, 75, 162, etc.

Knox, John, 266, 272.

Koenig, 145.

"Kurzer Hand-Commentar," 38.

Lees, Dr. John: "The German Lyric," 33, 42.

Love, the Divine, 106, 348, 356, etc.

Lowth, Bishop: "De Sacra Poesi Hebraeorum," 33.

Magor-Missabib, 192.

Man and the new covenant, 367.

Marti, 155, 184.

McCurdy, 111.

McFadyen, J. E., 184, 222.

Megiddo, battle of, 163.

Metrical Questions, vii, 32-53 and passim.

Mispah, 292, 308.

Misraim (Egypt), 94, etc.

Nabopolassar, 175.

Nebuchadrezzar, 110, 126, 175, 292, etc.

Nebusaradan, 235, 291, 292.

Necoh, 163, 175, 384.

Nineveh, Fall of, 162, 163, 175, 383.

Nineveh, 175.

Noph (Memphis), 94, 311.

Omnipresence, the Divine, 256, 366.

Oracles on the Edge of Doom, 60, 195.

Parable of the Potter, 82, 185.

Parables, 183.

Pashhur, 191.

Pathros, 311.

Patience, the Divine, 187-189, 217, 237.

Peake, Prof., 146, 147, 184, 222, 268, 273, 274, 279, 287, 293, 312, 375.

Predestination, 78, 186, 335.

Prophets. Personality of the, 3; see also 245-266.

Qinah (metre), 37, 39, 44, 244, 283, 295, 297, etc.

Queen, or Host, of Heaven, 195, 234, 313, 314.

Ramah, 70, 292, 297, 303.

Rechabites, the, 193.

Renan, 308.

Rothstein, 222, 294, 312.

Sacrifice, 130, 152, 155-159, 299, 341.

Saintsbury, George: "History of English Prosody," 36.

Schmidt, Professor, 24, 25, 111, 382.

Schweich Lectures, 34.

Scythians, the, 73, 82, 110, 381.

Sedekiah, 232, and passim to 282.

Shakespeare, 36, 47.

Shiloh, 72, 149, 170.

Skinner, Rev. John, D.D.: his "Prophecy and Religion, Studies in the Life of Jeremiah," 7, 103, 111, 129, 133, 145, 146, 166, 169, 181, 190, 222, 227, 237, 268, 279, 284, 292, 307, 375, 383.

Slavery, 235; proposed emancipation, 273.

Smith, H. P., 147.

Smith, W. Robertson, 15, 159.

Snouck Hurgronje: "Mekka," 37.

Stade, B., 267.

Tahpanhes (Daphne), 94, 310, 311.

Tchekov, 198.

Thackeray, St. John: his "The Septuagint and Jewish Worship," 14.

Thomson, Rev. W. R., 111, 140, 146, 268.

Torah, the, 153, etc.

Urijahu, 173.

Wady Farah, 184.

Wellhausen, 5, 146.

Winckler: "A.T. Untersuchungen," 142, 176, 382, 383.



FOOTNOTES

1 A. B. Davidson.

2 A. B. Davidson. "Without Jeremiah," says Wellhausen, "the Psalms could not have been composed."

3 Cp. e.g. Jer. xi. 19, with Is. liii. 7; and see Grotius, "Annotata ad Vetus Testamentum," on Is. lii-liii; Cornill, "Das Buch Jeremia erklaert," pp. 11-12; John Skinner, "Prophecy and Religion," p. 351.

4 II. Chron. xxxvi. 21 (with a reference to Lev. xxvi. 34, 35) and 22, 23, the latter repeated in Ezra i. 1-2. Duhm, indeed, but on insufficient grounds, thinks the former citation, because of its reference to Leviticus, cannot be from our Book of Jeremiah but is from a Midrash unknown to us; yet the chronicler's was the very spirit to associate a Levitical provision with Jer. xxix. 10; cp. xxv. 9-12. The other quotation Duhm refers to some part of Is. xl. ff. (xliv. 28?) as though this had at one time been attributed to Jeremiah.

5 In the Apocrypha proper, (1) "Baruch" to which is attached (2) "The Epistle of Jeremy" warning the Jews of Babylon in general and conventional terms against idolatry. Apocalyptic writings, (3) "Apocalypse of Baruch," (4) (5) and (6) three other "Apocalypses of Baruch," (7) "The Rest of the Words of Baruch," or "Paralipomena Jeremiae," (8) "Prophecy of Jeremiah." For particulars of these see "Encyclopaedia Biblica," arts. "Apocalyptic Literature" (R. H. Charles), and "Apocrypha" (M. R. James).

