11 
 
 ■ 
 
 OF THE 
 
 \<m\m 
 
 (W.Fjndla\ 
 
 111). 
 
 m 
 
 H 
 
 m-^J 
 
 
 ■'.■■■ '■■>:■■//.// 
 AND HIS 
 
 C . 
 
 
 
 ■ .4. .",'- i 
 
 ■ : 1' I I 
 
 
 II 
 
t til* Qkwlagtw 
 
 PRINCETON, N. J. & 
 
 Division.. Jl).S..\ 50lO 
 Section v.\ » L 
 
 v,3 
 

 
 ■ 
 
 'WHBmi 
 
 ini 
 
BOOKS FOR BIBLE STUDENTS 
 
 Edited by 
 
 ARTHUR E. GREGORY, D.D. 
 
 PRINCIPAL OF THE CHILDREN'S HOME AND ORPHANAGE 
 
 Author of " The Hymn-Book of the Modern Church," &c. 
 
 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 BY 
 
 George G. Findlay, D.D. 
 
 Vol. Ill 
 
 ROBERT CULLEY 
 
 2 CASTLE ST., CITY RD., AND 26 PATERNOSTER ROW, EC. 
 
Other Works bythe Same Author 
 
 The Books op the Prophets in their Historical 
 Succession. Vol. I, To the Fall of Samaria. In the 
 Series of Books for Bible Students. Third Thousand. 
 2s. M. 
 
 The Epistles op Paul the Apostle. In the Series of 
 Books for Bible Students. Tenth Thousand. 2s. Gd. 
 
 Christian Doctrine and Morals : the Fernley Lecture 
 for 1894. Third Thousand. 3s. 
 
 " The Things Above " : Ten Sermons, included in the 
 2nd Series of Helps Heavenward. 2s. 6d. 
 
 The Church op Christ : Two Lectures delivered in 
 Leeds. Is. 
 
 The above are published by Charles H. Kelly. 
 
 Also the following Commentaries 
 
 1 Corinthians, in the Expositor's Greek Testament, 
 Vol. II. 
 
 Galatians and Ephesians : Two Volumes in the 
 Expositor's Bible. 
 
 Colossians, in the Pulpit Commentary. 
 
 1 and 2 Thessalonians, in the Cambridge Bible for 
 Schools ; also in the Cambridge Greek Testament. 
 
THE BOOK 
 
 op 
 
 THE PROPHETS 
 
 IN THEIR HISTORICAL SUCCESSION 
 
 GEORGE G. FINDIAY, D.D. 
 
 TUTOR IN N.T. LITERATURE AND CLASSICS, 
 HEADINGLEY COLLEGE 
 
 Vol. Ill 
 JEREMIAH AND HIS GROUP 
 
 ROBERT CULLEY 
 
 2 CASTLE ST., CITY ED., AND 26 PATERNOSTER ROW, E,C, 
 
 % 
 
<£iemplum arriptte, fratres, Iaooris et patirntiae ^ropfjrtas, 
 (|tti locuti sunt in nomine JBomint. . . . In eis £>piritus 
 Cfiristi praenunriabit eas quae in (tffiristo sunt passtones, 
 et posteriorrs glorias. 
 
 St James and St Peter. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PEEFACE See Vol. II 
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE x 
 
 THE CHALDiEAN AGE 
 
 CHAP. 
 XX. THE REIGN OP JOSIAH 1 
 
 XXI. THE APOCALYPSE OF ZEPHANIAH ... 23 
 
 XXII. HABAKKUK, AND THE RISE OF THE CHALDEANS 44 
 
 XXIII. AN OBSCURE EPISODE IN PROPHECY . . 79 
 
 XXIV. THE BOOK OF JEREMIAH Ill 
 
 XXV. THE HISTORY OF JEREMIAH . . . .155 
 
 XXVI. THE DISCIPLINE OF JEREMIAH .... 179 
 
 XXVII. DOCTRINE OF THE PROPHETS OF THE SEVENTH 
 
 CENTURY 213 
 
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 
 
 THE SARGONID DYNASTY AND AFTER 
 
m 
 
 P 
 H 
 
 P 
 
 o 
 o 
 
 PP 
 
 w 
 
 o 
 
 H 
 
 a, 
 o 
 
 00 
 o 
 i> 
 
 H 
 
 CO 
 
 <i 
 to • 
 
 Q 
 
 < 
 1— 1 
 
 H 
 
 t* 
 
 H:a 
 
 a * 
 
 O 
 CD 
 
 2 o 
 
 E-i 
 
 CO 
 
 P 
 
 a 
 
 01 
 
 CO Tt< 
 
 CD CD 
 
 CD CD 
 
 CM ' • 
 
 a o 
 
 co£; 
 
 00 
 
 W vi_, c 
 
 <1 o o 
 
 *Ph 
 
 a p 
 
 o 
 
 CD 
 CD 
 
 rg H-l .2 
 
 |gs 
 
 h £ -^ 
 
 co c 
 «« § 
 
 - 1 >> <D 
 
 ., ,0 CO 
 
 CD 
 CM 
 
 o 
 
 CD 
 
 o 
 
 
 o 
 
 o 
 CD 
 
 CD 
 
 fl CD 
 
 .2 O 
 ■43 
 
 o3 
 
 CD *i 
 
 O O cc 
 
 03 
 > 
 
 co . 
 C/3 
 
 
 
 O 
 
 
 
 CM 
 
 
 
 CD 
 
 1 
 
 Eh 
 
 O 
 
 CD 
 
 rrt 
 
 
 3 
 
 £ 
 
 
 of 
 
 • i-H 
 
 • 
 
 H 
 O 
 
 bo 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 3 
 
 co 
 
 tt 
 
 r— H 
 
 <J 
 
 Pn 
 
 = 
 
 <-t 
 
 M-H 
 
 oS 
 
 +j 
 
 ^3 £ 
 
 o3 
 
 P 
 Id 
 
 vT- 00 
 CD 
 
 2 CD 
 
 S A 
 
 O 10 ■<* 1— 1 
 O N (Nh 
 i> i> J>. I> 
 
 5^ CO 
 
 ^ CO 
 
 « 
 
 S3 
 
 "3 
 
 C3 
 
 1 
 
 O i> 
 
 a 
 
 CO C|_| 
 i-H O 
 
 CD p^3 , 
 fe ° 
 
 o 
 
 c3 c6 
 
 O O 
 o o 
 
 O O 
 
 J- 1 *H 
 
 f^P4 
 
 00 -^ . 
 OS O +i 
 
 CD °0 
 
 o 
 
 o 
 
 CD 
 O w 
 
 CD 
 
 CD 
 CO 
 CD 
 
 S 'a 
 
 «4H 
 
 o 
 
 a 
 
 CO 
 
 co >, 
 
 o 
 
 <1 
 
 00 
 
 »o 
 
 O 00 
 
 
 
 CO 
 
 CO CN 
 
 CD 
 
 CD 
 
 CD CD 
 
 1— < 
 
 ^ i=! 
 
 SJ t> 
 
 CD 
 
 O 
 
 co 
 
 CD 
 
 
 co bi 
 
 . «o 
 
 
 CD ^3 
 
 CD 
 
 
 'co ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 2 
 
 r* A 
 
 
 H 2 
 
 
 Ph'o 
 
 
 
 T3 ft 
 
 • 
 
 m pre 
 ian y 
 
 3 rT 
 
 
 3 f- 1 
 
 c3 
 
 W 
 
 ^ >»5tl ^ 
 
 < 
 
 ^U ^ 
 
 O P« 
 
 CO 
 
 (—1 
 
 ^ -< 
 
 CD 
 
 CS3 
 
 ■t> 
 
 
 
 CN 
 
 CM 
 
 •^ CD CD 
 03 CO r-{ .i-t 
 
 CM O i-h c 
 
 (N (M H ^ 
 
 i> r^ i> j> 
 
 o o 
 
 
 
 Ph C3 
 
 03 «h 
 
 o co 
 
 o?<! 
 
 O CD 
 
 o ^ ■ 
 
 CD 
 
 03 
 T3 
 
 o 
 
 CD 
 
 
 03 03 
 
 
 
 PI 
 
 
 03 
 
 43 
 
 o3 
 
 e3 
 
 13 
 
 oj 
 
 ' — 
 CD 
 
 rQ 
 
 P 
 
 
 8 
 
 P3 
 i— 1 
 
 Ph 
 
 a 
 
 o 
 U2 
 
 a a 
 
 O 03 
 
 03 ■-rj 
 PP a 
 
 O 43 
 
 CO 
 CD d 
 
 ^ .a 
 
 ■S ti3 « 
 
 a 03 >> 
 
 03 ^ tfi 
 
 Ph^ 
 
 ;a ° 
 
 i> CD 
 
 • c 
 o 
 
 . rO 
 
 03 
 
 PP 
 
 • o 
 
 c 
 o 
 
 2 P 
 
 ^ ' H 
 
 co CD "Ci 
 
 §•8 9 
 
 e «H^ 
 
 O «h 
 
 i-h CD 
 
 00 J>» 
 
 CD CD 
 
 ^^ 
 
 £s 00 
 
 rS CD 
 
 PP 
 
 p 
 
 p s -a 
 5^ a 
 
 CO 
 
 60 
 
 00 ra 
 
 S 3 
 
 O o 
 
 PP^ 
 
o 
 pq 
 
 H 
 
 Ed 
 
 H 
 
 eh 
 o 
 
 o 
 
 ft 
 
 pq 
 
 to 
 to 
 
 00 
 
 »o 
 I 
 
 O d CM 
 
 _ H-i CO 
 
 O o 
 
 CD CD 
 
 o- p 
 
 p M • 
 o 
 
 02 > to 
 Ed © <£ 
 
 ca 
 
 I 
 
 5^ 
 < • 
 
 <! 
 Ph 
 
 o 
 
 Ed 
 
 o 
 
 •3 si 
 
 P -H <H 
 
 O g _, 
 
 CD 
 PS 
 
 ^H 
 
 o 
 
 
 Fh 
 
 « fl 
 
 <+H 
 
 <H eg 
 
 
 CO p 
 
 P 
 
 «1 r5 
 
 +3 
 
 •p >» 
 
 
 <j ^ 
 
 u 
 
 o PQ 
 
 f-i 
 
 P5 
 
 
 <1 
 
 
 o o 
 
 CO CD 
 
 a> o 
 
 > co ^a 
 
 ^ a 
 • & -I 
 
 W el 
 
 O 
 
 ce ° s§ ° 
 Ph PQ 
 
 CO 
 iQ 
 
 I 
 R o 
 
 •< CO 
 
 H 
 
 o • 
 p 
 cq 
 Ed 
 
 Ph 
 
 N 
 
 - W 
 
 '53 
 P^ 
 
 OS 
 
 00 
 
 iO 
 
 I 
 
 »o 
 
 OS 
 
 o 
 
 I— I • 
 H 
 
 Ed 
 
 9 
 
 < 
 
 CO 
 
 Ph 
 
 W 
 
 o 
 
 Ph HH 
 
 w 
 
 Ph 
 
 OS 
 
 CO 
 
 iQ 
 
 I 
 
 00 P 
 
 CD 
 
 ■fc 
 
 p1^ 
 W 
 
 Pw r 
 O >> 
 
 WH ^M 
 
 o ° 
 
 Ph cd 
 
 Ph 
 
 03 
 
 t* O 
 
 i> r^ 
 
 »ra o 
 
 00 
 
 «ra 
 
 • += 
 
 Ph 
 >» 
 
 ^W 
 N 
 
 £ P 
 
 eg cq 
 
 00 H O 00 00 
 
 CM CM CM O O 
 
 pq co co co co co 
 
 O <H-H 
 
 
 V 03 CD 
 1-3 
 
 O 
 
 2 . '5b 
 
 o i*^ 
 
 2,oo 
 
 QJ H-3 O 
 
 pq 
 
 i> CO 
 
 ci o 
 ua co 
 
 i 
 
 co • 
 o 
 
 CO co 
 CM 
 
 " rP 
 
 eg 
 
 ^ o 
 
 O O 
 
 CO CO 
 
 CO CD 
 
 
 o 
 
 co eo cm 
 
 co ca o 
 
 o io o 
 
 r^ • • 
 
 oa 
 
 »0 r^ rl 
 
 CO o 
 
 00 00 
 
 P cci 
 
 £ 'p 
 
 © p 
 
 co rr 
 
 P, CO 
 
 oPQ 
 
 
 N3 
 < 
 
 <l 
 
 o 
 
 W 
 
 Ed 
 ha 
 
 CD 
 
 P 
 
 M o 
 
 <j CD 
 
 l-H -U 
 
 o ce 
 •-a 
 
 O 
 
 Ph 
 P 
 
 P 
 O 
 
 O 
 
 W 
 Ed 
 •-a 
 
 i- n3 
 
 ^P « 
 
 .it 
 
 CD CO 
 
 - ^ 
 CD CC 
 
 hh ^ «J 
 
 Ph <h-h Ph 
 ■< O CD 
 
 Ed g3 g 
 
 rP 
 
 Cd CD 
 
 co ^ 
 
 P CD 
 
 O rP 
 
 P^ c3 
 
 c3 « 
 
 oa o 
 
 CO CO 
 
 S3 
 
 HO 
 
 §6 
 
 o 
 
 Q 
 Q 
 
 P 
 
 Ph 
 
 -4 
 
 co 
 
 c3 
 
 O H 
 
 00 TT< 
 
 CO CO 
 CO CO 
 
 "» CO >J 
 
 •g CD CO 
 
 * -° i2 
 
 <5j CD <j 
 
 e H <« 
 
 PM 
 
 O CM 
 
 CO o 
 CO CO 
 
 o o ira 
 
 O Tfl CO 
 
 CD CD CD 
 
 CO 
 CM 
 CD 
 
 co 
 
 P 
 • i— i 
 
 to 
 
 ira ira 
 
 CM CM 
 
 CD CO 
 
 .P • ce 
 
 o 
 
 CM 
 
 CO 
 
 o 
 
 P 
 
 ■~ 
 
 o 
 
 P 
 
 m 
 
 
 ct 
 
 i-H 
 
 > 
 
 o 
 
 w p .3 
 
 p^ S 
 
 i- 1 co i — i 
 
 P » P 
 
 S^ CO CD 
 
 £ ca co 2 
 
 eo 
 3 
 
 Cg -rH 
 
 Ph ° 
 
 ce o 
 
 ^ CD fciC^ 
 
 O ^ 
 
 P ° 
 
 o 
 
 eg 
 
 !>> p 
 
 Ph m 
 
 T3 
 
 CO CO ^ 
 
 CD .*-< r*H 
 
 PhM Q Ph 
 
 M CD 
 
 Ed ^ 
 P3 
 
 P CD 
 
 P ^P 
 
 CO C_j 
 
 CD 
 CD 
 
 eg 
 * > 
 
 .s 
 
 > s 
 
 cd ce 
 
 ^& 
 
 CZ2 
 
 eg 
 CQ 
 
 ^5 
 P 
 M 
 
 CO 
 HH 
 
 P^ 
 
 P 
 CQ 
 
 !Z5 
 
 i— i 
 
 m 
 
 o 
 
 CO 
 
 T5 • 
 P CD 
 CD f-i 
 
 rP a 
 
 £W 
 
 CD P 
 
 P eg 
 
 8 ^ <ri 
 e rs o 
 
 
 8 
 
 CD 
 
 T3 
 
 O w 
 
 o "1 
 
 -3 CD 
 
 « rH 
 
 O .P 
 
 'P PJ 
 
 CO fj 
 
 en CJ 
 
 eg O 
 
 -Q O 
 
 2 rt 
 
 eg a 
 
 ° ^ 
 
 hvi a 
 
 CD O 
 
 CO 
 
 CD fj 
 
 pP ^ 
 
 H .2 
 
 QQ 
 
 - eg 
 
 o 
 
 CD 
 
 O 
 
THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 THE CHALDEAN AGE 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 THE REIGN OF JOSIAH 
 
 Interval of Judaean Independence— Josiah's Minority- 
 Younger Generation surrounding Josiah— Collapse 
 of Assyrian Power — Publication of Deuteronomy 
 —Union of Priestly and Prophetic Spirit— Political 
 Failure of Deuteronomic Movement— 2 Chronicles 
 on Josiah— Finding of the Law-book— Abolition of 
 the High Places — Jerusalem monopolizes Worship 
 —Excellence of Josiah's Administration— Conflict 
 with Pharaoh-Necho— Josiah's Death. 
 
 CHAPTERS xx and xxi belong to the inter- 
 regnum of twenty years or more previous 
 to 608 b.c, which separated the Chaldaean from 
 the Assyrian domination in Palestine. Neither 
 the king Josiah nor the prophet Zephaniah 
 comes into collision with the Chaldsean power ; 
 in. l 
 
2 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 but the events of their time were making for its 
 rise, and the crisis then took place in the history 
 of Judah which was to receive its solution at 
 the hands of Nebuchadrezzar. By the year 625 
 Assyria's suzerainty in the west-lands, declining 
 since her expulsion from Egypt (Vol. II, p. 180), 
 was completely lost ; the Chaldaean ascendency 
 began with the victory of Nebuchadrezzar over 
 Pharaoh-Necho at Carchemish in 605. Mean- 
 while, until the invasion of the Egyptians in 
 608 B.C., Palestine was free from foreign over- 
 lordship. The interlude between the Ninevite 
 and Babylonian suzerainty nearly coincides with 
 the reign of Josiah (Yo'shiyyahu) in Jndah, 
 640 (or 639)-608, On many accounts, Josiah's 
 reign was a juncture of peculiar importance in 
 the history of Israelite religion. The review of 
 this critical epoch wiil introduce the inquiry into 
 the course of Prophecy during the Chaldaean 
 Age, which forms the next principal section of 
 our work (see Vol. I, pp. 74, 75). 
 
 Josiah came to the throne as a child of eight 
 years. The circumstances of his accession were 
 anything but propitious. His father Anion, 
 after a rule of two years modelled on the evil 
 example of Manasseh, had fallen a victim to 
 some court conspiracy, which the country people 
 avenged on the murderers, crowning his little 
 
THE REIGN OF JO SI AH 3 
 
 son Josiah in his place (2 Kings 21 10-20). Who 
 held the regency, we are not told. Under the 
 given circumstances one would, suppose the boy 
 king to have been brought up in the tutelage 
 of the heathen party, so long dominant in 
 Judah. Happily he found instructors of the 
 opposite character, and rose entirely above the 
 evil surroundings of his youth. Josiah must 
 have possessed uncommon decision of character 
 and force of will to have reversed so completely 
 the national course, under the extreme disad- 
 vantage of his elevation to the throne in child- 
 hood. His religious choice was early made, 
 and made itself effective : the Book of Kings 
 (2 Kings 22 1. 2) records that " he did that which 
 was right in the eyes of Jehovah, and walked 
 in all the ways of David his father, and turned 
 not aside to the right hand or to the left." That 
 a prince of this pure and lofty nature should 
 be formed in so corrupt a court is a singular 
 occurrence. We can best account for this by 
 supposing that the child had imbibed his devo- 
 tion to the old faith from some domestic source, 
 determining the direction of his mind from 
 infancy. Was his mother Yedidah (2 Kings 22 1) 
 his religious teacher ? or is it possible that 
 Iluldah (Chuldah), " the prophetess " whom the 
 deputation from the king went to consult on 
 
4 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 the discovery of the Law-book in the temple 
 (2 Kings 22 u), had served as Josiah's nurse or 
 foster-mother, and had formed the child's mind 
 during his tender years? This would explain 
 her unique prestige in Jerusalem at this time 
 and the decisive part she played in the revolu- 
 tion of 621. Zephaniah and Jeremiah were both 
 of them prophets of repute at this latter date, 
 and belonged probably to the royal entourage; 
 but they were both, we suppose, young prophets 
 (see pp. 37, 183) ; while Huldah had an influence 
 over the king of which we know no other ex- 
 ample, of her sex, in the relations of Israelite 
 prophecy to royalty. Her position as " the royal 
 seer" becomes natural on the conjecture that 
 this inspired woman had been Josiah's pre- 
 ceptress in childhood and was his spiritual 
 mother. Through such channels the purest in- 
 fluences of faith have not unfrequently been 
 transmitted in evil times. 1 
 
 The young king did not, however, stand alone 
 in his zeal for Jehovah. He represented a new 
 generation, in which the better spirit of Israel 
 powerfully reacted against the oppression and 
 
 1 The history of the late Earl of Shaftesbury, who traced 
 his decisive religious impressions, received in childhood, to 
 the influence of a pious maidservant in his father's house, 
 illustrates what is here said. 
 
THE REIGN OF JO SI AH 5 
 
 degradation it had suffered for the last sixty 
 years. His personal abilities were of an nnusual 
 order, and he had powers of attraction which 
 reminded men of David as they watched his 
 career ; he became the darling of the people, 
 and no death in Israel was ever mourned like 
 Josiah's (see 2 Chron. 35 24. 25 ; Zech. 12 10. 11). 
 But all this would not have enabled Josiah to 
 effect his drastic reforms, had there not been a 
 genuine sympathy with his religious aims evoked 
 in the nation, and had there not been a body 
 of ready and capable helpers forthcoming from 
 amongst the ruling classes. Such a coadjutor, 
 and prompter, the king had in Hilkiah, the chief 
 priest of the temple {Ckilqiyyahu : a different 
 person from Hilkiah the father of the prophet 
 Jeremiah, Jer. 1 1), who discovered there the 
 hidden " book of the law"; his assistance was in- 
 dispensable for the work to be done. " Shaphan 
 the scribe " (2 Kings 22 10), or Secretary of 
 State, and his son Ahikam (^Achiqam), who with 
 others of the family proved staunch friends to 
 Jeremiah in later days, were of the same party, 
 to which we may safely add the names of 'Akbor 
 and 'Asayah, who accompanied these two in the 
 deputation sent to Huldah by the king, but are 
 otherwise unknown (ver. h). While this group 
 of men supplied Josiah's executive, Jeremiah 
 
6 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 was one of a band of prophets who preached a 
 return to " the old way " in city and country : 
 the written prophecies of Jeremiah bear traces 
 of a mission of this kind (see 11 i-s ; and comp. 
 pp. 187-191 below); and the numerous mercenary 
 prophets of Jehovah, with whom Jeremiah con- 
 tends under Josiah's sons, are evidence of the 
 fact that orthodox prophecy had revived and 
 flourished in this king's reign aucl Jehovism 
 was again the popular creed. 
 
 The national revulsion against idolatry, which 
 made the acceptance of the Deuteronomic cove- 
 nant possible, had at the same time powerful 
 external incentives. The breakdown of the 
 Assyrian empire, on subservience to which 
 Manasseh's policy was based, and the terrible 
 menace of the Scythian invasion whose lesson 
 Zephaniah and Jeremiah powerfully enforced, 
 had produced an effect resembling that wrought 
 a century earlier by the fall of Samaria and the 
 Assyrian terror, under the preaching of Isaiah 
 and Micah. These events destroyed the credit 
 of the newly imported idolatries, and drove the 
 people to seek the face of their own affronted 
 Jehovah. Moreover, by the year 621 the success 
 of Josiah's energetic rule — the restoration of the 
 national liberty which had been forfeited for 
 a century past, and the extension of Jndrean 
 
THE REIGN OF JO SI AH . 7 
 
 authority over the country of the Ten Tribes 
 (see 2 Kings 23 15-20) — gave decisive proof of 
 Jehovah's favour toward this exemplary king and 
 set an unmistakable seal upon the constitution he 
 proclaimed. Isaiah's predictions of the blessings 
 assured for repentant Israel under a righteous 
 king seemed at last on the point of fulfilment, 
 and Israel, delivered once more from the yoke 
 of the heathen, was to enter upon her destined 
 heritage. That the Scythian scourge, before 
 which the nation had crouched in terror (see 
 Chap, xxi), passed over Israel so lightly, while 
 it fell heavily on the heathen around her, was 
 an earnest of " the sure mercies of David " that 
 would be given to the son and the people of 
 David on returning to his ways. The political 
 situation enforced the Torah adopted by Josiah 
 with an effect that bore down all resistance. 
 But the outward pressure and force of circum- 
 stances acting on the popular mind, unattended 
 by any deep spiritual change, brought about a 
 formal and nominal rather than a real conversion 
 of the Jndasan people. The reaction that ensued 
 on Josiah's tragic death showed that the seed 
 of the word had, for that generation, been sown 
 in shallow and stony ground, where it " sprang 
 up quickly, because it had no depth of earth." 
 Yet Josiah's work was not in vain. The 
 
8 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 Deuteronomic code 1 remained in force; the Book 
 of the Law was held fast in the hands of the 
 people. Jeremiah's chief complaint in subse- 
 quent times was not that Jehovah's altars were 
 abandoned, but that zeal for His temple was 
 combined with disregard of His moral require- 
 ments and of His living prophetic oracles. With 
 the birth of Scripture Pharisaism took its rise. 
 Notwithstanding, the written word remained, 
 henceforth imperishable, to be a seed of life fur 
 all generations. 
 
 The spiritual forces of the nation had rallied 
 round the youthful king. They made a supreme 
 
 1 We cannot enter into the vexed question of the authorship 
 and literary history of Deuteronomy. It is admitted, almost 
 everywhere, that "the book of the law " or " the book of the 
 covenant," referred to in 2 Kings 22 10. n and 23 2. 3. 24, was 
 not the whole Pentateuch, but the roll of Deuteronomy, pos- 
 sibly in a shorter early recension containing the substance 
 of chs. 5-26. This is proved by the close correspondence of 
 the laws and exhortations of Deuteronomy with the impression 
 that the discovered book produced and with the measures 
 of reform carried out by Josiah, as these are described in 
 2 Kings 22, 23— a correspondence marked both in what 
 Deuteronomy and 2 Kings severally contain, and in what they 
 do not contain. The subject is treated learnedly and dis- 
 passionately in Dr Driver's Introduction to his volume on 
 Deuteronomy in the International Critical Commentary, as 
 also in the article on the same subject in Smith's Dictionary 
 of the Bible (ed. 2), by Prof. A. Harper in the Expositor's 
 Bible (Deuteronomy), and by Dr H. E. Kyle in Hastings' B.B, 
 
THE REIGN OF JO SI AH 9 
 
 effort to save the religion and state of Israel ; 
 and this took shape in the publication of the 
 Book of Deuteronomy, which formed, as it is 
 now generally thought, the nucleus of the col- 
 lection of Old Testament Scriptures. The year 
 621 B.C. is amongst the most memorable in 
 history ; for in this year the foundations of the 
 Bible were laid, and the religion of Israel became 
 a book-religion. The matter of the law, we presume, 
 existed in oral tradition, and in written form, 
 long before this time ; but hitherto, so far as 
 we can trace, in scattered and more private 
 collections belonging to priestly corporations 
 or prophetic schools, while the people sought 
 instruction in Divine things from the mouth 
 of priest or prophet (see Dent. 17 is 18 u-is, 
 Jer. 2 s 5 31 18 is, Am. 3 7, Mai. 2 4-7). But when 
 Josiah " read in the ears " of the people gathered 
 in Jerusalem " all the words of the book of the 
 covenant which was found in the house of 
 Jehovah," and bound the hearers, along with 
 himself, to this document, the covenant thus 
 accepted and canonized became in its published 
 form the standard and charter of the nation's 
 life, and Scripture was instituted. The Josianic 
 reformers of the seventh century before Christ 
 did what the Lutheran reformers of the sixteenth 
 century after Christ repeated : they gave the 
 
io THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 Bible to the common people ; they took it out 
 of the priests' hands, who had abused it for their 
 own gain (Mic. 3n, Jer. G 13, Zeph. 3 4, etc.). 
 With this treasure in possession the Jncheans 
 went into exile, and " the book " proved their 
 safeguard ; it was " the sanctuary of Jehovah " 
 to them (as the Rabbis afterwards called the 
 Bible), taking the place of temple and of city and 
 keeping alive the sacred memories of the home- 
 land and the grand hope of Israel. The Scripture, 
 first in narrower and afterwards in wider compass, 
 furnished in its " lessons " (" readings ") the 
 incentive and subject-matter for the little gather- 
 ings formed wherever a Jewish colony was settled, 
 by which the Dispersion have maintained their 
 faith and worship in alien lands to this hour. 
 Scripture and the Synagogue are correlative 
 institutions, the latter in truth the child of 
 the former. With the idea once started and the 
 nucleus supplied, Scripture soon grew to larger 
 proportions. Much of its material was already 
 to hand. The Exile, as we hope to show in the 
 last volume of this work, was a great occasion for 
 sifting and compiling Israelite sacred literature. 
 
 Deuteronomy admirably combines the prophetic 
 with the priestly spirit. It is true, therefore, 
 to the character of Moses, who was priestly 
 legislator and inspired prophet in one person. 
 
THE REIGN OF JO SI AH n 
 
 Deuteronomy is the law of Moses in its broad 
 principles, preached to the times and baptized 
 into the spirit of prophecy. A cold repetition 
 of legal formula?, or a mere verbal echo of dis- 
 courses of the Founder uttered eight centuries 
 before, could never have served the purpose, nor 
 seized the conscience of king and people as this 
 book manifestly did, coming fresh from " the 
 mouth " of the living God. Like our Lord's 
 Sermon on the Mount, Deuteronomy was the 
 law of Israel re-edited and revivified, its old 
 " letter " — the acknowledged word of Moses — 
 raised from the dust, refurbished and proclaimed 
 anew in the freedom of the Spirit that giveth life. 
 Still it was the lata, not the gospel, which this 
 epoch-making book conveyed. Deuteronomy 
 appears to represent the final effort of the 
 prophetic order of earlier times, in union with 
 the loyal priesthood, to save the existing nation 
 by re-enforcing the Mosaic covenant, promulgated 
 in a style suited to the age and embodied in a 
 writing that should be known and read of all 
 men. To this document the nation is solemnly 
 pledged, under the authority of the devoted and 
 popular king whom Jehovah had in His mercy 
 given to Israel. The discovery of the book was 
 a providential coincidence. The attempt to 
 enforce it was boldly designed and ably executed. 
 
12 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 So long as Josiah lived, it appeared successful ; 
 
 in its ultimate effect this srreat book, the fruit 
 in reality of the Lest work of many generations, 
 was indeed successful beyond calculation. But 
 politically, and in its spiritual impression on the 
 existing people (see Chap, xxv), it proved a 
 failure. The Judaean civil state was beyond 
 redemption (see Jer. 7 15. 16, etc.). Moral decay 
 and enfeeblement of the national fibre had 
 advanced continually since Isaiah's time ; "the 
 remnant " on which the earlier prophet relied 
 was attenuated to the last degree. The heroic 
 character and leadership of Josiah, acting at 
 a juncture when the nation was temporarily 
 released from the pressure of the surrounding 
 heathen empires, gave a semblance of restored 
 vigour to the little state which disappeared 
 with his defeat and death, when the people 
 fell back into religious confusion and social 
 disorder. Josiah's sons and grandsons, set up 
 one after the other by Egypt or Babylon, 
 in varying fashion "did that which was evil 
 in the sight of Jehovah." Their folly and 
 incapacity accelerated the inevitable ruin ; they 
 reflected truly enough the divided heart and 
 fickle temper of the nation they ruled. Amongst 
 the professed orthodox Jeremiah found himself 
 confronted by a new legalism based on the letter 
 
THE REIGN OF JO SI AH 13 
 
 of Deuteronomy, which was worse than that ex- 
 posed by Isaiah ; single-handed, he opposed the 
 body of the priests and prophets, who claimed to be 
 the exponents of Jehovah's law and maintained 
 the inviolability of Zion (Vol. I, pp. 296-297), 
 serving themselves heirs to Isaiah by the canting 
 repetition of his watchwords. The hopes so 
 fondly built for a time on the work of Josiah 
 and the national covenant of 621 thus came to 
 naught. This tragic failure is the burden of the 
 Book of Jeremiah (see Chaps, xxiv, xxv). 
 
 In 2 Chron. 34 1-7 we are given to understand 
 that Josiah's reformation commenced earlier than 
 is indicated in 2 Kings 22 : " For in the eighth 
 year of his [Josiah's] reign, while he was yet 
 young \_scil. at the age of 15], he began to seek 
 after the God of David his father; and in the 
 twelfth year he began to purge Judah and 
 Jerusalem, etc." These data are definite, and 
 intrinsically probable ; we accept them with 
 confidence, notwithstanding the distrust of critics 
 for statements of Chronicles unsupported by 
 the Book of Kings. Granting that Josiah's 
 career was marked by the perfect loyalty to 
 Jehovah set forth in both narratives, one cannot 
 think that he took no spontaneous measures for 
 the reform of religion of his own accord, nor until 
 such action was pressed upon him by the discovery 
 
14 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 of Deuteronomy in his twent} r -seventh year. 
 Long before this the king had come of age, and 
 would he bound to declare himself ; and with his 
 high spirit and capacity for action, it is difficult 
 to suppose that he did nothing to suppress 
 idolatry until the crisis related in 2 Kings. The 
 writer of this latter narrative would hardly have 
 made Josiah such a paragon, had he imagined 
 that the King remained for many years of respon- 
 sibility acquiescent in the condition of things 
 so unsparingly condemned by Zephaniah (see 
 Chap. xxi). " The twelfth year " of Josiah's 
 reign was 629-S — probably the date when 
 his actual rule began (in the " eighth year " 
 already, according to the Chronicler, he had given 
 proof of his faith): then " he began to purge Judah 
 and Jerusalem." Now this was just one year 
 before Jeremiah's call (Jer. 1 i) ; and, as will ap- 
 pear in Chap, xxi (see pp. 32-33), this beginning 
 of reform followed on the delivery of Zephaniah's 
 oracles and the panic created by the rumours of 
 the Scythian hordes approaching. These events 
 followed in close and natural sequence. The 
 Chronicler may have somewhat anticipated the 
 course of things by ascribing to Josiah's initial 
 proceedings some of the results of later action, 
 but he is surely in the main correct : the king- 
 lost no time in declaring himself on Jehovah's 
 
THE REIGN OF JOSIAH 15 
 
 side, and set himself early to his life's task; 
 he accepted Zephaniah's warning. The way was 
 paved for the sweeping revolution of theyear 621 by 
 previous legislation on public worship commencing 
 from Josiah's assumption of actual royalty. 
 
 The lost Book of the Law was brought to 
 light in the course of repairs of the temple- 
 structure, which Hilkiah was executing under 
 Josiah's orders (2 Kings 22). This shows that 
 the king and the temple authorities were already 
 busy in rectifying matters of worship. " The 
 breaches " in Jehovah's house, referred to in 
 2 Kings 22 5, may well have been clue to the 
 removal of the foreign gods, with their shrines 
 and accessory buildings, which had been intruded 
 there in the two previous reigns, rather than to 
 neglect of the fabric ; and ver. 4 of 2 Kings 23, 
 describing Josiah's cleansing of the temple, gives 
 upon this supposition a summary statement of 
 what took place partly (as intimated in 2 Chron.) 
 before the finding of the Book of the Law and 
 partly after that event. The attention of the 
 reader of Kings is fixed upon the critical event 
 of Josiah's reign, viz. the adoption of the national 
 covenant-book ; the Chronicler seeks rather to 
 interest us in Josiah himself, in the progress 
 of his godly work and the exhibition of his 
 exemplary piety. 
 
1 6 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 Stress is laid by both accounts on the fact that 
 Josiah abolished " the " sacred " high places," 
 as this was enjoined by Deuteronomy. The 
 Chronicler (2 Chron. 31 1) credits Hezekiak with 
 a similar act of destruction ; but this earlier 
 edict most have been partial, and temporary in 
 effect; it may have been aimed only at the High 
 Places that had lapsed into heathenism. These 
 " high places " rilled an important part in the 
 religion of Palestine : they were the immemorial 
 seats of local worship throughout the country — 
 the hill-tops where Canaanite shrines had stood, 
 and where the Israelites on entering the land 
 set up in turn Jehovah's altars. We find Samuel 
 and others of the earlier religious leaders wor- 
 shipping at these village sanctuaries, without 
 misgiving or rebuke. But in course of time as 
 the Israelites mingled with the older population, 
 wherever religious strictness declined, the local 
 superstitions and idolatrous associations of the 
 high places tended to reassert themselves (comp., 
 in the opposite sense, the history told in 2 Kings 
 
 17 24-33). While the cultus remained nominally 
 Jehovistic, heathen rites and symbols thus be- 
 came attached thereto. This was a chief cause, 
 indigenous to the soil, of the corruption of 
 Jehovism by Ba f alism that had destroyed the 
 northern kingdom of Israel ; and it operated as 
 
THE REIGN OF JO SI AH i 7 
 
 a constant danger in outlying Judsean districts. 
 The mischiefs infesting the local shrines were 
 incurable; no remedy was left but a sweeping 
 destruction, all public worship and sacrifice to 
 Jehovah being concentrated in Jerusalem and 
 the country priests being transferred, as Levites, 
 to the service of the Jerusalem temple. This 
 measure was feasible in the narrow territory of 
 Judaea; but it did violence to much innocent 
 religious feeling and local patriotism, and in- 
 volved much heart-burning and hardship (comp. 
 pp. 106-108). The desecration of " the high 
 places " was the most difficult and disturbing of 
 Josiah's reforms ; it was a veritable revolution. 
 Such effacement of the ancient rural shrines 
 had become possible in virtue of the predominance 
 which had accrued in course of time to the city 
 and temple of David through the long and 
 illustrious line of Zion's kings and prophets, 
 whose work has gained for " the city " and 
 " house of Jehovah " their incomparable sanctity. 
 The teaching of Isaiah and the deliverance of 
 Jerusalem from Sennacherib contributed most 
 of all to this result. Curiously enough, the 
 cultus of the High Places has revived under later 
 creeds ; the heights of Palestine are now crowned 
 with the monuments of Muhammadan saints, to 
 which pilgrimage is made and where vows are 
 in. 2 
 
18 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 offered. The practice seems to be rooted in the 
 soil. Under the Deuterouomic code, Jerusalem 
 monopolized all sacreclness of place ; and " the 
 mountain of the house of Jehovah is established 
 in the top of the mountains and exalted above 
 the hills." The significance of Jerusalem and 
 the temple had reached their highest point ; the 
 theocratic national life concentrated itself at this 
 site, where it was soon to receive a mortal blow, 
 which served in the end to liberate its higher 
 spirit for universal service to mankind. 
 
 Thirteen years longer Josiah reigned in peace 
 and honour. To this period Jeremiah looked 
 back from the unhappy times which followed, as 
 to halcyon days ; he rebukes Jehoiakim with 
 the words, " Did not thy father eat and drink, 
 and do judgement and justice ? then things went 
 well with him. He judged the cause of the poor 
 and needy; then things went well. Was not 
 this to know Me ? saith Jehovah " (22 is. 10 ; comp. 
 Mic. 6 s, Tsa. 1 16. 17). His religious zeal took effect 
 in righteous and firm government ; his people 
 enjoyed that impartial administration of justice 
 which is so rare in the East, and is the greatest 
 of social blessings. On this account Josiah is 
 extolled above all Israelite rulers in the sacred 
 narrative : " Like unto him there was no king 
 before him, that turned unto Jehovah with all 
 
THE REIGN OF JO SI AH 19 
 
 his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his 
 might, according to all the law of Moses " (comp. 
 Dent. 6 5) ; " neither after him arose there any 
 other like him " (2 Kings 23 25). He attained 
 the ideal of David's dying song (2 Sam. 23 3.4) : 
 
 One that ruleth over men righteously, that ruleth in 
 
 the fear of God ; 
 He shall be as the light of the morning when the sun 
 
 ariseth, — a morning without clouds ; 
 When the tender grass springeth out of the earth, 
 
 through the clear shining after rain. 
 
 Such a burst of unlooked-for sunshine, such a 
 dayspring of fresh hope, the reign of Josiah 
 brought to his people, reviving the promise of the 
 Messianic kingdom and the perfect Son of David, 
 with whom Josiah would have been more dis- 
 tinctly associated in the prophetic mind but for 
 his premature and disastrous end (see, however, 
 Zechariah 137-o, and (pp. 8G-87 below). Alas ! 
 Josiah 's rule, instead of proving the dawn of a 
 fair spring morning when the winter raius are 
 past, was only a rift in the clouds, a delusive 
 interval of brightness in the wild sunset of 
 Israel's day, a lull of the storm that would soon 
 end in the wreck of the Judrean state and the 
 Davidic dynasty. 
 
 The withdrawal of Assyrian rule, which seems 
 to have followed on the Scythian raids, had given 
 
20 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 Josiah opportunity to annex, in part at least, 
 the old northern territory of Israel — the entire 
 kingdom of David was his by hereditary right. 
 Accordingly we find him " destroying the altar 
 that was at Bethel " and " the high place " set 
 up by Jeroboam ; he " took away all the houses 
 [shrines] of the high places that were in the 
 cities of Samaria, which the kings of Israel had 
 made to provoke Jehovah to anger," at which, as 
 appears from 2 Kings 17 24-33, a kind of hybrid 
 or bastard cult of Jehovah had been restored 
 under the patronage of the king of Assyria ; and 
 he " slew all the priests of the high places that 
 were there, upon the altars, and burned men's 
 bones upon them " (2 Kings 23 15-20). This was 
 an interference on Josiah's part, such as could 
 only be committed with impunity because for the 
 time Jndah was the strongest power in Palestine, 
 and he was in a position to reassert the long- 
 forfeited sovereignty of David and Solomon over 
 the Samarian districts. 
 
 Hence when Pharaoh-Necho, in the year 608, 
 marched northwards — the first time for ages that 
 an Egyptian army had traversed Palestine — to 
 secure Syria and to vindicate his share in the 
 partition of the Assyrian empire, Josiah treated 
 this as an invasion of his own domain and a 
 violation of Jehovah's territory, and he flung 
 
THE REIGN OF JOSIAH 21 
 
 himself across Necho's path at Megidclo. From 
 the singular account given in 2 Chron. 3520-22, 
 it appears that Josiah put himself in the wrong 
 and acted a fanatical part. Necho had avoided 
 meddling with Judtean affairs and infringing 
 upon the Judfean boundary j 1 he did his best 
 to spare Josiah the unequal combat, and to 
 husband his own forces for other use : " He 
 sent ambassadors to him, saying, What have I 
 to do with thee, thou king of Judah ? [a rebuke 
 to Josiah for overstepping his province]. I 
 come not against thee, but against the house 
 wherewith I have war [presumably, the house 
 of Assyria, for Nineveh was still standing] ; and 
 God hath commanded me to make haste. For- 
 bear thee from meddling with God, who is with 
 me, that He destroy thee not." Whether this 
 lifelike speech be literally authentic or not, it 
 seems to express the judgement of later times 
 and to signify that Josiah in this momentous 
 step acted with a rash bravery and " tempted 
 Jehovah his God " ; he had come athwart the 
 Divine purposes, and paid the penalty. This was 
 the first great error of a blameless and noble 
 career ; but it was fatal. 
 
 1 This makes it likely that Necho carried his troops by sea 
 to the plain of Esdraelon, instead of marching them across 
 the desert and along the coast. 
 
22 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 So this preax chevalier of Jerusalem brought 
 his own life to a melancholy end, and with it 
 brought down at a stroke the edifice he had 
 reared with efforts so strenuous, so single- 
 minded, and for the time so successful. In all 
 likelihood, the king was impelled to the encounter 
 with Egypt by the popular prophets whom 
 Jeremiah had later to combat ; if any true prophet 
 (except the Pharaoh) gave him warning, there 
 is no record of the fact. 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 THE APOCALYPSE OF ZEPHANIAH 
 
 Zephaniah and Nahum — Date of Zephaniah— Connexion 
 with Josiah's Reformation — The Coming Day of 
 Jehovah — Horror of the Scythian Invasion — Judah's 
 Escape — Causes of Reprieve— Zephaniah compared 
 with Isaiah and Jeremiah — A Prophet of Jerusalem 
 — Relations with the Royal House — Personality of 
 Zephaniah — Integrity of the Book — Suggested Inter- 
 polations — Analysis of the Book. 
 
 THE prophet Zephaniah was a contemporary of 
 Nahum (Vol II, Chap, xix) ; the two are 
 linked by the words of Zeph. 2 13-15. The last 
 sentence of this oracle on Nineveh — •" Every one 
 that passes by her hisses, wags his head " — is an 
 echo of Nakuni's conclusion (3 19). Bat there is 
 this difference, that while the coming fall of 
 Nineveh fills the whole soul of Nahuni and is 
 the one thought that inspires him, to Zephaniah 
 it forms a subordinate and incidental topic ; he 
 views " Asshur " along with " disk " as distant 
 
 keatken powers wkick Jekovak will destroy in the 
 
 23 
 
24 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 awful judgement sweeping over the earth, while 
 Philistia, occupying the immediate foreground, 
 is conspicuous in his landscape of desolation. 
 Assyria still exists, but she has ceased to domi- 
 nate the horizon ; her " yoke " no longer rests 
 on Judah's shoulder (contrast Nahum 1 13/15). 
 For this reason we judge Zephaniah's prophecy 
 to be the later of the two, though perhaps only a 
 little later, considering how rapidly the Ninevite 
 power declined. He wrote during the last fifteen 
 years of Nineveh's history, subsequent to the first 
 Median invasion of her territory under Phraortes, 
 after which Assyria maintained a limited and 
 precarious dominion. 
 
 The situation of Zephaniah is further indicated 
 by the picture given in ch. 1 4-6.8-12 of the state 
 of Jerusalem. Some points in his description 
 are obscure ; but the language of vv. 4 and 5 
 shows the strange mixture of idolatries, local 
 and imperial, which had prevailed under king 
 Manasseh, to be still in existence ; it continues 
 side by side with the public worship of Jehovah. 
 This requires a date either early in Josiah's 
 reign, before his great reforms, or in the time 
 of this king's apostate sons. The denunciation 
 of Nineveh, above quoted, decides us for the 
 former of these epochs, since the death of 
 Josiahandthe fall of Nineveh all but coincided 
 
THE APOCALYPSE OF ZEPHANIAH 25 
 
 (608-607 B.C.) In ver. s "the princes " and " the 
 king's sons " (" king's house " in the LXX : a 
 preferable reading, or a correct paraphrase) are 
 denounced as ringleaders in evil, and with them 
 are associated " all such as are clothed with 
 foreign apparel " — the followers of heathen 
 fashions ; but no reflexion is made on the king : 
 this observation points us again to the time of 
 Josiah's minority, when power was in the hands 
 of the king's elder relatives who represented 
 the old regime, while the character of Josiah 
 had not as yet asserted itself. The allusion of 
 ver. 11 to the " merchant people " (lit. " people 
 of Canaan"; comp. Hos. 127, R.V. margin) as 
 prominent in Jerusalem, and those " laden with 
 silver " (see also ver. is), suits a time following 
 the long peace under Manasseh and before the 
 Scythian raids, when Jerusalem had risen to 
 commercial prosperity and recovered the wealth 
 lost in Sennacherib's invasion. This criterion 
 agrees with those already noted. 
 
 The little Book of Zephaniah is therefore one 
 of the most precisely dated in Israelite pro- 
 phecy. In the opinion of nearly all critics, it 
 was written shortly before Josiah's reformation, 
 when the evils that flourished under Manasseh 
 and Amon were still rampant, but the true faith 
 of Israel had found its voice once more and 
 
26 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 the revival which culminated in Josiah's drastic 
 reforms had already begun. This gives us 
 630 B.C. as the approximate date for Zephaniah — 
 some five years only after that assigned to Nahum 
 (Vol. II, pp. 184-186), and nearly coincident with 
 the year of Jeremiah's first public appearance 
 (Jer. 1 2). These three preachers of righteousness 
 came forward almost simultaneously ; the early 
 years of Josiah were marked by a renascence of 
 the spirit of prophecy that had been repressed 
 for half a century under the fierce heathenish 
 rule of Manasseh. The importance of this crisis 
 has been shown in our last chapter. 
 
 Josiah ascended the throne, a child of eight 
 years (2 Kings 22 1), in 640 B.C.; in the eighteenth 
 year of his reign the famous discovery was made in 
 the temple of " the book of the law " (vv. 3-13) ; but 
 six years before this (2Chron. 34 3 if.; see pp. 13-15) 
 the young king, about the time of his coming 
 of age, " began to purge Judah and Jerusalem 
 from the high places," etc. Josiah's reformation 
 was therefore set on foot within two or three 
 years of the publication of Zephaniah's pro- 
 phecy ; and the inference post hoc ergo propter 
 hoc is more than commonly plausible. 
 
 By the year 630 Nineveh had lost her imperial 
 position. A new power is mounting the horizon, 
 on which Zephaniah's fearful gaze is fixed ; in 
 
THE APOCALYPSE OF ZEPHANIAH 27 
 
 its approach he foresees overwhelming distress, 
 it may be irretrievable ruin, for the whole of 
 Israel's world. " The great day of Jehovah is 
 near," he cries — u a day of wrath, a day of trouble 
 and distress, a day of wasting and desolation, a 
 day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds 
 and thick darkness" (lis)- So this prophet 
 tolls the knell of doom for the nations ; he strikes 
 the iron note that was taken up in the thirteenth 
 century after Christ, under like circumstances, by 
 the Franciscan Thomas of Celano, who composed 
 on this theme the Dies irce, dies ilia, 1 which 
 has become the Hymn of the Last Judgement 
 for all Christendom. " The day of Jehovah," 
 signifying the coming epoch of Divine judgement 
 upon Israel and the nations, is no new concep- 
 tion ; Zephaniah cites it as an idea familiar to 
 his hearers, that is now at length to be realized 
 in all its terrors. He recalls with the idea the 
 language of Amos (5 is), of Joel (1 15 2 2. 11 : see 
 Vol. I, pp. 109-1 13), and Obadiah (15), reaching 
 back to the ninth century. The doom he predicts 
 is both wider and more complete in destructive- 
 ness than that foretold by the earlier prophets : 
 " I will sweep, sweep all things from off the face 
 of the ground, is the oracle of Jehovah. I will 
 
 1 The first line of Thomas's Latin hymn forms the first 
 sentence of Zeph. 1 15 in the Vulgate translation. 
 
28 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 sweep off man and beast ; I will sweep off the 
 fowls of the heaven and the fishes of the sea. 
 And I will bring to rain the wicked, 1 and cut off 
 the men of wickedness from the face of the 
 ground — it is the oracle of Jehovah," Such are 
 the opening words of Zephaniah. This vision of 
 a world-wide catastrophe, breaking up the fabric 
 of natural life and bearing down in a common 
 ruin all earthly powers — Assyria as much as 
 Philistia or Judah — now appears for the first 
 time in Scripture. 2 Prophecy begins to detach 
 itself from historical conditions, giving a free 
 rein to imagination in setting forth that which is 
 borne in upon it by the Spirit of God ; it assumes 
 at this stage the form of Apocalyptic, the mould 
 into which Jewish religious thought tended more 
 and more to run, — the Book of Daniel and the 
 Revelation of St. John being finished examples 
 of it. In virtue of this approximation, we 
 have entitled the chapter " The Apocalypse of 
 Zephaniah." 3 
 
 The instrument of the impending world-ruin 
 
 1 Here we accept G. A. Smith's correction of the text, who 
 follows Wellhausen. 
 
 2 Isa. 34 must, we think, be regarded as later, and probably 
 post-exilic (see Vol. II, pp. 121-126). 
 
 3 There existed a Jewish Apocryphal "work under this title, 
 named in patristic lists, which is quoted by Clement of Alex- 
 andria, in Stromata v. 11. 77. 
 
THE APOCALYPSE OF ZEPHANIAH 29 
 
 is nowhere named/ nor even the quarter from 
 which it comes. The contemporary hearer will 
 understand (comp. Matt. 24 15). The judgement 
 is to take the shape of a military invasion : the 
 Day of Jehovah will be " a day of the trumpet 
 and alarm, against the fenced cities and against 
 the high corner-towers " (1 ig) ; " the wealth " of 
 the sinners in Jerusalem "shall become a prey" 
 (1 13) ; the Ethiopians, on the edge of the world, 
 are to be " the slain of Jehovah's sword " (2 12) ; 
 men's " blood will be poured out like dust, and 
 their flesh shall be as dung " (1 17). We must 
 therefore understand the "sacrifice" prepared for 
 the great " day," to which Jehovah invites His 
 " consecrated guests," as signifying a huge 
 slaughter of men, that will be carried out by His 
 appointed instruments and that bears accord- 
 ingly a sacred judicial character (1 7. s) ; this 
 image reappears in St. John's awful picture of 
 "the great supper of God" (Rev. 19 17-21). 
 
 Who, then, are the executioners of this tre- 
 mendous doom ? what storm-cloud is lowering 
 on Zephaniah's sky that portends the whole- 
 sale devastation he imagines ? We answer, 
 The Scythian hordes, the same that Jeremiah 
 
 1 Similarly Amos avoids the name of Assyria, though it 
 looms through his whole representation of the Day of 
 Jehovah (see Vol. I, p. 139). 
 
30 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 describes in his contemporary oracle of ch. 622-24: 
 " A people from the north country, a great 
 nation stirred up from the uttermost parts of 
 the earth. They lay hold on bow and spear ; 
 they are cruel and have no mercy. Their voice 
 roareth like the sea, and they ride upon horses." 
 Neither Egypt nor Assyria is at present to be 
 feared ; these powers have to fear like others ; 
 they will be levelled by the tempest with the 
 petty kingdoms of Palestine. In no previous 
 prophecy are the great and small states of 
 Israel's world ranked together as they are here 
 in chap. 2. The day of Jehovah now breaking 
 is of an unprecedented kind ; the style of the 
 prophet's announcement shows that the newly 
 appearing invaders who are pouring in their 
 swarms from unknown regions, with their 
 ferocious aspect and uncouth array, had inspired 
 an extreme horror and took to the minds of men 
 a preternatural character, such as attaches to the 
 convulsions of nature, to the earthquake or the 
 deluge ; they revealed fresh resources stored in 
 the Divine providence for scourging the world's 
 wickedness. Hence when the storm had passed 
 and " Gog and Magog " had become a tradition 
 of the last generation, Ezekiel devotes two 
 chapters (38, 39) to them, setting forth God's 
 judgements that must fall on this cruel power in 
 
THE APOCALYPSE OF ZEPHANIAH 31 
 
 its turn : Gog is addressed as " corning out of 
 the uttermost part of the north — thou and many 
 people with thee — all of them riding upon 
 horses, a great company and a mighty army, 
 coming up against my people Israel, as a cloud 
 to cover the land." The frightful havoc wrought 
 by these savages from the steppes of central 
 Asia supplied imagery and colouring to Jewish 
 Apocalyptic for centuries ; its traces appear 
 in the last Book of Scripture (see Rev. 20 s). 
 The Hunnish and Mongol invasions which deso- 
 lated eastern and mid Europe in the fifth and 
 later centuries of our era, were repetitions of the 
 experience now awaiting the civilised lands south 
 of the Caucasus. 
 
 Zephaniah's predictions were not indeed ful- 
 filled to the letter. Far from reaching Ethiopia 
 (2 12), the Scythian marauders halted at the 
 borders of Egypt, being bought off, Herodotus 
 tells us, by the reigning Pharaoh Psammetichus. 
 Probably the desert brought them to a halt ; 
 moreover Egypt, intersected everywhere with 
 canals, was a difficult country for such troops as 
 the Scythian cavalry. Not they, but the Mecles, 
 destroyed Nineveh (vv. 13-15) in the end, as Nairn in 
 predicted (see Chap, xix) ; but their irruption 
 exposed the powerlessness of Assyria, and laid 
 waste the regions supplying its chief resources 
 
32 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 (see Vol. II, p. 177). Jerusalem also and the 
 Judsean highlands appear to haye escaped their 
 ravages ; but in this case, again, the harrying of 
 the low countries up to the fortress hills of Judah, 
 and the arrest of commerce, meant impoverish- 
 ment for city and people. If Josiah, who took 
 the reins into his hands soon after the delivery 
 of this oracle, showed himself as vigorous in his 
 political and military as in his religious action, 
 the Jndaean territory was capable of successful 
 defence against the barbarian horsemen. More- 
 over, the reforms effected by this pious and 
 brave young king altered the moral situation, 
 and would justly be held to avert, for that time 
 at least, the ruin threatened by the prophets ; 
 see Ezekiel 33 h-io, in justification of such 
 nonfulfilment. 
 
 The preaching of Zephaniah and Jeremiah, 
 under the stress of this awful visitation, operated, 
 doubtless, as a powerful factor in the national 
 reformation. These men stood toward Josiah's 
 policy in much the same relation as that which 
 Micah and Isaiah held to the movement of 
 Hezekiah's days (see Jer. 26 is. io). The situation 
 under the two kings was closely parallel. Each 
 of them in early youth succeeded an idolatrous 
 predecessor, and found the national religion and 
 morals debased and the country in extreme 
 
THE APOCALYPSE OF ZEPHANIAH 33 
 
 danger. At the former crisis the fall of Samaria 
 had given warning to her neighbour, and Judah 
 was all but in the grasp of the irresistible 
 Assyrians ; now a new foe of mysterious origin, 
 and more destructive than any known to human 
 memory, is espied approaching. In each case 
 the prophet con Id appeal to a patriotic party, 
 revolted by the corrupt foreign influences which 
 had prevailed and ready to rally to the name 
 of Jehovah, at whose head the young monarch 
 ranges himself. Zephaniah's stern warnings 
 found, therefore, prepared hearers, and took 
 effect on the conscience of king and people. For 
 this reason " the day of Jehovah " that he an- 
 nounced was postponed (see 2 Kings 22 18-20) ; 
 and when a generation later, under Josiah's evil 
 sons, the judgement did descend on Judah and 
 Jerusalem, it was inflicted by another instrument 
 and under conditions changed from those here 
 contemplated. 
 
 Zephaniah is, like Nahnm, a continuer of the 
 work of Isaiah. But the two contemporaries 
 look in opposite directions and take up different 
 parts in Isaiah's comprehensive role. Nahum 
 resumed the anti-Assyrian strain ; he brought 
 to their climax Isaiah's prophecies of woe on the 
 great oppressor and on his policy of " blood and 
 
 iron." Zephaniah's soul burns, like Isaiah's in 
 in. 3 
 
34 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 his earlier chapters, against the sins of Jeru- 
 salem, which had assumed even darker features, 
 and were bringing on the city still heavier 
 punishment than that predicted a century before. 
 The former cries, " Woe to the bloody city " 
 (Nah. 3 1), meaning Nineveh ; the latter, " Woe 
 to the rebellious and polluted city" (Zeph. 3 i), 
 meaning Jerusalem. In his foreign outlook, 
 Nahum's eyes are fastened on the Median 
 invaders of Assyria ; Zephaniah descries the 
 Scythian hordes swooping down on the civilised 
 world of western Asia. 
 
 While Nahum soars high, Zephaniah falls 
 below their common master in oratorical and 
 literary power. His pictures have not the clear- 
 ness, nor his verses the stateliness and music, 
 of the great prophet-poet of Jerusalem. He 
 often leans on earlier writers ; his ideas move 
 along the general lines of prophetical teaching, 
 as those of Nahum scarcely do. 
 
 The style of Zephaniah throughout has little of 
 the vigour of that of Nahum, though in religious 
 depth and earnestness of moral tone he greatly 
 surpasses him (A. B. Davidson). 
 
 Zephaniah recalls Joel and Amos, along with 
 Isaiah. He is most of all akin to Jeremiah, his 
 companion in age, who began upon the same 
 platform as Zephaniah but proceeded far beyond 
 
THE APOCALYPSE OF ZEPHANIAH 35 
 
 it; for Jeremiah's work extended over forty 
 years, while Zephaniah's, so far as we know it, 
 was confined to a single crisis. Zephaniah stands 
 in the shadow of Jeremiah, much as Micah in 
 the shadow of Isaiah. 
 
 But unlike Micah and like Isaiah in this re- 
 spect, and far more than Jeremiah of Anathoth, 
 Zephaniah was a prophet of Jerusalem ; he 
 writes "from this place" (1 4). His fears and 
 hopes are bound up with Mount Zion (see 1 10-12 
 3 1-5). His descriptions of the coming judgement 
 may sound vague and grandiose, but he is pre- 
 cise and matter-of-fact when he touches on the 
 life of the city — its different quarters, the various 
 classes of its people and their characteristic sins 
 (1 4-6. s-12 3 3. 4). He points to " the Fish-gate," 
 "the Mishneh " or Second Quarter (New-town), 
 "the Heights," "the Maktesh" 1 where the 
 merchants live : no other writer of the Old 
 
 1 The Fish-gate was situated probably in the north wall of 
 the city ; see Neh. 3 3 12 39, 2 Chron. 33 14. The Tyrians wera 
 the fishmongers of Jerusalem ; see Neh. 13 ic. For the Mishneh 
 (misrendered " college " in A. V.), see 2 Kings 22 14, 2 Chron. 
 34 22 ; a newer part of the city, lying north-west of the Temple 
 area. " The Heights " seems to denote the northern parts of 
 the city generally. The Maktesh, or Mortar, is not mentioned 
 elsewhere : the name designates a liollow in the contour of 
 Jerusalem, and would fitly apply to the old Tyropcean valley 
 west of the Temple, especially in its upper part. 
 
36 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 Testament makes, in a few lines, so many allu- 
 sions to localities in Jerusalem. With graphic 
 touches he paints the spiritual chaos, the loss 
 of religious certainty and moral principle, into 
 which the city of Jehovah's faith had sunk — the 
 conglomerate of strange cults, the multitude of 
 heathen priests ("Chemarim") that were a 
 legacy from Manasseh's time, the duplicity or 
 easy conformity of men who " swear to Jehovah 
 or by Milcom " as you please, " the worship of 
 the host of heaven upon the house-tops," the 
 cynical irreligion of men " settled on their lees " 
 who " say in their heart, Jehovah will not do 
 good neither will He do evil," — the last a novel 
 trait in Israelite character (conip. Pss.10 4 14, 53). 
 For Zephaniah, as for his illustrious predecessor, 
 the kingdom of God is centred in Jerusalem ; 
 all his thoughts are for the character and fate 
 of the Holy City ; her deep guilt is his despair. 
 
 It is remarkable that this prophet, though 
 he claims royal lineage, nowhere alludes to 
 the Davidic covenant or strikes a distinctly 
 Messianic note ; he may well have felt the degra- 
 dation of David's house under Manasseh too 
 deeply to cherish the hopes in this direction 
 that had been raised so high by Isaiah (comp. 
 Jer. 1 5 1-4). Zephaniah's pedigree is carried 
 back, as in the case of no other prophet, to the 
 
THE APOCALYPSE OF ZEPHANIAH 37 
 
 fourth ancestor — a peculiarity explained by the 
 assumption that the " Hezekiah " with which 
 the genealogy terminates was the famous king 
 of that name. He was Hezekiah's great-great- 
 grandson, while Josiah was his great-grandson, 
 although they were contemporaries, — Josiah reck- 
 oning an average of thirty-three years, Zephaniah 
 of twenty-five, in the generations covering the 
 century between. (Observe that Manasseh, and 
 possibly Anion after him, had sacrificed children 
 to Molech : 2 Kings 21 6. 20.) 
 
 We may infer from the above figures that 
 Zephaniah was young, like his comrade Jeremiah, 
 at his appearance in the prophetic character. 
 He speaks with the severity and uncontrolled 
 vehemence of youth ; he represents the new 
 generation, springing up with Josiah and ready 
 to prompt or second his reforms, who were in 
 violent reaction against the Assyrianising policy 
 of the last fifty years. The prophet's name — 
 Hebrew Z'phan-yah, (whom) Yahceh-hath-hid — 
 has suggested the fancy that he had been con- 
 cealed at his birth, like Moses in Egypt, during 
 Manasseh's persecution. The name, however, is 
 borne by three other Old Testament personages, 
 one of whom, called " Zephaniah the second 
 priest " in 2 Kings 25 is (referred to also in 
 Jer. 21 1, etc.), was contemporary with our prophet; 
 
38 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 another, who named his son " Josiah," belonged 
 to the restored exiles of 520 B.C. (Zech. 6 9. 14). 
 
 The integrity of the Book is denied by many 
 recent critics. The concluding paragraph, 3 14-20, 
 may reasonably be called in question: (1) because 
 of its joyous impress, which is in strong contrast 
 to the gloomy and even appalling outlook of the 
 rest of the work — the change would presume an 
 entirely altered situation and mood in the writer, 
 if he be still the same Zephaniah ; (2) because 
 of the language and style of the closing stanza, 
 which resembles those of the Second Isaiah 
 (comp. ver. u with Isa. 54 1; 15. 16 with 40 1.2; 
 17 with 62 5 63 1 ; 19 with 60 u 61 7). (3) The 
 words of vv. 19. 20 distinctly presuppose the 
 Judfean captivity. Zephaniairs continuer was, 
 like himself, a lover of Jerusalem. This de- 
 lightful song, if it had stood alone bearing no 
 author's name, would inevitably have been re- 
 ferred, along with Isaiah 40 ff., to the return from 
 Babylon. Its place at the end of the Book 
 makes it easier to suppose that it was a post- 
 script from a later time, as probably was the case 
 with Isaiah 12 (see Vol. II, p. 54), and possibly 
 with Micah 7 14-20 (see Yol. I, pp. 247, 248) and 
 Amos 9 11-15 (Yol. I, p. 154). " The Book of the 
 Minor Prophets," says Robertson Smith, " is 
 made up of short pieces, some bearing a name 
 
THE APOCALYPSE OF ZEPHANIAH 39 
 
 and some anonymous ; and it is only old usage 
 that ascribes anonymous pieces to the last pro- 
 phet whose name is prefixed to his prophecy." 
 
 Other passages excite suspicion as to their 
 genuineness, but apart from mere errors of the 
 pen, or possible dislocations of the text, the two 
 following are the only instances in which there 
 is plausible ground for assuming interpolation : 
 
 (a) The oracle against Moab and Ammon, 
 2 8-11 ; for it attacks peoples of whose hostility 
 to Judah at this epoch we hear nothing from 
 any other quarter (yet see Ueut. 23 3-6, published 
 about this time, and Jer. 9 26 25 17 ff., where 
 Moab and Amnion are prominently associated 
 with Judah in punishment) ; a better reason lies 
 in the difference of metre, vv. s-11 falling out of 
 the Qinah (dirge) measure (see Vol. I, p. 144) in 
 which the Woes before and after this are com- 
 posed. Ver. 11 is suspected not only for this 
 last reason, but because it predicts the universal 
 conversion of idolaters, — an idea said to be irrele- 
 vant here and belonging to post-exilic thought 
 (against this, see Isa. 19 is-25, and the observa- 
 tions on pp. 85-7 of Vol. II). A. B. Davidson ably 
 maintains the genuineness of the whole passage. 
 
 (b) Vv. 9. 10 of chap. 3 are open to the last- 
 stated objection, and are regarded as a gloss 
 from a subsequent prophet by G. A. Smith and 
 
40 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 other critics. Ver. 10 is extremely difficult, for it 
 interrupts the connexion, and apparently pre- 
 supposes the Exile. Ewald, however, would read 
 instead of " my dispersed " the proper name 
 "Put" or "Phut" (Heb. phut for pkutsai), which 
 Nahum 3 9 gave us associated with " dish " as 
 here— an emendation which removes the ana- 
 chronism. " The verse is obscure on account of 
 the uncertain meaning of several words in it " 
 (Davidson). On the whole, the judgement of 
 Robertson Smith holds good, that — 
 
 Though the sequence of thought in the Book of 
 Zephaniah is not so smooth as a Western reader may 
 desire, a single leading motive runs through the 
 whole, viz. the approach of a world-wide judgement, 
 which the prophet announces as near at hand, and 
 interprets, on the lines laid down by Isaiah in his 
 prophecies about Israel and Assyria, as destined 
 to destroy the wicked and prepare the way for the 
 visible sovereignty of the righteous God of Israel. 
 
 On this basis we analyse Zephaniah's Book as 
 follows (its plan resembles that of Joel ; see 
 Vol. I, pp. 107-109) : 
 
 A. Jehovah's Threatening against Jeru- 
 salem, chap. I. 1 
 
 1. A storm impending, that will sweep bare the 
 face of the earth, vv. 2. 3. 
 
 1 In ver. 4 read, with the LXX, " name," instead of " rem- 
 nant, of Baal " ; comp. Hos. 2 17. 
 
THE APOCALYPSE OF ZEPHANIAH 41 
 
 2. Judah and Jerusalem the special objects of the 
 coming of this Day of Jehovah, 4-18. 
 
 (a) The various classes of idolaters marked out 
 for destruction, 4-6. 1 
 
 (b) The butchery of the sinners furnishes a 
 sacrificial feast to Jehovah's guests, for which the 
 royal house and court supply eminent victims, 7-9. 2 
 
 (c) The cries of the slaughtered heard from the 
 several quarters of Jerusalem, 10. 11 ; and the city 
 " searched with candles " to hunt out Jehovah's 
 deniers, 12. 
 
 (d) Complete destruction of wealth and military 
 power, with wholesale bloodshed — a clay of un- 
 relieved misery ; for " Jehovah will make an end — 
 yea, a speedy end — of all that dwell in the 
 land," 13-18. 
 
 B. Jehovah's Admonition, based on the 
 Judgements falling on other Peoples, 
 chap. 2 i-3 s. 
 
 1. A call to seek Jehovah in the short respite, 
 addressed to " the lowly of the land," who " may 
 be hid in the day of Jehovah's anger," 1-3. 
 
 2. Doom of the Peoples, chap. 2 4-15. 
 
 (a) For the storm falls first on the Philistine 
 
 1 The Chemarim (Heb. JTmarwi) are mentioned in 
 2 Kings 23 5 as put down by Josiah. 
 
 2 The " guests " invited seem to be the wild invaders, who 
 will revel in slaughter and feast on the spoil ; comp. Isa. 13 3-5 
 (exilic). The "leaping over the threshold" of ver. 9 was a 
 foreign superstitious custom, that had become fashionable in 
 Jerusalem ; comp. 1 Sam. 5 5. 
 
42 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 cities, 1 4. 5 ; amid whose ruins " the remnant of 
 the house of Judah " will pasture their flocks, 6. r. 
 [The critics mark the last clause, referring to the 
 Captivity, as a gloss.] 
 
 (6) On Moab and Amnion, whom a doom awaits 
 like that of Sodom and Gomorrah, s-n (see the 
 discussion above). The " pride " (as in Isa. 16 6) 
 and insolent aggression of these kinsmen of Israel 
 are the causes of their destruction. 
 
 (c) On the distant Ethiopians, 12. 
 
 (d) On rich and "joyous " Nineveh, 13-15. 
 
 3. Doom approaching Jerusalem, chap. 3 1-6. 
 
 {a) The sins of Jerusalem described : (1) her 
 stubborn rebellion against Jehovah, 1. 2 ; (2) the greed 
 and cruelty of her rulers, 3 ; (3) the hypocrisy of 
 her prophets and priests — contrasted with — 
 
 (b) The stern rectitude of Jehovah shown by His 
 continual judgements, 5. 6. 
 
 1 The name " Cherethites " (Heb. Kretldm) is used as a 
 synonym for " Philistines" (seel Sam. 30 14. 16, Ezek. 25 16, etc.), 
 and appears to point to a Cretan origin for this people. This 
 accords with the fact that in Amos 9 7, Jer. 47 4, and Deut2 23, 
 the Philistines are traced to Cap/ttor — are named indeed 
 " Caphtorim " in the last passage (comp. Gen. 10 14) ; for 
 Caphtor was, most likely, the island of Crete, or some district 
 in Crete (see Hastings' Diet, of Bible on these words). Dr 
 Cheyne (in Eneycl. BiMica), however, finds the original 
 Caphtorim and Cherethites on the south coast of Asia Minor. 
 The Philistine cities suffered severely in the wars between 
 Assyria and Egypt ; the Scythian inroad seems to have 
 given them a finishing blow. They disappear from history 
 after this time. Gath is no longer mentioned after its 
 dismantling by Uzziah : see 2 Chron. 26 fi. 
 
THE APOCALYPSE OF ZEPHANIAH 43 
 
 4. The ho]?e, hitherto disappointed, that repent- 
 ance ivill yet be found in Jerusalem, which is solemnly 
 warned of the fate impending, 7. 8. 
 
 C. The Promise of Deliverance to the 
 Penitent, ch. 3 9-13 ; or simply 3 11-13. 
 
 1. Vv. o. 10, generalizing upon Isa. 19 is-25, predict 
 the conversion of the heathen, along with restored 
 Israel, to Jehovah's worship — all " serving with one 
 consent." (See p. 39 above.) 
 
 2. Vv. 11-1.3, taking up the thread of B.4, tell how 
 " in that day " a humbled remnant shall possess 
 God's " holy mountain," who will securely " trust 
 in the name of Jehovah." This seems the natural 
 goal of the prophecy. 
 
 [The Epilogue, or Postscript, chap. 3 u-20. 
 Seemingly from a later hand : see p. 38 above. 
 
 1. Jerusalem bidden to sing over her restoration 
 and JehovaKs return to her, 14-17. 
 
 2. Her mourners and exiles brought home and 
 herself honoured, whereas she was disgraced among 
 the peoples, 18-20.] 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 HABAKKUK, AND THE RISE OF THE CHALDEANS 
 
 First Assailant of the Chaldseans — Comparison of 
 Habakkuk and Isaiah — Prophecy and Psalm — Unity 
 of chs. 1, 2 — Order of vv. 1-4 and 5-11 of chap. 1 — 
 Budde's Reconstruction — Davidson's Criticisms of 
 Budde— G. A. Smith's Conjecture— Ch. 1 1-4 aimed 
 at Domestic Oppressors — Jehovah's Strange Work 
 — Habakkuk's Remonstrance — Wrong punished by 
 Greater Wrong ! — Habakkuk parts company with 
 Jeremiah — Protest against Imperialism — Jehovah's 
 Response — Habakkuk and St Paul — Taunt-Song 
 against Nebuchadrezzar— Features of Chaldaean Rule 
 — Scythian Cavalry employed by Nebuchadrezzar— 
 Nebuchadrezzar the Builder — Tyranny is Suicide — 
 Authorship of ch. 3— Affinities of the Ode— God in 
 Nature and Redemption — Resemblances of ch. 3 to 
 chs. 1, 2 — Kirkpatrick's Reading of ch. 3 — Resem- 
 blance to Book of Job — Recovered Faith — Name 
 and Locality of Habakkuk— Jewish Legends about 
 Habakkuk — Analysis of the Book. 
 
 HABAKKUK is the first of the prophets 
 to denounce "the Chaldeans" as Israel's 
 oppressors. For him they take the place held 
 
 so long by the Assyrians, viz. that of Jehovah's 
 
 44 
 
HABAKKUK, AND THE CHALDEANS 45 
 
 instrument for chastising His people's sins — 
 an instrument destined to destruction in its 
 turn because of the cruelty and violence with 
 which it exercises its God-given power. This 
 theme involves nothing new in principle : 
 Isaiah's teaching, now confirmed by the course 
 of history, had given the same interpretation 
 to the Assyrian tyranny. But to Habakkuk 
 the problem assumes a darker aspect, and he 
 reaches a more advanced solution. His treat- 
 ment of the situation is marked by boldness of 
 conception and imaginative genius. " Perhaps 
 no other poem of equal length has a range of 
 vision so wide and so lofty " (McCurdy). 
 Habakkuk is one of the prophet-poets of Israel, 
 like Isaiah and Nahum — a singer rather than 
 an orator. The concise, dramatic form of his 
 composition and his abrupt style involve his 
 verses in obscurity — an obscurity aggravated, as 
 many critics judge, by corruptions and serious 
 displacements in the Hebrew text. 
 
 Habakkuk's position in regard to the Chalda?an 
 conquest differs from that in which Isaiah stood 
 toward the Assyrian crisis of a century ago in 
 two respects : he looks for no immediate vindi- 
 cation of Jehovah's covenant-faithfulness, such 
 as Isaiah predicted and witnessed in the de- 
 liverance of Jerusalem from Sennacherib; and he 
 
46 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 must needs challenge Jehovah's use of evil tools 
 — a thought foreign to Isaiah's mind. In the 
 raising of the latter question Habakkuk's origin- 
 ality lies. He is in search of a theodicy. 
 
 Chs. 1 and 2 form the prophecy of our author, 
 introduced by the title of 1 i : " The oracle 
 (massa 9 ; see Vol. I, p. 58 f.) which Habakkuk 
 the prophet did see." l Chap. 3 bears a new title 
 of its own : "A prayer of Habakkuk the pro- 
 phet." This composition is in fact a psalm 
 (comp. the titles of Pss. 17, 86, 90, and the sub- 
 scription of Ps. 72), of a detached and general 
 character, bearing on its surface no marks of 
 connexion with the foregoing prophecies or the 
 historical situation they imply. The identity of 
 authorship is therefore questioned ; and critics 
 decide for or against the editorial tradition of 3 i, 
 according to the view they take of the internal 
 structure of the two pieces (chs. 1, 2, and ch. 3) 
 and the mental characteristics revealed in each. 
 
 1 This heading has its only exact counterpart in Isa. 13 l, 
 where it is manifestly editorial (see Yol. II, p. 92) ; it resembles 
 the superscription of Xahvm, preceding Habakkuk in the 
 order of " The Twelve." The word massa' appears in the titles 
 of Xahum, Habakkuk. Zech. 9 l, 12 l, and Malachi — a desig- 
 nation otherwise confined to the oracles of Judgement in 
 Isa. 13-23. This very word is forbidden as having become 
 a cant phrase in Jer. 23 3<wo— a prohibition showing it to 
 have been in popular use in Habakkuk*s time. Massa' may 
 well therefore be original here, as in Xahum. 
 
HABAKKUK, AND THE CHALDEANS 47 
 
 I. The prophecy proper extends from chap. 1 2 
 to 2 20. 
 
 The unity of this composition, and the order 
 and connexion of its several parts, are also in 
 dispute. Admittedly, the deliverance of 2 4, 
 ending with the words " The just shall live in 
 his faithfulness," is the climax of the Book ; 
 the series of Woes that follow — 2 e (or 5)-2o — 
 form a pasan composed in a mode with which 
 Isaiah has made us familiar, that supplies a 
 fitting sequel to the oracle of ver. 4 — an outburst 
 of the prophet's joy over the downfall of the 
 great oppressor, now assured to him. As a 
 whole, chap. 1 leads up naturally enough to the 
 crisis signalised by 2 1-4 : the colossal greed and 
 savagery of the new master into whose hand 
 Jehovah gives the empire of the world, create 
 a problem in Divine government for which 
 Habakkuk asks a solution. The position of 
 vv. 5-11 in the train of thought is the stum- 
 bling-block ; yet this is just the passage which 
 furnishes the historical datum and point of 
 attachment for the Book, by the reference it 
 makes in ver. e to the Chaldasans. 
 
 Now, the above section of chap. 1 stands isolated 
 in its context : with it removed, vv. 2-4 and 12-17 
 appear to give a continuous and consistent sense, 
 forming (it is said) a sustained appeal against 
 
48 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 some powerful and cruel rale under which Israel 
 has been placed "for correction" by Jehovah. 
 Who the tvrant is we are not told : onlv the 
 later verses poiot to a foreign, imperial poten- 
 tate, under whom u the nations " are suffering 
 along with Israel — this suit- Assyria or Babylon 
 equally well. The accepted application of the 
 prophecy to the latter power is due to ver. t : 
 but if the paragraph in which this datum stands 
 be eliminated, the reference of the rest of the 
 chapter becomes an open question. 
 
 Dr Giesebrecht. therefore. 1 whose criticisms are 
 always judicious, proposed to - - 
 
 r. 1-4 and 5-11 : he reads the latter paragraph 
 as Habakkuk'- ning announcement of the 
 Chaldean invasion, and the rest of the chapter 
 . - - the prophet's complaint and appeal 
 to Jehovah against the invaders He has sent. 
 Wellhausen and Nowack, in their Commentaries. 
 adoj - — brecht's rectification : moreover, they 
 reg ~d vv. :--_-_ as earlier in date by some years 
 than the remainder of the chapter, and possibly 
 from another hand, since in the one representa- 
 
 1 Pp. 196-138 his 1 'rage zur Te*aia%ritik. iieW. 
 - frwfketu S -teUerei (1890), in which 
 
 he refutes Hackmann's theory, adopted bv I>r Cheyne, of 
 the post-exilic date of the - passages : 
 
 -b. 
 
HABAKKUK, AND THE CHALDEANS 49 
 
 tion the Chaldeans are seen approaching and in 
 the other already dominating. 
 
 Karl Budde, the Hebrew Professor of Strass- 
 burg, has struck out another explanation 1 of 
 the seeming disorder in this Book. Instead of 
 throwing 1 5-11 backward, he carries it forward 
 and sets it down after 2 4. Chap. 1 2-2 4 (minus 
 1 5-11) he then reads as an impeachment of the 
 Assyrians, to which, on his theory, chap. 1 5-11 
 gives Jehovah's reply to the effect that He is 
 raising up the Ghaldceans to punish Assyria. The 
 prophecy, as thus originally conceived, Budde 
 supposes to have been delivered within the years 
 621-615 B.C., being designed to encourage the 
 Juda?ans to revolt from Nineveh, whose ascend- 
 
 1 See the Expositor, V. i. 372-385 (May 1895), where 
 Budde also discusses an elaborate reconstruction proposed 
 by Kothstein, which has not found favour, but which starts 
 from the correct assumption that 1 2-1 speaks of oppression 
 within Judali itself. Budde's view was propounded earlier, 
 and more completely, in the Studien unci Kritiken for 1893, 
 p. 383 ff . The latest theory is that of B. Duhm, who sub- 
 stitutes for Budde's Assyrians and Chaldceans of the 7th 
 century the Persians and Greeks (under Alexander the Great) 
 of the 1th ! He brings the latter into Habakkuk's text by 
 reading, li Lo, I raise up the Chittim " (see Dan. 11 30) instead 
 of "the Chasdim" (Chaldreans). In these feats of critical 
 daring Duhm still bears the palm ! He does good service, 
 however, by reasserting the solidarity of chap. 3 with the rest 
 of the book. 
 
 ill. 4 
 
So THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 ency is now seriously threatened by her southern 
 neighbour and old rival Babylon. In " the law" 
 and " judgement" whose action is "slacked" 
 (1 4), he sees the To rah then newly promulgated 
 by Josiah and hindered in its execution through 
 the interference of the Assyrian overlord. In 
 the flush of the Josianic reformation, Budde con- 
 tends, Judah could claim with a good conscience 
 to be " righteous " (1 13, 2 4), and resented as 
 undeserved the sufferings inflicted by her.heathen 
 rulers. The event contradicted the above fore- 
 cast, the Chaldaeans turning out to be the 
 destroyers instead of the deliverers of Israel : 
 this accounts, Budde thinks, for the disturbance 
 of the original order, Habakkuk's editor, with 
 more adroitness than honesty, having transposed 
 his announcement of the Chaldeans' coming to 
 the position where it now appears, on purpose 
 to remedy this failure and to make it appear as 
 though the Chaldaeans had been the oppressors 
 denounced and not the rescuers greeted by the 
 prophet ! Budde's solution of the difficulty has 
 found considerable favour ; Cornill in particular, 1 
 and G. A. Smith, 2 give it their adhesion — the 
 
 1 In the later editions of his useful Einleitung in das alte 
 Testament. 
 
 - The Booh of the Twelve Prophets (Expositor's Bible), vol. ii, 
 p. 119 ff. 
 
HABAKKUK, AND THE CHALDJEANS 51 
 
 latter, however, with an important modification 
 to be noticed afterwards. 
 
 A. B. Davidson has stated (in pp. 50-55 of 
 the Introduction to Habakkuk in the Cambridge 
 Bible for Schools) the strong objections that lie 
 against Bndde's construction. The historical 
 basis for it is wanting. By the year 621, in the 
 middle of Josiah's reign, Assyria was no longer 
 oppressing the Judreans ; the Scythian terror had 
 before this time eclipsed the old fear from that 
 quarter ; Nineveh was shorn of her distant pro- 
 vinces and with difficnlty held the Medes at bay. 
 Such was the course of her history, as we have 
 traced it in previous chapters (Vol. II). In the 
 given political situation the language of 1 15-17, 
 applied to Assyria, would be an anachronism. 
 And though the Chaldeans had by this time 
 revolted from Nineveh and were probably in 
 league with her other enemies, the Medes were 
 her direct assailants ; from them the fatal blow 
 was impending, which finally fell in the year 
 607. Not till after the battle of Carchemish 
 (b.c. 605) did the Chaldeans assume the role 
 ascribed to them in 1 5-11 — then, and not before, 
 was that people " raised up " to " march through 
 the breadth of the earth." This seems to be 
 the earliest possible date for the paragraph in 
 question. 
 
52 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 Dr G. A. Smith's conjecture, that the Egyptian 
 rule is denounced in 1 2-4. 12-17 and its over- 
 throw by the Chaldceans promised in 1 5-11, escapes 
 the above objection ; but what little we know 
 of the brief dominance of Pharaoh-Necho 
 in Palestine (608-005) does not warrant our 
 applying to it the indictment of 1 2-4. 12-17. 
 Necho's victories were not of the wide and 
 conclusive character indicated in 1 14-17. This 
 Pharaoh inflicted two definite injuries on Judaea, 
 neither of which is referred to — the defeat and 
 death of Josiah, and the captivity of his son 
 Jehoahaz ; but he established no empire over 
 " the nations." 
 
 The assumption from which all the schemes 
 of readjustment proceed, that of the continuity 
 of 1 2-4 with 1 12-17, is justly questioned by A. P>. 
 Davidson. Instead of these sections of the pro- 
 phecy being parts of the same lament, they 
 are quite distinct. No syllable in the former 
 passage breathes of foreign oppression ; it is 
 only the identification of "the wicked" and 
 "the righteous" of ver. 4 with "the wicked" 
 and the "more righteous than he" of ver. 13 
 that has led the above-mentioned critics to dis- 
 cover the heathen tyrant in the beginning of 
 the chapter. Read by itself, the protest with 
 w r hich the Book opens sounds like nothing else 
 
HABAKKUK, AND THE CHALDMANS 53 
 
 but the familiar plaint of the prophets against 
 the misgovern ment and social injustice rank in 
 JucUea under the later kings : " this is the 
 natural sense of the verses and of the words used 
 in them." With Davidson agree on this point 
 not only Pusey, Delitzsch, Kirkpatrick, but 
 "advanced" critics also like Kuenen, Driver, 
 and McCurdy. 
 
 How long, O Jehovah, have I called, and Thou dost not 
 
 hear ! 
 I cry out to Thee " Violence," and Thou wilt not save ! 
 
 Why dost Thou bid me look on trouble and behold 
 mischief, 
 
 So that oppression and violence meet mine eyes, 
 
 And strife comes, and quarrel arises ? 
 Therefore the law is palsied, and judgement cannot move ; 
 
 For the wicked sets watch about the righteous, 
 
 So that judgement goetli forth lamed ! 
 
 It is the cry of a patriot outraged by civil 
 wrong, by the improbity of magistrates and the 
 poisoning of the fountains of justice, such as 
 the prophets had denounced ever since Amos 
 and which brought about the ruin of both the 
 Israelite kingdoms. Hab. 1 2-4 echoes the accu- 
 sations of Zeph. 3 1-3, Jer. 625-29 66.7; it repeats 
 the tale of Isa. 1 21-23, Mic. 3 1-3 7 2-4, of Amos 3 10 
 5 11. 12, etc., relating to earlier times ; comp. also 
 Pss, 35, 55, 82, for the protests of pious Israelites 
 
54 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 to Jehovah against the oppression of their fellow- 
 countrymen. The Deuteronomic legislation was, 
 in fact, nullified by the radical corruption of 
 Judrean society, not by the interference of foreign 
 rulers. 
 
 What is God's answer to the prophet's indict- 
 ment of his people ? It is just such as had been 
 made to Amos and Isaiah and Zephaniah in 
 turn — the same that is given to his contem- 
 porary Jeremiah: " Lo, I am raising up the 
 Chaldasans! " (e). This is Jehovah's "work" 
 for the day that is approaching — a work strange 
 and incredible, since it meant the destruction of 
 the edifice of restored law and worship but just 
 erected by Josiah (5), which despite their infi- 
 delity the Judreans cherished with a patriotic 
 confidence ; comp. Jer. 7 1-15. Babylon will be 
 the avenger of Jehovah's wrongs upon Jndah, 
 as the Scythians had threatened to be about 
 630 B.C., and as the Assyrians had been in the 
 eighth century. Hab. 1 5-11 is therefore parallel 
 to Isa. 5 26-30, and holds the same relation to its 
 foregoing context as the latter prediction to the 
 w Woes" of Isa. 5 1-25. Chaldsea plays over again 
 the familiar part of Assyria (hence perhaps the 
 abruptness of her introduction) ; the new power, 
 which was in fact the offspring of the old 
 inheriting its character with its dominion, is 
 
HABAKKUK, AND THE CHALDAZANS 55 
 
 " ordained for judgement " upon the crying sins 
 of Judah (vv. 2-4). So far, Habakkuk's doctrine 
 contains nothing novel ; he simply applies with 
 incisive force the logic of Amos and Isaiah to 
 his own times. 
 