6 Following Hitzig, C. J. Ball ("The Prophecies of Jeremiah" in "The Expositor's Bible," 1890, pp. 10 ff.) refers Pss. xxiii, xxvi-xxviii to Jeremiah, and it is possible that in particular the personal experiences in Ps. xxvii are reflections of those of the prophet. But such experiences were so common in the history of the prophets and saints of Israel as to render the reference precarious.

7 It has been calculated that the Greek has 2700 words fewer than the Hebrew, i.e. about 120 verses or from four to five average chapters.

8 E.g. ii. 19, 29; iii. 1; v. 4a; viii. 16, 21; xxxii. 12, etc.

9 ne'um Yahweh: utterance or oracle of Jehovah.

10 E.g. the words at his mouth, xxxvi. 17; xxxviii. 16.

11 E.g. Jerusalem in viii. 5, and in xxxvi. 22 the ninth month.

12 E.g. ii. 1-2; xxv. 1b; xxvii. 1; xlvii. 1; l. 1.

13 E.g. viii. 10ab-12; x. 6-8; xi. 7, 8; xvii. 1-4 (perhaps omitted by the Greek, because partly given already in xv. 13, 14); xxv. 18 and a curse as at this day; xxvii. 1, 7, 12b, 13, 14a, 17, 18b, clauses in 19, 20, the whole of 21, and 22b; xxix. 14, 16-20; xxx. 10, 11 (= xlvi. 27 f.), 15a, 22; xxxiii. 14-26; xxxix. 4-13; xvi. 26; xlvii. 1 (except to the Philistines); xlviii. 45-47; lii. 28-30.

14 E.g. i. 10, 17, 18; ii. 17, 19; vii. 28b; xii. 3; xiv. 4, etc.

15 Verse 14 is not found in the Greek.

16 In his Schweich Lectures on "The Septuagint and Jewish Worship" (for the British Academy, 1921) Mr. St. John Thackeray presents clear evidence from the different vocabularies in the Greek Version that this Version was the work of two translators, the division between whom is at Ch. xxix. verse 7. The dividing line cuts across the Greek arrangement of the chapters, which sets the Oracles on Foreign Nations in the centre of the Book. This shows that it was not the translators who placed them there, but that the translators found the arrangement in the Hebrew MS. from which they translated. Further, he thinks that the division of the Book into two parts was not made by the translators, but already existed in their Hebrew exemplar. For this the Hebrew text gives two evidences: (1) the titles of the Oracles, (2) the colophons appended to two of them. The titles are some long, some short. In the Hebrew order the Oracles with long titles are mixed up with those with short, but in the Greek order the six with long titles come together first and are followed by the five with short. There are two colophons—one to the Moab Oracle, the other to the Babylon Oracle; but the Moab Oracle stands last in the Greek order and the Babylon Oracle last in the Hebrew order.

From all this two conclusions are drawn: (1) when the titles were inserted the chapters were arranged as in the Greek, which, therefore, was the original arrangement; (2) they afford Hebrew evidence for a break or interruption in the middle of the Oracles—the longer titles cease about the end of Part I of the Greek Version, which therefore follows a division of the Book into two parts that already existed in the Hebrew original from which it was made. The Hebrew editor who amplified the titles had apparently only Part I before him.

17 E.g. Graf ("Der Prophet J. erklaert," 1862), George Douglas ("The Book of Jeremiah," 1903) for the Hebrew; and Workman ("The Text of Jeremiah," 1888) for the Greek. For a judicial comparison of the two editions, resulting much in favour of the Greek, see W. R. Smith, "The O.T. in the Jewish Church," Lectures IV and V.

18 "The Hebrew is qualitatively superior to the Greek, but quantitatively the Greek is nearer the original. This judgment is general, admitting many exceptions, and each passage has to be considered by itself."—A. B. Davidson. Cp. Duhm, "Das Buch Jer.," p. xxii.

19 Oracles on the King, xxii. 1-xxiii. 8 and on the Prophets, xxiii. 9-40.

20 The Oracles under Jehoiakim, chs. vii-x, before those on the enforcement of Deuteronomy under Josiah xi. 6-8.

21 The Oracle for Baruch, dated in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, 604 B.C., is not given till ch. xlv, a long way off from ch. xxxvi to which it belongs by date and subject, and only after chs. xl-xliv, the story of Jeremiah's life after the fall of Jerusalem.

22 So far as it is common to the Hebrew and the Greek.

23 The end of is wanting in the Greek.

24 Chs. xl-xliv. And between them the title and its supplement ignore the Oracles which Jeremiah uttered under Josiah after the thirteenth year of the King, perhaps iii. 6-18, and certainly xi. 1-5, 6-8.