 But in vv. 12-17 his thought takes a surprising 
 turn. Instead of acquiescing in Jehovah's re- 
 sponse to the cry raised to heaven by Judasan 
 sin, the prophet remonstrates against that answer. 
 The remonstrance implies experience of Chaldean 
 usage, and therefore was separated by some 
 interval of time l from the threat of vv. 5-11. 
 Jehovah's answer to Habakkuk was practically 
 given by the victory of Carchemish in 605, 
 which brought south-western Asia to the feet 
 of Nebuchadrezzar ; after that event, Jndaea 
 soon came to taste the quality of the new 
 empire. The whole of Habakkuk's prophecy 
 thus falls between the years 605 and 597, 
 at which latter date Jehoiakim revolted from 
 his Babylonian master and was crushed. Earlier 
 prophets had been content to see in the sub- 
 jugation of Israel to heathen powers a nemesis 
 upon its rebellion against Jehovah, Isaiah finding 
 
 1 In the composition of the poem, the scenes of which 
 extend over several years (see 3 2), this interval disappears, 
 and Habakkuk's second appeal to Jehovah (1 12-17), with 
 dramatic propriety, follows immediately on the answer to his 
 first appeal of 1 24. 
 
56 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 his comfort in the thought that the saved 
 " remnant " will preserve the seed of the nation 
 to reflourish in a better day ; Habakkuk ventures 
 to question ab initio the righteousness of the 
 use of such instruments by a holy God. As 
 Dr G. A. Smith puts it, at this point for the 
 first time " the prophet" appears " as sceptic" 
 (yet see Amos 7 1-4). The horrible inhumanity 
 and the idolatry of brute force displayed by the 
 Chakheans in their dealings with subject peoples 
 (14-17) forced this contradiction on the prophet's 
 mind. At the same time, the interlude of 
 freedom and national revival enjoyed under 
 Josiah (see pp. 2, 19-20) had made the reimposed 
 bondage the more galling for the Judaeans. 
 Something of the new scepticism manifest in 
 Habakkuk is due to the growth of the spirit of 
 humanity, and to the finer sense of the Divine 
 rectitude acquired under the teaching of his 
 predecessors. 
 
 In ver. 12, commencing his second appeal, the 
 prophet appears submissive ; he repeats, in his 
 grand style, the old patient creed : Jehovah's 
 eternal being assures His people's survival ; 
 their present dire experience will issue in " cor- 
 rection," not extermination. Suddenly, in ver. 13, 
 his suppressed indignation blazes out — But how 
 can God associate Himself with monsters like 
 
HABAKKUK, AND THE CHALDEANS 57 
 
 these Chalda?ans ? how revolting that He should 
 call their doings His " work " ! (5) : 
 
 Too pure are Thine eyes to behold evil, 
 And to look on mischief Thou canst not endure ! 
 Wherefore then dost Thou look on while the robbers rob ; ' 
 Art silent, while the wicked swallows up one that is 
 more righteous than he 1 ? 
 
 The critics who must make " the wicked and 
 righteous" of this verse square with "the wicked 
 and righteous " of ver. 4 miss the point of the 
 prophet's daring sarcasm. Toward His people 
 Jehovah is strict enough — His " eyes too pure," 
 forsooth, to bear the sight of wrong (comp. e.g. 
 Ps. 5 4-0) ; yet He watches calmly the outrages 
 of this world-tyrant, and keeps silence while the 
 Chaldaeans trample down a nation which, bad 
 though it may be, is better than themselves ! Why 
 punish the wicked 5y the more wicked?* This is 
 the enigma that confronts Habakkuk — an enigma 
 confounding indeed when it is once realized, and 
 inevitable at the given stage of revelation. 
 
 Here Habakkuk parts company with Jeremiah, 
 
 1 We adopt Wellhausen's emendation. 
 
 2 In ver. 13, Judah is not called absolutely " righteous," but 
 "righteous in comparison with " its enemy. One could well 
 understand a high-minded French patriot denouncing the 
 Germans at the end of 1870 in terms that he had applied to 
 the violence and chicanery of his own Government at the 
 beginning of the same year. 
 
5 8 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 whose view of Judah's ill-desert he has endorsed 
 in 1 2-4. He takes the first step in that inquiry 
 as to the justice of God's administration in 
 human life and in the course of history — " the 
 riddle of this painful earth " — on which Israel 
 meditated with fruitful results during the Exile, 
 and which gave birth to the Book of Job and the 
 doctrine of the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53. 
 The difference between the two contemporary 
 teachers does not take the extreme form assumed 
 by those who see in " the righteous " and " the 
 wicked " of 1 4 Judah and the Chaldceans and 
 suppose Habakkuk to represent his people as 
 innocent in their quarrel with Nebuchadrezzar. 
 If that were so, Habakkuk's position would be 
 almost that of " the prophets," blind to the 
 moral condition of their country, 1 over whom 
 Jeremiah's "heart" was "broken" and "all his 
 bones shook " (23 9-40). Like Jeremiah, our 
 prophet regards the Chaldrean power as "or- 
 dained for judgement"; Jeremiah, like him, 
 foresees a tremendous doom awaiting the king 
 of Babylon " when the time of his own land 
 
 1 Though Habakkuk did not side with the popular prophets 
 who opposed Jeremiah, he helps us to understand their 
 position (see pp. 170-172 below), and his protest indicates the 
 furious resentment roused by the rule of Nebuchadrezzar, 
 which led to the desperate rebellions made under Jehoiakiro 
 and Zedekiah. 
 
HABAKKUK,. AND THE CHALDEANS 59 
 
 shall come " (Jer. 25 12-14. 26, 27 7 : Jeremiah's 
 authorship of chs. 50, 51 is denied). What 
 exercises Habakkuk is not that Judah should 
 be punished, but punished by such hands — that 
 the Holy One of Israel should call the Chaldean 
 king " My servant " as He does repeatedly in 
 Jeremiah, and should say of this inhuman despot, 
 " I give it [the dominion of the earth] unto whom 
 it seemeth right unto Me ; and now have I given 
 all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadrezzar 
 the king of Babylon " (25 9 27 5. 6 43 10). Jere- 
 miah, on his part, sees no difficulty in this — any 
 weapon is good enough for punishing apostasy 
 so vile as that of Judah and her kings — he con- 
 demns Jehoiakim and Zedekiah in turn for 
 breaking faith with the master whom Jehovah 
 had set over them (comp. Ezek. 16 59 17 12-19). 
 Habakkuk is grieved to the heart by God's 
 setting up such a master : the Chaldean do- 
 minion horrifies him — not Judah only, but the 
 human race is laid under this frightful incubus ; 
 and Jehovah, it seems, has done it ! 
 
 Wherefore hast Thou made mankind as fishes of the sea, 
 
 As the worms that have no ruler ? 
 All of them with the angle he takes up ; 
 He draws them into his net, and gathers them into his 
 seine : 
 
 Therefore he rejoices and exults ! 
 
60 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 Thereupon be sacrifices to his net, and burns incense to 
 
 his seine ; 
 For by them his portion is made fat, and his food 
 
 grows rich ! 
 Is he for ever to draw the sword, 1 and to slay continually 
 
 the nations without pity ? (vv. h-it). 
 
 Here is the first inspired appeal against "man's 
 inhumanity to man /'against the crimes committed 
 in the name of empire and the exploiting of the 
 masses for dynastic interests. Amos and Isaiah 
 were touched by this sentiment (see Vol. I, p. 148, 
 and Vol. II, p. 53) ; in the Book of Habakkuk 
 it is the leading motive. Here the revolt of the 
 spirit of mankind against imperialism comes to 
 consciousness, as it was bound to do under the 
 Israelite religion, and speaks out its complaint to 
 God. By the end of the first chapter, the sin of 
 Israel appears to be swallowed up in the greater 
 sin of the Chaldaaan conqueror against humanity. 
 
 The prophet's second appeal, springing out of 
 the awful reply to his first, is now lodged with 
 Jehovah, and he waits for the answer (2 i) : 
 
 On my watch will I stand, and will put myself on my 
 
 tower ; 
 And I will spy out to see what He will say to me, 
 And what He 2 will reply to my expostulation. 
 
 1 The Received Text here is obviously corrupt : we follow 
 Giesebrecht's and Wellhausen's emendations. 
 
 - We venture, with the critics, to read the third person, 
 instead of the first. 
 
HABAKKUK, AND THE CHALDMANS 6i 
 
 The oracle of ver. 4 is Jehovah's response ; the 
 prophet is directed to " write it " large " on a 
 tablet," setting it up in some public place, where 
 those who hurry past " may read it " (2) ; for 
 himself, he is bidden to be patient, assured that in 
 God's good time He will vindicate His doings (3). 
 The oracle is this : 
 
 Lo, swollen (or perverted), not straight, is his soul in 
 
 him ! 
 But the righteous shall live by bis faithfulness (ver. 4). 
 
 Buckle thinks this a slight and inconclusive 
 answer; accordingly he brings in ch. 1 5-11 to en- 
 large and enforce it, as we have seen above — the 
 connexion between the two parts of Jehovah's 
 reply on this hypothesis is far from obvious. 
 But 2 4 is in fact a sufficient reply — the only 
 reply at present possible — to Habakkuk's remon- 
 strance ; it is uttered with the brevity befitting 
 a Divine oracle and in a form calculated to pro- 
 voke reflexion. Jehovah admits His servant's 
 charge against the new ruler, — his arrogance and 
 falseness ; such dominion, it is implied, in the 
 nature of things cannot last (comp. 1 11). The 
 counter-sentence, " The just shall live by his 
 stedfastness," makes no promise of continuance 
 to the existing Juda?an state, which is steeped, 
 
62 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 as Habakkuk had declared, in wickedness (1 2-4) ■ 
 but that which is righteous in the nation shall 
 survive the present tyranny ; truth and loyalty 
 can never perish. "The vision," after all, was 
 worth " writing and making plain." It is that 
 which the Apostle John saw in his " last hour," 
 under the emperor Domitian — " The world 
 passeth away and the lust thereof, but he that 
 doeth the will of God abideth for ever " ; the 
 same that Jesus saw when He said on the night 
 before He suffered, " In the world you will have 
 tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have over- 
 come the world." 
 
 Faithfulness, rather than faith {trustfulness), 
 is the sense of the last word of the oracle ; it is 
 the quality by which a man against all odds 
 adheres to truth and right. The Apostle Paul 
 gave a new turn to the text, suggested by the 
 Greek pistis, in building upon it the New 
 Testament principle of Justification by Faith. 
 The two applications are not difficult to reconcile ; 
 and the use of the sentence in Heb. 10 38 lies 
 somewhere between Habakkuk's and Paul's 
 meaning. The life of the human spirit is in its 
 cleaving to God : for Israel in Habakkuk's age, 
 that cleaving meant fidelity to God's covenant 
 amidst national apostasy and overwhelming 
 disaster ; for Paul and the hearers of his gospel, 
 
HABAKKUK, AND THE CHALDEANS 63 
 
 it meant trust in God's grace, which proffers 
 forgiveness and new life in Jesus Christ. 
 Accepting Habakkuk's watchword, the loyal 
 remnant of Israel met the shock of the fall of 
 Jerusalem and the theocratic state and endured 
 the dreary night of exile. Jehovah was Himself 
 its dwelling-place ; the roots of its life were in 
 Him, the Holy and Eternal, beneath the region 
 of change and fear. 
 
 Thus emboldened, the prophet looks the 
 Chaldasan in the face and braves the worst that 
 he may do. Vv. 5-20 of eh. 2 are " a proverb 
 (mashal), a riddling taunt-song," that the out- 
 raged nations are heard chanting over their proud 
 and cruel oppressors — an eruption of volcanic 
 anger from the heart of humanity. It takes the 
 shape of a five-fold "Woe," 1 in the style of 
 Isaiah's tirade against his people in chs. 5s-25 10 1-4 
 (see Vol. II., pp. 35-36. The five strophes of 
 this song of cursing bear on the insatiate pride 
 (5-s), the unscrupulous greed (9-11), the tvorks of 
 building reared at a vast cost of human life (12-14), 
 
 1 The opening words of v. 5 are unintelligible, as they stand 
 in the Massoretic text. Probably the word " wine " (wanting 
 in the oldest Versions) is a corruption of the not dissimilar 
 Hebrew for " Woe." This correction, proposed by Wellhausen 
 (an admirable textual critic), would bring the first stanza 
 into line with the other four, each beginning with "Woe 
 to " 
 
64 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 the shameless sensuality (15-17), the base idolatry 
 (19. is) l of the imperial power. 
 
 The Chaldaean was essentially a reproduction of 
 the Assyrian domination (see Vol. I, Ch. x) ; it 
 proved for Judah, in effect, a fatal culmination 
 of the former oppression. Hence Babylon drew 
 upon herself, in concentrated form, the hate 
 treasured up against Nineveh for a hundred and 
 fifty years. What needs to be said about the 
 place of Babylon and the Chaldeans in history 
 and the influence of their empire on Israel and 
 on prophecy, will be reserved for Vol. IV and the 
 period of the Exile. Two or three features of the 
 Chaldrean conquest call, however, for remark. 
 
 The sudden rise and swift advance of the new 
 power is vividly described in 1 c: the Assyrian 
 invasion in the last century had been gradual 
 and long-foreseen, like the tide that now ad- 
 vances now retreats ; the Chaldfeans pour 
 themselves in flood, at a rush, over the whole 
 field. This was rendered possible by the helpless 
 condition of the peoples so long trodden down by 
 the Assyrians, and by the recent devastations of 
 the northern barbarians ; Egypt alone could 
 make any stand against the Babylonian troops. 
 But the rapid stride to imperial sway was due to 
 
 1 These two verses, by some accident, have changed places 
 in the MSS. 
 
HABAKKUK. AND THE CHALDMANS 65 
 
 the genius of a single man. The crashing victory 
 of Nebuchadrezzar , " the Napoleon of the east," 
 over Pharaoh-Necho at Carcheruish, in the year 
 605, gained for him at a stroke the mastery of 
 western Asia. But the dominion created so 
 swiftly declined and fell almost as swiftly at 
 Nebuchadrezzar's decease. He died in 561 B.C. ; 
 and it took but twenty-three years under his 
 feeble successors to bring the empire to an end. 
 The terrific speed of the advance is to Habakkuk 
 a presage of speedy departure : " Then shall he 
 sweep by as a wind; and he overpasses [the 
 mark] and is guilty" (1 11) — the furious onset of 
 the enemy, carrying everything before it, brings 
 him quickly into collision with the purposes of 
 God. 
 
 It is noticeable that Habakkuk's description 
 of the Ohaldsean forces resembles that given by 
 Jeremiah in 4 11-13. 29 6 22. 23, with seeming refer- 
 ence to the earlier Scythian assailants (comp. 
 Ezek. 38 4. 15 concerning " Gog, of the land of 
 Magog"; see pp. 29-31 above). The prophet 
 sees an army of " horsemen " coming — " they fly 
 as an eagle that hasteth to devour " (1 s). It 
 was their command of this arm which gave the 
 Chaldean movements their amazing celerity. 
 Now, Babylonia was not a country of horses ; 
 the probability is that on the break-up of the 
 in. 5 
 
66 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 Scythian hordes, which had roamed about 
 plundering in south-western Asia for twenty 
 years, large bodies of their cavalry were enlisted 
 by the Cbaldreans. Nebuchadrezzar seized this 
 weapon, and used it with brilliant effect. The 
 same thing has repeatedly happened on the 
 collision of a barbarian with a civilised military 
 power : so the Romans utilised the Goths, and 
 the English the Mahrattas and Pathans in 
 India. This employment of the Scythian horse- 
 men, who retained their ferocity and marauding 
 habits and their well-known worship of the 
 sword (1 ie), gave additional horror to Chaldean 
 warfare. 
 
 The third " Woe," in ch. 2 12-14 (to which ver. 11 
 leads up), against him who "builds a city in 
 blood " and sets " the nations toiling [to provide] 
 for smoke and wearing themselves out for sheer 
 vanity," suits exactly the Babylonian king. 
 Nebuchadrezzar was, perhaps, the greatest 
 builder who ever lived. The walls and temples 
 of Babylon reared by him were the wonder of 
 antiquity ; he expended on them the wealth of 
 his conquests and the lives of countless captives 
 — all to end in " smoke and nothingness ! " 
 Ver. 14 is quoted from Isa. 1 1 9 to intimate that, 
 instead of the fame of the new Babylon and its 
 builder, " the glory of Jehovah shall cover the 
 
HABAKKUK, AND THE CHALDMANS 67 
 
 earth." The most signal note of Habakkuk's 
 triumph over the Chaldseans is his conviction, 
 pervading the song, that the oppressor prepares 
 his own destruction. The oracle of 2 4 virtually 
 said that a power so arrogant and treacherous 
 cannot "live " ■ as Dr G. A. Smith expresses it : 
 
 In the nature of things [this tyranny] cannot 
 endure, but works out its own penalties. . . . 
 In cutting off others the tyrant is but forfeiting 
 his oivn life (ver. 10). The very violence done to 
 nature, the deforesting of Lebanon for instance, 
 and the vast hunting of wild beasts (17), shall 
 recoil on him. Hardly anywhere have we found 
 so complete an absence of all reference to the 
 direct action of God in the punishment of the 
 tyrant. . . . These great proverbs or taunt-songs, 
 in conformity with the proverbs of the later 
 Wisdom, dwell only upon the inherent tendency 
 to decay of all injustice. . . . Tyranny, they 
 assert — and history ever since has affirmed their 
 truthfulness — tyranny is suicide. 1 
 
 Thus Habakkuk combines the moralist with 
 the seer, the inspiration of the Chokmah with 
 that of Prophecy. He has grasped the law 
 which binds together moral and material dis- 
 solution, and understands how " sin, when it is 
 full-grown, gives birth to death." The ethical 
 sensibility which compelled him to ask how God 
 
 1 Booh of the Twelve Prophets, vol. ii, p. 144. 
 
68 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 could avail Himself for Israel's punishment of an 
 instrument so much worse, led him to see that 
 this truculent power by the enormity of its 
 wrong-doing incurs irretrievable ruin. Twice 
 the refrain is heard (perhaps oftener in the 
 original poem), " because of men's blood, and for 
 the violence done to the earth, to the city aud to 
 all that dwell therein " (2 s. 17). " The nations " 
 on whom the Chaldreans have trampled, rise up 
 to taunt them (e) ; " the remnant of the peoples " 
 whom she has " spoiled," spoil Babylon in 
 turn (s). She is " storing up " for herself " wrath 
 against the day of wrath," and by her crimes 
 "lading herself with pledges" (c) that must be 
 paid to the last farthing. 
 
 II. The question of the authorship of the con- 
 cluding hymn, chap. 3, does not greatly concern 
 Habakkuk's prophetical work, though it does 
 affect our estimate of the range of his thought 
 and his literary gifts. Ch. 2 20 is a link between 
 the taunt-song of 2 5-19 and the added psalm ; 
 this verse must be put down to a later hand, if 
 ch. 3 be not from the prophet Habakkuk. This 
 is peculiar amongst chapters of the Prophets 
 in being furnished with musical annotations ' 
 (vv. 1. 3. 9. 13, and the subscription in 19), which 
 
 1 On these terms — Shigionotb, Selah, etc. — see Davison's 
 Praises of Israel, p. 86, and Hastings' B.B. 
 
HABAKKUK, AND THE CHALDEANS 69 
 
 show that it was at some time used by the 
 Temple choristers. .Either the song, belonging 
 originally to the Book of Habakknk, was ex- 
 tracted therefrom for this purpose and adapted 
 for choral use ; or it first appeared in a collection 
 of Psalms and was borrowed by the editors of 
 the Nebi'im to supply a suitable close to the little 
 Book of Habakknk. Recent critics generally prefer 
 the latter explanation, and regard this hymn, like 
 Zeph. 3 14-20 (see pp. 38-39) or Isa. 12 (see Vol. II, 
 p. 54), as a poetical addendum attached to the 
 prophet's work to give it a more edifying conclu- 
 sion. This case is distinguished from the others 
 named by the express assertion of Habakkuk's 
 authorship in the separate title (3 1), the title 
 being such as would be naturally prefixed in 
 transferring the piece from the roll of the prophet 
 to the psalm-collection in which for a time it 
 found a place; compare the titles of Pss. 17, 86, 
 90, 102, 142, also Ps. 72 20. We are content to 
 leave the question undecided, with a strong 
 leaning toward the traditional view. 
 
 This splendid Ode is a meditation on the 
 grandeur of Jehovah, and deserves to be counted 
 with the Song of Miriam in Exod. 15 and of 
 Deborah in Judges 5, with Ps. 18, and Job 40, 41, 
 as amongst the masterpieces of Hebrew poetry 
 in this order. The object of praise is the cove- 
 
70 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 nant God of Israel, whose majesty was witnessed 
 above all in the deliverance of His people from 
 Egypt. This is in effect a psalm of the Exodus. 
 That glorious "doing" Jehovah is besought, at 
 the outset, to " renew [revive] in the midst of 
 the years " (2) — at this present juncture of dis- 
 tress and helplessness. Such an appeal was 
 suitable to any period of depression in Israelite 
 history ; no clear allusion is made to the Exile, 
 nor to any later crisis than Habakkuk's time. 
 The text of the poem is obscure, and probably 
 defective in a number of places ; its musical 
 adaptation may have led to some confusion of 
 reading. As in other Old Testament theophanies, 
 the glory of God exhibited in material nature is 
 enlisted to heighten the glory displayed in His 
 people's redemption (comp. Pss. 18, 19, 687.8, 
 Isa. 51 15. 16, etc.) : Israelite monotheism involves 
 this unity of the Creator and Redeemer-God. 
 On the same postulate the miracles of Jesus 
 rest. The forces of the external world, held at 
 Jehovah's command, are sympathetically moved 
 when He steps forth to His grand historic acts 
 of salvation. 
 
 It is difficult to draw either from the contents 
 or style of the poem any positive inference as to 
 its period and origin. There is little in the way 
 of common idiom or vocabulary to build upon, 
 
HABAKKUK, AND THE CHALDEANS 71 
 
 in proof of a single 'authorship of prophecy and 
 psalm. Hab. 3 is lyrical, Hab. 1 and 2 dramatic 
 in structure. A like vividness of imagination 
 and poignancy of phrase are manifest in both 
 compositions ; the author's mind appears to move 
 in each by a succession of illuminating flashes, 
 of sudden starts and revulsions of feeling, yet 
 with a certain logical continuity behind these 
 impulses. The psalm, like the prophecy, comes 
 from a visionary, a contemplative soul ; in both 
 sections of the Book one observes the religions 
 subjectivity common to Habakkuk with Jeremiah 
 (see p. 156) and characteristic of the epoch, the 
 disposition of the thinker to read the movements 
 of the time as they are mirrored in his own spirit, 
 and to conceive his revelations in the form of a 
 colloquy with Jehovah ; comp. 1 2. 13 2 1 with 
 3 16-19, also Jer. 15 15-21, etc., and see pp. 76-78 
 below. 
 
 It is possible to read the theophany of vv. 3-15 
 as a description of the expected coming of Jehovah 
 for Israel's deliverance x given in colours drawn 
 from the Exodus (the Hebrew perfects being read 
 as " prophetic perfects "), rather than the poetical 
 rendering of the Exodus itself. By this con- 
 
 1 The marginal reading of the Revisers in ver. i3ff, " Thou 
 art come for the salvation of Thy people," &c, sustains this 
 view. 
 
72 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 struction Kirkpatrick would link ch. 3 closely 
 to the foregoing context. 1 He finds in 3 2 the 
 prophet's plea against delay, such as the words 
 of 2 s had intimated, in the fulfilment of Babylon's 
 doom, which has been virtually pronounced in 
 25-10. "The answer to his prayer flashes upon 
 him in a moment. . . . The recollection of the 
 past is a ground of hope for the future- . . . He 
 who once wrought these wonderful works for 
 His people will not fail to work the like again 
 in His own time and His own way" (comp. 
 Ps. 71 19. 20). So while the prophet " trembles " 
 at the vision, " he learns the secret that will 
 give him patience — nay more, rejoicing in the 
 day of trouble (10-19), when the laud lies utterly 
 desolate from the Chaldseafl invasion, he can 
 endure as seeing Him who is invisible." Thus 
 interpreted, " the prayer of Habakkuk " forms a 
 natural, if not indispensable, close to " the oracle 
 of Habakkuk." 2 
 
 But chap. 3 supplies the complement to chs. 1 
 and 2 in another respect. It carries with it 
 reproof, as well as comfort. Habakkuk has 
 dared in 1 13-17, like Job when under the lash, 
 
 1 Doctrine of the Prophets, Lecture X. 
 
 2 In his recent essay, Das Bucli HabaTiuli (Tubingen), 
 B Duhm contends for the unity of the three chapters ; see 
 p. 49 above. 
 
HABAKKUK, AND THE CHALD&ANS 73 
 
 to " reply against God " — indeed, in 2 1 he takes 
 up the attitude of one who has posed the 
 Almighty ! — the presumption could hardly pass 
 uncorrected. The terrible majesty in which 
 Jehovah clothes Himself to the prophet's vision, 
 makes his soul quake to its centre. Habakkuk's 
 scepticism is rebuked, in a similar fashion to 
 that of Job, by the sublime theophany with 
 which Jehovah winds up the long debate between 
 the patriarch and his exasperating friends. The 
 trustfully submissive conclusion of the ode 
 (vv. iG-19) expresses the mood that should result 
 from the struggle through which Habakkuk's 
 mind has passed. This book in fact rehearses, 
 on a smaller scale and from its specific point of 
 view, the problem worked out later in the great 
 drama of Job. 
 
 Some interpreters, holding the unity of Oracle 
 and Prayer, regard vv. 17-19 as an ending tacked 
 on to the unfinished, or mutilated, ode, which has 
 been borrowed, it is suggested, from an unknown 
 psalm written in time of famine. But ver. 17 is 
 a country lover's picture of utter desolation, such 
 as the poet of vv. 3-15 may well enough have 
 drawn. The song dies away into plaintive yet 
 joyous acquiescence in Jehovah's will : 
 
 Yet as for me, in Jehovah I will rejoice ; 
 I will exult in the God of my salvation ! 
 
74 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 Jehovah is my strength, and He hath made my feet like 
 unto hinds' feet ; 
 And over the heights He directs my way ! (10) 
 
 Thus the prophet at last treads firmly where 
 he had faltered. These lines are his final re- 
 sponse to the oracle given him in 2 4; they 
 express a perfect reconciliation to Jehovah's will, 
 and a perfect confidence in His promised salva- 
 tion ; they breathe the spirit by which "the 
 servant of Jehovah " in suffering Israel will 
 " live " through the worst distresses. Should 
 internal evidence compel us to read ch. 3 as a 
 post-exilic product, the compiler would then 
 appear to have annexed it to this Book with a 
 skill and insight truly inspired. 
 
 The name and title of this eighth in the suc- 
 cession of " the Twelve " tell us very little about 
 the author. Habakkuk (Hebrew Ghabaqquq : in 
 the LXX 'Afi/3aKov/jL, as if for Ghahbaquq or 
 -qum) is a solitary personal name, derived from a 
 root meaning to embrace, enfold. The existence 
 of a kindred noun in Assyrian is one of the 
 reasons leading the German Assyriologist Peiser, 
 writing lately on this Book, to locate the author 
 in Nineveh. 1 Nothing is known of the prophet's 
 
 1 Peiser, agrees with Budde in reading the prophecy 
 (chs. 1, 2) as a denunciation of the Assyrians, threatening 
 them with destruction by the Chaldseans. By carrying the 
 
HABAKKUK, AND THE CHALDEANS 7$ 
 
 family or dwelling-place. He appears to be a 
 Jndeean, with a wide outlook upon tlie politics 
 of his time and feeling an intense horror for the 
 Chaldrean rule over Jndah and the neighbouring 
 lands, whose little Book is " unrivalled in its 
 harmonious union of passion and reflectiveness " 
 (McCnrdy). 
 
 In the absence of genuine tradition, Jewish 
 fabJe has embellished the fame of Habakknk. 
 The legends about him — the most notable of 
 them contained in the Apocryphal Bel and the 
 Dragon (2 33-39) — are historically worthless. The 
 romance just referred to bears in the LXX the 
 superscription, " From the prophecy of Arnba- 
 koum, son of Jesus (Joshua), of the tribe of Levi." 
 
 We will now analyse the Book, as follows : 
 
 A. The Prophecy of the Rise and Ruin 
 of the Chaldean Empire, chaps. 1, 2. 
 
 This falls into two parts : The Dialogue between 
 
 date back to 625 he obviates, or at least reduces, the fatal 
 objection to Budde's theory (see p. 51). An American Pro- 
 fessor, W. K. Betteridge, has carried the same line of ex- 
 planation further by making Habakkuk synchronize with 
 Isaiah and fixing on 701 B.C., the epoch of Sennacherib's in- 
 vasion, for the occasion of the oracle. The difficulties which 
 these conjectures encounter are patent. Prof. A. B. Peake 
 gives a clear account of the criticism of Habakkuk in 
 Appendix A to his valuable book on The Problem of Suffering 
 in the Old Testament. 
 
76 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 the prophet and Jehovah, 1 2-2 4 ; and the 
 Taunt-song over the doomed Chaldeans, 2 5-20. 
 
 I. The Dialogue held by the prophet with 
 Jehovah consists of two questions addressed to 
 God, and answered in turn by Him. The answer 
 to his first appeal dismays Habakkuk, and calls 
 forth a second, more poignant question, ch. b-24 : 
 
 1. The prophet's complaint to Jehovah against the 
 wickedness of his people, 1 2-4. 
 
 2. Jehovah's answer, that He is raising up the 
 Chaldaeans to chastise them, 6-11. 
 
 (a) Attention called to Jehovah's incredible work 
 going on amongst the nations, 5 — viz. that He is 
 raising up the Chaldceans> who are seen marching 
 to empire, c. 
 
 (6) Description of their character and forces, 7-10. 
 
 (c) Assurance that their passing will be swift, like 
 their coming, since they are guilty, 11. 
 
 3. The prophet's second appeal, against Jehovah's 
 use of such agents for His holy purposes, 1 12-2 1. 
 
 (a) The prophet recalls Jehovah's eternity, who is 
 the Holy One and Israel's Rock, 12. 
 
 (6) This emboldens him to ask how a God so pure 
 can- regard complacently the rise of a power so 
 evil 1 13. 
 
 (c) Is not God Himself thus treating men like 
 fishes or mere insect-swarms 1 14. 
 
 (d) For the new power He has set up does just 
 this ; it deifies its own brute force and instruments 
 of murder, 15-17. 
 
 (<?) The prophet, ascending his tower of contem- 
 plation, waits for God's answer, 2 1. 
 
HABAKKUK, AND THE CHALDEANS 77 
 
 4. Jehovah's second answer, given in a brief 
 oracle, 2 2-4. 
 
 (a) The prophet is to publish the response, in- 
 scribing it in large, legible characters, 2, 
 
 (b) It works out its fulfilment, but needs time 
 and patience, 3. 
 
 (c) The oracle : to the effect .that pride goes before 
 a fall, while righteousness is imperishable holding 
 fast to God, 4. - 
 
 II. The Taunt-song of the oppressed Nations 
 over the Fall of the Chaldceans, into which the 
 prophet breaks with a quick revulsion from his 
 despondency, ch. 2 5-20. After the first verse, he 
 pnts his taunts into the mouth of the trampled 
 peoples : 
 
 1. Woe to the arrogant and insatiate world- 
 robber ! 5-8. 
 
 2. Woe to him who sacrifices all others to his own 
 security ! 9-11. 
 
 3. Woe to the builder who lays his walls in blood, 
 and spends the toil of nations on heaping fuel for 
 God's judgement-fires ! 12-14. 
 
 4. Woe to the debaucher of mankind, and the 
 violator of nature ! 15-17. 
 
 5. Woe to the multiplier of idols ! 19. 18. 
 
 The song sublimely ends, silencing the tumult of 
 the peoples : 
 
 " Jehovah is in the temple of His holiness ; 
 Hush, before Him, all the earth ! " (20) 
 
 God's " temple " here is the palace of heaven, from 
 
78 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 which, in ch. 3, the prophet images Him riding forth 
 for the redemption of His chosen. 1 
 
 B. The Psalm of Jehovah's Manifestation 
 in Redemption, chap. 3. 
 
 1. The prophet, fearful yet trustful, appeals once 
 more to Jehovah — no longer questioning, but humbly 
 'praying that He would "renew His work" and 
 blend His " wrath " toward Israel with " mercy," 2. 
 
 2. In answer, Jehovah appears, coming forth as 
 of old to make war for His people, 3-15 : 
 
 (a) The splendour of this theophany, as of the 
 sun marching from the east, 3. 4. 
 
 (6) The powers of destruction Jehovah wields — 
 pestilence, lightnings— shattering the mountains and 
 terrifying the peoples, 5-7. 
 
 (c) In no displeasure against nature (s)— though 
 she trembles through all her frame (10. 11)— but in 
 wrathful, pitying love toward His own Jehovah 
 proceeds on this grand expedition, 9. 12-15. 
 
 (The movements of thought in this section are in 
 a splendid confusion that defies analysis). 
 
 3. The prophet's final acquiescence, ig-io. 
 
 (a) The majesty of God, whom he had dared to 
 question, overwhelms him, io. 
 
 (b) He dare not doubt, however appearances belie 
 God's promise, lr. 
 
 (c) He will not submit merely ; he will hence- 
 forth rejoice and be strong in Jehovah, is. 19. 
 
 1 Those who treat chap. 3 as a late supplement to Hab. 
 1 and 2, generally suppose 2 20 to have been inserted as a link 
 between the two pieces. If so, this has been done with a 
 subtle art truly wonderful in a compiler. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 AN OBSCURE EPISODE IN PROrHECY : 
 ZECHAMAH 12-14 
 
 Obscurity of Zecli. 12-14 — Views of Advocates of Unity 
 of chs. 9-14 — Improbability of Origin in Grecian 
 Period — Chs. 12-14 and the Last Days of Jeru- 
 salem — " In that Day " — Expected Overthrow of 
 Besiegers — Public Repentance — Death of "the 
 Shepherd" — Second Vision of the Siege — Punish- 
 ment of Non-conforming Heathen — Chap. 14 13. w 
 misplaced — Standpoint of the Prophet — Prominence 
 of the House of David — Sins of the Time — The 
 Earthquake in Uzziah's Reign — The Mourning of 
 Hadadrimmon — Contrast between Author of Zech. 
 12-14 and Jeremiah — Fluctuations of Hope and 
 Fear — Relation to Ezekiel — Topographical Data — 
 Priestly Feeling of Writer — " Holiness to Jehovah " 
 — Organized Repentance — A Martyred Prophet — 
 Schism between Judah and Jerusalem. 
 
 CHAPTERS 12-14 of the Book of Zechariah 
 \J form a perplexing episode in Hebrew pro- 
 phecy. They bear no title ; their occasion and 
 purpose have been left undefined by author 
 and editors ; the critics are agreed only in the 
 
 79 
 
80 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 opinion that they cannot be ascribed, any more 
 than chs. 9-11, to the Zechariah of the first 
 eight chapters. The reasons given previously, 
 in Ch. ix of the first volume of this work, for 
 referring Zech. 9-11 to another writer than the 
 post-exilic Zechariah, apply equally to the 
 prophecies before ns. No new advocate of the 
 literary unity of the canonical " Zechariah " has 
 appeared (beside those named on p. 194 of 
 Vol. I) ; and the arguments for separation first 
 advanced by Newcome in 1785, have gained 
 almost universal acceptance. 
 
 Ch. 12 i begins, like 9 i, with the heading 
 " The burden (massa?) of the word of Jehovah," 
 purporting to introduce a new prophecy — whether 
 proceeding from the same period and the same 
 hand as the foregoing " burden " is the question. 
 If we were right in referring chs. 9-11 to the 
 age of Isaiah, a third author must be found for 
 chs. 12-14; since the death of Josiah, to all 
 appearance, is alluded to in 12 n. The critics who 
 maintain the unity of chs. 9-14, assign the 
 whole book so constituted (whose author is 
 named accordingly the " Deutero-Zechariah ") 
 to late post-exilic times : Dr Kirkpatrick, e.g., 
 dates it in the fifth century and the Persian age 
 (between First Zechariah and Malachi) ; Drs 
 B. Stade and G. A. Smith, in the third century 
 
AN OBSCURE EPISODE IN PROPHECY 81 
 
 under the Greek dominion ; Dr Marti, 1 with 
 others, in the Maccabaaan age. Dr Nowack, who 
 writes on the Book of Zechariah in Hastings' 
 Dictionary of the Bible, 2 discovers four separate 
 authors, all of Grecian times, in Zech. 9-14 ; 
 Wellhausen, in the Encyclopaedia Biblica, sees 
 " two well-marked divisions "— chs. 9-1 1 (adding 
 13 7-9) and chs. 12-14— the former of which he 
 identifies with " the first third of the second 
 century before Christ " when Juclasa was coming 
 under the power of the Seleucicl kings of Syria, 3 
 the latter with the Maccabaean rising— and this 
 chiefly because of the allusion in 12 5-7 to the 
 deliverance to be won for Jerusalem by " the 
 chieftains of Judah." 
 
 The history of the Old Testament Canon raises, 
 however, a decided presumption against the 
 probability that any such addition was made 
 to the Nebi'im much later than 300 B.C. 4 This 
 
 1 Das Dodeka-jwopheton, in the Kurzer-Hmdcommentar z. 
 alt en Testament. 
 
 2 Reproducing here the Introduction to his exposition in 
 the HandhommentaT z. alien Testament (Kleine Propheteii). 
 The " Kurzer Handcommentar " and " Handkommentar " are 
 rival German commentaries, of much the same character- 
 critical, concise, and finished in scholarship. 
 
 3 See, on this period, Dr R. W. Moss's From Malachi to 
 Matthew in this series. 
 
 4 See Ryle's The Canon of the O.T., pp. 118-123 ; also O.T. 
 Canon in Hastings' D.B. 
 
 in. 6 
 
82 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 objection seems fatal to Marti's and Wellhausen's 
 theories, which rest moreover on a slender basis 
 of correspondence with the epochs supposed, and 
 involve much conjecture and straining of the text 
 throughout. We should look sceptically at the 
 attempts made by recent leading critics to refer 
 prophetic writings to the dim and ignoble times 
 of the later Persian and Greek dominion. The 
 obscurity of that period witnesses to the low ebb 
 of Judsean national life ; literature and life 
 flourish or decay together. The Israelite genius 
 was under an eclipse ; memorable deeds and 
 memorable utterances alike were wanting. The 
 Books of Ecclesiastes and of Chronicles afford a 
 measure of the capacity of this decadent age, and 
 an index to its style and trend of thought. At the 
 same time the darkness supplies a region in which 
 speculation operates the more freely, since the 
 data for controlling it are wanting. The two and 
 a half centuries after Malachi have served as a 
 dumping-ground for inconvenient and unattached 
 Old Testament documents. The Hebrew style, 
 the literary power, the prophetic force and 
 freshness, the spiritual atmosphere of Books like 
 Joel and Zechariah 9-14, are such as we have no 
 reason to credit to the j^ost-Ezraite times, when 
 the legalistic scribe and the half-hell enized sceptic 
 were the typical representatives of Jewish culture. 
 
AN OBSCURE EPISODE IN PROPHECY 83 
 
 In accounting for " Deufcero-Zechariah " we 
 find ourselves obliged to fall back on the views 
 of the earlier critics — Newcome, Ewald, Kuenen, 
 Bleek, Riehni — which are still stoutly upheld by 
 Strack 1 and Orelli, to the effect that (1) the 
 whole of Zech. 9-14 is pre-exilic; but (2) while 
 Zech. 9-11 belong to the last days of Samaria 
 (see Vol. I, Ch. ix), Zech, 12-14 is a product of 
 the last days of Jerusalem before its overthrow 
 by Nebuchadrezzar, and the writer of these 
 chapters was a contemporary of Habakkuk and 
 Jeremiah. We are aware of the difficulties 
 attaching to this hypothesis : but it is the only 
 assumption which sets the writing in question 
 on historical ground, and supplies a basis for its 
 continuous interpretation. Let us survey the 
 contents of this strange piece of prophecy • after 
 doing this we shall be better able to judge of its 
 scope, and of the situation that gave birth to it. 
 
 The phrase u in that day " runs like a refrain 
 through the three chapters, heard in 12 3. e. s. 9. 11, 
 in 13 1. 2. 4, in 14 1. 4. e. s. 9. 13. 20. 21 : each succeeding 
 movement, and almost every item of description, 
 is thus punctuated. For the seer beholds " the 
 day " immediately approaching which prophecy 
 had so long foretold — "the great day of Jehovah"; 
 
 1 In his Einleitung in das A. T. — a concise and accurate 
 handbook, written from the conservative critical standpoint. 
 
84 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 his vision accordingly mingles in the liveliest 
 way, and to a degree that makes discrimination 
 very difficult, the environing conditions with the 
 ideal colours of Messianic judgement and triumph 
 furnished by earlier Jewish apocalyptic x and 
 enriched from his own imagination. There is an 
 awful crisis closely impending, that dominates 
 the horizon and inspires both his oracles 
 (12 i-13 6 and 14 1-21) — it is the siege of Jerusalem. 
 
 I. First vision of the eiege. 
 
 (cc) In ch. 12 1-9 this siege is described 
 as ending in the overthrow of the hostile 
 nations 2 : " all the nations of the earth shall 
 be gathered together against her" (3); but 
 they are destined to fail, for Jehovah " will 
 make Jerusalem a cup of reeling unto all 
 the peoples round about " ( 2 ), and " will 
 defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem," making 
 "the weak amongst them as David, and the 
 house of David as God " ( s ) ; thus He " will 
 seek to destroy all the nations that come against 
 Jerusalem " (9). Beside the image of the " cup 
 of reeling," which with variations is common to 
 the prophets of the early sixth century (comp. 
 
 1 See the remarks on Joel, Vol. I, pp. 111-115; also on 
 Zephaniah in this volume, pp. 27-8. 
 
 - Between 12 2 and 3 it seems likely that 14 13. 14 originally 
 stood ; see pp. 89 and 105. 
 
AN OBSCURE EPISODE IN PROPHECY 85 
 
 Jer. 25 15-17, Hab. 2 16, Ezek. 23 32-34), the seer 
 employs in his graphic way another simile peculiar 
 to himself : he sees the city as " a burdensome 
 stone to all the peoples" (3)— "the figure of 
 Jerusalem as a boulder, deeply embedded in the 
 soil, which tears the hands that seek to remove 
 it, is a most true and expressive summary of the 
 history of heathen assaults upon her " (G. A. 
 Smith). The part played by Judah in the 
 abortive siege is the puzzling feature of this 
 oracle ; we reserve the consideration of it to the 
 end of the Chapter. 
 
 (b) Chap. 12 io-13 6. The deliverance of Jeru- 
 salem will be followed "in that day" by an 
 act of repentance on the part of the city, headed 
 by the royal and priestly families (12 10-14) ; 
 in consequence of this " there shall be a fountain 
 opened to the house of David and to the in- 
 habitants of Jerusalem for sin and for unclean- 
 ness " (13 1) ; as a part of which cleansing, " the 
 names of the idols," together with "the prophets 
 and the unclean spirit," are to " pass out of the 
 land" (2). The destruction of the false prophets 
 is described with dramatic zest, and 13 3-6 reads 
 like a lively illustration of Jeremiah 23. 
 
 Chap. 13 7-9 is a disconnected fragment, from 
 which the catchword "in that day," that runs 
 through the context of chs. 12-14, is missing. 
 
86 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 It dwells on the tragic death of some religious 
 leader in Israel, one so exalted and near to God 
 that Jehovah calls him " My shepherd and the 
 man that is My fellow (or intimate)." This 
 calamity will result in the destruction of two- 
 thirds of the people ; the residue will pass 
 through the fire refined, and will thereafter 
 cleave to Jehovah. We know of no event to 
 which this little prophecy can be so naturally 
 attached as the death of Josiah in 608 B.C.; but 
 we are left to conjecture resjDecting the reference. 
 Probably the idea of the saved " remnant " 
 (transmitted from Isaiah), which is common 
 to this passage with 14 1.2, suggested its inser- 
 tion where it stands. On the other hand, 
 a number of critics, including Ewald and 
 Wellhausen, suppose the isolated verses to have 
 slipped out of their proper place at the end of 
 ch. 11, since they resume the figure of " Jehovah's 
 shepherd" which pervades 11 4-17 (see Vol. I, 
 p. 217). But the simile was almost a common- 
 place of prophecy; and 13 7-9 is in substance 
 incongruous with the conclusion of ch. 11, which 
 invokes Jehovah's vengeance on some " worthless 
 shepherd." There exists a sacred link between 
 the author of this stray oracle and the " earlier 
 Zechariah" of chs. 9-11, in the fact that both 
 were in our Lord's thoughts during His passion : 
 
AN OBSCURE EPISODE IN PROPHECY 87 
 
 from Zechariah 9 9 He took direction for His 
 Messianic entry into Jerusalem ; Zech. 13 7 
 He quoted as He walked down to Gethsemane, 
 in making excuse for the desertion of His dis- 
 ciples — " I will smite the shepherd, and the 
 sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad " 
 (Matt. 26 3i, Mark 14 27). Supposing Josiah the 
 smitten shepherd of 13 7, this devoted son of 
 David became, as he well deserved to be, a type 
 of the suffering Christ. 
 
 II. Chap. 14 opens with a second vision of Jeru- 
 salem besieged by " all the nations (heathen)." 
 
 (a) But this time the city is taken, and half 
 of its people are led away captive (vv. 1. 2). The 
 catastrophe is stated in concise matter-of-fact 
 terms, with no lamentation and no moralising. 
 As before, the enemy is not named ; but he is 
 one who has pressed " all nations " into his 
 service; their assault represents the combined 
 forces of heathendom. 
 
 (b) The siege having thus ended with the 
 overthrow of His city, Jehovah delivers His 
 counter-stroke (3-11) : " Then shall Jehovah go 
 forth and war against the nations." He will 
 fight, however, not with military arms, but by 
 effecting great convulsions of nature, which are 
 set forth somewhat in the manner of Habakkuk 
 3 3-11 (see pp. 70, 78). He cleaves through the 
 
88 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 mount of Olives a deep valley running east and 
 west (4. 5) ; He turns night for Jerusalem into 
 perpetual clay (e. 7 ; comp. Isa. 30 26 and 60 10. 20 ; 
 Rev. 21 25) ; He makes the droughty city a 
 source of " living waters " that flow to both 
 seas, east and west, through all seasons of the 
 year (s; comp. Joel 3 is, Isa. 33 21, Ezek. 47 1-12, 
 Rev. 22 1) ; He levels the hilly, broken land 
 north and south of the site into a plain, from 
 which the city will rise lofty and secure with 
 her ring of walls and towers and her replenished 
 population (10.11). Enthroned in this wondrous 
 New Jerusalem, " Jehovah shall reign over the 
 whole earth : in that day shall Jehovah be one 
 and alone, and His name one and alone" (9; 
 comp. 13 2; also Isa. 22.3 19 is. 23. 24, Zeph. 3 9, 
 Mai. 1 11). 
 
 (c) The above vision of Jerusalem's salvation 
 after her capture concludes with the threat of a 
 fearful plague, visiting both man and beast, on 
 the rebellious heathen who warred against her, 
 and who show their persistence in enmity by 
 refusing " to keep the feast of tabernacles " and 
 " to worship the king, Jehovah of hosts, at 
 Jerusalem " (12. 15-19) ; and with the promise that 
 everything in Jerusalem, from the dreaded war- 
 horses to the common kitchen-utensils, shall be 
 holy unto Jehovah, and " there shall no more be 
 
AN OBSCURE EPISODE IN PROPHECY 89 
 
 a Canaanite ia the house of Jehovah of hosts " 
 (20.21). 
 
 Vv. 13. u interrupt the connexion in which they 
 stand. They carry us back to the siege of 
 Jerusalem, and would be quite intelligible if 
 read after 12 2 — their proper place, according to 
 the view of many critics. They supply the 
 missing account of the effect on " the peoples," 
 and on Judah, of " the cup of reeling " which we 
 see administered in 12 2. 
 
 There is much in the standpoint and outlook 
 of the seer of these two visions that is peculiar 
 to himself, and some things that, as they stand, 
 quite baffle explanation. But the chief land- 
 marks of his position seem to be those of the 
 age of Jeremiah and the last days of Jerusalem, 
 between 608 and 586 B.C. To begin with, the 
 prophet's solicitude throughout is for " Judah 
 and Jerusalem" — no longer, as in chs. 9-11 
 (see Vol. I, pp. 201, 208-210), for " Ephraim and 
 Judah." A great siege of Jerusalem, for which 
 the heathen are gathering round and on the 
 issue of which turns the future of God's king- 
 dom, forms the primary subject of the whole 
 deliverance. This conflict is treated in imaginative 
 style, but one cannot suppose the siege itself 
 to be imaginary ; this would be to remove the 
 
90 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 substratum of the prophecy and to make it a mere 
 work of fancy — an interpretation incompatible 
 with the strong passion and vivid realism of 
 the composition. The prophet has an actual 
 crisis in the fate of Jerusalem before him. 
 Setting aside the Maccabrean epoch — which lay 
 quite beyond the period of the Nebi'im, and is 
 excluded by the gravest incongruities — we know 
 of two actual sieges of crucial moment in Old 
 Testament times, — that of Sennacherib in 701 
 and of Nebuchadrezzar in 587-6 B.C. In view 
 of 12 ii, the latter of these two dates is alone 
 possible. To the seer's view, Jerusalem is still 
 unfallen : the Maccabrean rising, on the other 
 hand, began with Jerusalem in the hands of 
 the heathen ; the struggle of the patriots was 
 for its recovery. In the first vision he expects 
 that she will stand, as hitherto, inviolable (122. 3 ; 
 comp. Obad. 17. 21, Joel 3 12-17, Isa. 29 i-s, 37 35, 
 Pss. 46 and 48) — this is not at all the post- 
 exilic strain. The second vision (ch. 14) amends 
 the first : the prophet now foresees " the city 
 taken, the houses rifled, the women ravished, 
 and half the city going forth into captivity " (2). 
 The captivity of Jerusalem is for him therefore 
 still in the future ; he nowhere alludes to any 
 distant exiles. 
 
 The prominence of "the house of David/' 
 
AN OBSCURE EPISODE IN PROPHECY 91 
 
 which appears at the head of the people both in 
 battle and in supplication (12 7-13 1), speaks for 
 the days when the monarchy was standing and 
 the welfare of city and nation was involved 
 in its leadership ; cotnp. Isa. 7 13, Zeph. 1 s, 
 Jer. 21 11. 12. It is true, as against this inference, 
 that the king remains nnmentionecl ; but this 
 silence may be accounted for by the character of 
 Josiah's unworthy sons, in whose reigns power 
 and responsibility rested with " the house " more 
 than the nominal ruler; hence in the Book of 
 Jeremiah "the princes" constantly figure " beside 
 the king" ; Zephaniah, during Josiah's minority, 
 equally ignores the king and threatens "the 
 princes " (see p. 25). 
 
 The two great sins from which " the house of 
 David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem " require 
 to be cleansed are, first, idolatry (13 2; comp. 
 Mic. 5 13-15, Isa. 2 8. is 31 6. 7, Jer. 2 26-28 7 17-20 etc., 
 Zeph. 1 4-6, Ezek. 14 is 18 etc.); and secondly, 
 false and apostate prophecy — evils conspicuous 
 in Jeremiah's and Ezekiel's denunciations uttered 
 on the eve of Jerusalem's fall (see Jer. 5 31 
 23 9-40, Ezek. 13 ; comp. Mic. 3 7). Here at least 
 the prophet speaks to the facts and deals with 
 the vices of his own day; to question this is 
 to take away all purpose from his work. But 
 if there be anything certain about post-exilic 
 
92 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 Jerusalem, it is that she was weaned from idolatry 
 and that this had ceased to be the national 
 danger. Add to this, that from the Ezra- 
 Nehemian era, and increasingly as time went on, 
 the profession of the prophet gave way to that 
 of the scribe and priest ; it is a voice out of the 
 Maccabaean age which complains, " There is no 
 more any prophet " (Ps. 74 9). " Traces " of 
 the above corruptions, it is argued, appear in the 
 days after the Exile : Zech. 13 2-6 speaks of the 
 wiping out of no mere traces, but of the preva- 
 lent and crying uncleanness of the times. One 
 has only to turn to the Book of Malachi follow- 
 ing this, to realize how different was the moral 
 atmosphere of the post-exilic from that of the 
 pre-exilic Jerusalem, which we are still conscious 
 of breathing here. 
 
 Zech. 12-14 contains two striking allusions to 
 local events, both referring to the past — how far 
 past we can only guess. The reminder of " the 
 earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah," 
 in 14 5 , is unmistakable. The words "ye shall 
 flee like as ye fled " at first sight appear to be 
 addressed to the generation who experienced this 
 memorable calamity (which furnished a date 
 also for the Book of Amos ; see Vol. I, p. 127), 
 whereas this prophecy is a century and a half 
 later at the least. The reminiscence is, at any 
 
AN OBSCURE EPISODE IN PROPHECY 93 
 
 rate, more natural before the Exile, while Jeru- 
 salem preserved a continuous memory. The 
 overthrow by Nebuchadrezzar effected such a 
 dislocation in the city-consciousness, that the 
 comparison, when regarded as made in a later age, 
 assumes an artificial and antiquarian character. 
 
 The other local allusion, which we have 
 already noted (12 11) — " In that day there shall 
 be a great mourning in Jerusalem, as the 
 mourning of Hadadrimmon 1 in the valley of 
 Megiddon" — has received more than one inter- 
 pretation. Beside the familiar explanation, which 
 finds this example in the grief of the Judseans 
 over Josiah's fall at the battle of Megicldo 
 (2 Kings 2329.30; 2 Chron. 35 24), there is the 
 theory of Hitzig, endorsed by Robertson Smith 
 and others, who saw the exemplary " mourning" 
 in the annual lamentation of the Syrians over 
 Adonis (identified with " Hadad," and this 
 
 1 This word occurs nowhere else. It is presumed to be a 
 local name. " Hadad " — an Aramasan title of deity — occurs 
 in several non-Israelite personal names (see Gen. 36 35, etc., 
 2 Sam. 8 3, 1 Kings 11 14, 1 Chron. 1 30). The LXX translators 
 may have had simply " Kimmon " (pomegranate) before them, 
 which is a rather common place-name (comp. 14 10 below). 
 Jerome reports finding an " Adadremmon " near the site of 
 Jezreel, and this has been identified with the modern village 
 of "Rumanneh." But Jerome's statement is unsupported, 
 and the identification is geographically questionable. 
 
94 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 AraniEean deity again with the " Rimnion " of 
 2 Kings 5 is) ; but it is improbable to the verge 
 of impossibility, that the Hebrew author— this 
 author particularly, in view of 13 2« — would have 
 allowed himself to likeu Jerusalem's lamenting 1 
 for its sin before Jehovah to that notorious 
 heathen celebration : see Ezek. 8 is. 14 upon this 
 subject (where "Tamniuz" = the classical Adonis). 
 The mention of Megiddo is good ground for con- 
 necting the " great mourning " with Josiah's fall, 
 whose tragic end his peojde, after his burial at 
 Jerusalem (2 Kings 23 30), may well have com- 
 memorated in following years on the scene of the 
 disaster. Bat subsequently to the fall of Jeru- 
 salem, the remembrance of this loss, so keen at 
 the time when the prophet writes, was eclipsed 
 by more awful calamities. The earthquake of 
 Uzziah's time was a unique event in Palestine, 
 to be kept in mind for generations. Not so with 
 Josiah's death in battle : if the allusion to this 
 occurrence were certain, we might build upon it 
 as being by itself a sure pre-exilic datum. 
 
 "While the features of Zech. 12-14 thus far 
 observed go to associate the author with the 
 epoch of Josiah's sons, there are things here to 
 which we find no parallel in other records of the 
 time — some of them surprising in a contem- 
 porary and fellow-worker of Jeremiah. Our 
 
AN OBSCURE EPISODE IN PROPHECY 95 
 
 author expected at first a favourable termination 
 to the siege of Jerusalem (12 1-9), already com- 
 menced or approaching. He predicts the defeat 
 of the beleaguering nations in highly coloured 
 language, much after the style of Joel 3 9 17 1 (see 
 Vol. I, pp. 111-113). Attending this undeserved 
 mercy, in the prophet's fond hopes, a signal 
 repentance will take place on the part of rulers 
 and citizens. Jeremiah formed a more despairing 
 and, as it proved, a truer judgement of the state 
 of the nation ; from the outset he foretold nothing 
 but ruin (1 is-is}. Later on, this prophet, con- 
 vinced by events, came round to the same view 
 (for one cannot doubt that the seer of 14 1.2 and 
 of 12 s is one person). Even so, he passes lightly 
 over the city's fall : his thoughts are full of the 
 deliverance lying beyond, and of the splendour of 
 
 1 Joel's vision of the slaughter of the heathen assailing 
 Jerusalem is recalled by the Judsean crisis of the sixth cen- 
 tury, and is reproduced in new colours by the visionary of 
 Zech. 12 2 (14 13. 14)9. Reasons were given in Ch. vi of Vol. I 
 for rejecting the prevalent critical view as to the late post- 
 exilic date of Joel. The two Books — Joel and Zech. 12-14 — 
 must stand or fall together in this respect. The interpreters 
 who treat these as products of the closing age of Israelite 
 prophecy, see in them imitative compositions wearing a 
 studied archaic stamp — a judgement based on a priori 
 theories as to the post-exilic origin of the " priestly" and the 
 " apocalyptic " ideas in Judaism, against which, in the case 
 of these writings, the literary sense rebels. 
 
96 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 God's final kingdom in Zion (14 3-11). He is an 
 eminently eschatological prophet, able to project 
 himself away from the miserable present and to 
 live by imagination in the light of " the latter 
 days" (Isa. 2 2). He was an optimist, Jeremiah 
 a pessimist, by temperament ; he is an idealist, 
 Jeremiah a stern realist. His intuition is poetical 
 and apocalyptic, and moves in a visionary world 
 created in part for him already by Joel and 
 Isaiah ; Jeremiah is prosaic, downright, sternly 
 ethical, brushing aside all conventions and pre- 
 conceptions that do not square with the remorse- 
 less facts of the time. In the last chapter we 
 discovered Habakkuk viewing the Chaldean 
 conquest in another light, and moralising upon 
 it in quite another sense, from Jeremiah : we 
 need not be surprised that a third contemporary 
 teacher of Israel interpreted the same historic 
 crisis on lines diverging from those of both his 
 inspired companions. These differing doctrines 
 are not for that reason incompatible. The 
 representations of Jeremiah have so preoccupied 
 our minds and determined our conceptions of the 
 attitude and message of prophecy at the epoch 
 of the Fall of Jerusalem, that it is difficult — even 
 more so than in Habakkuk's case — to realize the 
 legitimacy of this writer's point of view. Yet 
 it is necessary that we should do so, if we are 
 
AN OBSCURE EPISODE IN PROPHECY 97 
 
 to understand the tenacity with which Isaiah's 
 doctrine of the inviolability of Zion continued to 
 be held, and the force with which this idea re- 
 asserted itself after the Exile and wrought in the 
 re-creation of the Jewish nationality and the 
 resurrection of the Holy City. 
 
 The fluctuations of thought thus marked, as 
 between chs. 12 and 14, were natural enough 
 in the course of the years 608-586 B.C. At some 
 moments Jeremiah himself had gleams of hope 
 (see Jer. 22 1-4 26 3) ; and the act of reformation 
 described in Jer. 34 8-10, for the short time it 
 lasted, must have encouraged an anticipation of 
 Jehovah's interference, even at the eleventh hour. 
 One can imagine Zech. 12 i-13 2 being delivered 
 on the spur of this occasion, when " the spirit of 
 grace and of supplication" did seem for the nonce 
 to have come on king and people, and they pro- 
 fessed and actually began to " do that which was 
 right in " Jehovah's " eyes." The promise of 
 escape given as from Jehovah, in ch. 12 sff., was 
 tacitly contingent on Jerusalem's conversion, and 
 lapsed when that conversion proved abortive. 
 Ezekiel in ch. 33 has given us the rationale of 
 such unfulfilled predictions ; he justifies the 
 apparent contradiction of God's alternate threats 
 and promises, possibly with this recent instance 
 before his mind. Noticeable variations occur in 
 in. 7 
 
98 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 Isaiah's forecasts of the issue of Sennacherib's 
 siege : at one juncture, the levity of the citizens 
 drove him to foretell the very worst fate for 
 them (in Isa. 22 i-u ; see Vol. II, pp. 63-65) ; for 
 all that, in the end he announced, and speedily 
 witnessed, a glorious deliverance. Isaiah rose 
 from fear to hope ; this messenger of God sank 
 from hope to despair, when the prospect of 
 amendment proved delusive. Prophecy is not 
 the utterance of hard-and-fast predictions, express- 
 ing the decrees of a mere Divine sovereignty ; it 
 springs from the free intercourse of the living 
 God with living men and changes its voice with 
 their changing disposition, "judging the house 
 of Israel every one according to his ways." 
 
 To many critics the ideal (apocalyptic) picture 
 of renovated Jerusalem in 14 4-n yields evidence 
 of an imitating hand, and therefore of a late 
 origin for the work to which it belongs. On 
 the contrary, we recognise in this passage the 
 air and stamp of originality. Its terse vigour, 
 its bold traits of description, and the fine poetic 
 combination of its elements belong to the richer 
 strain of Hebrew writing, to the time of the 
 creators and not the copyists. Of its four fea- 
 tures — the great valley cleaving the Mount of 
 Olives, the perpetual sunshine, the double peren- 
 nial stream rising in Jerusalem, and the plain 
 
AN OBSCURE EPISODE IN PROPHECY 99 
 
 levelled around the mountain-city — the first and 
 last are peculiar to this landscape ; they form 
 signal improvements, it should be observed, upon 
 Jerusalem's natural surroundings in respect 
 both of defence and fertility, such as would be 
 suggested by the experience of a siege. This is 
 still more true of the third distinction of the New 
 Jerusalem, its copious " living waters." This 
 great desideratum of the existing city is ideally 
 supplied by a succession of prophets — by Joel 
 first (3 is), in another form by Isaiah (33 21 ; see 
 Vol. IT, pp. 121-122), and by Ezekiel (47 1-12) who 
 thinks, however, of the redemption of the eastern 
 wilderness and the Dead Sea by the temple- 
 stream rather than of any advantage to Jerusalem 
 herself. Ezekiel was a great borrower, and it 
 is more probable that his laboured and method- 
 ical account of the new river was suo'srested 
 by the vivid little picture before us, than that 
 the obligation lay on the other side. If our 
 author makes the waters flow both east and 
 west, this is due to his geographical sense, not 
 to a desire to enhance upon Ezekiel. The pro- 
 mise of a nightless day may be a reflexion of 
 Isa. 30 26 ; but if so, it assumes a fresh and 
 touching expression. St John's " new Jeru- 
 salem" derives more from Zech. 14 than from 
 any other Old Testament source ; the parallel 
 
ioo THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 prophetic pictures, as we see them, have a 
 parallel historical basis in the double siege and 
 destruction of the Holy City, by Nebuchadrezzar 
 and by Titus. 
 
 Five points in the circuit of the city are 
 specified in 14 10, two being named only in this 
 passage and by Jeremiah (20 2 37 13 38 7 31 3s), 1 
 viz. " Benjamin's gate" and "the corner gate" 
 — a coincidence speaking for approximate date — 
 while a third, "the tower of Chanan'el," is 
 known besides only from Jer. 31 3s and Neh. 3 1. 
 The two other points noted in the circamval- 
 lation, " the first gate " and " the king's wine- 
 presses," are mentioned nowhere else ; the last 
 of these landmarks has a pre-exilic sound. 
 When it is foretold that Jerusalem shall "be 
 inhabited" and shall "dwell in her place," this 
 is because the writer expects the city to be 
 captured forthwith and half emptied (14 2), and 
 is no proof that she now lies in ruins. 
 
 The priestly feeling of this prophet, which 
 shows itself by his insisting that the heathen shall 
 attend at the Feast of Tabernacles in token 
 of their submission to Jehovah after His " day " 
 
 1 Vv. 38-40 of Jer. 31 are marked as unauthentic by a number 
 of critics, for reasons that appear slight enough — partly on 
 account of fcheir coincidences with Zech. 14, assumed to be 
 late. TLe language of ver. 40 is quite Jeremiah's. 
 
AN OBSCURE EPISODE IN PROPHECY 101 
 
 of triumph, appears to many a sure sign of 
 late production. Here, however, as in the case 
 of Joel (see Vol. I, pp. 103, 104), it must be 
 maintained that Israelite sacerdotalism was no 
 late, post-exilic development ; Hosea and Isaiah 
 demonstrate its existence and strength in early 
 times, by their protests against its errors ; the 
 priestly narratives and codes of the Pentateuch, 
 granting their exilic or post-exilic redaction, 
 were the offspring of a long and vigorous de- 
 velopment from Moses downward. Ezekiel, 
 contemporary with our author (as we suppose), 
 presents a thorough-going combination of priest 
 and prophet in one person. 
 
 " The Feast of Tabernacles " (bearing here, 
 by the way, its Deuteronomic name) was in 
 ancient times " the feast of Jehovah " for all 
 Israel (1 Kings 8 2 12 32 ; comp. Judges 21 19-21), 
 though later it became second in importance to 
 the Feast of Passover. As the vintage festival 
 crowning the agricultural year, "it was common 
 to Israel and the nations round about them," l 
 and therefore lent itself to the purpose of Zech. 
 14 16. During the siege, we can understand how 
 much this feast would be hindered, and how 
 delightful its celebration would appear to those 
 cooped up in city walls. If the prophet wished 
 
 1 See Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, iv. G99#. 
 
IQ2 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 to depict a future community of worship between 
 Israelite and Gentile, there was no happier way 
 of doing this than by representing all nations 
 as gathered to Jerusalem for the autumn festival. 
 Subsequently to the time of Ezra, more detailed 
 ritual conformity would surely have been de- 
 manded from the submissive Gentiles. 
 
 The legend " Holiness to Jehovah," that will 
 be read " on the bells of the horses " (14 20), 
 belongs to the priestly Torah f see Exod. 28 36) ; it 
 was doubtless an old watchword of the priest- 
 hood (comp. Mic. 4 13 ; Isa. 23 is). The notion 
 of the sanctification of Israel's secular life did 
 not originate after the Exile, but lay at the basis 
 of the national covenant (Exod. 19 5. e) ; it fills 
 the Law of Holiness (Lev. 19-26), which took 
 shape, according to the critics, under EzekieFs 
 influence. The place, however, not the people, 
 becomes the subject of this consecration ; since 
 Jerusalem is made the centre of a world-wide 
 worship of Jehovah (10). For this reason, it 
 appears, the cooking-" pots," needed in pre- 
 paring the sacrificial meals, must be huge as 
 " the bowls before the altar " (so, after Well- 
 hausen, we understand ver. 2o?>) ; and " every pot 
 in Jerusalem and in Judah " will be in requisi- 
 tion for this blessed use (21). This is just a 
 priest's way of .imagining the throng of feasters 
 
AN OBSCURE EPISODE IN PROPHECY 103 
 
 coming up to the house of Jehovah. The in- 
 scription on " the bells of the horses " means 
 that even these instruments of invasion, the 
 terror of Israel and a chief aversion of the 
 prophets (see 12 4 10 5 ; Micah 5 10; Hab. 1 8 ; 
 also Dent. 17 ie, etc.), will hereafter be pressed 
 into Jehovah's service. 
 
 With the priestly habit of mind we may 
 associate the extraordinary picture drawn in 
 12 10-14 of a universal repentance, the participators 
 in which are distributed into their different 
 " families " (or " clans ") in the traditional 
 hereditary method, while " the wives " in each 
 group make their lamentation apart. In Eastern 
 usage women play a prominent and specific part 
 in mournings over the dead (comp. 2 Chron. 35 25, 
 Jer. 9 17-20 ; Exod. 19 15 is, perhaps, also relevant 
 here) ; and this is the case before us (10). ' - The 
 family of the house of Levi" takes its place 
 beside the two royal clans ; the priestly order 
 is thus named after the manner of Deuteronomy, 
 in which " priests " and " Levites " are identified. 
 The clan of the Shimeites (with Shim'i for 
 name-father ; Exod. 6 ie. 17) was for some reason 
 conspicuous to the writer's mind amongst the 
 Levites. It is interesting to find " the house 
 of Nathan " specified along with u the house of 
 David"; for it was through Nathan that the house 
 
104 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 of David survived when the leading Solomonic 
 branch became extinct, so that Nathan has the 
 honour to figure in the ancestry of Jesus Christ 
 (Luke 3 31). This is the single occurrence of his 
 name (about half-way) between the genealogies 
 of 2 Samuel (with 1 Chronicles) and Luke; it 
 indicates that the minor Davidic line maintained 
 its pedigree throughout. The existence of two 
 royal clans goes to account for tbe importance 
 attaching to " the princes " during this period ; 
 they confront us everywhere in the Book of 
 Jeremiah, and half eclipse the king. 
 
 The " mourning " which the prophet looks 
 forward to is an act of penitent remorse for the 
 death of some pious leader, over whom the 
 nation will grieve as one would for a "firstborn" 
 or an " only son." "Who this servant of Jehovah 
 was, that had fallen a victim to the blind anger 
 of princes and people, we cannot tell. The text 
 of 12 io is obscure, and possibly corrupt, at this 
 point. 1 "We know from the Book of Jeremiah 
 (26 20-23) of one martyr of the period, slain by 
 Jehoiakim, viz. " 'Uriyyah, the son of ShemaSahu 
 
 1 In the received reading, "upon ««; whom they pierced," 
 the small Hebrew letter denoting " me " should probably be 
 deleted, and we may read " upon . . . whom they pierced," 
 recognising a lacuna where the object of the preposition has 
 dropped out. 
 
AN OBSCURE EPISODE IN PROPHECY 105 
 
 of Kiryath-y'arim," a disciple of Jeremiah who 
 provoked by too plain speaking " the king, with 
 all his mighty men, and all his princes," and 
 whose extradition from Egypt Jehoiakim took 
 the trouble to secnre. This crime inculpated the 
 nation. The whole interests of prophecy were 
 involved in Uriah's murder, and Jeremiah nar- 
 rowly escaped the like doom. The humiliation 
 prescribed is not too great for so flagrant and 
 public a deed of wrong. If, despite its committal 
 (perhaps not very recent at the time of writing), 
 the city is to be delivered from its besiegers, 
 deliverance can only be looked for on condition 
 that the guilty purge themselves from this 
 dreadful stain of blood. 
 
 The most startling circumstance in Zech. 12-14 
 is the quarrel between Jerusalem and Judah 
 plainly signified in 14 14, and presumably implied 
 in 12 2. 1 Supposing such a strife to have arisen, 
 or to be contemplated by the prophet, we under- 
 stand 12 5 to indicate Judah's relenting toward 
 the mother-city, with whose enemies the country- 
 people at first had taken part (12 ib 14 14a) : " the 
 
 1 We should probably read the last clause of ver. 2 thus, 
 " and Judah also shall be in [take part in] the siege against 
 Jerusalem," omitting the preposition l al (upon or against) 
 before " Judah," comp. the rendering of LXX and Vulgate. 
 Then vv. 13. 14 of ch. 14 come in aptly to carry on the sense of 
 12 2b, and supply the starting-point for the prediction of 12 3-9. 
 
106 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 chiefs of Juclah shall say in their heart, The 
 inhabitants of Jerusalem are my strength in 
 Jehovah of hosts their God " ; they recognise 
 that the ruin of the sacred capital will be fatal 
 to themselves. So they turn on the besiegers 
 in whose camp they were found, and, throwing 
 them into confusion by this unexpected rising, 
 prove to them " like a pan of fire amongst 
 wood and like a torch of fire among sheaves," 
 so that " they devour all the peoples round 
 about " (12 e). Thus the temporary revolt of the 
 Judsean countrymen becomes the salvation of 
 the city instead of being its destruction, and 
 the honour of the victory rests with " the tents 
 of Jndah " («). Such is the only plausible 
 explanation of this most difficult passage. The 
 turn of events the prophet anticipates is, in any 
 case, unique. 
 
 We do not hear from any other source of any 
 such rupture between Jerusalem and the Judaeans, 
 either after or before the Exile. The relations 
 of city and country in the MaccabaBan wars agree 
 with the situation here given in so far that Judah 
 supplied Jerusalem with her deliverers ; but the 
 civil strife represented as bringing about the 
 situation of this passage had no counterpart at 
 that time, and Jerusalem was then in possession 
 of the heathen at the outbreak of the war, not 
 
AN OBSCURE EPISODE IN PROPHECY 107 
 
 under siege by them (see pp. 89-90 above). At 
 the same time, though we have no proof of actual 
 schism, there were symptoms of contention and 
 conditions tending to breed enmity betwixt the 
 capital and the rest of Judah in the times 
 leading up to 587, which deserve attention. 
 King Amon was assassinated, as it appears from 
 2 Kings 21 23. 24, by his courtiers at Jerusalem, 
 and the murder was avenged by "the people of 
 the land " — i.e. the country-folk — who " made 
 Josiah his son king in his stead." Josiah's 
 reformation, involving the destruction of the 
 local sanctuaries in favour of the great city- 
 temple and the removal of the country priests, 
 seemed an ill return toward those who had raised 
 him to the throne ; it brought with it dis- 
 turbance and loss to the districts affected and 
 a violation of long-cherished rural sentiment 
 and custom, which, though suppressed under his 
 vigorous rule and his powerful religious ascend- 
 ency, would naturally smoulder in the popular 
 mind and may well have broken out under his 
 successors and when misfortune appeared to 
 mark the centralizing policy with Jehovah's dis- 
 pleasure. Add to this inevitable cause of ill-blood 
 the extravagance of Jehoiakim in costly building 
 — an old grievance of the rurals against the city 
 nobles — which at a time of national poverty 
 
108 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 would certainly aggravate rebellious feeling 
 towards the capital. It must be remembered 
 that the writer is predicting, and that condition- 
 ally, what the future may bring forth. He was 
 probably aware of a bitter temper amongst the 
 tribesmen, that would on occasion burst into open 
 war and might lead them to aid in the first 
 instance the enemies of the throne. As we have 
 seen, events did not follow the course augured in 
 chap. 12 (pp. 07-98), and ch. 14 gives an amended 
 forecast of the future. But there must have 
 been a vera causa for the idea entertained in 
 14 14 (to follow 12 2), that " Judah shall fight 
 against Jerusalem." The expectation of this 
 throws a new light upon the troubles and con- 
 fusions of the last days of Jerusalem. 
 
 Analysis of Zechariah 12-14 
 
 The Siege of Jerusalem and After 
 
 The Title and Introduction : chap. 12 1 x 
 
 I. First Vision of the Siege and its 
 Sequel : chap. 12 2-13 e. 
 
 1. Jerusalem made a Gup of Reeling to the 
 Nations, 12 2-9. 
 
 1 The title is, no doubt, editorial ; it is in line with that 
 of 9 1 and of Mai. 1 l ; see Vol. I, pp. 191-192. The fine intro- 
 ductory sentence — " Thus saith Jehovah, who stretcheth out 
 
AN OBSCURE EPISODE IN PROPHECY 109 
 
 (a) Judah sharing in the League against her, 12 2b 
 and 14 13. 14. 
 
 (b) The Experience of the Besiegers, 12 3. 4. 
 
 (c) Judah turning on her Allies in Defence of 
 Jerusalem, 5-7. 
 
 (d) The City's Glorious Deliverance, 8. 9. 
 
 2. The National Repentance and Purification 
 that ensues, 12 10-I.3 c. 
 
 (a) A Mourning over One Slain by the People's 
 Sin, 10. 11. 
 
 (b) The Royal and Priestly Clans foremost in the 
 Act of Penitence, 12-14. 
 
 (c) A Fountain opened for Cleansing the 
 Penitents, 13 1. 
 
 (d) The Land purified from Idolatry, 2 . 
 
 (e) Its False Prophets repudiated and put to 
 Shame, 3-6. 
 
 [A fragmentary Oracle relating, perhaps, to 
 Josiatis death and the purifying affliction that is 
 to follow it : chap. 13 7-0.] 
 
 the heavens and layeth the foundation of the earth, and 
 formeth the spirit of man within him" — is often regarded 
 as an echo of Isa. 42 s and 48 13 (exilic) ; but the compact- 
 ness and impressive force of the passage as it stands here 
 bespeak its originality ; Am. 4 13 and Mic. 6 1. 2 are somewhat 
 similar — the latter passage certainly anterior to Zech. 12 1. 
 Hab. 3 develops the thought of the oneness of Jehovah in 
 His works of creation and redemption ; see p. 70. This 
 overture accords with the grand imaginative style of the 
 whole piece. 
 
no THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 II. Second Vision of the Siege and its 
 Sequel : chap. 14. 
 
 1. The Capture and Sack of the City, 1. 2. 
 
 2. Jehovah, in His turn, declares War against 
 the Nations, 3. 
 
 3. Great Convulsions of Nature, amidst which a 
 New Jerusalem is born and Jehovah proclaimed 
 " King over all the earth," 4-11 : 
 
 (a) A Valley cleft through the Mount of 
 Olives, 4. 5. 
 
 (b) Night abolished for Jerusalem's Inhabit- 
 ants, G. 7. 
 
 (c) Perennial rivers flowing east and west from 
 the City, 8. 
 
 (d) The Country north and south levelled to 
 a Plain, above which the City rises high and 
 secure, 10. 11. 
 
 4. The Plagues striking the Heathen who refuse 
 to keep the Feast of Tabernacles at Jerusalem, 
 12. 15-19 [vv. 13. 14 were inserted under I, la ; see p. 89]. 
 
 5. Jerusalem's Full Consecration as the Centre of 
 Jehovah's World-wide Worship, 20. 21. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 THE BOOK OF JEREMIAH 
 
 Loose Structure of the Book — First Publication of 
 Jeremiah's Prophecies— Contents of Roll burnt by 
 Jehoiakim— Place of chap. 1 — Second Edition of 
 the Roll — Collection of Royal Oracles— The Fig- 
 baskets — Tenor of chs. 1-25 — Later Memoirs of 
 Jeremiah — Book of the Future of Israel and 
 Judah — Hopefulness of Jeremiah's Later Teach- 
 ing — Suspected Interpolations — Restoration of 
 Ephraim — Baruch's Reminiscences of Jeremiah — 
 Stories of the Siege — Jeremiah and the Remnant— 
 Baruch's Collaboration in Authorship — The Book 
 sunk in Euphrates — Against Babylon— The Foreign 
 Oracles (46-49) — Older Oracles incorporated— Order 
 of chapters in LXX — Historical Postscript — 
 Analysis of the whole Book. 
 
 THE Book of Jeremiah is the longest in the 
 Bible, and the loosest in its structure ; 
 " scarcely another book in the Old Testament 
 gives so much the impression of being thrown 
 together without a plan, as does that of 
 
 Jeremiah " (Cornill). This impression is modified 
 
 in 
 
U2 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 by closer examination ; but it remains true that, 
 while the contents follow in a general way the 
 chronology of the superscription and the con- 
 nexion of thought in particular sections is often 
 well maintained, the Book as a whole exhibits 
 no consistent scheme, and the order of time is 
 repeatedly violated without any evident reason 
 for this in the subject-matter. The reader who 
 desires to gain an intelligent grasp of the 
 progress of events and the development of 
 thought and character during the long course 
 of Jeremiah's ministry from the volume as it 
 stands, finds himself much at a loss. His 
 embarrassment is increased when on turning to 
 the Greek version he discovers what ajmears to 
 be a different edition of the Book, with the 
 chapters running in another order and one-eighth 
 of the Hebrew text missing altogether. The 
 composition of this book of prophecy is a difficult 
 problem ; we must reduce its contents to order 
 and set them in the light of the contemporary 
 history, if we wish to apprehend the work of the 
 author as a living whole, to gather the lessons 
 of Jeremiah's life and to weigh the sum of his 
 contributions to the religion of Israel and the 
 building up of the Church of God. 
 
 1. Fortunately, the Book itself provides in 
 chap. 36 a clue to its history, which we can 
 
THE BOOK OF JEREMIAH 113 
 
 follow for a considerable distance. We learn 
 from ver. 4 that Jeremiah had a secretary Baruch l 
 (" Barak ben-Neriyyah, ben-Machseyah," 32 12), 
 who at a certain date " wrote from the month of 
 Jeremiah all the words of Jehovah, which He 
 had spoken unto him, upon a roll of a book." 
 This was in " the fourth year of Jehoiakim " 
 the fateful year of the battle of Carchemish 
 (605 B.C.) which gave to Nebuchadrezzar the 
 sceptre of the East (see pp. 55, 65), being the 
 twenty-third year of Jeremiah's ministry (comp. 
 1 1-4 25 3). The volume referred to was to 
 contain " all the words that " Jehovah " had 
 spoken unto " Jeremiah " against Israel and 
 against Juclah, and against all the nations, from 
 the day that" He first "spoke unto" him "up to 
 the present day" (36 2) — it was, in fact, a digest 
 of Jeremiah's prophecies of doom uttered from 
 628 to 605 B.C. This roll, we presume, formed 
 
 1 Baruch's brother, named Seraiah, accompanied the 
 king Zedekiah on his visit to Babylon in the capacity of 
 "quarter-master" (5159). It would appear, therefore, that 
 Baruch belonged to the nobility of Jerusalem, a fact which 
 accounts for the warning against ambition given to him in 
 45 6, and helps to explain the protection which Jeremiah 
 repeatedly received, despite his unpopularity and the enmity 
 of the royal court. It may be inferred also from 45 5 that 
 Baruch was in the year 604 a young man, under the temptation 
 to pursue a political career. His devotion to Jeremiah 
 speaks for his self-sacrifice, constancy, and religious spirit. 
 III. 8 
 
114 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 the nnclens of the Book of Jeremiah. It is 
 possible, and even likely, that Jeremiah had by 
 him notes in writing of his earlier addresses, 
 but he is now for the first time instructed to put 
 together a continuous " book." The expression 
 " all the words " in this memorandum does not 
 signify a verbatim report of Jeremiah's past 
 preaching, but such a rehearsal of its substance 
 as the circumstances permitted ; in this repro- 
 duction, made for a specific purpose, of speeches 
 delivered some of them twenty years ago, it was 
 inevitable that they should be coloured and their 
 form of presentation affected by the situation of 
 the author at the time of writing. 
 
 Being dictated mainly from memory, prophecies 
 extending over three-and-twenty years cannot have 
 been reproduced exactly as they were spoken. It 
 was the purpose of the prophet to preserve and 
 lay before the people a compend of his ideas and 
 teaching, his judgement upon the past history of 
 the people and on their present condition, and his 
 convictions regarding the inevitable issues in the 
 future, without much regard to the circumstances 
 in which the ideas had been originally expressed. 
 Hence these earlier chapters are fragmentary, and 
 without connexion ; passages in the same chapter 
 may belong to different situations (A. B. Davidson) 
 
 The red I thus prepared by Baruch contained a 
 
THE BOOK OF JEREMIAH 115 
 
 number of sections of " three or four leaves " 
 each x (36 23) — it was therefore of considerable 
 compass ; but it was not too long for continuous 
 reading to the assembly of the people, not too 
 long to be publicly read three times over, 
 seemingly, in one day — first to the congregation 
 at the temple by Baruch (10), then by Barnch 
 again to the gathering of " princes " (11-15), and 
 lastly, after some interval, by Jehudi to Jehoiakim 
 and the lords in waiting at the winter-palace 
 round the fire (20-26). Now, can we recover this 
 original " book of Jeremiah " ? We observe, 
 in attempting to determine its limits, (1) that it 
 was composed of prophecies of rebuke and 
 judgement 2 addressed to communities — " against 
 Israel, etc."; (2) that it was written "from 
 Jeremiah's mouth " — a condition excluding the 
 narratives relating to him in which he figures in 
 the third person ; (3) that it covered only the 
 first half of Jeremiah's career, up to the year 
 605; (4) that it was limited to what could be 
 deliberately read in an hour or two, and within 
 
 1 The meaning of this verse seems to be that the king 
 destroyed the MS. 'piecemeal, cutting off and flinging into 
 the fire three or four leaves at a time, as Jehudi finished 
 reading each section. 
 
 - This does not forbid the inclusion of incidental passages 
 of entreaty and promise, or confession, such as 3 22-4 2 and 
 7 3-7. 
 
n6 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 the patience of a large popular assembly. These 
 conditions are fulfilled, if we identify with the 
 " roll of a book " written out by Baruch and 
 read to the people in 605-4 B.C. chs. 2-6, relating 
 to the pre-reformation days of Josiah's reign ; 
 ch. 11 l-u (or -it), relating to the Covenant of the 
 year 621; chs. 7-10 (excluding 9 lis-lOio), 1 
 occasioned by the crisis of the year 608 ; and 
 
 1 Chap. 10 17-25 is the immediate continuation of 9 17-22, 
 and the proper conclusion of the great discourse of judge- 
 ment on Judah beginning in 7 1. 2. The interpolated matter 
 is made up of three disconnected paragraphs : (a) 9 23. -ji, an 
 apophthegm akin to the five that are strung together in 
 17 5-13; these may have belonged to some collection of 
 Jeremiah's aphoristic sayings ; why this particular aphorism 
 should have been interjected here, it is hard to say. 
 (A) 9 25. 26, a short oracle of doom coupling Judah with the 
 nations — circumcised and uncircumcised together — that might 
 have found a place in ch. 25 1.5-31, but is astray where it 
 stands. The above are true sayings of Jeremiah, but out of 
 place. (e) Ch. 10 l-ic is a discourse of different style and 
 type altogether, bearing the distinctive marks of later Jewish 
 literature. It resembles Deutero-Isaiah, Pss. 115 and 135, 
 also Wisdom 14 ff. and Baruch 6 in the Apocrypha ; and 
 appears to be addressed to exiled and faithful Jews surrounded 
 by idolatry. Vv. 12-16 reappear in the oracle against Babylon, 
 51 15-19 — a coincidence which gives some clue to the date of 
 this homily. Ver. 11 is in the Aramaic language (like Ezra 
 4 8-6 is and Dan. 2 4-7 28), as though given for a watchword 
 to be used by Israelites confronting their foreign neighbours. 
 The LXX varies from the Hebrew text in this section more 
 than commonly, the best copies omitting vv. 6-8 and 10, and 
 reading: ver. 5 after 9. 
 
THE BOOK OF JEREMIAH 117 
 
 ch. 25, the great oracle of 605 B.C., in which the 
 prophet, takes round the wine-cup of Jehovah's 
 wrath to " the nations." This makes a compact 
 and fairly homogeneous volume, containing some 
 ten chapters and about six thousand words. 1 It 
 does not seem likely that, for the occasion in 
 view, Jeremiah entered into much detail in 
 his Dooms " against the nations " ; the power- 
 ful summary of 25 is ff. would be a sufficient 
 deliverance on this part of the subject for 
 the immediate purpose ; it was expanded into 
 the collection of oracles against foreign peoples 
 (46-51), which is placed at the end of the Book 
 (see pp. 139-140). 
 
 Chap. 1 might be included in the definition 
 of 36 2, taken with a little latitude, and its 
 addition would not add unreasonably to the 
 matter which Baruch had to read to the temple- 
 multitude ; but on the whole this preface seems 
 more suitable for the second edition of the 
 volume, in which there were " added besides 
 many like words " (36 32). The words of 2 1-3 
 
 1 Allowance should be made in this estimate for possible 
 later accretions to the original text. On the other hand, it is 
 possible that the sections of the roll were here and there cut 
 down in the readjustments and adaptations necessary for 
 later editions. It is difficult to think that the covenant- 
 oracle of 11 1-14 (or -17) was not at one time more 
 complete. 
 
u8 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 form an admirable introduction to the roll as it 
 was first composed for public reading. 
 
 2. Having now, conjecturally, recovered from 
 Jehoiakim's brasier the primary book of Jeremiah, 
 let us cast about for the " many like words " 
 that " were added " in re-writing it. The new 
 copy was not provided for use at a single public 
 reading ; the authors would be free, therefore, 
 to make additions of any kindred matter worthy 
 of record and necessary for completeness. But 
 the other conditions previously stated still hold 
 good : (1) Jeremiah in dictating to Barnch 
 would, presumably, sj)eak of himself in the first 
 person ; (2) the larger book ranged over the 
 years 628-604 ; (3) it was a book of doom, 
 not of promise, containing in its additions 
 " like words " to those already inscribed ; and 
 (4), if we are to press the terms of 36 32 
 strictly, the added matter served to supplement 
 the earlier work, and was not interwoven 
 with it. 
 
 Chap. 1 4-19, as we have intimated, supplies 
 the natural introduction to this more permanent 
 collection of Jeremiah's prophecies of judgement. 
 The personal reminiscences which we find scat- 
 tered through chs. 11-20 of the canonical Book 
 would also find a fitting place in the enlarged 
 edition, since they are, in common with chap. 1, 
 
THE BOOK OF JEREMIAH 119 
 
 pieces justificatwes, serving to vindicate the 
 prophet's attitude and to explain the necessity 
 laid upon him. The years 605-4 formed a 
 critical epoch for Jeremiah's personal experience 
 no less than for his public mission (see Ch. 
 xxvi below), and it was appropriate that he 
 should review, from the position in which he 
 now stands, God's past dealings with his soul 
 and reveal the inner side of the strange ministry 
 he is called to exercise. 1 The autobiographical 
 matter, with accompanying scenes and discourses, 
 that was thus added to the original Book of 
 Doom, may have embraced chs. 1 4-19, 11 is-12 6 2 , 
 
 1 For the similar motive that led Isaiah to write ch. 6, or 
 his second published book, see Vol. II, p. 41. 
 
 2 Ch. 11 1-17 we have included, with some doubt, in Jere- 
 miah's first edition. In 12 s& the parallelism and context 
 demand the reading suggested by the LXX : " If in a land 
 of peace thou art not confident, then how wilt thou do in the 
 pride of Jordan ? " i.e. If Jeremiah is fearful amongst his 
 kindred, how will he fare amongst his powerful enemies in 
 Jerusalem ? The emendation of Hitzig, preferred by some 
 critics, gives a similar sense : " If in a land of peace thou art 
 fugitive, then how, etc. ? " The two remaining paragraphs 
 
 of ch. 12 (7-13, 14-17) are probably of later origin ; they belong 
 to a time when Judah is already suffering as " a speckled 
 bird" (9) from the other birds around her, and "evil 
 neighbours" meddle with Jehovah's " inheritance" (h) : this 
 happened on Jehoiakim's rupture with Nebuchadrezzar, 
 about 600 B.c. (see 2 Kings 21 1. 2) ; but not earlier, so far 
 as we know. 
 