25 Ch. lii.

26 E.g. iii. 6-18; ix. 23-26 with x. 1-16; xxi. 11-12 with (probably) 13-14.

27 E.g. ii. 26; v. 13; x. 11, the last written in Aramaic.

28 Cp. xxiii. 7, 8 with xvi. 14, 15, and xxx. 23, 24 with xxiii. 19, 20.

29 x. 1-16; xvii. 19-27 (on the Sabbath—unlike Jeremiah, who did not lay stress on single laws but very like post-exilic teaching, e.g. Neh. xiii and Is. lviii), possibly xxiii. 1-8; xxv. 12-14 (the obviously late as at this day in verse 18 and verse 26b are omitted by the Greek).

30 Parts of xxx and xxxi, especially xxxi. 7-14, the spirit of which is so much that of the Eve of the Return from Exile and the style so akin to that of the Great Prophet of that Eve that some take it as dependent on his prophecies.

31 xlvi-li, especially on Moab, xlviii. 40-47, which is based on the earlier prophecy, Is. xv-xvi; on Edom, xlix. 7-22, based on Obadiah; Elam, xlix. 34-39; and the long prophecy on Babylon, l. 1-58, which reflects like Is. xl. ff. the historical situation just before the Medes overthrew Babylon, and expresses an attitude towards the latter very different from Jeremiah's own fifty years earlier. The compiler, or an editor of the Book, has (li. 60) erred in attributing this long prophecy to Jeremiah. In all these there may be genuine nuclei.

32 Ch. lii.

33 So Greek, Hebrew has Israel.

34 N. Schmidt in the "Encyclopaedia Biblica."

35 Professor Schmidt, in the article already quoted, takes this to mean only that Jeremiah "retouched under fresh provocation" the contents of the first Roll. This interpretation would imply that words means nouns, verbs, adjectives and so forth, whereas words can only carry the same sense as it carries in the rest of the Book, viz. whole Oracles or Discourses. Note the phrase words like them, viz. like the words or Oracles on the first Roll.

36 Cp. A. B. Davidson, "Jeremiah," in Hastings, "B.D.," ii. 522.

37 Schmidt, op. cit.

38 xlv. 5.

39 Chs. i., xi., 1-8, 18-xii. 6; xiii. 1-17; xviii. 1-12.

40 Chs. xxiv, xxviii, xxxii (except for the introductory verses 1-5).

41 "De Sacra Poesi Hebraeorum," 1753.

42 Writing of the early German lyric, Dr. John Lees says in his volume on "The German Lyric" (London, Dent & Sons, 1914): "In regard to the length of the lines, their number, and the arrangement of the rhymes, the poet has absolute freedom in all three classes;" and again of the Volkslied "there is no mechanical counting of syllables; the variation in the number of accented and unaccented syllables is the secret of the verse." And he quotes from Herder on the Volkslieder: "songs of the people ... songs which often do not scan and are badly rhymed."

43 Dalman, "Palaestinischer Diwan."

44 Saintsbury, "History of English Prosody," vol. ii. 53, 54.

45 Snouck Hurgronje, "Mekka," vol. ii. 62.

46 "Kurzer Hand-Commentar," 1901; and "Das Buch Jeremia," a translation, 1903.

47 "Das Buch Jeremia," 1905, p. xlvi.

48 E.g. Sievers, "Metrische Studien," in the "Transactions of Saxon Society of the Sciences," vol. xxi (which relies too much on the Massoretic or Canonical text); Erbt, "Jeremia u. seine Zeit," p. 298; Giesebrecht, "Jeremia's Metrik," iii. ff.; Karl Budde's relevant pages in his "Geschichte der althebraeischen Litteratur," 1906 reached me after I had expressed the views I have given above. They agree in the main with these views.

49 Certainly the evidence of both the Hebrew text and the Versions are against it, and the sense supports the text. More than once when sharp questions or challenges are thrown out, we have very appropriately two parallel lines of two accents each instead of the usual Qinah couplet of three and two: e.g. ii. 14 and iii. 5. See below, pp. 46 ff. Compare the variety of metres, which Schiller employs to such good effect in his "Song of the Bell"—a variety in beautiful harmony with that of the different aspects of life on which he touches; and see above, p. 36, on the irregularity of metre in Heine's Nordseebilder.

50 Ch. xxix.

51 Op. cit., p. xii.

52 Chs. i, xi and xxxi.

53 "It is an understatement of the case to say that the folk-song has been a source of inspiration. In the very greatest lyricists we simply find the folk-song in a new shape: it has become more polished and artistic, and it has been made the instrument of personal lyrical utterance."—John Lees, M.A., D.Litt., "The German Lyric" (London, etc., Dent & Sons, 1914).