120 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 14 and 15, 1 16 ^is.ie-is 2 , 17 i-is 3 , 18, 19, 20. Most 
 of the contents of chs. 1-25, as we know them, is 
 thus brought within the scope of the enlarged 
 roll of the book of Jehovah's judgements on 
 Israel and the nations, which terminated with 
 chap. 25. 
 
 The second edition of Jeremiah's book above- 
 described stands in the main as at first composed, 
 but has suffered dislocations and the intrusion 
 of later material. In particular, and beside the 
 passages referred to in the footnotes of the last 
 paragraph, chap. 13, containing the two parables 
 
 1 No date is given for "the drought" of ch. 14 1 ; but it 
 appears from 14 121s and 15 7-9 that it followed upon some 
 great defeat in battle — "sword and famine" are together 
 desolating the land. This and other considerations point to 
 an occasion soon after the defeat at Megiddo (608), and early 
 in Jehoiakim's reign. 
 
 2 Vv. 14. 15 of ch. 16 are intruded here, where they interrupt 
 the sense; they are in their proper place in 23 7.8. Vv. 10-21 
 are contested by the critics, and may be fairly suspected as 
 a gloss or prophetical annotation. 
 
 3 The earlier paragraphs of ch. 17 — viz. vv. 1-4, 5-8, 9 and 10, 
 11, 12 and 13 stand quite isolated, and do not seem to lead up 
 to the personal passage of vv. 14-18. The first of the above 
 paragraphs is a characteristic Jeremianic message of doom; 
 the four that follow read like a string of apophthegms, and 
 are unique in this author, but not for this reason unau- 
 thentic ; chap. 9 23. 24 contains an isolated dictum of the same 
 type. Vv. 19-27 again are quite different from anything else 
 in the chapter, and stand alone in the Book ; on this passage, 
 see p. 145 below. 
 
THE BOOK OF JEREMIAH 121 
 
 of the spoilt girdle and the full wine-jar? is 
 associated with the captivity of the year 597 by 
 the references of vv. is. 19, — where " the king 
 and queen-mother" can only mean Jehoiachin 
 and Nekushta (see 22 24-26, and 2 Kings 24 s-io). 
 
 Chap. 21 1-10 is chronologically an " aberrant 
 boulder," a fragment from Baruch's memoirs 
 (see pp. 131-132) belonging to the year 589 or 
 thereabouts ; it appears to have been inserted here 
 through some later hand, by way of introducing 
 Jeremiah's oracles upon the contemporary kings 
 of Judah, Zedekiah being thus added to com- 
 plete the list. Following upon 21 11-14, which 
 reads as a brief general warning, 22 1-9 was most 
 probably addressed to Josiah on his assumption of 
 power; Jehoahaz (= Shallum) is the subject of 
 22 10-12 ; vv. 13-19 denounce Jehoiakim, who is 
 contrasted with his father ; while vv. 20-30 are 
 an elegy upon the captive Jehoiachin ; and 
 ch. 23 1-8 winds up the series by a summary pro- 
 nouncement on " the evil shepherds " who have 
 
 1 It is a question whether " Euphrates " is not a misrender- 
 ing of the Hebrew Peratli, which may have been the name 
 of some hiding-place for the "girdle" in Jeremiah's neigh- 
 bourhood. If the Euphrates was intended, the command 
 can only have been allegorical, the river of Babylon repre- 
 senting the approaching exile, by which "the pride of Judah 
 and Jerusalem " is going to be " marred" and the old union, 
 between Jehovah and His people brought to an end, 
 
122 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 wasted Jehovah's flock (1-4), concluding with a 
 promise of the happier Messianic rule (s-s) in the 
 vein of chs. 30-33 (see pp. 125-129). The string 
 of royal oracles extends beyond the year 604, and 
 looks as though it once formed a little book 
 by itself. 
 
 The detached roll at first containing chs. 
 21 n-23 8 may, however, have included the 
 rest of ch. 23 " concerning the prophets," since 
 kings and prophets were the two chief powers in 
 the Jndrean commonwealth and were co-operating 
 for its ruin. In the sustained and powerful 
 philippic of 23 9-40, which is amongst the most 
 finished of Jeremiah's extant speeches, the 
 standing quarrel between himself and the popu- 
 lar prophets comes to a head ; it sums up the 
 utterances of many years. Vv. 13. 14 recall the 
 earliest period of Jeremiah's ministry, when he 
 was fond of comparing Judah with Israel (see 
 3 16-is) ; ver. 10 reminds us of " the drought " 
 early in Jehoiakim's reign (14 1. i3-ie) ; vv. 19. 20 
 imply that the troubles beginning with Josiah's 
 death are in full course. The encounter between 
 Hananiah and Jeremiah in 593 (ch. 28) may 
 have been the occasion for this full deliverance 
 against the false projmets ; and there is nothing 
 in 21 n-23 8 that demands a much later date. 
 
 Chap. 24, the vision of the two baskets of Jigs ■, 
 
THE BOOK OF JEREMIAH 123 
 
 dates itself quite distinctly in the earlier part of 
 Zedekiah's reign (597-587), when the worthless- 
 ness of the Judaean leaders left behind after 
 Jehoiachin's captivity had become apparent. This 
 chapter should be associated with 29. 
 
 We have thus eliminated chapters 13, 21-23, 
 and 24, with other minor fragments, from the 
 enlarged book of Jeremiah written out for him 
 by Baruch at the end of the year 604. Allowing 
 for occasional glosses and interpolations and for 
 possible disarrangements due to accident or to 
 the mistakes of editors and cojiyists, there is 
 nothing in the residue of Jer. 1-25 which may 
 not have stood, as we find it, in the volume 
 referred to at the close of ch. 36. The chapters 
 and sections of later date that we have detected 
 within these limits were placed where they 
 are, presumably, by a subsequent editor on the 
 ground of some connexion of their subject- 
 matter, real or supposed, with the said book : 
 chs. 12 7-17, 13, 21-23, and 24 are all con- 
 cerned with Jehovah's judgements on His apos- 
 tate people, and are therefore congruous in their 
 purport with the Book of Doom. 
 
 3. Chapters 127-17, 13, and 24 should be assigned 
 to the later memoirs of Jeremiah, dating subse- 
 quently to the year 604. The same designation 
 would apply to ch. 27 — the prediction of Nebu- 
 
124 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 chadrezzar's sovereignty, given under the figure of 
 "bands and bars" worn on the prophet's neck 1 ; 
 and to ch. 28, relating the prophet's struggle with 
 Hananiah, which took place "in the same year," 2 
 the fourth of Zedekiah, viz. 593 B.C. To this 
 category also belongs the singular story of the 
 temptation of the Rechabites by Jeremiah in 
 chap. 35 (dated about 600), which is told in the 
 first person. Chap. 29 — the account of Jeremiah's 
 correspondence with the exiles of the first 
 Judrean captivity — should probably be included 
 here ; for it stands in close connexion with 
 
 1 " Jehoiakim" in the Received Text of ver. l is a patent 
 error for "Zedekiah " (see the margin of the R.V.). 
 
 - " The same year, at the beginning of the reign of Zedekiah 
 king of Judah, in the fourth year, in the fifth month": so 
 chap. 28 is dated in ver. 1. The LXX omits the first two of 
 these marks of time, reading "And it came to pass in the 
 fourth year of Zedekiah, in the fifth month" ; the LXX also 
 ignores the date of 27 l. The critics in both instances adopt 
 the shorter (LXX) reading. To speak of "the fourth year" 
 as " in the beginning " of a reign which only lasted 10 years, 
 is certainly anomalous. It will be noticed that ch. 28 begins 
 as from Jeremiah's mouth ("Hananiah . . . spoke unto me "), 
 but in the sequel puts Jeremiah into the third person. This 
 change seems to be due to rhetorical feeling and to the 
 design, either of the original narrator or of his editor, to set 
 "Jeremiah the prophet" over against "Hananiah the pro- 
 phet " — prophet confronting prophet. The LXX, according to 
 its wont, abbreviates by writing simply " Hananiah " and 
 " Jeremiah." 
 
THE BOOK OF JEREMIAH 125 
 
 chs. 13, 24, and (in point of matter) with 28. 
 Although Jeremiah does not speak in chap. 29 
 •propria persona, the absence of the first personal 
 pronoun is accounted for by the fact that he 
 is citing letters and not direct speech. 
 
 We have now six chapters — viz. 35, 13, 24, 
 29, 27, 28 (in the order of time) — containing so 
 many distinct stories from Jeremiah's life during 
 the years 603 to 593 and forming a consecu- 
 tive and fairly connected body of memoirs, which 
 may very well have been added by the prophet 
 himself in the same fashion as previously to the 
 Book of 604, antecedently to the last siege of 
 Jerusalem and before this writing had taken 
 on any further shape. This we may call the 
 third edition of Jeremiah's Book of the Dooms of 
 Israel, Judah, and the Nations. We must also 
 recognise the possibility that, either at the 
 second or third stage in the growth of this 
 volume, oracles against the Foreign Nations, 
 such as we find in the collection of chs. 46-51, 
 were introduced. We have now accounted for 
 the whole of chs. 1-29, with the exception of 
 26 and with the addition of 35. 
 
 4. In ch. 30 1-3 we come upon traces of a second 
 " book " which Jeremiah was instructed to write, 
 of a wholly different complexion from that de- 
 scribed in ch. 36 : " Write thee all the words 
 
126 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 that I have spoken unto thee in a book ; for, lo, 
 days are coming — it is the oracle of Jehovah ! — 
 when I will turn the captivity of My people 
 Israel and Jndah, saith Jehovah, and 1 will 
 bring them again to the land that I gave to 
 their fathers, and they shall possess it." 1 This 
 command introduces a section of the Book of 
 Jeremiah covering four chapters (30-33) — two 
 of pure prophecy and two of narrative — that is 
 complete in itself and stands out in bright relief 
 against the general background of his ministry. 
 Dnhm happily designates it " The Book of the 
 Future of Israel and Jndah." Judging from the 
 introductory words, we suppose this little book 
 to have been written, perhaps at Mizpah (see 
 ch. 40), when the Exile was complete and Zion 
 lay desolate (see also, to this effect, 30 17. is 
 31 c i2. 27 28. 38). The delightful vision of the 
 restored Israel and rebuilt Jerusalem appears, 
 from 31 2c, to have come to the prophet partly 
 
 1 The authenticity of vv. 1-3 is more or less doubted by 
 critics, for reasons that do not seem stringent. There is no 
 real contradiction or discrepancy between 30 1 and 36 2 : one 
 might take directions to "write a book" in 586 without any 
 necessary reference to the earlier book written in 604 B.C. 
 Vv. 10. n are more questionable : they are missing in the LXX, 
 and do not fit this context ; the passage is probably an 
 ancient gloss taken from 46 27. 28, where the words are more 
 apposite; but see p. 137. 
 
THE BOOK OF JEREMIAH 127 
 
 in a dream — " Upon this I awaked, and beheld ; 
 and my sleep was sweet unto me." The above 
 sentence marks the end of the dream : one 
 suspects that some words have dropped out, 
 either at ver. 23 or further back, describing the 
 prophet's falling asleep and the beginning of his 
 dream. 
 
 Chs. 32 and 33 l are attached by way of illus- 
 tration and comment to the great oracle of the 
 foregoing chapters, and stand to them in much 
 the same relation as the secondary (narrative) 
 to the primary (predictive) elements of the Book 
 of Doom. Both narratives relate to the time of 
 the siege under Zeclekiah, and they show that 
 the hopeful thoughts which gave birth to the 
 new book were stirring in Jeremiah's mind and 
 sustained his courage throughout the last days 
 of Jerusalem. The purchase of his cousin 
 Chanam'el's field, enjoined on him by God, was 
 itself a pledge of the better days coming ; it was 
 the occasion for a fuller disclosure of Jehovah's 
 design to restore His kingdom and city. Ch. 33 
 adds a second and direct assurance to this effect, 
 
 1 Following the criterion previously set up, viz. the refer- 
 ence to Jeremiah in the first or third person, we should assign 
 ch. 32 to Jeremiah's reminiscences and cb. 33 to Baruch's. 
 Perhaps chap. 33 would more correct^ be placed under the 
 next beading. If this narrative be due to Baruch, it has been 
 verv fittinglv attached to ch. 32. 
 
128 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 given while " Jeremiah was yet shut up in the 
 court of the guard " (ver. 1 ; comp. 37 21). Along 
 with the city, it appears that the Davidic throne 
 and the Levitical priesthood are expected to be 
 re-established (vv. 14-26). 
 
 The second part of ch. 33, however, containing 
 these latter promises, is wanting in the Greek 
 Version, and its contents expose it to the sus- 
 picion of post-Jeremianic origin : 
 
 Vv. 17-22 give promises for the house of David and 
 the house of Levi which do not harmonize with 
 Jeremiah's tone ; in particular, the promises to 
 the Levites imply a value put upon the external 
 cultus and services, a specifically priestly ideal, 
 which in this most spiritual of all the prophets is 
 unthinkable (Cornill). 1 
 
 Other expressions in the Book of Consolation 
 (30-33) are read by the critics as interpolations 
 from later hands — especially those that savour of 
 
 ' Dr Cornill, with other critics, passes a like judgement on 
 the Sabbath-prophecy of 17 io-2r. His rejection of Jeremiah's 
 authorship as "unthinkable," in both instances bears the note 
 of exaggeration (see pp. 11*7-198, 233). Jeremiah could not 
 imagine his Israel of the future in abstracto, without positive 
 institutions and forms of worship. "\\ r hen he came to represent 
 the life of the new-covenant people in concrete form, it would 
 be very difficult for him to dispense with the monarchy and 
 priesthood ; see, however, 31 34. 
 
THE BOOK OF JEREMIAH 129 
 
 the Dentero-Isaiah — viz. 30 1% and 22 (these also 
 wanting in the LXX), 31 10-14.37 (wanting in 
 LXX); and even the entire prayer of Jeremiah 
 and Jehovah's answer in 32 16-44, which are said 
 to he written in a prosaic and spun-ont style 
 foreign to Jeremiah and belonging to the later 
 Jewish literature of edification. It is conceiv- 
 able that the prayer and answer have been 
 expanded by the scribes. Messianic texts and 
 passages relating to the latter days were liable, 
 beyond others, to attract glosses and accretions 
 in transmission. 1 
 
 Very characteristic for Jeremiah is the anti- 
 cipation of the return of Ephraim. This is 
 described (31 2-20) in language of exquisite 
 pathos, which recalls the heart-piercing tones 
 of Hosea (see Vol. I, Ch. vin). Amongst the 
 marks of genuineness attaching to the crowning 
 Jeremianic prophecy of the New Covenant 
 (31 31-34) is the fact that it is introduced as " a 
 covenant with the house of Israel and with the 
 house of Judah." 
 
 5. Nineteen chapters of the canonical "Jere- 
 miah" still remain, outside of those we have 
 included in the two " books," with their supple- 
 
 1 Dnhm has attacked the genuineness of 31 31-34 ; but on 
 this very grave point he is effectually controverted by Cornill 
 (see pp. 211, 231-239 below). 
 
 III. 9 
 
130 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 ments, that are certified as having been drawn np 
 by the prophet himself. Ch. 26 we have put on 
 one side, for it purports to be written about Jere- 
 miah, not "from his mouth " : it is a graphic and 
 detailed account of Jeremiah's trial for sedition, 
 which took place on his reappearance as the 
 prophet of doom to Jerusalem in the year 608. 
 This narrative makes reference to the speech 
 reported by Jeremiah himself in ch. 7 : comp. 
 26 6. 12 with 7 12-15 ; also 26 3. 13 with 7 3 ; and 26 12 
 — " this house and this city " — with 7 4 and 9-14, 
 and with 7 29-33. 1 In similar fashion, ch. 36 tells 
 the tale of the publication of Jeremiah's first 
 book of prophecy in the year 604. This report, 
 like the former, unmistakably comes from an 
 eye-witness, and the evidence points to no one 
 but Baruch as the narrator. Chs. 26 and 36 2 
 are therefore passages from Jeremiah's life, fur- 
 nished by his companion and amanuensis, of the 
 
 1 E. Bruston, in his lucid and interesting dissertation 
 entitled Le Prqphete Jeremie et son temjis, dates ch. 7 in 
 Josiali's reign and before the reformation ; he thinks that the 
 comparison of the Jerusalem temple with the tabernacle at 
 Shiloh was used by Jeremiah more than once. 
 
 2 Ch. 36, whereat stands, is altogether detached from its true 
 context. Its position, like that of 21 mo, and of 24 and 35, 
 is strong evidence to the disarrangement which the Book 
 of Jeremiah has suffered since it left the hands of its 
 authors. 
 
THE BOOK OF JEREMIAH 131 
 
 greatest value for elucidating his prophecies and 
 written, one would suppose, expressly for this 
 purpose. They are memoirs of Jeremiah's private 
 secretary, which were added, with or without the 
 prophet's instructions, to the Book of Doom that 
 Baruch had written out for him in two successive 
 stages. Had the prophet enjoyed Baruch's 
 companionship earlier, we might have had 
 interesting memoranda of the same kind from 
 Josiah's time. 
 
 Beside the two chapters above named, relating 
 to the critical epochs of Jeremiah's mission in 
 the reign of Jehoiakim, we find a string of 
 narratives of the same stamp — being in jn'ose 
 style, and quoting Jeremiah in the third person 
 and in a curt and somewhat bald manner, but 
 full of incident and lively description — which 
 set forth the hero's later fortunes. These stories 
 of the prophet give a pretty full account of his 
 position and relations to the public authorities — 
 (a) during the last siege and capture of Jeru- 
 salem, and (b) amongst the Judreans left behind 
 in the country with whom he finally migrated to 
 Egypt, where we lose sight of him. The narrative 
 pieces belonging to the history of Jeremiah in 
 the siege and after, together with chs. 26 and 
 36, form what we may call the memoirs of 
 Baruch, which supply a distinct and invaluable 
 
132 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 contribution to the completed Book of Jeremiali : 1 
 they include chs. 21 1-10 (see p. 121 above), 
 34 1-7 and s-22, 37 1-10. 11-21 38 i-is. u-2s 39 11-14, 2 15-18 
 (in order of time coming after 38 1-13), 51 59-01 
 (see pp. 134-5) — the above form (a) the anecdotes 
 of the siege and capture, which may have stood in 
 the first instance by themselves ; 3 (b) chs. 40-44, 
 
 1 It is likely enough that Baruch, in writing and rewriting 
 his master's oracles, added prosaic touches of his own — his- 
 torical allusions in the shape of headings and annotations, 
 and connecting links between the discourses. Some passages 
 of this sort, which critics eliminate as un-Jeremianic, may be 
 due to the secretary's pen and may be strictly original. 
 
 - Ch. 39 1-10 (headed by the last clause of ch. 38 : see E.V.), 
 apart from ver. 3 is nearly identical with 2 Kings 25 1-12 ; 
 and this paragraph appeal's a second time in the Book of Jere- 
 miah, at the beginning of ch. 52. In ch. 52 this Book is 
 admittedly the borrower ; as between Jer. 39 1-10 and 2 Kings 
 25 1-12, the question of originality is disputable. Many critics 
 ascribe to Baruch only 38 28ft 39 3. u: "But when Jerusalem 
 was taken, then came all the princes ... of the king of 
 Babylon, and they had Jeremiah fetched out of the court 
 of the guard," etc. The LXX wants 39 4-13 altogether. 
 
 3 The superscription of the Book of Jeremiah (1 1) extends 
 it " unto the carrying away of Jerusalem captive in the fifth 
 month " : i.e. it regards the volume as closing at ch. 39 
 (without, however, excluding 4G-49), and finds no place for 
 chs. 40-44. It looks as though the heading had been pre- 
 fixed in the year 586, and belonged to an edition (from the 
 hand of Baruch ?) of that epoch. If so, we must recognise 
 four editions of the Book of Jeremiah up to date : (1) The 
 original Eoll burnt by Jehoiakim ; (2) the reproduction of 
 this, with " many like words," containing Jeremiah's pro- 
 
THE BOOK OF JEREMIAH 133 
 
 a long and full piece of biography, 1 written 
 probably while the prophet was still living, 
 which recounts Jeremiah's experiences and doings 
 amongst the residue of his people left behind 
 in JudcecCj and in Egypt, whither they migrated 
 dragging the reluctant prophet with them. 
 That this most valuable supplement comes from 
 Baruch is made evident by ch. 45, which is in 
 effect a signature, since it contains the oracle of 
 warning and promise of safety given by Jeremiah 
 to his friend 2 in the year 605, when Baruch had 
 assisted him in the production of his earliest 
 book. 
 
 We owe therefore to Baruch the son of Neriah 
 something like twelve chapters, or nearly a 
 
 phetic reminiscences up to the year 604 ; (3) a further issue 
 of the Book of Doom, with reminiscences coming down to 
 593 — this would embrace the whole of chs. 1-29, excluding 
 26 and including 35 ; (4) a greatly enlarged volume, extend- 
 ing to ch. 39 (including also chs. 46-49 ?), which embraced 
 Jeremiah's Book of Consolation (30-33) added to the Book 
 of Doom, and Baruch's biographical memoirs up to the 
 year 587. 
 
 1 This memoir gives a favourable impression of Baruch's 
 historical power. 
 
 2 See the foot-note on p. 113. As Jeremiah grew older, it 
 is likely that he left the care of his writings more and more 
 to his companion. The fourth (see last note but one) and 
 fifth editions owe their shape, presumably, to Baruch rather 
 than Jeremiah. The fifth we take to be the last issued in 
 the prophet's lifetime. 
 
134 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 fourth of the entire work. In a certain sense, we 
 owe to him the ivhole ; for without the secretary's 
 careful and willing pen the great prophet's words 
 might have found no record. In all fairness, 
 this Scripture ought to be called " The Book of 
 Jeremiah and Barnch." If we could recover the 
 work as it left Barnck's hands, closing with 
 ch. 45, we should probably find it orderly and 
 well-digested. The incoherences which make 
 the study of Jeremiah so difficult, should be 
 imputed to later handling. 
 
 G. Chs. 46-51, as they stand, form an appendix 
 to the work of Jeremiah-Baruch. They contain 
 Jeremiah's oracles on the foreign nations, put 
 together under the title " The word of Jehovah 
 which came to Jeremiah the prophet concerning 
 the nations." This collection raises many diffi- 
 culties for criticism. 
 
 The doom upon Babylon, which fills chs. 50 
 and 51, and is nearly as long as the rest of the 
 Foreign Oracles united, concludes this section. 
 To it is attached an anecdote (51 59-64) telling 
 how, at the time " when Zedekiah went up to 
 Babylon in the fourth year of his reign " (593 : 
 a critical epoch for Jeremiah), the prophet 
 " wrote in a book all the evil that should come 
 upon Babylon, even all these tvords ivhich are 
 written concerning Babylon " (a reference to 
 
THE BOOK OF JEREMIAH 135 
 
 chs. 50 2-51 5s), 1 and gave the book to Seraiah, 
 Baruch's brother, who was on Zedekiah's staff, 
 directing him to read the roll alond and then 
 fling the book, with a stone tied to it, " into 
 the midst of Euphrates, saying, Thus shall 
 Babylon sink, and shall rise no more ! " There 
 is no reason to doubt the historicity of this 
 very singular story, which is connected through 
 Seraiah with Barucb, and may well have belonged 
 to the memoranda of the latter. The symbolic 
 action it relates is in keeping with Jeremiah's 
 methods ; in point of time, it nearly synchronized 
 with the symbol of the yokes (27), by which he 
 represented the subjection of Judah and her 
 neighbours to Babylon; the token of the sunk 
 book was a suitable pendant to the other emblem, 
 as it indicated to the Judsean king and nobles 
 that their present submission to the Chaldseans, 
 enforced upon them by Jehovah's will, would 
 be followed by ultimate deliverance and should 
 therefore be patiently borne. 
 
 That some short oracle on Babylon's doom 
 was written in 593 b.c. by Jeremiah and thus 
 disposed of, we may readily believe. But to 
 say that chs. 50 and 51 reproduce that " book," 
 
 1 This clause belongs to the writer of the foregoing prophecy, 
 or to the editor who connected it with the story of Jeremiah's 
 drowned book. 
 
136 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 is a different matter. The Jeremianic authorship 
 of this prophecy, in anything like its present 
 form, is surrendered by nearly all Old Testament 
 scholars. The writing is charged with Jeremiah's 
 phrases and, in particular sentences, recalls his 
 ideas and manner ; but it is badly composed, 
 confused and straggling throughout and lacking 
 in poetic unity and movement. It betrays 
 reminiscences of Ezekiel and the Second Isaiah, 
 along with Jeremiah, and its author has drawn 
 largely upon Isa. 13 2^14 23 — a composition which 
 we have ascribed to a late exilic epoch (see 
 Vol. II, pp. 92-4). The attitude of the writer 
 toward Nebuchadrezzar and the Chalcheans is not 
 that of Jeremiah : : he nowhere recognises the 
 conqueror as Jehovah's " servant " and filling a 
 place in His sovereign purposes (25 9) ; there 
 is no hint of caution to the exiles already 
 in Babylonia, nothing said to help them to 
 bear their banishment peacefully and hopefully 
 (contrast chap. 20) ; the utterance breathes the 
 unqualified hatred and vengeance against the 
 tyrant city that animated the exiles in the later 
 years of the Babylonian dominion (comp. Ps. 137). 
 The writer sees Babylon's overthrow now close 
 at hand, as Nahum saw that of Nineveh ; the 
 
 1 He somewhat resembles Jeremiah's contemporary Ha- 
 bakkuk in his animus toward the Chaldieans ; see Ch. xxn. 
 
THE BOOK OF JEREMIAH 137 
 
 invadiDg peoples are pouring in upon her like a 
 sea, and Jehovah's people are ready to go forth 
 from her midst (51 42-45). We accept, as most 
 plausible, the view of chs. 50-51 advanced by 
 recent critics to the effect that the prophecy of 
 judgement upon Babylon was uttered by a late 
 exilic, or early post-exilic, writer, using pos- 
 sibly for a nucleus some brief word of Jeremiah 
 against Babylon, who attempted in good faith to 
 reproduce the book flung into the Euphrates by 
 Seraiah. If so, ch. 50 2-51 ss testifies to the 
 state of Jewish thought and feeling on the eve 
 of the restoration, rather than of the destruction, 
 of Jerusalem. 
 
 The remainder of the Foreign Oracles, though 
 by no means free from obscurities, may be relied 
 on as Jeremiah's authentic work. Against Egypt 
 two distinct prophecies are directed : 46 2-12, 
 purporting to have been delivered shortly before 
 the battle of Carchemish (605 b.c.) ; and 46 19-26, 
 which is undated, but resembles 43 10-12 and may 
 therefore be referred to the time of Jeremiah's 
 sojourn in Egypt (after 586 B.C.) 1 Chap. 47, 
 " concerning the Philistines, before that Pharaoh 
 smote Gaza," belongs to the era of Egyptian 
 sway in Palestine, 608-605 B.C. The five dooms 
 
 1 Hebraists detect a play on the name (Pharaoh) Hojphra 
 in ver. it. Vv. 27, 28 read like a Deutero-Isaianic annotation. 
 
138 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 that follow — upon Moab (48), Ammon (49 i-g), 
 Edom (49 7-22), Damascus (49 23-27), Kedar and 
 the kingdoms of Hazor (49 28-33), are undated ; 
 but these may have borne the same date with 
 that given to the eighth doom, upon Elam 
 (49 34-39), viz. " the beginning of the reign of 
 Zedekiah," the time when Jeremiah sent round 
 the " yokes " to the kingdoms neighbouring 
 Judah (27) ; or they were first written, perhaps 
 in some shorter form, in 604 at the crisis sig- 
 nalised by chap. 25. 
 
 Apart from the case of Egypt, whose im- 
 portance demanded fuller treatment, the other 
 dooms are brief and summary — except the two 
 concerning Moab and Edom. These peoples 
 were the objects of a special animus on the part 
 of the Judreans ; but the peculiar feature of the 
 Moabite and Edomite dooms is that in each case 
 the writer borrows from older oracles 1 — ch. 48 
 taking up and incorporating, with large additions 
 and adaptations, the prophecy of Isa. 15, 16, 
 against Moab, and 49 7-22 utilising the little 
 Book of Obadiah (vv. h-io = Obad. 1-4). This 
 
 1 We are begging the question of priority here. In com- 
 paring Isa. 15, 16 and Jer. 48, most critics see the older 
 form of the common matter in Isaiah ; but the reverse holds 
 in the case of Obad. 1-4 and Jer. 49 7-22— the general vote of 
 critics assigns a late date to the Book of Obadiah. We have 
 touched on these two questions in Vol. I, chs. v, VI. 
 
THE BOOK OF JEREMIAH 139 
 
 dependence may seem to throw doubt on Jere- 
 miah's authorship ; but the same phenomenon 
 has appeared in the instance of Isaiah (Vol. I, 
 pp. 116-120, and Vol. II, pp. 77, 79, 81) ; Jere- 
 miah is doing here in a good way what he taxes 
 other prophets (in 23 30) with doing in a bad way ; 
 prophecy was a continuous legacy, and its oracles 
 were liable to be worked-over and redelivered at 
 successive epochs (see Vol. I, pp. 27, 28). When 
 we find Jeremiah thus appropriating and recast- 
 ing the utterances of his predecessors, we need 
 not be surprised that unknown successors have 
 in some cases taken similar liberties with his 
 words, and that the Book of the Nebi'im bears 
 traces throughout of prophetical glosses and 
 postscripts arising from the needs of later times. 
 The translators of the Septuagint have inter- 
 posed the Foreign Oracles in the middle of 
 Jeremiah (after ver. 13 of ch. 25), conforming to 
 the order of Isaiah (see chs. 13-23) and Ezekiel 
 (35-39), and supposing probably that chs. 46-51 
 formed the " words written in this book, which 
 Jeremiah prophesied against all the nations." 
 The intruded section destroys the continuity of 
 vv. 13-15 ; this cannot have been its original 
 situation. At the same time, it is not unlikely 
 that " the word of Jehovah concerning the 
 nations " announced in ch. 46 1 was at first 
 
140 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 attached to ch. 25 and formed part of the Book 
 of Doom — in the shape perhaps of a series of 
 brief oracles — and that it was detached from 
 this connexion and made into an appendix to 
 the completed Book of Jeremiah, when the long 
 prophecy against Babylon (50, 51) was added 
 thereto, at the time when the fall of Babylon 
 had become the absorbing interest of Jewish 
 minds. 1 If so, the Greek editors have made 
 an awkward attempt to restore the Oracles in 
 question to the place where they once stood in 
 Jeremiah's writings. 
 
 The LXX, while it displaces the Foreign 
 Oracles, has redistributed them in the folio wing- 
 order : Elam, Egypt, Babylon, Philistia, Edom, 
 Amnion, Kedar, Damascus, Moab — an arrange- 
 ment that seems quite arbitrary, whereas the 
 Hebrew order, in chs. 40-51, follows the suc- 
 cession of the drinkers of Jehovah's cup of w r rath 
 in ch. 25, with the exception that Edom there 
 precedes Moab and Amnion while in ch. 49 it 
 
 1 This consideration suggests the date for the conclusive 
 edition of the Book of Jeremiah — the sixth we have ventured 
 to distinguish — viz. the closing of the Judasan exile in Baby- 
 lon, c. 540 B.C. Ch. 52 may have been appended at the same 
 time, since the Book of Kings was, in all probability, compiled 
 during the Exile. This supposition does not exclude the 
 possibility of interpolations and editorial touches coming 
 from later hands. 
 
THE BOOK OF JEREMIAH 141 
 
 follows them. 1 It is curious that the LXX 
 omits the promises of restoration — to Egypt 
 (46 2e), Moab (48 47; also vv. 45. 46 are missing), 
 Ammon (49 6) — except in the case of Elam 
 (49 39). 
 
 7. Chap. 52 is an historical postscript to the 
 Book of Jeremiah, as completed by the inclusion 
 of the Dooms on Foreign Nations, and stands 
 to this Book in the relation which chs. 36-39 
 hold to the Book of the First Isaiah. 
 
 This chapter, like Isaiah 36-39, is an excerpt 
 from the 2nd Book of Kings (24 is-25 21), 2 which 
 surely possessed the status of a standard work 
 when it came to be thus used. Vv. 4-16 have 
 been anticipated in ch. 39 1-10 (see p. 132). The 
 reference of the last paragraph (vv. 31-34) to the 
 elevation of Jehoiachin bv king Evil-Merodach 
 on the accession of the latter to the throne of 
 Babylon, which took place in 561 B.C., brings 
 
 1 Damascus in 49 23-27 fills the place of Tyre and Zidon, etc., 
 in 25 22 — the latter, however, have a share in the Doom of 
 the Philistines (47 4). The Arabian tribes, known as Kedar 
 and the kingdoms of Ha z or in 49 28-33, are spoken of by other 
 names in 25 23-25. The Medes of 25 25 are unnoticed in the 
 Dooms of chs. 46-49. 
 
 2 The two narratives are not quite identical : 2 Kings 
 25 22-2G is omitted here, for chs. 39 and 40 have told us 
 the story of Gedaliah ; and Jer. 52 28. 29, with the valuable 
 numerical data it contains, is wanting in 2 Kings. 
 
142 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 us down, for the completion of the Book, to an 
 epoch beyond the lifetime of Jeremiah, and pro- 
 bably of Baruch also. 
 
 We will dow analyse the Book of Jeremiah, 
 on the basis of its history as sketched above. 
 
 The Book of Jeremiah and Baruch 
 
 I. The Great Book of Doom, dictated by 
 Jeremiah in 604 B.C. This contained a digest 
 of Jeremiah's jjrophecies of judgement, of the 
 years 628-605, to which were added in re- 
 writing " many like words," including the 
 autobiographical passages and reminiscences 
 interspersed through chs. 1-29. It is impossible 
 to discriminate certainly between the matter 
 contained in the earlier and later recensions 
 of this work. 
 
 1. The Introduction, concerning the Prophet's 
 Call and Life-work, chap. 1. 
 
 (a) Jeremiah's First Struggle with his Vocation. 
 
 2. The Judgement upon Judah's Treachery toward 
 Jehovah, chs. 2-6. A connected discourse repro- 
 ducing Jeremiah's teaching in the pre-reformation 
 years, 628-621. Only 3 o-is breaks the continuity, 
 having slipped out of its place either before or after 
 the rest of chs. 2 and 3. In this grand philippic two 
 sections are distinguished : 
 
THE BOOK OF JEREMIAH 143 
 
 A. The Revolt of God's People, chs. 2, 3. 
 
 (a) Israel reproached for Infidelity to the Love of 
 her Youth, chap. 2. 1 
 
 (b) The Question of her Divorce by Jehovah, 
 3 1-5 and 3 19-4 4. 
 
 (c) Comparison of Judah's Harlotry with that of 
 her Sister Israel, 3 e-ie. 2 
 
 B. The Impending Punishment, chs. 4-0. 
 
 (a) The Enemy's Approach signalled, 4 5-is. 
 
 (b) The Ruin he brings for Zion, 4 19-31. 
 
 (c) Inquisition made to see whether Judgement 
 may be arrested — its appalling Result, chap. 5. 
 
 (d) The Invasion announced ; its Justice vin- 
 dicated, and its Horrors described, chap. 6. 
 
 [We have suggested that 11 1-17, the discourse on 
 the Broken Covenant, stood originally here between 
 I, 2 and 3 — perhaps in a more complete form, in which 
 it matched the speeches preceding and following.] 
 
 3. The Judgement upon the Hypocrisy of Judah, 
 chs. 7-10 (omitting 923-IO16). 3 This discourse 
 
 1 E. Bruston finds here, plausibly, two discourses inter- 
 woven : the first, consisting of vv. 2-3. 14-25. 33-37, reproving 
 Israel under the figure of a bride ; the second — vv. 4-13. 26-32 — 
 conveying the reproach directly and without the figure. The 
 two sections are in different style and metre, the latter 
 resembling Deuteronomy. Vv. 4-13 are on this ground con- 
 demned by Duhm as non-Jeremianic. 
 
 2 In 3 6-18 " Israel " and " Judah " are contrasted as harlot 
 sisters; in the verses before and after, "Israel" stands for 
 the people generally and through its whole history. More- 
 over, in 3 6-18, Jehovah addresses the culprit as " you " ; in 
 the rest of the chapter as " thou." 
 
 3 On the omitted prophecies, see the footnote, p. 116. 
 
144 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 reverts to the year 608, the crisis caused by Josiah's 
 death! followed by the captivity of Shailum (Jeho- 
 ahaz) and the accession of Jehoiakim. 
 
 (a) The People's False Trust in the Temple, which 
 is to suffer the Fate of the House at Shiloh, 7 i-28 
 (comp. ch. 26). 
 
 (6) The swiftly coining End of Jerusalem, whose 
 Calamities will match her Sins, 7 20-8 17. 
 
 (c) Lamentations over her hapless but richly 
 deserved Fate, 8 is-9 22 and 10 18-25. 
 
 4. Scenes and Reminiscences of Jeremiah 's Earlier 
 Ministry ', illustrating chs. 2-10. This heading 
 covers the " many like words " of 36 32, including 
 chs. 1, 11, 12 (in part), with 14-20. (On chap. 13 
 see pp. 120-121.) 
 
 (a) The Broken Covenant of Judah, and the 
 Attempt on Jeremiah's Life at Anathoth; or, the 
 Double Conspiracy (11 9 and 10), 11 1— 12 o. 1 
 
 (b) The Sermon on the Drought, 14 i-15 0. 
 
 (/3) Jeremiah's Second Struggle with his 
 Vocation, 15 10-21. 
 
 (c) The Prophet forbidden to marry, ch. 16. The 
 actual prohibition doubtless came earlier ; this is a 
 discourse about it. 
 
 (d) Short Oracle of Doom, followed by Altercation 
 with the People and Appeal to Jehovah : 17 1-1, 0-13, 
 and 11 -is. 2 
 
 1 Ch. 11 1-17, or some equivalent discourse, seems to be 
 required between chs. 2-6 and 7-10, in view of the description 
 of 36 2 ; but as this section now stands, it serves to introduce 
 the Anathoth plot. See postscript to 2 B above. 
 
 2 The connexion of thought and of occasion in ch. 17 is 
 very precarious ; see p. 120, 
 
THE BOOK OF JEREMIAH 145 
 
 (y) Jeremiah's Third Struggle with his 
 
 Vocation, vv. m-18. 
 
 [(e) Homily on Sabbath-keeping, ch. 17 10-27. This 
 
 piece, like 11 i-s (or -is), may have first belonged 
 
 to the Covenant-preaching of Josiah's time. Its 
 
 authenticity is much disputed ; see p. 120.] 
 
 (/) Discourses on the Potter's Wheel and the 
 Broken Jar, chs. 18, 19. 
 
 (g) Jeremiah beaten and put in the Stocks, 
 ch. 20. 
 
 (6) Final Struggle of the Prophet with his 
 Vocation, vv. r-is. 
 5. The Judgement upon the Nations (after Car- 
 chemish, 605), chap. 25. 
 
 II. Book of Oracles against the Kings 
 and Prophets, chaps. 21-23. Apart from 
 21 1-10, which has been torn from its proper 
 context (see p. 121), nothing here requires a 
 later occasion than 593 B.C. These chapters 
 ma}' have been added as a supplement to the 
 Book of Doom, some time after the above date, 
 along with Section III. 
 
 1 . Tivo detached A ddresscs to the House of David — 
 (a) ch. 21 11-14, brief and general, bearing on King 
 and City ; (6) 22 1-9, a Homily directed to some 
 particular Ruler, probably Josiah. 
 
 2. Elegy on Josiah and Shallum - Jehoahaz 
 (608 B.C.), 22 10-12. 
 
 3. Denunciation of Jehoiakim, 22 13-19. 
 
 4. Doom of Jehoiachin, 22 20-30. 
 
 in. 10 
 
i 4 6 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 5. Judgement on the Evil Shepherds, and Promise 
 of a Better Rule, 23 1-8. 1 
 
 6. Concerning the Prophets of the Day, 23o-4o. 
 One of Jeremiah's most finished and powerful 
 diatribes ; as to its date, see p. 122. 
 
 III. Later Reminiscences of Jeremiah : 
 chs. 12 7-i7, 35, and 13, 24, 27-29. A supple- 
 ment to the Book of Doom, added by the 
 prophet some time before the last siege of 
 Jerusalem. 
 
 1. Denunciation of Judatis Evil Neighbours, 
 chap. 12 7-i7. Date, about 600 (?) ; see p. 119. 
 
 2. Temptation of the Rechabites, chap. 35. Date, 
 about 600 B.C. 
 
 3. The Symbols of the Marred Girdle, and the 
 Full Wine- Jar, chap. 13. Date, the earlier Judoean 
 Captivity, 597 B.C. ; see pp. 120, 121. 
 
 4. Vision of the Two Fig-baskets, ch. 24. Some- 
 what later than the above. 
 
 5. Correspondence of Jeremiah with the Exiles, 
 chap. 29. A little later again. 
 
 6. Symbol of the Yokes for the Necks of Judah 
 and the Nations, chap. 27. Date, 597 (?) or 593. 
 
 1 Vv. 7. 8 are of uncertain origin. The LXX puts them at 
 the end of the chapter ; this indicates that the passage had a 
 doubtful footing. The words have occurred once before, in 
 16 H. 15, where also they seem out of place ; they look very 
 much like a proverbial prophetic saying, such as scribes 
 might be tempted to insert here or there. 
 
THE BOOK OF JEREMIAH 147 
 
 7. Encounter ivith Hananiah, ch. 28. Date, 593. 
 [Here, perhaps, the Book of Oracles against the 
 Kings and Prophets (II above) should come in.] 
 
 IV. The Little Book of Consolation, 
 clis. 30-33. The prophecies of restoration pre- 
 suppose the fulfil rnent of Zion's doom. Chs. 30 
 and 31 should therefore be dated shortly after 
 the fall of Jerusalem in 587 (see pp. 125-127) ; 
 chs. 32, 33 are recollections from the siege 
 illustrating this book. 
 
 1. Prediction of Zion's Resurrection, ch. 30. l 
 
 2. Ephraim, Jehovah's Firstborn, to share in the 
 Redemption, 31 1-30. 
 
 3. The New Covenant between Jehovah and 
 Reconciled Israel, 31 31 10. 
 
 4. Sign of the Restoration in the Purchase of 
 Chanam'ers Field, 32 1-15 ; on vv. 16-44 see p. 129. 
 
 5. Promise to the like effect made by Jehovah 
 diwing the Siege, ch. 33 1-13 ; on vv. 14-26 see p. 128. 
 
 V. Baeuch's Memoirs of Jeremiah : chs. 
 21 i-io,26, 34, 36-45, 51 59-64. 
 
 1. The Story of the Prophet's Encounter with the 
 People in 608 B.C., chap. 26 ( = ch. 7). 
 
 2. The Writing of the Rook of Doom in the years 
 605-4, chap. 36. 
 
 1 On vv. 1-3, and 10. 11, see footnote, p. 12G. 
 
148 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 3. The Book of Babylon's Fate sunk in Euphrates, 
 51 59-64. Date, 593 B.C. 
 
 4. Jeremiah's Warnings to Zedekiah : 
 
 (a) In answer to the First Deputation, 21 mo ; 
 at the beginning of the War, about 590 B.C. 
 
 (b) Later in the War, when two fortresses out- 
 side of Jerusalem still stood, 34 i-r. 
 
 (c) Answer to the Second Deputation, at the 
 suspension of the Siege, 37 3-12. 
 
 (d) Interview with the King near the End of the 
 Siege, 38 14-28. 
 
 5. The Abortive Enfranchisement of the Slaves, 
 during the Siege, ch. 34 8-22. 
 
 6. Jeremiah's Treatment during the Siege : 
 
 (a) Arrested for going out to Anathoth, 37 11-21. 
 
 (6) Flung into an Empty Cistern for preaching 
 Surrender and rescued by ' Ebed-melek, 38 1-13 ; the 
 Promise of Safety to his Rescuer, 39 is is. 
 
 7. Release of Jeremiah on the Capture of the 
 City, by Nebuchadrezzar's order : 
 
 (a) First Account, in 39 11-14 — preceded by the 
 account of the Capture of the City (1-10), based on 
 2 Kings 25 1-12 (see p. 132). 
 
 (b) Second Account, in 40 i-6, leading up to the 
 next section. 1 
 
 8. Jeremiah's Experience with the Judaeans after 
 the Captivity, chs. 40 7-44 30. 
 
 (a) Assembling of the Remnant at Mizpah, 40 7-12. 
 (6) Gedaliah's neglected Warning, 40 13-ic. 
 
 (c) Gedaliah's Murder by Ishmael, 41 1-10. 
 
 1 These two accounts of Jeremiah's release do not seem 
 quite consistent ; they may be from different hands. 
 
THE BOOK OF JEREMIAH 149 
 
 (d) Overthrow of Ishmael by Jochanan, 41 11-18. 
 
 (e) Jeremiah's Prophecy against the Migration to 
 Egypt, chap. 42. 
 
 (/) The Flight to Egypt, chap. 43. 
 
 9. Jeremiah's Doom on the Judceans in Egypt, 
 chap. 44. 
 
 10. The Oracle for Baruch in the Year 604, ch. 45. 
 
 VI. Jeremiah's Dooms on the Foreign 
 Nations : chs. 46-49 [50, 51]. 1 
 
 1. Against Egyjrt, ch. 46 — (a) against the Army 
 of Pharaoh-Necho, vv. 2-12, in 608 B.C. ; (6) against 
 Pharaoh-Hophra (?), vv. 13-2*3, about 586. 
 
 2. The Philistines, chap. 47 ; 608-5 B.C. 
 
 3. The Moabites, chap. 48 (= Isa. 15, 16 1-12). 
 
 4. The Ammonites, chap. 49 1-6. 
 
 5. The Edomites, chap. 49 7-22 (= Obad. vv. 1-4). 
 [6. Damascus, etc, chap. 49 23-27. 
 
 7. Kedar, etc. ( = The Arabians), ch. 49 28-33. 2 ] 
 
 8. The Elamites, ch. 49 34-39. 
 
 9. The Doom of Babylon, which was sunk in 
 Euphrates, ch. 51 59-64. Date, 593 B.C. 
 
 VII. The Historical Postscript, chap. 52. 
 See pp. 141, 142. 
 
 1 On these two chapters, see pp. 134-137. 
 
 2 Ver. 28J is a post eventum note, recording the fulfilment. 
 The authenticity of VI, 6 and 7 is, however, much disputed 
 on internal grounds, and because the matter of these oracles 
 lacks historical confirmation. 
 
ISO 
 
 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 It will be convenient to append a chronological 
 table of the chapters of Jeremiah : 
 
 B.C. Chapter. 
 
 628 1 
 
 628- {2-6; (?) 16 ; 
 621 (21H-22 9 
 
 62 l |(?)11 is, 11o-12g; 
 
 later ((?) n^ 27 
 
 608 
 
 { 7-10, 26, 1 22 10-12 ; 
 
 I 46 1-12 
 608- (22 13-18, 47 ;(?) 14-15, 
 605 (17 l-is, 18-20 
 
 (25/36, 45; 
 
 ( (?) 48, 49 1-33 
 
 605-3 a 
 604 
 
 B. c. Chapter. 
 
 f - 600 {(S ; i 2 ;, 7 ;23,-s 
 
 597 13, 22 20-30 
 
 597- ( 24, 29, 27, 28 ; 
 593 ( 49 34-39 ; (?) 23 9-39 
 593 51 59-04 
 
 ( 21 mo, 34, 37 
 ( 32-33 
 
 588- 
 587 
 
 £*f 30-31; 40-44; 
 
 later i 4613 " 26 
 
 39; 
 
 A few words remain to be said about the 
 Septuagint Version and its relation to the re- 
 ceived Hebrew Text, from which it deviates 
 more frequently and notably than in any other 
 Book of the Old Testament. The Greek is 
 shorter than the Hebrew by 2,700 words, or 
 about one-eighth of the whole ! At one time 
 the view prevailed that the Egyptian-Greek 
 translators, working probably in the second 
 century B.C., had before them a distinct edition 
 of the original preserved in Egypt from the 
 
 1 In the case of narrative sections, such as ch. 2G, the 
 date refers not to the time when the story may have been 
 written, but to the time when the events took place. 
 
THE BOOK OF JEREMIAH 151 
 
 time of Jeremiah's death, and that the Masso- 
 retic form of the Book was derived from a later 
 Palestinian recension, in which the Egyptian text 
 had undergone enlargement and rearrangement. 
 This theory is now abandoned, and the general 
 superiority of the Massoretic reading is recog- 
 nised, in Jeremiah as in the rest of the Old 
 Testament. The greater number of variations 
 must be put down to the errors and the licence 
 of the translator ; and apart from the larger 
 omissions distinguishing the LXX, there is little 
 reason for supposing that the Jews of Egypt 
 had in possession any purer form of Jeremiah 
 than those of Palestine or used a recension of 
 the original differing in any material respect 
 from that represented by the extant Hebrew 
 MSS. The brevity of the Greek rendering ap- 
 pears to be due in great measure to systematic 
 abbreviation : the translator of this book has 
 used greater freedom than any of his collabo- 
 rators, 1 habitually shortening the titles of per- 
 sons, omitting proper names where possible, 
 dropping synonymous expressions, and curtailing 
 descriptions. 
 
 1 The signal inequality of the LXX rendering of the O.T. in 
 its different parts proves that the work was done by different 
 hands working independently; it extended probably over a 
 long period of time. 
 
152 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 The following passage, relating the death of 
 the prophet Uriah (26 20-23), in which the words 
 omitted by the LXX are italicized, will show 
 how largely the translation is an abridgement : 
 
 And there was also a man that prophesied in the 
 name of the Lokd, Uriah the son of Shemaiah of 
 Kirjath-jearim, and he prophesied against this city 
 and against this land according to all the words of 
 Jeremiah. And the king Jehoiakim, with all his 
 mighty men and all the princes, heard his words, 
 
 and -j w ?■ sought to put him to death ; and 
 
 Uriah heard of it, and ivas afraid, and fled and went 
 intoiEgypt. And the king Jehoiakim sent men into 
 Egypt — Elnathan the son of Achbor and certain men 
 
 with him, into Egypt ; and they fetched \ rr • j 
 
 forth {out^Egypt, and brou S ht him ™ t0 the 
 king Jehoiakim, who slew him with the sword, and 
 
 cast {his deal body into the S raves of the sons 
 of the people. 
 
 In the above example, the Greek exhibits a 
 calculated and not unskilful cutting down of the 
 Hebrew, which bears unmistakable marks of 
 originality. This is not the case in which a 
 shorter, purer text has been glossed, but in which 
 the full text has been of set purpose condensed. 
 Similarly, the LXX retrenches vv. 1. 2 of ch. 7 
 
THE BOOK OF JEREMIAH 153 
 
 omitting the graphic and living touches of the 
 passage and reducing the sentence to its barest 
 terms : " Hear the word of the Lord, all Judah ! " 
 Where duplicates occur in different parts of the 
 (Hebrew) Book — a phenomenon frequent in 
 Jeremiah (comp. 6 12-15 and 8 10-12, 6 22-24 and 
 50 41-43, 10 12-16 and 51 15-19, 16 14. 15 and 23 7.8, 
 23 5. 6 and 33 u-io, 30 10. 11 and. 46 27. 2s, 39 1-10 and 
 52 4-16, 49 19-21 and 50 44-46) — the LXX (except in 
 the peculiar instances of chs. 50, 51 : ) avoids the 
 repetition, and is, on the whole, sustained by 
 internal evidence in doing so. Amongst the 
 other substantial omissions (as distinguished from 
 abbreviations) distinguishing the Greek Version, 
 those of 29 16-20, 48 45-47, 33 14-26 (less certainly), and 
 49 6 commend themselves on intrinsic grounds — 
 these we take to be instances in which the 
 shorter Greek text is free from accretions that 
 the Hebrew has subsequently gathered ; on 
 the contrary, the absence of 11 7. s, 17 1-4, 31 37, 
 52 2. 3, 15, 28-30, from the Greek gives proof of real 
 defects in the text employed by the translator, 
 or of mistaken judgement upon his part. 
 
 The nature and value of the Hebrew text 
 which underlay the LXX constitute a problem 
 still awaiting complete investigation. Mean- 
 
 1 On this post-Jeremianic composition, which is largely a 
 catena from older prophecy, see pp. 134-137. 
 
154 THE BOOKS OF THE PR0PHE1S 
 
 while, the verdict of A. B. Davidson l is that in 
 which Old Testament scholars generally would 
 concur, so far as Jeremiah is concerned : 
 
 Both texts reflect the same archetype ; but this 
 archetype underwent a gradual process of expansion, 
 and the process is reflected at an earlier stage in the 
 MS. or MSS. at the basis of the LXX, and at a more 
 advanced stage in those at the basis of the Massoretic 
 Text. . . . Speaking generally, the Massoretic Text 
 is qualitatively greatly superior to the Greek ; but 
 on the other hand, quantitatively, the Greek is 
 nearer the original text. This judgement is general, 
 admitting many exceptions — that is, cases where 
 the quality of the Greek text is better, and its 
 readings more original than the Hebrew ; and also 
 cases where, in regard to quantity, the Hebrew is 
 to be preferred, the omissions in the LXX being due 
 to faults in the translator's MS., to his own over- 
 sight, or to his tendency to scamp and abridge. 
 
 If one dared to dissent even a little from so 
 great a master, one would be disposed to lay 
 more stress on the last probability than Davidson 
 seems to have done. 
 
 1 See his excellent article on "Jeremiah" in Hastings' 
 Dictionary of the Bible, vol. ii, p. 574. 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 
 THE HISTORY OF JEREMIAH 
 
 The Martyr Prophet — Personal detached from Natural 
 Religion — Home of Jeremiah — Chronology of the 
 Title — Jeremiah and Deuteronomy — Jeremiah, 
 Zephaniah, Josiah — Delay of threatened Calamity 
 — Accession of Jehoiakim — Conflict between Pro- 
 phet and King — Denunciation of Jehoiakim — First 
 Deportation to Babylon — Relations of Jeremiah 
 and King Zedekiah — Prophecy of the Yokes — The 
 Popular Prophets — Correspondence with the Exiles 
 —Second Siege of Jerusalem — Jeremiah charged 
 with Treason — Jeremiah's Last Days. 
 
 THE Book of Jeremiah is largely an auto- 
 biography. The author becomes uncon- 
 sciously the hero of his work. At this crisis 
 the religion of Israel took refuge within the 
 soul of this devoted and much-enduring man ; 
 there it concentred its forces for a new advance. 
 Jeremiah is the martyr-prophet, in whom above 
 all others "the Spirit of the Christ testified 
 beforehand" of His sufferings. So with this 
 
 155 
 
156 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 prophet the Old Testament faith enters upon its 
 more inward and subjective stage of develop- 
 ment. The transition from Amos and Hosea 
 to Jeremiah resembles in religion that which 
 is marked amongst the philosophers in passing 
 from Plato and Aristotle to the Stoics. As 
 national life decayed and the state-religions of 
 classical Greece broke down, philosoi3hy threw 
 off its political habit and became introspective 
 and ethical; so with the ruin of the Israelite 
 nationality, as city and monarchy and temple 
 fell under the doom pronounced by prophec}', 
 the life of the individual soul struck deeper root. 
 Losing its supports in the old covenant institu- 
 tions and severing itself from the corrupt society 
 around it, the faith of men like Jeremiah cast 
 itself nakedly upon the word of Jehovah and 
 found its stay and nourishment in inward com- 
 munion with God. 
 
 Personal religion thus detaches itself from 
 social and institutional religion, and comes to 
 full consciousness. In this lies the chief positive 
 significance of the story of Jeremiah. As it 
 has so often proved, the death of the old world 
 was giving birth to the new ; where everything 
 visible spoke of defeat and the anguish of disso- 
 lution, a richer and finer life was germinating 
 in the soil covered with the wreck of past 
 
THE HISTORY OF JEREMIAH 157 
 
 greatness. That so much has been preserved of 
 Jeremiah's work and that his character shines 
 out so eminently, shows that the after-times 
 did not fail to realize the nobility of the man 
 and the importance of his message. Jeremiah 
 fills a large and unique place in the succession 
 of the prophets ; in pure spiritual vision and 
 attainment, he must be pronounced the greatest 
 of them all. 
 
 Like Isaiah, Jeremiah laboured under three 
 kings (1 1) ; his public ministry covered more 
 than forty years, extending from 628 to 585 B.C. 
 or later. Both prophesied under rulers of the 
 most opposite character : in the former case, an 
 apostate father was followed by a pious son, 
 Isaiah in his earlier years struggling with Ahaz 
 to find a disciple and ally in his successor ; 
 Jeremiah's experience was the reverse of this — 
 the reformation effected by Josiah during the 
 first half of his course being followed by a fatal 
 relapse under that king's ignoble sons. Isaiah's 
 career culminated in the glorious deliverance of 
 Jerusalem from Sennacherib : Jeremiah's old 
 age witnessed the destruction of Jerusalem by 
 Nebuchadrezzar, and the eclipse of the national 
 life. He died an obscure exile, at the hands, as 
 tradition relates, of his fellow-countrymen ; but 
 he attained through his long tribulation a grand 
 
158 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 spiritual victory, and " kept the faith " for future 
 generations. This man of sorrows could well 
 have said to the true Israel, like Jesus in 
 dying, "Be of good cheer; I have overcome 
 the world ! " 
 
 Jeremiah was the son of a priestly house 
 belonging to Anathoth, a little town situated in 
 the territory of Benjamin, two and a half miles 
 north-east of Jerusalem. His native place stood 
 high on the mountain-ridge, commanding a wide 
 view northwards over " the hills of Ephraim " 
 (4 15, 31 6.15-20) and eastwards over " the pride 
 of Jordan" (12 5 49 19 50 44), across the river- 
 valley which vividly contrasted by its luxuriant 
 growth with " the bare heights " on either side 
 of it (3 2. 21 4 11 7 29). His horizon is full of 
 " the mountains," which in his visions of judge- 
 ment he sees " trembling " beneath Jehovah's 
 displeasure and " the hills moving to and fro " 
 (4 24; comp. 9 10 13 ie). "The land of Benjamin" 
 is conspicuous in his enumeration of localities 
 (32 44 33 13 ; comp. 61); " Rachel," the tribe- 
 mother of Ephraim and Benjamin, figures in 
 one of his most pathetic pictures (31 15). The 
 landscape of Anathoth supplied to Jeremiah's 
 imagination its broad framework ; the imagery 
 which filled it was rich and various. ^Nature 
 and human life, in country and city, are reflected 
 
THE HISTORY OF JEREMIAH 159 
 
 in the mirror of his ever-shifting moods and 
 the colours of his poetry. Not improbably, 
 Jeremiah's family was descended from the line 
 of Abiathar, David's companion, the last high- 
 priest of Eli's house, who was banished by 
 Solomon to Anathoth, where his " fields" lay 
 (1 Kings 226.27). His father Hilkiah (1 1 : 
 Chilqiyydhii) cannot have been identical with 
 Josiah's high-priest of that name, the man 
 who made the memorable discovery of the Law- 
 book in the temple (2 (Kings 22 s). Jeremiah 
 evidently stood in no connexion with the temple- 
 authorities ; and despite his long residence in 
 Jerusalem and his intense devotion to it, he was 
 a genuine countryman, with a keen eye for the 
 city's vices (01 6 o. 7 13 27, etc.), ready to cry, 
 " Oh for a lodge in the wilderness ! " (9 2) and 
 eager to escape to Anathoth the moment that 
 the siege of Jerusalem was relaxed (37 11). He 
 puts " the men of Judah " before " the inhabit- 
 ants of Jerusalem " in coupling them together 
 (4 4 11 2. 6. p. 12 32 12), whereas Isaiah's order is 
 the reverse of this (Isa. 5 3 22 21). 
 
 The title prefixed to the Book is fall and 
 precise, and has been carefully drawn up : " The 
 words of Yirmyahu, son of Chilqiyyahu, of the 
 priests that were in 'Anathoth in the land of 
 Bin-yamin : to whom the word of Yahweh came 
 
160 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 in the days of Yo'shiyyahu, son of 'Anion king 
 of Yndah, in the thirteenth year of his reign. It 
 came further in the days of Yehoyaqim, son of 
 Yo'shiyyahu king of Yndah, unto the end of the 
 eleventh year of Tsidqiyyahu, son of Yo'shiyyahu 
 king of Yndah, unto the captivity of Yerushalem 
 in the fifth month " (1 1-3). This account, while 
 it ignores the closing events of Jeremiah's min- 
 istry as this was continued in Judaea and Egypt 
 subsequently to the overthrow of Zedekiah 
 (chs. 40-44), correctly indicates the two chief 
 periods of the prophet's work, and their detach- 
 ment from each other. " The word of Jehovah 
 came" to him first in the year 628, seven years 
 before the Josianic reformation, while the country 
 was yet steeped in the idolatry and moral cor- 
 ruption of Manasseh's age. To this period the 
 earliest preaching of Jeremiah applies, being 
 contemporary with that of Zephaniah and of 
 similar scope (see pp. 24-33 above). Then a 
 long silence fell on the prophet. We catch a 
 glirnj^se in ch. 11 i-s of some kind of missionary 
 campaign carried on by Jeremiah in promotion, 
 as it seems, of the Deuteronomic Law, for " the 
 words of this covenant" in that place cannot 
 well mean any thin 2: else than the Torah then 
 delivered to the people. 
 
 Singularly enough, this passage, and the ad- 
 
THE HISTORY OF JEREMIAH 161 
 
 verse reference of 8 s, are the only direct allusions 
 Jeremiah makes to the Deuteronomic code or to 
 any written law. The character and adminis- 
 tration of Josiah won his respect (22 15. ia) ; bat 
 his pages leave us entirely in the dark about the 
 king's work in the reformation of religion — a 
 phenomenon that has its parallel in the relations 
 of Isaiah to Hezekiah (see Vol. II, pp. 20-22). 
 While his language is affected by the Deutero- 
 nomic style, the Deuteronomic doctrine appears 
 to be studiously avoided. The ultimate signifi- 
 cance of the publication of the Torah and the 
 centralization of worship seems to have escaped 
 Jeremiah, under his strong conviction of the 
 immediate failure of Josiah's movement. He 
 saw too clearly that the popular reforms were a 
 mere " cleansing of the outside of cup and 
 platter," which would not avert Jehovah's puni- 
 tive wrath : his hope fixed itself upon the coming 
 of "days when Jehovah would put His law in the 
 inward parts " of His people and " write it in 
 their hearts," and no longer on tables of stone 
 or leaves of papyrus (31 31-34). After the first 
 issuing and enforcement of Hilkiah's book, 
 Jeremiah took up an attitude of reserve in re- 
 gard to it ; so far as his extant prophecies show, 
 no "word of Jehovah came" to him in the twelve 
 
 years that elapsed between Josiah's reform and 
 in. 11 
 
1 62 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 death. He stood aside, letting other men try 
 their plans for the people's salvation ; when they 
 failed, he stepped in again. 
 
 Like Zephaniah, Jeremiah had been convinced 
 at the outset and while the old heathen party 
 were still in power, that the kingdom of Judah 
 was doomed ; the two young prophets saw the 
 instruments of its destruction in the oncoming 
 Scythian hordes. The rain threatening from 
 this quarter was averted (see pp. 31-32) ; the 
 highlands of Judah escaped the barbarian irrup- 
 tion, and the new king, on coming of age, proved 
 a successful ruler and a devoted servant of 
 Jehovah (see pp. 1-4, 13-15). The covenant of the 
 nation with its God was re-enacted, under what 
 seemed the most favourable omens ; Jeremiah 
 himself took part in preaching it. The reproof 
 of ch. 8 s — " How do ye say, ' We are wise, and 
 the law of Jehovah is with us ' ? But, behold, 
 the false pen of the scribes hath falsified it ! " — 
 cannot have been aimed at the publishers of 
 Josiah's Torah ; it points to some early attempt 
 made to disseminate vitiated copies, in the in- 
 terest of the old corruptions (comp. vv. 4-7). 
 Deuteronomy attacked the very evils against 
 which Jeremiah's life was directed — the idola- 
 trous local cults, and the popular immorality ; 
 he could not fail to sympathize with its spirit 
 
THE HISTORY OP JEREMIAH 163 
 
 and intent ; but the method of its promoters 
 was not his, and only for a moment could he 
 share their hopes of a national salvation. He 
 viewed with instinctive distrust the attempt to 
 impose external conformity on a people whose 
 disposition was alien from the pure worship and 
 law of Jehovah. In fact, Jeremiah no longer 
 believed in a state religion : " all these maxims 
 of government," as Marti well says, " these royal 
 decrees in favour of the faith of Jehovah," were 
 in his eyes " only a sowing among thorns " ; 
 there was in them " no breaking up of the fallow 
 ground" (4 3) ; the reformation was imposed, not 
 spontaneous ; it came from the king's will instead 
 of the people's heart. 
 
 At the same time, the awful predictions ful- 
 minated by Jeremiah and Zephaniah since the 
 year 628 had for the present failed ; the prophet 
 felt himself discredited as a messenger of 
 judgement, and his mouth was shut. To this 
 seeming frustration of his earlier warnings the 
 strange outcry of ch. 20 7&. is most plausibly 
 referred : " Jehovah, Thou hast befooled me, 
 and I have been made a fool of! — I am become 
 a laughing-stock all the day ; every one mocketh 
 me. For so often as I speak, I must cry out, 
 I must exclaim, c Violence ' and ' Oppression ' ; 
 then the word of Jehovah is made a reproach to 
 
1 64 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 me, and a derision all the day." For twenty 
 years he was crying " Wolf, wolf," and the fold 
 was still spared ! In the end the jn'ophet's 
 foresight was vindicated, with awful ernjmasis ; 
 but until the fatal year 608, events moved in a 
 course that falsified his jeremiads. With the 
 fall of Josiah at Megiddo, the well-intentioned 
 experiment of reformation to order came to 
 an end. 
 
 Chs. 1-6 echo, from some distance (see pp. 113- 
 114 above), the pre-reformation preaching of 
 Jeremiah. " In the beginning of the reisrn of 
 Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah " (26 i ; comp. 1 3), 
 he resumed his activity. The accession of this 
 king opened a disastrous era for Judgea. " The 
 people of the land " had raised his younger 
 brother Jehoahaz to the throne, on whom Jere- 
 miah pronounces an elegy in ch. 22 10-12 ; but the 
 conqueror of Megiddo, Pharaoh-Necho, annulled 
 the popular choice after three months, substi- 
 tuting in his own interest Eliakim (Jehoiakim), 
 whose unfitness was notorious. Jeremiah set 
 himself to stem the tide of reaction that ensued 
 on the elevation of this unprincipled young 
 monarch. His address at this crisis had a con- 
 sequence almost fatal to the preacher (26 10-19). 
 This important deliverance, briefly summarized 
 in 26 1-9, appears to be given in extenso in 
 
THE HISTORY OF JEREMIAH i6$ 
 
 chs. 7 1-8 3 (comp. 7 2-7 with 26 2. 3 ; 7 12-15 with 
 26 6. 9 ; 7 4. 10. 11 with 26 12) ; ch. 7 is introduced 
 by the formula, " The word that came to Jere- 
 miah from Jehovah " (" came this word from 
 Jehovah," 26 1), — an expression pointing to a 
 new and specific revelation made to the prophet 
 after some interval, and which seems to be re- 
 called by the language of 1 8a. 
 
 From this moment began the struggle between 
 prophet and king, which culminated " in the 
 fourth year of Jehoiakim " and " the first year of 
 Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon" (25 1 36 1 45 1) 
 — soon after the battle of Carchemish (605), 
 terminating the short-lived Egyptian ascendency 
 — when through Jeremiah Jehovah proclaimed 
 the Babylonian victor His emperor-elect and 
 sent round " the cup of the wine of His fury " 
 for " all the nations " to drink, beginning from 
 Jerusalem (25 15-29). The daring prophet, who 
 addressed his discourse of doom to " all the 
 people of Judah and all the inhabitants of 
 Jerusalem" (presumably at some festival gather- 
 ing), was put under restraint ; but he occupied 
 his leisure in writing out his oracles, as delivered 
 up to date, which he instructed his secretary 
 Baruch to read to the people " in Jehovah's 
 house " upon " the fast-day " — a fast ordered 
 doubtless in view of the approach of the 
 
1 66 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 Chaldaeans. This reading took place in " the 
 fifth year of Jehoiakim " (36i-io). The roll in 
 Barnch's hand was brought ultimately to the 
 king, who, after hearing the sheets read, ran 
 his knife through them and flung them into 
 the fire (vv. 20-24). Jeremiah and Baruch, by a 
 Divine providence, escaped Jehoiakim's vengeance 
 (26 2e) — evidently they had friends at court ; and 
 the destroyed manuscript was reproduced by 
 Baruch, writing at Jeremiah's dictation, with 
 " many like words " added thereto. The volume 
 thus composed in the winter of 604-603 forms 
 the basis of the existing Book of Jeremiah ; see 
 p. 112 ff., also notes on p. 132. 
 
 Ch. 22 13-19 goes to account for Jehoiakim's 
 hatred of Jeremiah. This passage is a fierce 
 tirade against the king's extortion and the forced 
 labour exacted in the building of his palace — 
 to be dated in the early and comparatively 
 prosperous years of his reign ; it concludes by 
 predicting for him " the burial of an ass " ; a 
 similar execration followed on the burning of 
 Barnch's roll (36 30). Jehoiakim died during 
 the war with Nebuchadrezzar ; but the historians, 
 though condemning his evil rule, record nothing 
 extraordinary concerning the manner of his death 
 or sepulture (2 Kings 23 36-24 e, 2 Chron. 36 5-s). 
 The incident of the Rechabites, who took refuge 
 
THE HISTORY OF JEREMIAH 167 
 
 in Jerusalem during the siege at the end of 
 Jehoiakim's reign, is the only other occurrence of 
 Jeremiah's life, beside the above, that is expressly 
 referred to " the days of Jehoiakim." Many of 
 Jeremiah's undated speeches bear internal signs of 
 belonging to this period — the bulk indeed of those 
 contained in chs. 7-20 (see pp. 119-120 above) ; x 
 to these should be added most of the Dooms 
 upon the Foreign Nations (see pp. 117, 137-138). 
 Jehoiakim died in the course of the struggle 
 with Babylon, on which he had presumptuously 
 entered. The youthful Jehoiachin (Yeko-yakin, 
 2 Kings 24 6-9 ; called Yekonyah in 1 Chron. 3 16 
 and Jer. 24, and Konyahu in Jer. 22 24-28 and 
 37 1), who shares his father's ill rejjutation, held 
 the insecure throne but three months, until 
 Jerusalem was surrendered to Nebuchadrezzar. 
 On this ensued the first deportation to Babylon 
 (2 Kings 24 s-w). The prophet pronounced 
 against Jehoiachin sentence of perpetual banish- 
 ment (Jer. 22 24-29), in spite of which the nationalist 
 party for long set their hopes on his restoration 
 (28 4) ; he languished in prison for thirty-seven 
 years, when Nebuchadrezzar's successor re- 
 leased him and gave him a place in the court 
 at Babylon (2 Kings 25 27-30). Zerubbabel, who 
 held a distinguished rank among the restored 
 
 1 On the title of 27 i, see p. 124. 
 
1 68 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 exiles, was Jehoiachin's grandson. Josiah's 
 remaining and third son Mattaniah, with his 
 name changed to Zedekiah (Tsidqiyyahu)^ was 
 set on the throne by 'Nebuchadrezzar, who 
 preferred to rule Judaea through the native 
 dynasty, and supposed he had rendered the 
 principality powerless by removing the flower 
 of its population. 
 
 The relations of Jeremiah with Zedekiah, the 
 last of the kings of Judah, are of lively interest. 
 Zedekiah sinned rather through weakness and 
 incapacity than through violence of temper ; he 
 consulted Jeremiah more than once, but wanted 
 the resolution to act on the prophet's advice. 
 The inferior JudsBan chiefs who now came into 
 power-, instead of learning prudence by the lesson 
 of 597, played a reckless and fanatical part : 
 listening to the promptings of neighbouring 
 vassal states and relying on the help of 
 Egypt, the old "broken reed" of Isaiah's time, 
 they pushed Zedekiah into treasonable action 
 (Jer. 27 2. 3, 28 i-4, 25 io, 37 5-7 ; Ezek. 17 15. 17). In 
 the first instance, when Zedekiah in his fourth 
 year had entertained some plot against his 
 suzerain (comp. 27 1-3 [b.v. margin] with 28 1. 2), 
 he escaped punishment by prompt submission, 
 going up to Babylon to renew in person his 
 pledges of loyalty (51 59). On this occasion, 
 
THE HISTORY OF JEREMIAH 169 
 
 as it is related in 51 59-01, Jeremiah sent by a 
 friendly hand a copy of some oracle against 
 Babylon to be sunk in the Euphrates with the 
 words, " Thus shall Babylon sink, and shall not 
 rise again." This roll, we are told, contained the 
 " judgements" delivered in the foregoing chapters 
 (50, 51 ; but see pp. 134-137 above). As to the 
 ultimate fate of Babylon, Jeremiah and Habak- 
 knk were at one (comp. pp. 58-59). Either then 
 or earlier, Zedekiah took a peculiarly solemn 
 oath of fealty to the Chakhean sovereign, the 
 breach of which Ezekiel regarded as unpardon- 
 able (Ezek.17 n-20, 21 2^27 ; comp. 2 Chron. 36 13). 
 Jeremiah cherished a kindlier feeling for this 
 unhappy monarch (21 9 34 4. 5) and did his best 
 to save him. 
 
 We have no dated utterance of Jeremiah's in 
 Zedekiah's reign earlier than its fourth year, 
 593, when (as indicated above) the kings of 
 Edom, Moab, Amnion, Tyre and Zidon, sent 
 " messengers " to Jerusalem with a view to 
 concert measures against the Chaldean over- 
 lord. Jeremiah was instructed to " make bands 
 and bars and put them on his neck," then to 
 send these through the ambassadors to the 
 several kings in token of the subjection due to 
 Babylon, the maintenance of which is enjoined 
 upon them under the severest threats (ch. 27). 
 
170 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 This demonstration brought Jeremiah into direct 
 conflict with the patriotic party. Forthwith 
 " Chananyah ben-'Azzur, the prophet," confronted 
 Jeremiah in the temple with the words, " Thus 
 speaketh Jehovah of hosts, the God of Israel, 
 saying, I have broken the yoke of the king of 
 Babylon " (28 1-4) ; " within two full years," he 
 predicts, the sacred vessels of which the temple 
 had been despoiled will be replaced, and Jeconiah 
 and his fellow exiles will be restored to their 
 native land. Suiting the action to the word, 
 Hananiah snatches off the wooden yoke Jeremiah 
 was wearing, and breaks it in two before priests 
 and people. For the moment the prophet of 
 evil is confounded ; Jeremiah can only say, 
 " Amen ! may Jehovah do so ; may Jehovah 
 perform thy words that thou hast prophesied ! " 
 But shortly " the word of Jehovah came " again 
 " to Jeremiah," bidding him to substitute " bars 
 of iron " for the broken bars of wood, and sen- 
 tencing Hananiah to death as a lying prophet — 
 a fate which overtook the latter, we are told, in 
 two months from this date (comp. vv. 1 and 17). 
 
 Hananiah represented the majority of the 
 official prophets of the time, who inflamed the 
 popular passions by preaching the inviolability of 
 Zion and promised a repetition of the deliverance 
 of the city from Sennacherib. A superstitious 
 
THE HISTORY OF JEREMIAH 171 
 
 patriotism had gathered round the terople and 
 its worship since the Josianic reforms : according 
 to the doctrine of the school of Hananiah, 
 Jehovah was bound by the re-established cove- 
 nant to defend His house, so long as the sacred 
 institutions were maintained. Formal loyalty 
 to the Deuteronomic cultus was combined with 
 a gross disregard of its ethical demands, and 
 the people " trusted," as Jeremiah had declared 
 years ago (7 4-11), " in lying words, saying, ' The 
 temple of Jehovah is this ! ' and when they 
 had escaped calamity, they would u come and 
 stand before " Jehovah " in the house called by 
 His name, and say, * We have been delivered ' — 
 to do, forsooth, all these abominations ! " thus 
 turning " His house into a robbers' den ! " The 
 reformation of 621 had produced, as Jeremiah 
 seems to have expected almost from the begin- 
 ning, a generation of thorough-paced pharisees ; 
 the type of zealotry which brought destruction 
 on Jerusalem in the first century of our era was 
 in full operation at its overthrow in the sixth 
 century before Christ. Jeremiah stood alone 
 confronting prophets x and priests, king, princes, 
 and people. His terrible philippic against the 
 
 1 The position of Jeremiah's contemporaries, Habakkuk 
 and the author of Zech. 12-14, has been fully discussed in 
 Chs. xxii and xxiii. 
 
172 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 prophets, ch. 23 o-io, was launched on this occa- 
 sion or not very much later. In the existing order 
 of the Book, it follows up the denunciation of 
 the kings — or u shepherds " (a term probably in- 
 cluding the princes besides) — of Judah(21 n-234): 
 kings and prophets, most of all the latter, were 
 the united causes of Israel's undoing. Zephaniah 
 (3 4) condemned the prophets and priests of thirty 
 years earlier in the like strain ; but nowhere else 
 in the Old Testament, since the encounter of 
 Micaiah ben-Imlah and Zedekiah ben-Kena'anah 
 (1 Kings 22) before king Ahab, has the struggle 
 between the true and false prophecy come out 
 in so dramatic a form. Whether it was that 
 Jeremiah's warning, confirmed by the death of 
 his opponent, prevailed with Zedekiah or that 
 the king's courage failed him, he made his peace 
 this time witb the Babylonian overlord ; it was 
 not till five years later (39 1), in 588 B.C., that 
 the actual revolt burst out. 
 
 Before this time and while Judaea was in 
 peaceful intercourse with Babylon, communica- 
 tions had passed between Jeremiah and the 
 exiles of 597, whom he likens in ch. 24 to a 
 basket of " good figs " in comparison with the 
 " very bad figs " left behind. He addressed a 
 letter to " the residue of the elders of the 
 captivity" (under whom the captives preserved 
 
THE HISTORY OF JEREMIAH 173 
 
 their native organization) " and to the priests 
 and to the prophets" (amongst these, Ezekiel 
 was surely known to him), "and to all the 
 people whom Nebuchadrezzar had carried away 
 captive," exhorting them to make themselves 
 at home where they are settled and to behave 
 as good citizens, at the same time " seeking 
 Jehovah " in the foreign land " with all their 
 heart," because their banishment is to last 
 "seventy years" (ch.29); they must reject the 
 delusive hopes held out by certain prophets who 
 were plaving in Babylonia the role adopted to 
 his ruin by Hananiah in Jerusalem. Two of 
 these deceivers, Ahab and Zedekiah, Jeremiah 
 denounces by name ; these men Nebuchadrezzar, 
 it is foretold, " will roast by fire," — doubtless for 
 provoking the exiles to rebellion (vv. 21-23). In 
 contemptuous reply to this attack, the ringleader 
 of the fanatics in Babylon, named Shemaiah 
 (" Sherna'yahu the Nechelamite ") wrote to 
 " Tsephanyah, son of Ma'aseyah, the priest " at 
 Jerusalem, asking that Jeremiah be "put in 
 the stocks " as one " that is mad and acts the 
 prophet " (vv. 25-29) ; Jeremiah retorts by a curse 
 pronounced on his accuser in Jehovah's name 
 (vv. 30-32). With this lively and instructive epi- 
 sode Jeremiah's ministry to the exiles in the 
 east comes to an end. 
 
174 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 The second siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchad- 
 rezzar, beginning in the year 588, the ninth of 
 Zedekiah's reign, brought Jeremiah's relations 
 with the government to an acute stage. In the 
 first year of Jehoiakim's reign he had narrowly 
 escaped a traitor's death (ch. 26) ; in the course 
 of the same reign he was scourged and put in 
 the stocks by Pashhur, the priest in charge of 
 the temple, in order to silence or discredit him 
 (ch. 20). From that time Jeremiah appears to 
 have been forbidden access to the temple and 
 the opportunity of public preaching. He was 
 obliged to send Baruch to read to the people what 
 he had wished to say, at the crisis of Jehoiakim's 
 fourth year (ch. 36). The marvel is that he 
 escaped throughout this reign the fate which 
 actually fell on his disciple Uriah (^Uriyyah), 
 whom Jehoiakim dragged for execution out of 
 Egypt, whither he had fled from the king's 
 displeasure (26 20-24). During the later years of 
 Jeremiah's ministry in Jerusalem the danger 
 came from " the princes " and " the men of 
 war," rather than the king. At the outset 
 Zedekiah withstood the war-party and the influ- 
 ence of foreign intrigue, and strove to keep faith 
 with Babylon; in the end, like Hezekiah 120 
 years before, he was carried into rebellion by 
 the rising tide of nationalism, which under the 
 
THE HISTORY OF JEREMIAH 175 
 
 instigation of prophets and priests assumed 
 a religious as well as a patriotic character. 
 Nebuchadrezzar dealt promptly with the Judaean 
 revolt ; his troops appeared before Jerusalem in 
 the tenth month of Zedekiah's ninth year — 
 January 588 ; the siege, which was desperately 
 maintained, and interrupted by an abortive 
 diversion from the side of Egypt, lasted for 
 eighteen months. 
 
 Twice the king publicly appealed to Jeremiah, 
 by deputation — that he should " inquire of 
 Jehovah for us " and "pray unto Jehovah our 
 God for us " — first at the commencement of the 
 war (21 1-10), and then later on, when the be- 
 sieging army was drawn off to meet the Egyptians 
 (37 3-10) : the occasions are clearly distinct, though 
 " Zephaniah the priest " (comp. 29 25. 29) took part 
 in both meetings. Jeremiah in both instances 
 declares Jehovah to be inexorable, promising 
 bare " life " only to those who go over to the 
 Chaldeans. Naturally therefore, when Jeremiah 
 took the opportunity of the relaxation of the 
 siege to visit Anathoth, he was suspected of 
 desertion and thereupon scourged and thrown 
 into prison (37 11-21). The pnmhet had " re- 
 mained there many days," probably till the 
 Chaldseans resumed the investment, when Zede- 
 kiah had him brought to the palace for a secret 
 
176 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 consultation. Though Jeremiah could only re- 
 peat his former uncompromising response, the 
 king did not refuse his plea for milder treatment, 
 and he was placed in " the court of the guard " 
 with a provision for his maintenance (37 16-21). 
 
 In this more open custody Jeremiah had 
 some access to " the people," which he used 
 in urging them to save their lives by " going 
 out to the Chaldeans " (38 1-3 ; comp. 32 2. s. 12). 
 The military authorities of course regarded this 
 as treason, and " the princes" insisted with 
 the king on Jeremiah's execution (38 4. 5). He 
 was flung into an empty well, where he must 
 soon have perished but for the compassion of 
 an Ethiopian servant of the court, who obtained 
 leave from the king to rescue him ; and he was 
 restored to "the court of the guard" (vv. c-13). 
 Once more, as the siege drew to its close, 
 Zedekiah asked the prophet's advice, who 
 counselled surrender, assuring him of personal 
 safety on this condition. Once more Zedekiah 
 hesitated, and he was lost ; his attempt to escape, 
 when the city was on the point of capture, mis- 
 carried. The last si^ht the luckless kin 2 looked 
 on was the slaughter of his sons ; then he was 
 blinded, and so led a prisoner to Babylon. 
 
 The conclusion of Jeremiah's story is told in 
 chs. 39-44, and is of the like melancholy tenor. 
 
THE HISTORY OF JEREMIAH 177 
 
 Nebuchadrezzar had intelligence of the part 
 Jeremiah had taken in urging his people to keep 
 faith with their suzerain, and gave orders for 
 his liberation. He elected to stay with the poor 
 remnant of the Judseans under the charge of 
 Gedaliah, the son of his old protector Ahikam 
 (26 24), who had probably followed his advice in 
 surrendering to the Chaldfeans. He witnessed 
 the assassination of Gedaliah ; and was fated to 
 have his prophetic counsel once again asked and 
 disobeyed, for the survivors inquired through 
 him whether they should take refuge in Egypt, 
 and persisted in doing so, carrying the prophet 
 along with them, in spite of his warning against 
 this step. Jeremiah protested, both before the 
 journey and when the emigrants arrived at 
 Tahpanhes by the Nile, that the sword of 
 Nebuchadrezzar, and the very miseries from 
 which they sought flight, would follow them 
 into Egypt. The prophet had the extreme grief 
 of seeing his fellow-exiles resume, and impu- 
 dently defend, the idolatries which had brought 
 Jehovah's wrath upon them in their own land 
 (ch. 44). 1 The Jewish tradition relates, only too 
 
 1 Jer. 44 1 speaks of the Jewish fugitives as settling " at 
 
 Migdol, and at Tahpanhes, and at Noph" (Memphis), which 
 
 were cities of Lower Egypt, and also " in the country of 
 
 PatJiros" — a name for Upper Egypt or the Thebaid (see 
 
 in. 12 
 
178 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 probably, that this most heroic of the prophets 
 died by stoning at the hands of his compatriots 
 in Egypt, who were infuriated at his rebukes. 
 
 Hastings' D.B. on " Pathros "). A bundle of papyri has 
 lately been unearthed at Assouan, by the First Cataract 
 of the Nile, in this region, which proceeds from the Jewish 
 colony living there between the years 471 and 411 B.C. — 
 contemporary, that is, with Ezra and Nehemiah. These 
 documents are Aramaic — in a dialect resembling that of the 
 Aramaic of the so-called Chaldee parts of the Books of Ezra 
 and Daniel — the common language of the Persian empire, in 
 which Egypt was at that time included. They are business 
 memoranda of various kinds, reflecting the life of a numerous 
 and comparatively prosperous community in active inter- 
 course with its Egyptian neighbours. Evidently at this 
 time — a century later than the prophet's day— the curse of 
 Jer. 44 12-14 had not fallen on the Jews of Pathros ; and they 
 had not continued in the idolatry that Jeremiah denounces. 
 There is satisfactory proof in these old papers, written 2,350 
 years ago, that the Egyptian Jews returned to the faith of 
 Jehovah. It is a comfort to think that Jeremiah's dying 
 protest was not in vain. See the very interesting account of 
 the matter in the work entitled Aramaic Papyri discovered, 
 at Assuan, edited by A. H. Sayce and A. E. Cowley (London, 
 1906). 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 THE DISCIPLINE OF JEKEMIAH 
 
 Self-revelations of the Book of Jeremiah — Stages of 
 his Inner Life — Reluctance at his Call — Repugnance 
 toward his Mission — Domestic Ties forbidden — 
 Early Prophecies of Denunciation — Effect on the 
 People— The Deuteronomic Reformation — Attitude 
 toward the Written Law — Jeremiah nonplussed — 
 Time of Disillusion— Shock of Megiddo — Super- 
 stitious Trust in the Temple — Early Years of 
 Jehoiakim— Drought following on Defeat — Jere- 
 miah's amour-proiwe — Taunts against Jeremiah — ■ 
 His Self-contradictions — Religious Leaders united 
 against Jeremiah — Imprisonment by Pashhur — The 
 Final Paroxysm — Accusation against God — Per 
 Crucem ad Lucem — The Roll read to Jehoiakim — 
 The Cup of Jehovah's Anger for the Nations — 
 Jeremiah's Mellowing — Purchase of the Anathoth 
 Field — Book of Israel's Future — The Law in the 
 Heart. 
 
 WE have sketched in the last chapter the 
 outward course of this man of sorrows, 
 who in his long career passed through almost 
 every kind of anguish that a minister of God 
 
 179 
 
i8o THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 and a lover of his people can endure. Jeremiah's 
 inner experience can be traced through a series 
 of self-revealing passages, with less certainty as 
 to the order of time but with a sufficiently clear 
 apprehension of the growth of his faith and 
 his spiritual character. Cbs. 1, 8 is and 9 i. 2, 
 11 18-23, 15 10. 11 and 15-21, 16 1-9, 20, 20, and 30-33 
 furnish the salient points in the history of this 
 great soul ; they disclose the protracted struggle 
 of a sensitive and yet sternly loyal and upright 
 nature with a most cruel vocation, its progress 
 from youthful consecration and a brave accep- 
 tance of the Divine will through doubt and 
 moods of passionate revolt to complete self- 
 conquest, ending in settled peace and a far-seeing 
 assurance of God's victory over the stubborn and 
 lawless heart of man. 
 