54 And in particular sins against the fundamental principle of parallelism, e.g. in iv. 3, where even with the help of part of an obvious title to the Oracle he gets only three lines and supposes the fourth to be lost; and though the sense-parallelism is generally within a couplet he divides it between the last line of his first couplet and the first of his second. Again, if we keep in mind what is said above (p. 35) of the recurrence in Hebrew poems of longer, heavier lines at intervals—especially at the end of a strophe or a poem, we must feel a number of Duhm's emendations to be not only unnecessary but harmful to the effectiveness of the verse.

55 Pointing את with Patah-Sheva for Tsere.

56 Pointing לםדתי with Chireq-Patah-Sheva-Sheva.

57 Hebrew adds poor.

58 So Duhm after the Greek; see p. 97, n. 3.

59 After the Greek.

60 By differently arranging the Hebrew consonants, see p. 117. Other arrangements are possible. Greek omits destined to ruin.

61 Hebrew and Greek have this couplet in the reverse order.

62 ii. 14-17.

63 xxxi. 15.

64 While Duhm and Giesebrecht reduce the text to the exact Qinah form, Erbt correctly reads it as varied by lines of four accents.

65 After Duhm who reads לכן = לאכן (cp. viii. 6) and transfers it to the following line.

66 See below, p. 92.

67 So Greek.

68 So Greek; Hebrew adds their God.

69 Hebrew adds and is cut off.

70 The Hebrew makom must here as elsewhere be given as equivalent to the Arabic makam (literally like the Hebrew standing-place but) generally sacred site.

71 After Duhm.

72 Hebrew adds the Lord our God; not in the Greek.

73 So Greek and Vulg.; Hebrew has he shall not see.

74 xiii. 12-14. The above rendering follows the Greek version.

75 A Hebrew idiom, literally don't, knowing, we know?

76 This couplet is wanting in the Greek.

77 So rightly Duhm after the Greek.

78 Hebrew uselessly adds in the land.

79 So Duhm, reading gar for ger.

80 Hebrew adds, and will make visitation on their sins, which the Greek omits.

81 ix. 17 f., 21 f.; see also pp. 205, 206.

82 xiii. 15-16.

83 So the Greek.

84 iv. 11-13, 15-17. The text and so the metre of 16, 17 are uncertain. For besiegers Duhm proposes by the change of one letter to read panthers, to which in v. 6 Jeremiah likens the same foes. Skinner, leopards. See below, p. 114.

85 Lit. Because of the feebleness of their hands.

86 xv. 5-9.

87 Greek; in both cases Hebrew adds the Lord.

88 See previous note.

89 This verse is uncertain; for Hebrew בעתה read with the Greek בהלה. For another arrangement see above, p. 51.

90 So Greek; Hebrew omits sound.

91 This line is uncertain.

92 Greek.

93 So Greek; Hebrew omits this line.

94 (1) Jeremiah of Libnah, father of Hamutal, II. Kings xxiii. 31; xxiv. 18; (2) Jeremiah, father of Jaazaniah, the Rechabite, Jer. xxxv. 3; (3) Jeremiah the prophet, son of Hilkiah.

95 Not to be confounded with the temple-priest, Hilkiah, who was concerned with the finding of the Law.

96 I. Kings ii. 26 f.

97 Duhm, p. 3.

98 Jer. i. 5.

99 ii. 23, 24; iv. 11; v. 6; viii. 7, 22.

100 Gen. xlix. 27.

101 iv. 3.

102 Is. x. 28-32.

103 xxxi. 15.

104 Hab. iii. 7.

105 See below on ch. iii.

106 vii. 12-15; xxvi. 6.

107 iv. 15.

108 i. 103-107 (after Hecataeus).

109 See Appendix I—Medes and Scythians.

110 "Jerusalem," ii. 263, 264.

111 Micah vi. 8.

112 xxii. 15, 16.

113 "Jerusalem," ii.

114 Though not in every case, for Anathoth itself is but the plural of the Syrian goddess Anath, as Ashtaroth is the plural of Astart or Astarte.

115 ii. 28; xi. 13.

116 iii. 2.

117 i. 5.

118 Luke i. 76.

119 See Lecture vii.

120 ii. 18.

121 See his seven Scythian songs below, pp. 110 ff.

122 xviii.

123 xxxvi. 2, a clause which Duhm merely on the grounds of his theory is obliged to regard as a later intrusion, though it bears no marks of being such.

124 So Cornill after the Greek.

125 xx. 7.

126 Hebrew adds the redundant to pull down; Greek omits.

127 Duhm; see above, p. 40.

128 This is clear from other passages, v. 14; xviii. 7-10, etc.

129 Ball happily translates wake-tree.

130 The text reads, its face is from the face of northwards, which some would emend to its face is turned northwards, i.e. the side on which it is blown upon and made to boil. Boiling or bubbling, lit. blown upon, fanned.

131 After the Greek; Hebrew has be opened.

132 Hebrew has races and kingdoms and adds Rede of the Lord.

133 Read אתם with points Chireq and Qamets.

134 Hebrew adds to them; Greek omits.

135 The last three couplets are uncertain. In v. 18 Hebrew adds a basalt pillar and, after bronze, against all the land.

136 xxxvi. 32; see pp. 22 ff.

137 P. 37.

138 See pp. 40 f., 72.

139 See p. 41.

140 So simply the Greek; the Hebrew, And the word of the Lord came unto me saying, Go and proclaim in the ears of Jerusalem saying, not only betrays an editorial redundancy, but what follows is addressed not to Jerusalem but to all Israel. Here if anywhere the Greek has the original. Jeremiah begins thus to dictate to Baruch.

141 Hebrew kebel = breath.

142 Egypt.

143 So Greek.

144 Lit. shepherds.

145 Hebrew adds Rede of the Lord.

146 Some Hebrew MSS. and Vulgate.

147 Cyprus = Kittim and Kedar, an Arab tribe, are the extremes of the world then known to the Jews.

148 So Greek.

149 Hebrew marg. my.

150 Or heave (Ball), lit. be aghast but the Hebrew is alliterative, shommu shamaim.

151 This couplet is after the Greek, Hebrew has browsed on thy skull for forced. Noph = Memphis, Egypt's capital; Tahpanhes = Daphne on the Egyptian road to Palestine. Either 14-19 or more probably 16 alone is one of Jeremiah's additions to his earlier Oracles after Egypt's invasion of Palestine in 608.

152 So Greek; Hebrew adds, when he led thee by the way.

153 Misraim = Egypt.

154 These last four lines follow the Greek.

155 So Duhm by a better division of words.

156 So the Greek.

157 The Hebrew kal seems to combine here its two meanings of swift and trifling.

158 Hebrew no' ash; with Greek delete the second no.

159 So Greek.

160 The insertion (by a copyist?) of this formula rather weakens the connection.

161 So some Versions.

162 Greek adds and as the number of streets in Jerusalem they burn to Baal; cp. xi. 13.

163 So Greek.

164 Greek.

165 Greek.

166 Greek the.

167 Prose, probably a later insertion when the prophet dictated his Oracles. See pp. 47 f.

168 The text of this quatrain is corrupt, the rendering above makes use of the versions.

169 The text of this verse too is uncertain. For skirts Greek has hands; to innocent Hebrew adds needy. Some read the second couplet [though] thou did'st not catch them breaking in, but because of all these, i.e. thy sins against Me, thou did'st murder them.

170 Or balked.

171 Greek.

172 Greek; Hebrew land.

173 So Duhm after the Greek. Hebrew is impossible.

174 The two Hebrew verbs in this couplet, natar and shamar mean to keep (or maintain) and to watch; they are usually transitive and (in the sense here intended) are followed by a noun, anger or wrath, which English versions supply here. But its absence from both the Hebrew and Greek texts leads us to take the verbs as intransitive, as is the case with natar in New-Hebrew.

175 Verses 6-18, in prose break the connection both of style and meaning between 5 and 19 and cannot in whole be Jeremiah's or from his period. This is especially true of 16-18 which assume the destruction of the Ark and the Exile of Judah as well as of Israel as already actual. But the passage probably contains genuine fragments from Jeremiah.

176 So Greek.

177 So one Hebrew MS. and Syriac.

178 Hebrew adds her sister.

179 Hebrew adds Rede of the Lord.

180 So Greek.

181 Lit. make not My face to fall.

182 Greek; Hebrew ye have.

183 That is Lord and Husband.

184 So Greek.

185 Hebrew adds to the Name of the Lord to Jerusalem.

186 So Greek; Hebrew your; after North Greek has and from all lands.

187 In antithesis to verse 5 of which it is the immediate sequel both in sense and metre.

188 Feminine, i.e. Judah was a daughter, and a son's portion was designed for her.

189 So finely Ball.

190 The riotous festivals on the high-places.

191 Hebrew adds the Lord.

192 This couplet after the Greek.

193 I agree with Cornill and Skinner that these two verses are a later addition. The answer to the people's confession comes in verses 3 and 4.