 This inner development, which makes the 
 story of one man an epitome and prophetic 
 mirror of God's dealings with His people in all 
 times, may be divided into five successive stages : 
 (1) Jeremiah's call to the prophetic office in 
 early life ; (2) the youthful period of fierce de- 
 nunciation, which extended from 628 to 621 B.C. 
 and was antecedent to the reforms of Josiah ; 
 (3) the time of disillusion and silence, 621-608, 
 ensuing upon the public reformation ; (4) the 
 period of decisive conflict, in the Judasan state 
 
THE DISCIPLINE OF JEREMIAH 181 
 
 and within Jeremiah's breast, which was opened 
 by the fall of Josiah at the battle of Megicldo 
 and terminated with the fourth year of Jehoiakim 
 (ch. 36 : 604 B.C.), when Jeremiah came to a 
 complete rupture with the king ; (5) the stage 
 of full acquiescence, attained by the prophet 
 amidst thickening national calamity and per- 
 sonal suffering, which extended from the esta- 
 blishment of the Babylonian supremacy (604), 
 through Jehoiakim's rebellion and the first siege 
 and deportation from Jerusalem, through Zecle- 
 kiah's hapless reign, to the destruction of the 
 city by Nebuchadrezzar and the flight of the 
 Jndgean remnant to Egypt, where the prophet- 
 martyr dies. 
 
 (1) In Jeremiatis call the special nature of his 
 task, and the peculiar temperament of the man, 
 both reveal themselves. He was to be, like 
 none before him, " a prophet unto the nations " 
 (1 5), the spiritual exponent of a coming world- 
 revolution and the mouthpiece of God's purpose 
 therein accomplished. With Jehovah's " words 
 put in his mouth," this shrinking, diffident young- 
 man is " set over the nations and over the king- 
 doms, to pluck up and to break down, and to 
 build and to plant " (vv. 9. 10). For Israel is now 
 to be swept into the vortex of world-politics ; 
 and Jeremiah presides over a grand epoch of 
 
1 82 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 destruction and reconstruction in the Divine 
 government of mankind. This seer witnessed 
 and interpreted the great Scythian irruption, the 
 fall of Assyria, the brilliant but illusive revival 
 of the Israelite nationality under Josiah, the brief 
 resuscitation of the Egyptian dominion, the rise 
 of the Median and Chalda3an empires, and the 
 destruction of the Davidic monarchy with its 
 city and sanctuary. Never was there crowded 
 into a single lifetime a train of more momentous 
 events, of more swift and violent changes in the 
 landscape of history. The political order exist- 
 ing around Jeremiah in 628, when his mission 
 began, was completely swept away by the date 
 of his death some forty-five years later ; but he 
 had sown the seeds of a new creation, which 
 were to germinate hiddenly through the exile of 
 his people and their centuries of tribulation, that 
 they might fructify till the end of time. The 
 two symbols attached to Jeremiah's inaugural 
 revelation, those of the early-blossoming almond 
 and the seetking-pot looking northwards (vv. 11-14), 
 picture the oncoming of the destined changes. 
 
 The reluctance of Jeremiah toward his call is 
 characteristic for his career. His was not the 
 prompt and eager spirit of Isaiah crying out, 
 " Here am I ! send me," so soon as his lips felt 
 God's fire and the summons reached his ear ; 
 
THE DISCIPLINE OF JEREMIAH 183 
 
 nor the unquestioning soul of Amos, to whom 
 Jehovah's voice came with a note resounding 
 and imperative as that of the lion roaring in the 
 forest : he meets his commission with the reply, 
 " Ah, Lord Jehovah ! behold, I cannot speak, 
 for I am but a boy ! " He feels no aptitude 
 for public speech ; his youth, to begin with, is 
 an insuperable bar. Jeremiah was sensible all 
 aloDg of the inadequacy of his powers and the 
 bitterness of his task. The contempt and un- 
 belief of his kindred, the insult and violence 
 that he repeatedly suffered from all classes of 
 his people, the appearance of disloyalty and of 
 sympathy with his country's oppressors that 
 attached to many of his oracles, wounded his 
 sensibilities in every part. 
 
 We saw in the experience of Habakkuk how 
 the naive faith of the older prophecy in Jehovah's 
 rule was troubled as it began to face the more 
 complicated problems of world-life and national 
 destiny (see pp. 55-59). Mke his contemporary, 
 Jeremiah had his sceptical moments ; he broke 
 out more than once into protest against the 
 harsh discipline of Providence ; but the trial as- 
 sumed in his case a more inward and personal 
 form. Jehovah had marked him from his 
 mother's womb for a great errand ; yet this 
 errand becomes his shame and torture, until he 
 
1 84 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 curses the day of his birth (comp. 1 5 with 15 10, 
 20 14-18) ! In Jeremiah the tragic mystery of 
 God's dealings with the individual man stands 
 over against the mystery of His dealings with 
 nations in the larger play of human life. It is 
 one of God's miracles — not without its parallels, 
 as in the instance of the fickle Simon who 
 becomes Christ's "rock," or John the apostle 
 of Love who pours out in the Apocalypse the 
 vials of " the unmixed wine of the wrath of 
 God " — it is a fine example of the " strength 
 perfected in weakness," that He should make 
 out of this soft-hearted, tremulous man "a fenced 
 city and an iron pillar and brazen walls," 
 " a tower and a fortress " for Himself amongst 
 His rebel people (see 1 is 6 27 15 20). Besieged by 
 every sort of hostility, assailed by contradiction, 
 ridicule, injury, with the whole force of religions 
 authority and popular feeling enlisted against 
 him — though his heart quaked all the while — 
 Jeremiah stood faithfully alone for God and 
 truth, as a lighthouse on its solitary rock breast- 
 ing the storms of more than forty of the darkest 
 years that God's kingdom on earth has known. 
 
 The oracle of ch. 16, at whatever time pub- 
 lished, must have come to the prophet at the 
 beginning of his course, for marriage was con- 
 tracted, as a rule, in the early years of adult 
 
THE DISCIPLINE OF JEREMIAH 185 
 
 life. A man of affectionate nature, he is for- 
 bidden all wedded alliance, all share in family 
 festivities or mournings ; with pathetic iteration 
 he refers in his prophecies to " the voice of 
 mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the 
 bridegroom and the voice of the bride," to " the 
 voice of the [household] mill-stones and the light 
 of the candle" (7 34 16 9 25 10 33 11) — he was 
 haunted by the sense of lost domestic bliss. 
 Cut off from social joys and the ties of kindred, 
 Jeremiah must witness by his lonely and un- 
 cared-for lot to the miseries impending on his 
 country. His detachment was emphasized by 
 the prophet's expulsion from Anathoth, his native 
 place, where a plot was laid against his life. 
 This circumstance probably occurred earlier than 
 is indicated by the position of the narrative 
 respecting it in 11 is-23. The story reminds us 
 of our Lord's experience at Nazareth. 
 
 (2) The first, youthful period of Jeremiah's 
 work coincided with the brief ministry of Zeph- 
 aniah in its occasion and aim ; see Chap. xxi. 
 Judsea was then filled with the idolatries set 
 up in Manasseh's reign (1 16 ; comp. Zeph. 3 1-4). 
 Immorality and oppression were rife amongst 
 all classes ; see especially 5 1-9. 26-31 (this chapter 
 reflects Jeremiah's first impressions of Jerusalem 
 =^-the state of things improved later under 
 
1 86 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 Josiah, according to 22 15-16 ; comp. Zepli. 3 1-4). 
 Both prophets descry a storm of judgement 
 sweeping down from the north ; it is the Scythian 
 invasion, then hanging over South -Western Asia, 
 which they depict in the graphic language of 
 Jer. 5 15-17 6 22-26 and Zeph. 1 2. 3. The preaching 
 of this period, written down some twenty years 
 afterwards (see 36 1. 2), is recalled in chs. 2-6. 
 A notable feature of Jeremiah's teaching at this 
 early time is the comparison he institutes (3o-is) 
 between the sin of " Israel," the old northern 
 kingdom, and that of " her sister Judah," to the 
 disadvantage of the latter. This tender-hearted 
 prophet, whose eyes in youth were accustomed 
 to the Ephraimite and Trans-jordanic landscape, 
 could never forget the larger Israel nor surrender 
 the unity of the ancient tribes. 
 
 Though the critics see in the hopeful passages 
 of chs. 3 14-is and 4 1-1 signs of interpolation, it 
 is impossible to exclude from the sombre fore- 
 bodings of the years 628-621 calls to repentance 
 on the prophet's part, and anticipations of relent- 
 ing in the sinful people (see 3 21-25) ; nor need 
 we doubt that Jeremiah's powerful and pathetic 
 preaching during those years took visible effect 
 here and there, and had its part in preparing 
 for the reformation in worship which Josiah 
 imposed with the outward acquiescence of the^ 
 
THE DISCIPLINE OF JEREMIAH 187 
 
 people. But the general tenor of Jeremiah's 
 utterances was severe and gloomy in the extreme ; 
 so much so, that when the danger from the 
 northern hordes passed over and when Josiah's 
 energetic and religious rule brought to Judah 
 an interval of freedom and prosperity unknown 
 for generations, events appeared to have run 
 completely counter to his expectations and his 
 pessimism became an object of ridicule. 
 
 (3) JeremiaKs relation to the D enter onomic 
 code and the reformation of 621 is the enigma 
 of his life. The silence of his Book on the 
 subject is even more perplexing than the ignoring 
 by Isaiah of Hezekiah's reforms. Chap. 11 1-8 
 supplies the only reference pointing in this 
 direction. We cannot follow Duhm and Cornill, 
 who dismiss these paragraphs as unauthentic 
 because they are unsupported by anything else 
 in Jeremiah's recorded preaching. Yv. 1-5, in 
 any case, bear strong marks of originality ; and 
 it is impossible to identify " this covenant " 
 (vv. 3. 6) with any other than " the covenant" 
 formally adopted by king and people under the 
 circumstances described in 2 Kings 23 1-3. There 
 is therefore reason to suppose that Jeremiah, 
 while he was not concerned in the discovery and 
 first promulgation of the Torah-book, recognized 
 in Deuteronomy the true principles of Jehovah's 
 
1 88 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 faith and worship and endorsed the action of 
 Josiah in admitting it as the statute law of the 
 kingdom. In keeping with snch approval is 
 his commendation of this king in the words of 
 22 15.16. Jeremiah is the earliest of the writing- 
 prophets in whom the Deuteronomic dialect 
 and manner are traceable. His pages supply 
 numerous and sometimes striking parallels to 
 the language of the Book in question. 
 
 The critics referred to find, indeed, in Jer. 8 s 
 a condemnation of the Deuteronomic movement 
 and of the use of any written Law. But this 
 is a violent application of the passage (see 
 p. 162 above), and rests on an exaggerated view 
 of Jeremiah's hostility to the official classes, 
 " How can ye say, We are the wise men, and 
 the Torah of Jehovah is in our keeping ? Nay, 
 verily ; the lying pen of scribes hath turned it 
 into lies ! " This rebuke comes from the re- 
 actionary time of Jehoiakim ; the reproof of 
 those who plumed themselves on the possession 
 of the Law,' while they perverted its sense to 
 suit their liking, is in reality a tribute to the 
 genuine Torah. Israel now possessed a Scripture, 
 recognized by all parties ; already the heretics 
 had learned to entrench themselves behind cor- 
 rupted readings or crooked interpretations. 
 
 Jeremiah, we gather, accepted the Book of 
 
The discipline of jeremiah 189 
 
 the Covenant published by Josiah as a true pre- 
 sentation of the national compact with Jehovah, 
 and proclaimed it through city and country in 
 this sense (11 i-s). But his activity in favour 
 of the royal policy was of brief duration. 1 The 
 result of the movement thus inaugurated was 
 grievously disappointing : in regard to places 
 and forms of cultus drastic changes were effected, 
 salutary enough in themselves and of lasting 
 significance ; but their action on the life of the 
 people at the time was formal and superficial. 
 The prophet saw too plainly that, with all this 
 outward compliance and enthusiasm for the new 
 order, there was no change of spirit, no " cir- 
 cumcision of the heart," no contrition for the 
 past and inward " turning to Jehovah " (comp. 
 pp. 160-163). The local heathenish altars were 
 abolished ; Jehovah's worship was celebrated by 
 a united people at Jerusalem with a splendour 
 and fervour hitherto unknown ; but the old sins 
 
 1 Had Jeremiah met the Josianic reform with radical 
 opposition, and even treated the Torah of 2 Kings 22, 23 as a 
 fraud (for so Duhm infers from Jer. 8 8), we should have heard 
 a great deal more about the matter than we do ; Deuteronomy 
 could not, under such contradiction, have taken the uncon- 
 tested position which it held in Jewish faith from this time 
 onwards (see pp. 9-11). The silence of Jeremiah on the 
 subject (apart from ch. 11) is much harder to reconcile with 
 the assumption of his hostility to Josiah's Scripture, than with 
 that of his approval and support of it. 
 
190 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 flourished, and the national temper was proud 
 and ungodly as before. As this became apparent, 
 Jeremiah withdrew and lapsed into silence. He 
 could not oppose the pious and sanguine young 
 ruler, who was so much deceived by appear- 
 ances ; he could not lend himself further to 
 methods that " healed lightly the hurt of the 
 daughter of Jehovah's people." 
 
 From the date of 11 i-s until Josiah's death, 
 there is no extant oracle of Jeremiah : gathering 
 up his earlier teaching in the year 604 for the 
 people's benefit, the prophet leaves this period a 
 blank (see pp. 150, 161-102). The awful threats 
 that he and Zephaniah had uttered had come to 
 nothing ; Judah had a popular, religious, and 
 successful king, with whom Jeremiah had no 
 wish to quarrel ; his call to repentance had been, 
 in a certain sense, obeyed, and the Deuteronomic 
 regime was formally enforced by priests and 
 prophets and accepted by the nation. Things 
 had turned out, both for good and evil, far 
 otherwise than the prophet of Jer. 2-6 had 
 prognosticated. Jeremiah was practically non- 
 plussed ; and through those twelve years of 
 seeming success but inward chagrin, no " word 
 of Jehovah " seems to have come to His prophet. 
 
 This was the time of disillusion and inward 
 testing for Jeremiah — a harder trial hardly 
 
THE DISCIPLINE OF JEREMIAH 191 
 
 could befall a prophet of God. Jehovah had 
 " set " him (C to pluck up and break down, to 
 build and plant"; twenty years have passed, 
 and so far his word has effected nothing for his 
 own people, either in the way of plucking up 
 or new-planting ! He had to learn the empti- 
 ness of professional and ceremonial and political 
 religion, the worthlessness of everything else 
 ivithout the law written in the heart. 
 
 (4) Josiah's death in battle at Megiddo pricked 
 the bubble of the national religiousness, that had 
 depended on the glamour of the king's influence 
 and the material prosperity of his reign. The 
 calamity recalled Jeremiah to his mission. " In 
 the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim the son 
 of Josiah, king of Judah, came this word of 
 Jehovah," bidding His prophet " stand in the 
 court of Jehovah's house, and speak unto all the 
 cities of Judah which come to worship " (26 1-9 = 
 7 1-8 3). He attacks the popular religion in its 
 tenderest point — its false reliance on the temple, 
 which he threatens with a ruin resembling that 
 which fell on the old sanctuary of Shiloh. To 
 the ears of u the priests and the prophets " such 
 words were blasphemy, like those uttered by 
 Stephen 640 years later. But there was enough 
 sound feeling in " the princes and all the people" 
 to save Jeremiah from the death to which the 
 
192 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 religious authorities would have hurried him, 
 aud he was defended by the example of Micah of 
 Moresheth. The scene of 26 10-19 was prophetic 
 of the trials of Jesus, and His martyr Stephen, 
 on the same ground. 
 
 The conflict thus commencing, which Jeremiah 
 had to sustain single-handed, was no longer 
 waged, like the earlier conflict shared with 
 Zephaniah, against open apostasy. It was a 
 more difficult and deeper contention — that of the 
 religion of the spirit against the religion of the 
 letter ; he had to expose a shallow and affected 
 conversion. He sets himself to denounce the 
 false Jehovism which built on the possession 
 of the temple and the Law, which had the name 
 of God and the cant of piety constantly in its 
 mouth, and entrenched itself within the forms of 
 the covenant armed with the weapons of fanati- 
 cism and self-righteousness. Chs. 7-10 * belong 
 to this time of the early years of Jehoiakim ; so, 
 probably, most of the matter of chs. 14-20, which 
 are undated, and which we identified (p. 118 ff.) 
 with the " many like words " that went to make 
 up the 2nd edition of Jeremiah's burnt volume 
 of 604 B.C. (see p. 166). The episode of 11 is-12 6 
 is more naturally referred to an earlier point in 
 
 1 Exception should be made of 9 23-10 16, as was shown on 
 p. 116 above. 
 
THE DISCIPLINE OF JEREMIAH 193 
 
 Jeremiah's course (see p. 185) ; but the personal 
 passages of (a) 8 is-9 c, (b) 15 10. 11. 15-21, (c) 17 14-18 
 18 18-23, and (r/) 20, fall within this middle period 
 and disclose the inner strife which then engaged 
 the prophet's soul. We will consider these 
 paragraphs in order ; they touch the quick of 
 Jeremiah's soul-experience : 
 
 (a) is the sequel of 8 4-17 ; Jeremiah has ac- 
 cused his people of ''backsliding (5), of knowing 
 not " Jehovah's ordinance " (7), and its teachers 
 of perverting Scripture (s), of "healing lightly" 
 the people's "hurt" and "saying Peace, when 
 there is none " and when " dismay " comes in- 
 stead of " healing " (11. 15) — " the harvest is 
 passed," cries the prophet, " the summer ended ! " 
 This description suits no time so well as the turn 
 in the national fortunes brought about by Josiah's 
 death, when the little army of Judah was de- 
 stroyed and the land laid open to the spoiler 
 (9 17-21 10 17-20), when the kingdom fell at a 
 stroke under the dominion of Egypt, and the 
 people rushed back into idolatry and open sin 
 (7 9 82. 6. 19). " The hurt of the daughter of my 
 people " (8 11. 21 9 1) — an expression peculiar to 
 this discourse — refers to the irreparable wound, 
 for which " Gilead " supplies " no balm " and 
 " no physician " (8 22), inflicted on Judah by the 
 battle of Megiddo and the loss of the national 
 in. 13 
 
194 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 freedom lately recovered under Josiah. Hence 
 the memorable outcry, " Oh that my head were 
 waters and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that 
 I might weep day and night for the slain of the 
 daughter of my people ! " (9 1 = Heb. 8 23). 
 
 Even that disaster was not irreparable, had it 
 fallen upon a loyal people; but it only revealed 
 the baseness of the Jndrean nature and the hol- 
 lowness of the social fabric : in the same breath 
 the prophet exclaims, " Oh that I could find a 
 wanderer's lodging-place in the wilderness, that 
 I might leave my people and go from them ! 
 For they are all adulterers, a congregation of 
 traitors" (9 2-6 = Heb. 9 1-5). Pity and loathing, 
 love clinging to the sinner and scorn revolting 
 from his sin, have never found more moving 
 expression nor fought more desperately within 
 any breast. Jeremiah is in the mood of Elijah, 
 when the hero-prophet fled before Jezebel, under 
 the despair that seized him in the reaction fol- 
 lowing his glorious success at mount Carmel. 
 The disapjjointnient gathering silently in his 
 soul since the first days of Josiah's covenant, 
 when the spring of a new life seemed to be 
 coming over the land, breaks out at last in full 
 utterance. The summer and harvest of that 
 springtime have passed, and no fruit remains ! 
 
 (b) The outburst of ch. 15 ioff. followed at no 
 
THE DISCIPLINE OF JEREMIAH 195 
 
 long interval upon the lamentations of clis. 8 
 and 9. Chs. 14 and 15 hang closely together, 
 and the whole discourse is introduced as " the 
 word of Jehovah that came to Jeremiah con- 
 cerning the drought." The close correspondence 
 of 14 17-19 with 8 15. 2i-9 1, together with the 
 allusion to the " bereaving of children " and the 
 "multiplying of widows" in 15 7-9, points to 
 the disaster of 608 as recent when this prophecy 
 was uttered. Defeat in battle and foreign sub- 
 jection had been followed by failure of rain ; 
 while the popular prophets had been saying, 
 "Ye shall not see the sword, neither shall ye 
 have famine," this double misery had befallen 
 people and prophets (14 13-is). Jeremiah attempts 
 intercession, speaking for " Judah " and " Zion " 
 in the prayer of 14 19-22; but Jehovah is inex- 
 orable — u Though Moses and Samuel stood before 
 Me," He replies, " yet My favour could not be 
 toward this people " (15 1). The same interdict 
 appears to be referred to in 7 ie as pronounced 
 in Jehoiakim's first year, and it is introduced a 
 few verses earlier in this very context after 
 a touching supplication (14 7-11). u Four" ways 
 stand open to the Judaeans — they are all ways to 
 destruction! (15 2-4). To this appalling oracle, 
 that mocks their wretchedness, the hearers retort 
 with execrations ; and the prophet cries out : 
 
196 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me ! 
 
 A man of strife and a man of contention to the 
 whole land ! 
 I have been no lender, nor borrower of money, 
 
 That all of them should curse me ! (15 10). 1 
 
 It is torture to this gentle, affectionate nature 
 to ponr curses on his people and to hear their 
 curses on himself. Reproach is breaking his 
 heart. The prophet protests that his one desire 
 is for his country's good ; 2 then with a quick 
 revulsion he turns to God, calling for vengeance 
 on his maligners, since he bears all this for 
 Jehovah's sake. He is cut off from human 
 happiness ; no joy exists for him but in the 
 vindication of Jehovah's word ; yet that word 
 brings to its bearer confusion and chagrin ! (i5-is). 
 
 This singular passage of Jeremiah's betrays 
 the amour-propre up to this time lurking in the 
 man ; he was not yet " made perfect in love." 
 
 1 The money-lender is the standing object of popular hatred 
 in the East. In the last line the Hebrew text seems to need 
 a slight correction. 
 
 2 Ver. n, as it stands in the Received Text, is most obscure. 
 Cornill's emendation of the verse gives it an appropriate and 
 powerful sense : " An ' Amen, Jehovah,' to their execrations 
 [i.e. May Jehovah fulfil them !], if I have not interceded 
 •with Thee at the time of calamity and want, seeking good 
 for mine enemy ! " coinp. Ps. 7 2-5. Vv. 13. 14 are strangely out 
 of place ; they seem to be a strayed fragment from some 
 other speech of threatening addressed to Judah. 
 
THE DISCIPLINE OF JEREMIAH 197 
 
 His fellows' revilings raise a storm in his 
 breast ; lasbecl by their undeserved reproaches, 
 he imprecates on them in one breath the very 
 punishment that he deprecated in the last ! The 
 revengeful temper the prophet had showed to- 
 ward his Anathoth neighbours (" Let me see 
 Thy vengeance on them/' 11 20), is as yet un- 
 purged. The hope of " seeing one's desire upon 
 one's enemies " was, in fact, a commonplace of 
 Israelite piety (see Pss. 54 7 59 10 112 s 118 7); 
 Jeremiah has still to rise above it. For the 
 present, God answers His servant by the simple 
 assurance that he shall be fortified and shielded 
 in the battle still to be waged with the people's 
 sins (vv. 20. 21 ; comp. Mic. 3 s). 
 
 (c) Chapter 17 is made up of a string of pas- 
 sages of various character, without historical data 
 or links of connexion — vv. 1-4 being a typical 
 Jeremianic doom-oracle ; vv. 5-13 running in an 
 abstract sententious vein rare in Jeremiah, though 
 not foreign to him ; while vv. 19-27 are a homily on 
 sabbath-keeping, with several peculiar linguistic 
 idioms, which has its only prophetic parallel 
 in Isa. 56 2 and 58 13 (see also Ezek. 20 12. 20, 
 Neh. 13 15-19) and is regarded by critics as an 
 interpolation from Nehemiah's time. 1 In the 
 
 1 Cornill goes too far when he says in his forcible way, 
 commenting on 17 19 ff., "This passage runs diametrically 
 
198 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 midst of this heterogeneous matter the heart-cry 
 of 17i4-i8 shrills out with startling* effect. It 
 marks another paroxysm in Jeremiah's agony, 
 which occurred not much later than that just 
 described. Our prophet is now branded with the 
 name of an unpatriotic Israelite, an ill-wisher to 
 his country — a "Pro-Boer" shall we say? The 
 trouble of the drought in the first year of 
 Jehoiakim has passed over; the country has 
 settled down, under the mild suzerainty of 
 Pharaoh-Necho, into comparative comfort. Jere- 
 miah is taunted, perhaps in reply to the oracle 
 of 17 1-4, with the failure of his terrifying threats : 
 " Behold, they say unto me, Where is the word 
 of Jehovah? let it come now!" (ver. is: comp. 
 Isa. 5 19, 2 Pet. 3 4). The stroke predicted in 
 
 counter to all that we know of Jeremiah and his theology. 
 That Jeremiah, who preaches more decidedly than any one 
 else the worthlessness of outward ceremonialism, insisting 
 that Jehovah regards only the heart, and who nowhere else 
 makes the slightest reference to the Sabbath, should have 
 attached such glowing promises to the formal observance of 
 the Sabbath-command . . . and should have made the con- 
 tinued existence of Judah and Jerusalem dependent on this 
 condition, is simply unthinkable." Such critics ride to death, 
 in the case both of Isaiah and Jeremiah, the antipathy of the 
 prophets to legalism. The Fourth Commandment was surely 
 ancient in Israel; it formed one of the bonds of the old 
 covenant between Jehovah and His people. Why should not 
 Jeremiah, on occasion, have made its keeping a test of the 
 heart-loyalty he desiderates 1 
 
THE DISCIPLINE OF JEREMIAH 199 
 
 Josiah's early days had never fallen ; the thunder- 
 clouds then gathered on Judah's horizon only 
 to disperse, ushering in a day of sunshine. The 
 fall of Josiah, with the subsequent train of mis- 
 fortunes, proved less disastrous than was foretold. 
 Twice over the destruction of the city and the 
 exile of the people announced by Jeremiah had 
 been averted : men will not be frightened by 
 him any more. His horrifying visions spring 
 from a malignant heart ; and the wish for the 
 people's hurt has surely been father to the 
 thought of it ! 
 
 Thus taunted, Jeremiah makes sad protest to 
 Jehovah, in ver. 16 : 
 
 As for me, I have not pressed after Thee with prayers 
 
 for evil ; l 
 And the woful day I have not longed for — Thou 
 
 knowest it ! 
 The issue of my lips hath been before Thee ! 
 
 Yet one feels that the imprecations of 11 20 and 
 15 15 gave colour to the charge laid at the pro- 
 phet's door; in this very place he invokes once 
 more God's wrath on his slanderers, calling for 
 11 double destruction" upon them (17 is). V v. ie 
 
 1 We follow the pointing of the Hebrew adopted by several 
 critics, after the Syriac Version and Aquila : vie -r a ah, " be- 
 cause of [in order to seek] evil," instead of mc-roeh, "from 
 being a shepherd " (R.V.). 
 
200 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 and is contradict each other so sharjDly, that 
 Cornill denies on this account the authenticity 
 of the latter verse, at any rate of its last clause ; 
 but the contradiction lies in Jeremiah's tempera- 
 ment : his heart is torn between pity and in- 
 dignation. Had he been asked, he might have 
 justified himself by saying that he desires ven- 
 geance on his tormentors and the mockers of 
 God's word, not on His people at large, against 
 whom notwithstanding he is compelled to launch 
 Jehovah's terrors. 
 
 The outbreak of ch. 18 18-23 is a repetition of 
 those of chs. 11 and 17. Jeremiah sees all the 
 forces of the nation arrayed against him — " the 
 law" of " the priest," "the counsel " of " the wise " 
 (the spokesman of the proverbial Ckokmah), and 
 " the word " of " the prophet ": the three parties 
 prepare a joint impeachment (is) ; they are bent, 
 it seems, on taking his life (23) — it is now war 
 to the knife between Jeremiah and the religious 
 leaders of Israel. The prophet can do nothing 
 but lodge his complaint with Jehovah, who has 
 failed thus far to vindicate His champion : he 
 appeals to the Heart-searcher, bidding Jehovah 
 "remember how I stood before Thee to speak 
 good for them, to turn away Thy fury from 
 them " (20). That he should be charged with 
 ill-will towards his country, as he is persistently, 
 
THE DISCIPLINE OF JEREMIAH 201 
 
 vexes the prophet beyond bearing. He pours 
 on his conspiring accusers, on " priest" and 
 " wise man " and " prophet" alike, the blistering 
 curses with which ch. 18 ends, 
 
 (d) " Come, and let us devise devices against 
 Jeremiah," the priests and prophets had been 
 saying (18 is): his arrest by " Pashchur ben- 
 'Immer the priest," who " beat " him and u put 
 him in the stocks," seems to have been the 
 outcome of this consultation. Baruch relates 
 the circumstances attending this outrage, and 
 Jeremiah's sentence on the perpetrator (20 1-6). 
 The narrative leads up to and explains ch. 20 7-is, 1 
 which is amongst the most extraordinary passages 
 in Scripture. The war we have been tracing, 
 between Jeremiah's shrinking yet passionate 
 
 1 Duhm, followed by Cornill, excises vv. 11-13— or at least, 
 vv. 12. 13 — as being out of keeping with Jeremiah's desperate 
 plight, and introduced by a later hand to relieve the gloom of 
 the passage. He regards ver. 12 as borrowed from 11 20, and 
 ver. 13 as coming from the Psalter. But why should not 
 Jeremiah, like other saints, have sung Psalras in prison ? 
 These violent surges and alternations of feeling, the passage 
 from defiance to despair, are psychologically true, and 
 characteristic of the nervous temperament in distracting 
 situations. It is one of the commonest errors of critics to 
 reduce their authors to a false consistency, to ignore the 
 fluctuations of moods and changes of posture that are inevit- 
 able in high-strung, impressionable natures, such as those of 
 the prophets commonly were. 
 
202 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 nature and the stern compulsion of Jehovah's 
 will, reaches here its decisive encounter. The 
 prophet has now to taste, beyond " smiting with 
 the tongue," the indignity of stripes and public 
 contumely — a punishment worse to him than 
 death. He is made a gazing-stock at the temple- 
 gates, exhibited as a common railer and enemy 
 of the peace to all Jerusalem. Next clay Pashhur 
 let Jeremiah out of the stocks; but from this 
 time forward he was inhibited from preaching 
 in the temple-court, the only place where the 
 people in assembly could be reached. His ad- 
 versaries had succeeded, they thought, in making 
 the troublesome prophet impotent for harm. 
 
 This climax of insolent wrong drives Jeremiah 
 quite past his patience ; and his hot heart vents 
 itself in a volcanic outburst, charged with the 
 grief and suffering of twenty years. He turns 
 first to Pashhur, and nicknames him Magor- 
 missabib {Terror -round- about), for an omen 
 of his fate (3-0). Then he accosts Jehovah, 
 whom he charges with having used His strength 
 to deceive a weak man and send him on a 
 fool's errand. The doom he has been ordered 
 to announce for so many years has never come, 
 and the messenger of Jehovah gets laughter 
 and blows for his pains (7. s). Fain would he 
 be silent : then Jehovah's word is made " as a 
 
THE DISCIPLINE OF JEREMIAH 203 
 
 burning in his bones " ; he must out with it, — 
 only to meet the scornful unbelief and malicious 
 plotting of those clearest to him. So he is 
 tossed to and fro, between the terrible yet un- 
 fulfilled word of Jehovah and the contempt of 
 his people. God affrights him with His judge- 
 ments, compelling him to utter them and then 
 deserting him ; men treat him as half-mad and 
 half-malignant. He is baited and bestead on 
 all sides ; he can endure no more ! — and after 
 a moment's reversion to the mood of confidence 
 and taunting toward his persecutors (12. 13), Jere- 
 miah breaks out into the awful cry, that in 
 modern times might have translated itself into 
 suicide : 
 
 Cursed is the day wherein I was born ! 
 
 Wherefore came I forth from the womb to see trouble 
 and misery, 
 And that my days should end in shame ! (vv. 14-is) l 
 
 1 Hitzig and some others would separate vv. 14-18 from the 
 foregoing*, regarding them as the product of Jeremiah's later 
 sufferings during the final agony of the siege in Zedekiah's 
 reign. But the crisis of his inner struggle came about long 
 before this. 
 
 Probably Duhm is right when he emends the text of ver. 15, 
 making the execrations of vv. 16. 17 refer to the prophet's 
 birthday (comp. Job 3 3-10), not to the bearer of the tidings of 
 his birth. 
 
204 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 Jeremiah lias now touched bottom, as one may 
 say ; he has reached the nadir of his despair. 
 With the consciousness he had of bis super- 
 natural call, of the fact that he was " consecrated 
 before he came forth out of the womb " and 
 " appointed a prophet unto the nations," the 
 imprecation of 20 u-is was nothing short of a 
 repudiation of his mission and the teaching of 
 his life. God has played with him and made 
 a fool of 1dm : so Jeremiah, for the moment, 
 believed and said ; and so it is set down " for 
 our admonition." We detected at the beginning: 
 the root of Jeremiah's discontent, the cause of 
 his wild anger against his persecutors and his 
 reproachings of God, in the man's self-love ; he 
 was touched with the spirit that made Jonah 
 sulk beneath his gourd and clamour for death 
 on its perishing, because Nineveh still stood 
 after he had proclaimed its ruin. Bat who are 
 we to condemn the prophet for his whirling 
 speech ? It was a veritable Calvary to which he 
 was brought ; all we can say is, that when " led 
 like a lamb to the slaughter" (see 11 19), Jeremiah 
 proved himself unequal to " the Lamb of God, 
 that taketh away the sin of the world." The fore- 
 runner fell short of the perfect example, — u who 
 did no sin ; who, when He was reviled, reviled 
 not again ; when He suffered, threatened not." 
 
THE DISCIPLINE OF JEREMIAH 205 
 
 The Lord, who " knoweth our frame," would 
 not take His over-wrought servant at his word ; 
 Jeremiah was spared to "endure to the end," 
 that he might " be saved." His recording of 
 the train of inward revolts and fightings against 
 God that marked his course, is evidence that he 
 had risen above them and that the bitterness 
 passed from his soul ; he became a wholly 
 chastened man, purged of the old leaven and 
 with the law written deep in his heart, ready 
 without a murmur to do Jehovah's will and 
 able to say, " Though He slay me, I will trust 
 in Him." In this calmer frame and with the 
 fever of his spirit spent, the prophet was pre- 
 pared for the crisis of the year 605-4, and for the 
 new phase upon which Israel's destiny entered 
 in its collision with Babylon. Chap. 20 is the 
 story of Jeremiah's Gethsemane. 
 
 (5) " The fourth year of Jehoiakim " (605) 
 was the year of the fateful battle of Carchemish 
 (on the upper Euphrates), which broke the 
 Egyptian power and brought Nebuchadrezzar 
 on to the scene of Palestinian politics. This 
 event was a new summons to Jeremiah, who 
 had been silenced by the occurrences of chs. 19, 20. 
 His old prediction of twenty-three years ago, 
 that " out of the north evil shall break forth " 
 (1 14 4 e 6 1), is going to take fulfilment in a way 
 
206 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 undreamed of then ; and he might well expect 
 that the portent would be visible to others. He 
 recalls therefore those former predictions, the 
 cause to him of so much undeserved reproach, 
 and puts them, condensed, into a book, 1 which 
 Baruch prepares for reading to the assembly 
 of the people in the temple-court, from which 
 Jeremiah is still excluded. Not till " the ninth 
 month" of the next year, in the winter of 604, 
 did the opportunity for reading the roll arrive, 
 when a national fast was proclaimed, — as we 
 may conjecture, on the demand of submission 
 to Babylon. Baruch's report, in ch. 36 1-8 (see 
 ver. r), goes to show that Jeremiah made this 
 attempt in a tender and hopeful spirit ; he had 
 shaken off the despondency of 20 m-is, and felt 
 himself quite reinstated as Jehovah's messenger. 
 The result of the appeal has been described in 
 pp. 164-1 66 ; it was the last chance for Jerusalem 
 and the royal dynasty, and it was rejected. 
 Vv. 30 and 31 pronounce, with judicial solemnity, 
 the doom which nothing can now avert : " Thus 
 saith Jehovah concerning Jehoiakim, king of 
 Judah : he shall have none to sit upon the 
 throne of David ; and his dead body shall be 
 cast out in the day to the heat, and in the night 
 to the frost. And I will punish him and his 
 
 1 For the contents of this roll, see pp. 142-144 above. 
 
THE DISCIPLINE OF JEREMIAH 207 
 
 seed, and his servants, for their iniquity ; and 
 I will bring upon them, and upon the inhabitants 
 of Jerusalem, and upon the men of Judah, all 
 the evil that I have pronounced upon them, but 
 they hearkened not." 
 
 Jeremiah, we must remember, was anointed 
 " a prophet to the nations." Hitherto he seems 
 to have dealt solely with his own people ; but 
 his eye now sweeps the wider horizon. He 
 delivers at this conjuncture Jehovah's judgement 
 on all the circle of peoples affected along with 
 his own by the victory of the Chaldseans. In 
 the rise of Nebuchadrezzar he discerned the 
 hidden goal and coming " day of Jehovah " for 
 which prophecy had long been making. As 
 chap. 25 informs us, " in the fourth year of 
 Jehoiakim," on the morrow of Carchemish, 
 Jehovah bade the prophet proclaim " Nebuchad- 
 rezzar, the king of Babylon, as His servant" (9), 
 and bade him put into his hand " the cup of 
 the wine of His fury," that he might " cause all 
 the nations to drink it " (15. ie). One after another 
 the heathen powers, headed by Jerusalem, come 
 up in imposing procession to drink their portion 
 of this deadly draught : iC Pharaoh, king of Egypt 
 . . . and all the kings of the Philistines . . . 
 Edom and Moab and the children of Amnion 
 ... all the kings of Tyre and all the kings of 
 
2o8 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 Zidon and the kings of the coast-land beyond 
 the sea . . . Dedan and Teinan and Buz . . . 
 and all the kings of Arabia . . . and all the 
 kings of Elam and all the kings of the Medes, 
 and all the kings of the north near and far . . . 
 and all the kingdoms of the world, which are 
 upon the face of the earth " (is-2s). For, in fact, 
 " Jehovah hath a controversy " — not with Israel 
 alone— but " with the nations ; He will plead 
 with all flesh ; as for the wicked, He will give 
 them to the sword'' (so. 31). The collection of 
 Dooms of the Nations placed at the end of the 
 Book of Jeremiah, in chs. 46-51, is a redaction, 
 drawn up in the first instance by Baruch and 
 supplemented by a later hand (see pp. 134-137), 
 of the oracles originally uttered in the year 605, 
 which formed the ingredients of " the cup of 
 reeling" that Jeremiah handed round to the 
 world-potentates of his day. The prophet has 
 risen at length to the grandeur of his vocation. 
 The man whom we saw " shaken like a reed 
 with the wind" of popular displeasure, though 
 still Jehoiakim's prisoner, speaks as God's judge 
 over the nations ; by his word he " jDlucks up 
 and breaks down " the mightiest kingdoms ; 
 thrones and dominions will fall at his breath. 
 
 When Jehoiakim ran his penknife through 
 Jeremiah's pages, the doom of Judah was sealed. 
 
THE DISCIPLINE OF JEREMIAH 2O9 
 
 Princes, people, and king, in their dealings with 
 the Chaldaean power through the remaining 
 sixteen years, passed from one act of folly and 
 treachery to another, Jeremiah stoutly expostu- 
 lating at every opportunity. But we find in all 
 the severity of his language and the extremity 
 of his sufferings, after the interior crisis of ch. 20, 
 no sign of the personal resentment and the recal- 
 citrance toward God so painfully in evidence 
 before that date. The encounter with the pro- 
 phet Hananiah (ch. 28) shows in Jeremiah the 
 dignified self-possession and the measured tone 
 of language that we have missed in previous 
 conflicts. His forbearance toward Zedekiah in- 
 dicates the mellowing of the prophet's nature ; 
 and the outrages he suffered at the time of the 
 siege, so far as we read, were endured with 
 patience and a good courage. 
 
 From this time Jeremiah's thoughts turned in- 
 creasingly toward the ideal and eternal. His gaze 
 rests on the bright future of God's kingdom that 
 lies beyond the present shame and misery. There 
 he finds a harbour of refuge, like the Christian 
 prophet who wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews 
 under the shadow of Jerusalem's second fall ; as 
 " the day approaches " for the overthrow of the 
 earthly Zion, the image of God's true city, a that 
 hath the foundations," grows clearer to his soul. 
 
 in. 14 
 
HO THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 Amid the horrors of the final siege, the pro- 
 phet's quiet confidence in the restoration showed 
 itself in the transaction by which he bought, 
 with deliberation and in proper legal form, the 
 field of his cousin Chanam'el at Anathoth. 
 Baruch {Barak ben-Neriyydk) appears as wit- 
 ness, and is here mentioned for the first time. 
 This incident is told in ch. 32, with a brief 
 introduction explaining the situation of Jeremiah 
 in prison at the time (vv. 1-5), and is followed by 
 a dialogue with Jehovah on the occasion extend- 
 ing from ver. 16 to the end of this long chapter, 1 
 in which, after citing the causes of Jerusalem's 
 imminent ruin, the Lord promises that the people 
 of Israel will be gathered home from the lands of 
 the exile (3:), restored to fellowship with God and 
 to union " in one heart and one way " (33. 39), and 
 reconstituted under an " everlasting covenant " 
 by " the putting of Jehovah's fear in their 
 hearts " (40-42). So " fields " will once more be 
 " bought in the land," and this purchase from 
 Chanam'el is the pledge of happier coming times 
 
 1 It must be noted that critics greatly question the genuine- 
 ness of 32 16-44, together with the whole of 33. We are inclined 
 to the moderate view of Giesebrecht, who cuts out vv. 17-23 
 (after the words, " Ah, Lord Jehovah ! ") as a gloss upon 
 Jeremiah's prayer, and explains 33 u-26 — a paragraph wanting 
 in the Septuagint — as an interpolation of kindred prophetic 
 matter made by some editor's hand. 
 
THE DISCIPLINE OF JEREMIAH 2it 
 
 and of Israel's indefeasible rights in her soil (43. 44). 
 To this is added a picture of the renovated city 
 and land, painted in colours that vividly contrast 
 with the miseries of the present siege (33 6-13). 
 
 The above forms the conclusion of the second 
 distinctly named "book "of Jeremiah, commencing 
 at 30 1 (comp. 36 2 and 32), which Duhm happily 
 designates " The book of the future of Israel and 
 Judah" (see pp. 125-129 above). This section of 
 Jeremianic prophecy affords a delightful counter- 
 part to the Book of Doom that was burnt by 
 Jehoiakim ; it shows that through Jeremiah's 
 eventide, despite its outward gloom, there shone 
 a calm and full inward light. 
 
 There is much in chs. 30 and 31 * that belongs 
 to the traditional prophetic scheme of Israel's 
 restoration and the Messianic days ; ch. 31 31-34 2 
 
 1 Here again allowance must be made for annotations and 
 enrichments of an oracle on which subsequent generations, 
 still moved by the spirit of prophecy, dwelt with predilection. 
 Ch. 30 10. 11 (an echo of Isa. 40 ff.) is wanting in the text of 
 the LXX ; so ver. 22, which anticipates 31 1. The lines of 
 30 23. 24 have appeared already in 23 19. 20, where they are 
 equally inappropriate and disturbing to the context. In 
 ch. 31, vv. 6-9a. 14. 23-30. 37-40, are put down as post-Jeremianic 
 by leading critics, for reasons more or less convincing. 
 
 2 His rejection of this passage is the chief blot upon Duhm's 
 brilliant but sometimes wilful Commentary on Jeremiah. See 
 Wilfrid J. Moulton's paper on " The New Covenant in Jere- 
 miah," in the Expositor for April 190G. 
 
212 THE BOORS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 is Jeremiah's best contribution to the doctrine 
 of the Kingdom and to the progress of spiritual 
 thought. This passage touches the high-water 
 mark of prophecy. The significance of the 
 promise of the New Covenant will be considered 
 in the following chapter. We note here that 
 the prophet had read first in his own heart 
 the secret which he conveys to his fellow men. 
 The mission, which for twenty years Jeremiah 
 had struggled with and borne as a crushing 
 yoke, the compulsion he had kicked against as 
 a cruel goad, he has at last accepted, becoming 
 to the depths of his nature a consecrated man 
 and resting on the will of God, for himself and 
 for his people, as good and holy. The Jeremiah 
 who said, " Oh, Jehovah, Thou hast befooled 
 me ! " and who cursed the day of his birth, is 
 long since dead ; the new man has been raised 
 up in him, who " waits to see the end of the 
 Lord " and finds mercy shining through the 
 darkest judgements. When Jeremiah foretells 
 " the days coming " when Jehovah " will put His 
 law in " men's " inward parts, and in their hearts 
 will write it," such a joyful day has dawned 
 already for himself; in his own breast he found 
 a mirror where he read the possibilities and 
 purposes of God's redeeming grace toward all 
 His people. 
 
CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 DOCTRINE OF THE PROPHETS OF THE SEVENTH 
 CENTURY 
 
 Samaria and Jerusalem — Ruin of Judah delayed but 
 inevitable — Jeremiah and Companion Prophets — 
 General Attributes of Jehovah — His Union with 
 Israel — Jehovah's invincible Love— Perplexity of 
 Habakkuk — Intimacy with Jehovah — Deepened 
 Moral Sensitiveness — Vein of Scepticism— Religion 
 less National, more Personal — Prophet and his 
 Mission identified — " The Heart " in Jeremiah — 
 Root of National Decay in Personal Sin — Rejection 
 of Temple and Ark — The Religion of the Past 
 and of the Future— End of the Old Covenant- 
 Jeremiah and Jesus Christ — Denunciation of Priests 
 and Prophets — Forgiveness of Sin — Prophecy and 
 the Nations — The Appointment of Nebuchadrezzar 
 — Breaking down the Wall of Partition — Restoration 
 of Gentile Peoples — Jehovah judging amongst the 
 Nations— Judah's Evil Neighbours— Israel's Fall 
 the Riches of the World. 
 
 THE fall of Samaria marked the proximate 
 goal of earlier prophecy (Vol. I, Ch. xn). 
 "The day of Jehovah " predicted by Amos and 
 Hosea arrived when, in 722 B.C., Sargon broke 
 
 213 
 
214 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 up the northern kingdom of Israel, and carried 
 the people of the Ten Tribes into an exile that 
 proved fatal to its corporate existence. But " the 
 remnant of the house of Jndah " escaped de- 
 struction from Assyria, and again " took root 
 .downward and bare fruit upward " (lsa. 37 31). 
 The century of respite enjoyed by the southern 
 principality enabled prophecy to pursue its work 
 in deepening the national religion and unfolding 
 the ideal of the kingdom of God. The large 
 conceptions of God and His redeeming purposes 
 handed down from Isaiah, were so developed and 
 matured daring the seventh century, that they 
 served to carry the faith of the Judsean captives 
 through the shock of political disruption and 
 dispersion ; under their influence was formed 
 that company of the elect, the church within 
 the people, whose first beginnings we traced in 
 Isaiah's time (see Vol. II, p. 46), which was 
 henceforth to be the trustee of Israel's heritage, 
 " the holy seed " and " substance " of a nation 
 whose political fabric was irreparably shattered. 
 
 The moral disease that destroyed the kingdom 
 of the Ten Tribes was as deeply seated in the 
 Judrean body politic. On the southern tribes, 
 however, comparatively poor as they were and 
 less contiguous with heathendom (see Vol. I, 
 pp. 128, 129), Canaanite and foreign idolatries, 
 
PROPHETS OF THE SEVENTH CENTURY 215 
 
 and the corruptions of wealth, operated more 
 slowly ; at the same time, the conservative 
 traditions attaching to the shrine and throne 
 of David at Jerusalem offered a resistance to 
 the invasion of alien habits that was stouter 
 than elsewhere. Zion supplied a rallying-point 
 for the spirit of prophecy, from the time of 
 Isaiah onwards, of indispensable value for its 
 preservation and progress (see the concluding 
 pages of Ch. xn in Vol. I). For all this, 
 Jerusalem was doomed in the end to share the 
 fate of Samaria ; so Micah the Morashtite had 
 proclaimed in the parallel he drew between the 
 two cities (Mic. 1 5-12, 3 8-12). 1 Jeremiah took 
 up, a century later, the strain of Micah, whose 
 oracle of doom served to protect his successor 
 (Jer. 26). Between the dates of Micah and 
 Jeremiah had come the blighting reign of 
 Manasseh, which undid the effect of Hezekiah's 
 reforms and brought Judah to the lowest 
 pitch of debasement. Jeremiah traces all 
 the subsequent disasters of the country to 
 Manasseh. The reformation of Josiah and the 
 adoption of the Deuteronomic covenant produced 
 little effect on the spirit of the people, and 
 
 1 Only, as Micah himself asserted, and as Isaiah passion- 
 ately insisted, Zion is after all imperishable ; Jerusalem may 
 fall, but to rise again (Mic. 4 ; Isa. 29 1-8, 31-33, etc.). 
 
216 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 scarcely arrested for a generation the downward 
 momentum. Even in Josiah's reign there appears 
 to have been no hearty union amongst the better 
 elements in the nation's life ; prophecy had 
 ceased to be a controlling influence in public 
 affairs — Jeremiah stood toward the kings of his 
 day on a footing of distance and aloofness, in 
 striking contrast with that assumed by earlier 
 prophets toward the rulers of their time. 
 Prophecy is now detaching itself from the 
 monarchy and the civil institutions of Israel. 
 Ceasing to be political, it becomes more purely 
 spiritual and inward. 
 
 The general doctrine of Isaiah was included 
 in the review of " The Doctrine of the Early 
 Prophets " given in Chapter xn of Volume I, 
 and Chapter xvn in Volume II has been de- 
 voted to his " Messianic Teaching." Isaiah and 
 Micah are separated from the prophets of this 
 century by the wide gap of the reaction under 
 Manasseh (Vol. II, ch. xvin). Amongst these 
 latter Jeremiah towers even higher than Isaiah 
 did over his companions. None of the " minor " 
 prophets of this epoch carries the same weight 
 as Amos and Hosea amongst Isaiah's fore- 
 runners. This chapter will therefore be in the 
 main a discussion of the teaching of Jeremiah. 
 Moreover, Jeremiah's predecessors and con- 
 
PROPHETS OF THE SEVENTH CENTURY 217 
 
 temporaries (Nahurn, Zephaniah, Habakkuk, and 
 the Anonymus of Zechariah 12-14), while in- 
 dividually of less importance, form by no means 
 so compact a group as the minor prophets of the 
 eighth century and have less in common with 
 each other. It is a sign of the times that 
 prophecy becomes increasingly individualistic, 
 and shows fewer traces of intercommunion and 
 of the influence of a dominant school of thought 
 than in former times. From Jeremiah and the 
 author of Zech. 12-14 one gathers that the 
 organized and professional Nebi'ism had sunk 
 into decrepitude in Judah, along with the other 
 national institutions, and was regarded by the 
 isolated genuine prophets of the time with 
 disgust and contempt : it is actually included 
 amongst the promises of Messianic blessing that 
 " the prophets shall be ashamed every one of 
 his vision " ; and " when any shall yet prophesy, 
 his father and mother shall say unto him, Thou 
 shalt not live, for thou speakest lies in the name 
 of Jehovah ! . . . and they shall thrust him 
 through when he prophesieth " (Zech. 13 2-6). 
 
 Points of contact, indeed, are not wanting 
 between the major prophet of this time and the 
 rest of his group. Zephaniah's ministry covered 
 the same ground with Jeremiah's in its first 
 stage, and is of similar tenor, Habakkuk was 
 
2i 8 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 contemporary with Jeremiah in the middle 
 period of the latter's teaching ; but this original 
 and detached thinker views the rise of the 
 Chaldeeans from a standpoint of his own. The 
 ideas of Zech. 12-14, which gather round the 
 siege and fall of Jerusalem, run partly upon the 
 lines of Joel and Isaiah, while they touch, on 
 the other side, the Apocalyptic of Ezekiel; the 
 absence of links between the writer of these pages 
 and Jeremiah— apart from their common anti- 
 pathy to the conventional prophetism — supplies 
 the strongest reason alleged for giving him a 
 different date and setting. Nahnm, with his 
 single theme of the fall of Nineveh, stands apart 
 from all others — Zephaniah only touching him in 
 a single passage; he belonged, in our opinion, to 
 the generation before Jeremiah ; Nahum's work 
 forms a complement to that of Isaiah and a 
 conclusion to the Assyrian era, rather than an 
 introduction to the Babylonian era and to the 
 prophecies of Jeremiah (see Vol. II, ch. xix). 
 
 I. The Knowledge of Jehovah 
 
 Jeremiah and his contemporaries have nothing 
 essential to add to the doctrine of God so 
 powerfully developed by the prophets of the last 
 century. Beside the omnipotence of Jehovah in 
 the control of nature and of the destiny of nations 
 
PROPHETS OF THE SEVENTH CENTURY 219 
 
 (Na. 1 4-6, Zepli. 1 2, 3 s, Hab. 3, Jer. 5 24, 14 22, 
 1 10, 25 15 ff.), to which these prophets give a still 
 more comprehensive scope, His omniscience is 
 realized with peculiar force by Jeremiah, who 
 speaks of Him habitually as One " who trieth the 
 reins and the heart " (1 1 20, 15 15, 1 7 10, 20 12, 29 23) ; 
 this lends an ethical bearing to his conception 
 of the Divine omnipresence, which he expresses 
 with a new simplicity and comprehensiveness 
 (23 23-25). In harmony with this representation, 
 the providence of God is viewed as concerned not 
 merely with the affairs of Israel and the over- 
 ruling of nations, but with the protection and 
 guidance of individual men — an aspect of the 
 Divine government that now becomes more 
 prominent in religious thought than hitherto 
 (Jer. 1 5. 19 10 23 11 19 17 5-8 36 26 39 is-is 45). The 
 eternal being of Jehovah Habakkuk powerfully 
 appeals to in ch. 1 12, as the guarantee of His 
 people's continued existence and of the final 
 triumph of righteousness (comp. 2 3. 4, 3 17-19). 
 
 Despite the awful sentence of judgement upon 
 his people which Jeremiah has to deliver, the 
 love of Jehovah toward Israel is the theme 
 nearest to his heart. Jeremiah was the heir of 
 Hosea in this respect (see Vol. I, pp. 163-165). 
 He is more distinctly so, because he cannot forget 
 Ephraim and the lost tribes ; he regards them 
 
220 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 as objects still of Jehovah's yearning, destined 
 to share in Israel's restoration, which he conceives 
 as including integrity of national life together 
 with fulness of spiritual blessing (3 12. is 303 31). 
 Jeremiah's profound realization of the love of 
 God, for which his affectionate nature gave him 
 so great a capacity, made his office as messenger 
 of doom an anguish ; at the same time it 
 gave to his denunciations a passionate severity 
 matched only by that of Hosea, and which in 
 his case is more sustained, more reasoned, and 
 full of solemn protest. " What unrighteousness 
 have your fathers found in Me, that they are 
 gone far from Me?" asks Jehovah, in Jeremiah's 
 earliest discourse (2 5). Jehovah has been a 
 nursing " father," " the guide of her youth," to 
 Israel ; He has proved a fond and faithful 
 " husband " (3 4. 14. 19. 20) ; even now He wishes 
 nothing but her return to " the love of her 
 espousals " (3 13. u. 22 4 1-4). He has been repaid 
 with insolent disobedience, with treachery and 
 " whoredom " and covenant-breaking on Israel's 
 part, from her youth up (2-5, 11 9-14). Jehovah's 
 anger is that of outraged love ; He is resolved 
 on a divorce (3 1, 11 15-17) ; this people bad been 
 bound to Him like a girdle round the loins, but 
 it " is marred and profitable for nothing," and 
 must be thrown away (13 1-11). 
 
PROPHETS OF THE SEVENTH CENTURY 221 
 
 Yet the rejection, so just and inevitable, is 
 not absolute. In the Jeremiah of later days, 
 "Mercy rejoices over against judgement" 
 (chs. 30-33). Jehovah " hateth putting away," 
 and says to His spouse as she goes into banish- 
 ment, " I have loved thee with an everlasting 
 love ; therefore I have maintained My kindness 
 to thee ; again will I build thee up, and thou 
 shalt be built, virgin daughter of Israel " ; 
 He asks Himself, " Is Ephraim a darling son to 
 Me ? is he a favourite child ? for often though 
 I have spoken against him, I do fondly remember 
 him still ; so that My heart is in a tumult over 
 him ; I must needs show him pity — it is the 
 oracle of Jehovah ! " (31 3-9. 18-20). Circum- 
 stances made Jeremiah a predicter of wrath and 
 ruin ; at the bottom, he is the prophet of the 
 Divine goodness, of Jehovah's unweariable and 
 invincible love. When he puts his creed into 
 formal expression, in the words of 9 23. 24, and 
 tells us what he deems to be the surest and 
 most delightful of all truths, he says, as from 
 Jehovah's mouth : " Let him that glorieth glory 
 in this, that he understandeth and knoweth 
 Me, that I am JEHOVAH, who doth exercise 
 lovingkindness, judgement, and righteousness in 
 the earth." Such is the order of God's moral 
 attributes with this great prophet. 
 
222 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 The apprehension of the Divine tenderness 
 was not confined to Jeremiah in this age. Even 
 Nahnm, who announces Jehovah as " a jealons 
 God and full of wrath," ends by saying, in 
 words that shine with a strange beauty from 
 his few fierce pages, " Jehovah is good, a strong- 
 hold in the day of trouble ; and He knoweth 
 them that put their trust in Him " (1 2. 7). 
 Habakkuk's perplexity over God's establishment 
 of the Chaldrean dominion is caused by the 
 contradiction between the raising up of so 
 inhuman a power and the known character of 
 Israel's God. The intensity of this prophet's 
 belief in Jehovah's unlimited lordship over the 
 nations, and in His wide compassion for human 
 misery, gives its keen edge and poignancy to 
 his complaint : " Wherefore lookest Thou upon 
 them that deal treacherously, and boldest Thy 
 peace when the wicked swalloweth up one more 
 righteous than he ? Why dost Thou make men 
 as the fishes of the sea, as the creeping things 
 that have no ruler over them ? " etc. (1 13-17). 
 
 This liberty of expostulation — such as Amos 
 or Micah never dreamed of using — shows that 
 the true Israel had grown into a greater intimacy 
 with God than earlier saints knew. The con- 
 trast between Jeremiah and the First Isaiah in 
 this respect is striking. God's transcendence, 
 
PROPHETS OF THE SEVENTH CENTURY 22$ 
 
 the splendour and majesty of His being, fill the 
 soul of the eighth-century prophet : in the vision 
 attending his call, Isaiah " sees Jehovah high 
 and lifted up " ; he hears the seraphim crying, 
 "Holy, holy, holy is Jehovah of hosts ! " "The 
 Holy One of Israel " is his habitual desig- 
 nation for God — an expression never occurring 
 in the genuine Jeremiah. 1 While for the con- 
 secration of Isaiah Jehovah " sent one of the 
 seraphim "to "touch" the prophet's "lips with 
 a live coal from the altar " (Isa. 6 6. 7), Jeremiah 
 writes of himself, " Jehovah put forth His hand 
 and touched my mouth, and Jehovah said unto 
 me, Behold, I have put My words in thy mouth" 
 (I 9). This distinction is characteristic : Jere- 
 miah conceives the true prophet as " standing 
 in the counsel of Jehovah, to perceive and hear 
 His word," like a privileged minister in the 
 select circle of his sovereign's confidants (23 is ; 
 comp. the Deutero-Isaiah in 50 4) ; on the other 
 hand, the summons that sent Amos on his 
 errand sounded to his ears like a distant lion's 
 roar in the desert (Am. 3 3.9). "The word of 
 Jehovah " that Jeremiah speaks becomes a part 
 of himself ; when he restrains that word, he 
 feels it as " a burning fire shut up in his bones " ; 
 he has " eaten Jehovah's words," and they are 
 
 1 This title appears in 50 29 and 51 5 ; but see pp. 134-137. 
 
224 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 " the joy and rejoicing of his heart " — his delight 
 at once and his torment, his glory and reproach 
 
 (1515-18 20 7-9). 
 
 This greater inwardness of faith, their livelier 
 sense of God's oneness with good men and of the 
 immanence of His word, brought with it a sore 
 distress for Habakknk and Jeremiah. The fact 
 that Jehovah made them men of " His counsel," 
 thus giving them to realize His inspiration in 
 the humane sensibilities of their hearts, rendered 
 the misrule of the world, the mockery of the 
 wicked and cruel, the enthronement of unscru- 
 pulous tyrannies, more shocking to them than to 
 saints of earlier generations. To these men God 
 is no longer the 'El Shaddai of the fathers, the 
 Almighty and Inscrutable; He is, in very deed, 
 " Jehovah, a God full of compassion and gracious, 
 slow to anger and plenteous in mercy and truth," 
 a God to be " loved with all the heart and soul 
 and might." How to reconcile the revealed 
 character of God with the actual state of the 
 world — this was the problem ! The remon- 
 strances of these prophets indicate the deepened 
 moral sensitiveness of religious minds in that 
 ase ; in their attitude towards Jehovah one re- 
 cognizes, if we may dare to say so, something 
 of the irae amantium, redintegratio amoris — the 
 lovers' quarrels that refresh their love ! 
 
PROPHETS OF THE SEVENTH CENTURY 225 
 
 Evil men of those times rejected the doctrine 
 of Almighty goodness as "a theorem refuted by 
 the plain facts of life, " saying in their heart, 
 Jehovah will not do good, nor will He do 
 harm " — " Jehovah hath abandoned the earth " 
 (Zeph. 1 12, Ezek. 8 12); and the best men, heartily 
 believing it, were at times dumfounded by the 
 discrepancy between their optimistic creed and 
 the trend of events around them. Hence the 
 vein of scepticism (for one cannot call it less) 
 in the prophecy of this calamitous epoch (see 
 pp. 55-62 above). How modern is this old trial 
 of faith ! 
 
 The experience of God's witnesses in the 
 period of the decay of Judah is summed up 
 in the lines of Psalm 73, whether composed at 
 this time or later : 
 
 Surely God is good to Israel, 
 Even to such as are pure in heart : 
 
 But as for me, my feet were almost gone ; 
 
 My steps had well-nigh slipped ! 
 
 Nevertheless, I am continually with Thee ; 
 
 Thou hast holden my right hand ! 
 It is good for me to draw nigh unto God : 
 I have made the Lord Jehovah my refuge, 
 
 That I may tell of all Thy works ! 
 
 in. 15 
 
226 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 II. National and Personal Religion 
 
 Dr Duhm excellently says : 
 
 Jeremiah is the noblest personality that Israel 
 ever produced before the coming of Christ. . . . 
 As a diseased and moribund people often unfolds 
 its finest blooms just when it is perishing — as Greece 
 in her decay gave birth to Socrates and Epaminondas, 
 to Demosthenes on her death-bed — so we are recon- 
 ciled to the hopeless dissolution of the Israelite 
 nation, since it gives to us at this last hour the 
 prophet Jeremiah. 
 
 In previous chapters we have already indicated 
 the significance of Jeremiah's position in the 
 history of bis people and in the evolution of the 
 spiritual life. He is, one might almost say, the 
 father of experimental religion. He realized 
 better than any inspired man before him the 
 inwardness of the Israelite faitb. And be was 
 brought to this consciousness by the force of 
 external events and the leading of the Spirit 
 of God, concurring with the aptitudes of bis own 
 delicate and reflective nature. 
 
 We have observed that Jeremiah stood toward 
 the national God on a footing of personal com- 
 munion, of which no previous Israelite, known to 
 us, affords the example. There are Psalms in a 
 similar vein, which may be older than Jeremiah ; 
 
PROPHETS OF THE SEVENTH CENTURY 227 
 
 but there is no certain proof of this. The man 
 is identified with his mission ; Jehovah's word 
 is " in his bones." The first words of Divine 
 revelation addressed to him declare the fact that 
 God claimed possession of his person, down to 
 its roots and elements : " Before I formed thee 
 in the belly, I knew thee; and before thou 
 earnest forth out of the womb, I sanctified thee ; 
 to be a prophet to the nations I appointed thee " 
 (1 5). His destination cuts him off from all 
 domestic relationships (16 1.2); he is a solitary, 
 like Elijah and John the Baptist, but a solitary 
 in the city and amongst the crowd. Singularly 
 enough, Jeremiah never once speaks of " the 
 spirit of Jehovah," l as of a distinguishable medi- 
 ating influence operating upon him; the objective 
 and subjective are blended in his apprehensions 
 of Jehovah's message, the Divine will presenting 
 itself with a peculiar immediacy to his conscious- 
 ness. Other expressions familiar in the prophets, 
 that serve to indicate their sense of the Divine 
 afflatus as a force coming from without upon the 
 inspired man, are wanting in Jeremiah. He 
 does not " see the word of Jehovah," like Isaiah ; 
 
 1 In this usage Jeremiah stands in contrast both with 
 Isaiah before him and with Ezekiel after him. The post- 
 Jeremianic passage of ch. 51 11 affords the only example 
 of the word ruach in the whole Book. 
 
228 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 nor feel " the hand of Jehovah " upon him, nor 
 behold in any imaginative form " the glory of 
 Jehovah," like Ezekiel ; the habitual formula 
 with Jeremiah is, " The word of Jehovah came to 
 me, saying . . ." : it comes, it is there within his 
 soul — that is all the prophet knows ! If the word 
 " spirit " (ruac/i), with its suggestion of God's 
 objectivity to the soul, is absent from Jeremiah's 
 vocabulary, " heart " is conspicuous : this term 
 occurs oftener here than anywhere else in the 
 Old Testament, except in the Psalms — a fact 
 evidencing by itself the supreme imj)ortance 
 which Jeremiah attaches to personal religion. 
 
 For "the heart" is the personality, the inner 
 and real man, with which Jehovah deals. In the 
 maxims of 17 o. 10, which treat of its condition 
 and its relations to God, Jeremiah gives his 
 diagnosis of the maladies of his time : " Deceitful 
 is the heart above all things, and incurable — who 
 knoweth it? I, Jehovah, searcher of the heart, 
 trier of the reins ! " On this subject Jeremiah 
 approximated to the teaching of Jesus. It is the 
 "heart" of "the men of Jndah " that needs to 
 be " circumcised " ; the " heart " of " Jerusalem " 
 must be " washed from wickedness " and the 
 " evil thoughts lodo-ing- within " it banished, 
 before salvation can come (4 4. 14). Without this 
 inner cleansing, Jeremiah was persuaded that 
 
PROPHETS OF THE SEVENTH CENTURY 229 
 
 Josiah's reformation would fail ; for it was a 
 "sowing amongst thorns," with no "breaking 
 up of the fallow ground" (4 3). The false pro- 
 phets " speak out of the deceit " and " the 
 vision" of "their own heart," and not "from 
 the mouth of Jehovah"; so they promise im- 
 munity to those who " walk in the stubbornness 
 of their own heart " (23 16. 17. 26). 
 
 Jeremiah saw with perfect clearness to the 
 root of the matter ; he traced the evils working 
 in the nation, past all environment and social 
 institutions, to the corruption of the individual 
 heart, to the universality and malignity of per- 
 sonal sin. Jeremiah has " run to and fro through 
 the streets of Jerusalem, and sought in the broad 
 places thereof," to find " a man that doeth justly, 
 that seeketh the truth " ; such persons do not 
 exist (5 1). There are those in plenty who have 
 " Jehovah near to their mouth, and far from their 
 reins " ; but the material for a sound nationality, 
 in honest, loyal men, is wanting. For himself 
 the prophet can say, " Thou, Jehovah, hast 
 known me ; Thou seest me and triest my heart 
 toward Thee " (12 2. 3). When hope visits him, it 
 is that Jehovah will one day give to Israel " a 
 heart to know Him, that He is Jehovah " (24 7). 
 
 The new interest attached to personal, as dis- 
 tinguished from collective, religious character 
 
230 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 is manifest when Jeremiah conceives the return 
 from the Exile as a restoration of selected in- 
 dividuals, the men of the " new heart " : "I will 
 take you," says Jehovah, " one of a city, and 
 two of a family, and bring you unto Zion " 
 (3 14 ; comp. Zeph. 3 12. 13) ; he could not expect 
 good to result from a wholesale repatriation. 
 On the same principle, we understand why 
 Jeremiah, and Ezekiel after him, traverse the 
 familiar proverb, " The fathers have eaten sour 
 grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge " : 
 not so for the future, our prophet says, ""Every 
 one shall die for his own iniquity; every man 
 that eateth the sour grapes, his teeth shall be 
 set on edge" (31 29. 30). This protest marks a 
 signal advance in Israelite conceptions of the 
 working of moral laws; the common man will 
 not henceforth be regarded, in the prevalent 
 fashion of antiquity, as an indistinguishable item 
 in the state with rights and responsibilities 
 accruing to him only from his tribe — he becomes 
 a person, in full status ; and it is the person, no 
 longer the nation or the clan, that is to constitute 
 the religious unit. Not by participation in family 
 rites or in national feasts and covenants, but by 
 the disposition of his own heart toward Jehovah 
 is each man's lot to be determined in the coming 
 times. 
 
PROPHETS OF THE SEVENTH CENTURY 231 
 
 With his fuller conception of personal religion 
 and of the intimacy between Jehovah and the 
 individual heart, Jeremiah consistently carried 
 to further lengths than any before him the old 
 contention of the prophets against ritualism. He 
 assails the popular pride in the temple, aggra- 
 vated by the Deuteronomic reforms, as a deadly 
 superstition, since this devotion to purer rites 
 was attended by no contrition of heart and no 
 putting away of the extortion and vice that prey 
 upon society — the house of Jehovah at Jerusalem, 
 he declares, must go the way of the old house at 
 Sliiloh, for it is no better than "a den of robbers" 
 (7 1-15). " The ark of the covenant of Jehovah," 
 that had been the palladium of the national 
 existence, will be forgotten in the better days 
 of the future (3ig.it). Sayings like these were 
 shocking and profane to the ears of the priests 
 and professional prophets ; they provoked un- 
 bounded resentment. Jeremiah even writes as 
 though the ceremonial system of worship formed 
 no part of Israel's duty and was never enjoined 
 by Jehovah, whose law was purely ethical (7 21-20 ; 
 comp. Hos. 6 6 ; Isa. 1 13-15 ; Mic. 6 c-s ; Ps. 50 7-15). 
 To take such expressions of the prophet cm 
 pied de la lettre, and to argue that Jeremiah 
 condemned temple- sacrifice and priestly minis- 
 trations as intrinsically wrong and contrary to 
 
232 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 Jehovah's mind, is a pedantic interpretation. He 
 is putting in an extreme and paradoxical way 
 his sense of the hatefulness of mechanical forms 
 without inward piety, and the futility of attempt- 
 ing to atone for the absence of the latter by 
 lavishness in the former ; " burnt offerings and 
 sacrifices " had at no time been the real burden 
 of Jehovah's demands from His people. This 
 controversy ranged all the official classes against 
 Jeremiah. The " scribes " with their " false 
 pen," the " prophets " with their "lying tongue," 
 the "priests " with their pretentious ritual, " the 
 wise men " with their crooked maxims — these 
 upholders of a corrupt system, who are leagued 
 against God's messenger, these encouragers of 
 rebellion and shameless ringleaders in wicked- 
 ness will, he stoutly declares confronting them 
 all, be made foremost examples in the nation's 
 punishment (8 8-is I818-23). 
 
 The entire fabric of the visible religion of Israel 
 must be broken up. A clean sweep is going 
 to be made of city, temple, kingship, prophetism, 
 priestly ordinances ; a complete breach is 
 necessary in the nation's life, that the way may 
 be clear for a fresh beofinnin^. Israel's future 
 career will date no longer, as heretofore, from 
 the Egyptian Exodus, but from the restoration 
 inaugurating a true spiritual order (23 7. s 31 31-34). 
 
PROPHETS OF THE SEVENTH CENTURY 233 
 
 Yet under the new conditions the monarchy and 
 the priesthood will re-flourish, in a purer form — 
 so Jeremiah certainly expected, if ch. 33 14-26 or 
 23 3-s be his work (see' p. 128). We cannot sup- 
 pose that he imagined the religion of the future 
 as altogether formless, and without its ordained 
 representatives ; he was faithful to the prophetic 
 tradition of the eighth century, in looking for- 
 ward to the re-erection of the throne of David, 
 idealized and glorified. For the nation, Jere- 
 miah's oracle is, " The days come, saith Jehovah, 
 that I will raise up unto David a righteous Shoot, 
 who shall reign as king and shall prosper . . . 
 and this is the name whereby he shall be called, 
 Yahveh - Tsidqenu " {Yahveh - is - our - righteous- 
 ness : a play on the royal name given to the 
 last reigning king — see 2 Kings 24 17 — viz. 
 Tsidqiyyahwj Righteousness-of -Yahveh). For the 
 individual Israelite, the oracle is, " Behold, the 
 days are coming, saith Jehovah, that I will make 
 a new covenant with, the house of Israel and with 
 the house of Judah. ... I will put my law in 
 their inward parts, and in their heart will I 
 write it. . . . They shall all know Me, from the 
 least of them unto the greatest, saith Jehovah ; 
 for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin 
 will I remember no more." 
 
234 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 III. The New Covenant 
 
 Despair of the theocratic state, to which the 
 battle of Megiddo in 608 gave the death-blow, 
 combined with the more personal apprehension of 
 religion to which Jeremiah, and in some sort 
 Habakknk, was led, to bring about a changed 
 conception of the relationship between Jehovah 
 and the community. In Jeremiah's prophecy of 
 the new covenant (31 31-34) this spiritual revolu- 
 tion is formally expressed. The new regime 
 has not actually arrived ; Jeremiah predicts its 
 coming in the future. For the present his 
 people live under the old covenant of Moses, 
 founded at the Exodus, which in fact they had 
 solemnly renewed of recent years in the terms of 
 the Deuteronomic To rah, — and no sooner renewed 
 than broken, bringing on themselves its curses 
 in speedy nemesis (11 9-14 31 32). This gross, 
 persistent breach of faith must be avenged, and 
 the ancient covenant, made by Jehovah with 
 Israel's fathers when He "took them by the 
 hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt," has 
 to be vindicated first, before the new constitution 
 cau be set on foot. But this will certainly take 
 place. Jehovah will not try a second time the 
 experiment of the Exodus and Sinai ; that is a 
 closed chapter in His dealings with men : " It 
 
PROPHETS OF THE SEVENTH CENTURY 235 
 
 shall no more be said, As Jehovah liveth that 
 brought up the children of Israel out of the 
 land of Egypt" (16 14.15), and "men shall no 
 more say, The ark of the covenant of Jehovah, 
 nor shall they remember it ; nor shall they miss 
 it ; nor shall any new one be made " (3 iq). 1 For 
 
 1 Ch. 3 14-18 is marked as a post-exilic interpolation^ Duhm 
 and Cornill, on various but scarcely conclusive grounds. 
 Giesebrecht conjectures that the paragraph formed part of 
 an address of Jeremiah to the Captivity of Israel and Judah 
 written after the fall of Jerusalem, in the strain of 31 27. 28. 32, 
 which the editors have inserted as being apposite at this 
 place. Giesebrecht bases this opinion on the similarity of 
 lauguage between this and the later oracle, but especially on 
 the allusion in 3 16 (last clause, of which the true sense is 
 given above) to the ark as no longer in existence ; from this 
 he infers that Jeremiah is writing after the destruction of 
 the temple. On the other hand, ver. 14& seems to recognize 
 Zion as standing and as open to receive returning Israelite 
 wanderers. Giesebrecht's difficulty is very real, and his sug- 
 gestion tempting. At the same time, the two last clauses of 
 ver. 16 (italicized above) look like a gloss from, the hand of 
 some prophet-interpreter desiring to reassure Judasans of the 
 Second Temple, who felt the loss of the old palladium. The 
 foregoing words, " They shall say no more, The ark of the 
 covenant of Jehovah " (a Deuteronomic phrase, by the way), 
 imply that the ark exists and retains its sacrosanct character ; 
 comp. the sentiment of Jer. 7 4 and 14. There is no ground 
 for Cornill's assumption, that the ark had disappeared before 
 587 B.C. The words " to the name of Jehovah at Jerusalem " 
 (17), which are wanting in the LXX, may be surrendered 
 without loss. Ver. 17 shows how impossible it was for 
 Jeremiah wholly to dispense with a material habitat and 
 visible form for the New Covenant dispensation. 
 
236 . THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 the ark contained, enclosed in a wooden box and 
 engraved on slabs of stone, that law which is 
 hereafter to be written more securely on the 
 living hearts of men. 
 
 No previous Israelite teacher had gone any- 
 thing like so far as this in the repudiation of 
 legalism ; it was not until six hundred years later 
 that the position won by Jeremiah was resumed 
 by Jesus Christ and His' apostle Paul, and that 
 the promise of the New Covenant took full effect. 
 The hopeless break-down of the state-religion, 
 and Josiah's failure in the enforcement of the 
 law of Deuteronomy, taught Jeremiah the lesson 
 of his life ; he was driven to the idea of the 
 New Covenant, as affording the only possible 
 escape for Israel from absolute ruin and the 
 only conceivable way of realizing the promises 
 made of God unto the fathers. 
 
 Under the New Covenant not only will the 
 external symbols and guards of the old Torah 
 disappear, but the official religious orders will 
 no longer be needed for its maintenance : " They 
 shall teach no more every man his neighbour, 
 and every mau his brother, saying, Know 
 Jehovah ; for they shall all know Me, from the 
 least of them unto the greatest of them." The 
 failure of the contemporary priests and prophets 
 in their duty was the most ominous sign of the 
 
PROPHETS OF THE SEVENTH CENTURY 237 
 
 general apostasy : " The priests said not, Where 
 is Jehovah ? . . . The prophets prophesied by 
 Ba'al" (2 s. 9 5 31 613 14 is, etc.); from these 
 " shepherds " of the people Jeremiah experienced 
 a relentless opposition — they met him with re- 
 peated contradiction and insult, and would have 
 put him to death (18 is, 20 1-3, 26, 28, 29 24-32). 
 As Hosea had said, it was " Like people, like 
 priest " (4 9). Those who should have been the 
 bulwark against evil, themselves " caused the 
 jjeople to err " and to " forget Jehovah's name," 
 and " strengthened the hands of evil-doers." 
 Zephaniah (see 3 4) and the author of Zechariah 
 12-14 (see 13 i-e) are at one with Jeremiah about 
 this : in the words of Zephaniah, " Jerusalem's 
 prophets are light and treacherous persons ; her 
 priests have profaned the sanctuary, and have 
 done violence to the law." In these appointed 
 guardians of the knowledge of Jehovah no 
 guarantee of its continuance any more remains ; 
 since the law of God can no longer depend on 
 " the priest's lips," it must be written on the 
 layman's heart (comp. Ezek. 34 l-ie). In his 
 reaction against the religious orders, Jeremiah, 
 who was himself a priest-prophet, here goes to 
 the extreme of individualism ; he appears to 
 make each man his own priest and prophet, in 
 entire independence of external ministrations (but 
 
238 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 see, on the other hand, ch. 33 14-20, and pp. 128, 233 
 above). 1 
 
 Finally, the New Covenant will be inaugurated, 
 by an act of indemnity, an oblivion of the sins 
 of the past : " I will forgive their iniquity, and 
 their sin will I remember no more" (31 34 33 s; 
 comp. Isa. 43 25). The realization of this promise, 
 in the " forgiveness of sins " proclaimed by 
 Jesus as the consequence of His sacrificial death 
 (Matt. 26 28 ; Luke 24 47, etc.), convinced His 
 disciples that the days of Jeremiah's " new 
 covenant " at last had come (Heb. 10 i-is). The 
 prophet himself conceived this forgiveness as an 
 experience to be realized both inwardly in the 
 bestowal of the consciousness of personal fellow- 
 ship with God, and outwardly in the return of the 
 people from exile and the rebuilding of their 
 desolated city : this is plain from the whole 
 context of 31 31-34. 
 
 Jeremiah fixes no time for the founding of the 
 New Covenant; he only knows that "days are 
 coming " in which Jehovah will do this — the 
 event is certain, and history is marching to the 
 
 1 Superficial inconsistencies of this sort are natural in a 
 writer of Jeremiah's temperament, and are no proof of in- 
 authenticity in either of the contrasted passages. The 
 inconsistency lies with the critics who reduce the sacred 
 author to the ordinary human level, and yet refuse him the 
 indulgence of an occasional self-contradiction. 
 
PROPHETS OF THE SEVENTH CENTURY 239 
 
 goal. He connects its institution with the end 
 of the approaching judgement — "after those 
 days " (31 33) ; as Isaiah saw the happy reign 
 of the ideal Son of David following on the 
 deliverance of Jerusalem from the Assyrians, 
 and as his successor in the exile saw the 
 "light" of Israel "come and the glory of 
 Jehovah risen upon" her in the approaching 
 restoration from Babylon (Isa. 60, etc.) ; so 
 Jeremiah associated his crowning vision of the 
 spiritual union between Jehovah and His people 
 with the repeal of the present doom falling on 
 apostate Israel and Jndah and the end of 
 Jerusalem's captivity. From the earliest to the 
 last days of his prophesying, Jeremiah held 
 unfalteringly to the national hope ; see 3 17. is for 
 the beginning, and chs. 30, 31 for the close of 
 his ministry. 
 
 IV. Jehovah's World-plan 
 
 Jeremiah was ordained at the outset " a pro- 
 phet unto the nations." Nahum, Zephaniah, 
 Habakkuk, and the Anonymus of Zech. 12-14, all 
 more or less conspicuously adopt the same role. 
 The Book of Nahum is a poem on the approach- 
 ing fall of Nineveh, whom the prophet, in the 
 name of Jehovah, apostrophizes from 1 14 on- 
 wards. Zephaniah, in ch. 2, delivers a series of 
 
240 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 Woes on the surrounding peoples : he sees the 
 scourge of the Scythian invasion about to be laid 
 impartially on all the world-powers, along with 
 the little kingdom of Judah. Habakkuk is 
 troubled by the infliction of the cruel Chaldrean 
 rule on the nations generally, and not on his 
 own people by itself — his feelings as a man are 
 outraged by the character of the new empire, 
 rather than his pride as a Judrean. When the 
 oracle is given him that revives his faith (2 4), 
 he breaks into a taunt-song over the Chaldean, 
 in which he voices the exultation of humanity 
 over the tyrant's fall (2 6af.). In a different 
 spirit, the author of Zech. 12-14 surveys the array 
 of the nations gathered under Nebuchadrezzar's 
 standard to the siege of Jerusalem ; he foresees 
 a time when they will humbly resort thither for 
 worship and sacrifice to Zion's God (14 16-21). 
 Every prophet of these days was bound to have 
 his thoughts occupied with " the nations," in 
 whose movements Judah had become inextricably 
 entangled ; he could not but reflect upon God's 
 plans for them. 
 
 In the character of Jehovah's "prophet unto 
 the nations," Jeremiah virtually anointed Nebu- 
 chadrezzar monarch of Israel's world (25 s-12, etc.), 
 even as Elijah was commissioned to anoint Jehu 
 king of Israel and Hazael of Damascus (1 Kings 
 
PROPHETS OF THE SEVENTH CENTURY 241 
 
 19 15-17). Hence he imposes submission to the 
 Chaldean king on the neighbour states as well 
 as on Judah, interfering at this point in politics 
 on the largest scale and in the boldest manner 
 (ch. 27) — as a Pope might do in the Middle 
 Ages ! He " takes the cup of the wine of fury 
 at Jehovah's hand " to serve it round to the 
 rulers of the East, reserving for the king of 
 Babylon, when " the time of his land shall 
 come," the last and bitterest draught of the 
 potion (25 i5-3i 27 7). Such was Jehovah's plan 
 for the immediate future. It was just this plan, 
 so announced as coming from Israel's "Holy One" 
 (" Lo, I am raising up the Chaldreans ! "), that 
 stirred the resentment and amazed inquiry of 
 the prophet Habakkuk (1 6. 12 ; comp. pp. 55-60). 
 Jeremiah declared all along that the Chaldean 
 dominion would be temporary. For " seventy 
 years" (25 11 29 10), or three generations (27 7), 
 it is to last : the figure 70 is doubtless to be 
 understood as a round number — as things turned 
 out, it approximated closely to the fact, the 
 Babylonian empire having endured from 605, 
 the date of Carchemish, to 536 b.c. 1 This is 
 
 1 The " seventy years " of 25 11 is repeated seven years later 
 in 29 10. Cornill deletes the clause containing the date as a 
 gloss in the former passage, vindicating it in the latter. 
 Duhm rejects, while G-iesebrecht affirms, the originality of 
 the numerical prediction in both instances. 
 
 in. 16 
 
242 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 one of the most notable of the definite predic- 
 tions in Old Testament prophecy, and excited 
 great attention in subsequent generations : see 
 2 Chron. 36 21. 22, Ezra 1 1-3, Dan. 9 2. Its fulfil- 
 ment, probably, did much to establish Jeremiah's 
 influence at the Restoration, and secured the 
 careful preservation of his writings. 
 
 There is little of a constructive character in 
 Jeremiah's teaching respecting the Gentiles. He 
 did much, in such passages as 9 23-20, to break 
 down those distinctions between Israel and her 
 neighbours which rested on grounds of external 
 privilege : man's true " glory," he says, is found 
 in the knowledge of Jehovah, who " exercises 
 lovingkindness, judgement, and righteousness in 
 the earth" and who will with sovereign impar- 
 tiality " punish " alike " the circumcised in their 
 circumcision " — " Egypt, and Judah, and Edom, 
 and the children of Amnion and Moab," iden- 
 tified in the practice of circumcision — and u the 
 dwellers in the wilderness," who were dis- 
 tinguished by their cropped hair. For these 
 formal customs — circumcision or polling of the 
 hair — could make no difference in His sight ; 
 they have no bearing on the moral deserts of 
 men or of nations. The prophet approves the 
 distant heathen of " the isles of Kittim " and of 
 " Kedar " as loyal to their worthless gods, while 
 
PROPHETS OF THE SEVENTH CENTURY 243 
 
 the Israelites deserted Jehovah, who had been 
 to them " a fountain of living waters " (2 10-13). 
 This comparison springs from a larger acquaint- 
 ance with strange peoples, and a more liberal 
 estimation of them, than one finds in the older 
 prophecy. 
 
 Hence we need not be surprised if Jeremiah 
 (according to the Hebrew text) concludes his 
 oracles against the foreign nations who are to 
 come under Nebuchadrezzar's sway, in four in- 
 stances — those of Egypt, Moab, Amnion, and 
 Elam (46. 26 48 47 49 6. 39) 1 — with promises of 
 restoration " afterwards" or "in the last days." 
 In the cases of Egypt and of Elam, these assur- 
 ances may have been an echo of Isaiah's generous 
 prediction, that Israel shall be one day " the third 
 with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst 
 of the earth " (19 19-25 ; see Vol. II, pp. 84-88) ; 
 for " Elam " now represented, approximately, 
 Assyria, which had disappeared from the list of 
 nations. The promise of rehabilitation to Moab 
 and Amnion is certainly surprising. No hope of 
 recovery is held out to the Philistines, to Edom, 
 Damascus, Kedar, or Hazor. The dominant note 
 
 1 These kindly verses are wanting in the LXX, and are 
 accordingly rejected by many critics. It is difficult to see 
 why a later hand should have inserted them ; but the Greek 
 translator of the second century B.C. might be under some 
 temptation to omit them (cornp. pp. 141, 151). 
 
244 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 of this prophet's message to the peoples is that 
 sounded in 25 31 : " Jehovah hath a controversy 
 with the nations, He will plead with all flesh ; as 
 for the wicked, He will give them to the sword." 
 If Jeremiah does not preach, with the Isaiah 
 of the exile, the gospel of a universal redemp- 
 tion through Jehovah's Suffering Servant in 
 Israel, he preaches at any rate a universal retri- 
 butive judgement, that will visit all guilty nations 
 along with Jehovah's unfaithful Israel. This at 
 least was absolutely clear to Jeremiah and the 
 discerning Israel of his time, that Jehovah is 
 deeply concerned in the affairs of the nations ; 
 that He is " a God afar off" no less than " nigh 
 at hand," resolved and able to measure out justice 
 to the great powers on the Euphrates or the Nile, 
 as to the little tribes of Israel — Asshur's over- 
 throw had given resounding proof of this ; that, 
 in fact, He is " Jehovah, who doth exercise 
 lovingkindness, judgement, and righteousness in 
 the earth" and who " delighteth in these things." 
 This doctrine, never before uttered in terms so 
 large and confident, was a grand message to 
 proclaim, worthy of a " prophet to the nations " ; 
 it was a lofty summit of faith to which Jeremiah 
 had climbed, in days when lovingkindness and 
 justice seemed to be banished from amongst 
 mankind. 
 
PROPHETS OF THE SEVENTH CENTURY 245 
 
 Habakkuk reached the same elevation when 
 lie was able to say, after his struggle with sore 
 doubt of God's just government, " Jehovah is in 
 His holy temple : let all the earth keep silence 
 before Him " (2 20). It was Jeremiah's doctrine 
 of the world-judgement exercised by Jehovah as 
 Lord of "all the earth," which the Psalmists of 
 the following age took up, associating it with the 
 coming Messianic rule, as in Psalm 96 9-13 : 
 
 O worship Jehovah in the beauty of holiness, 
 Tremble before Him all the earth ! 
 
 Say among the nations, that Jehovah is King ! 
 He shall judge the peoples with equity. 
 
 Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice ; 
 Let the sea roar, and the fulness thereof, — 
 
 Before Jehovah, for He cometh ! 
 
 For He cometh to judge the earth ! 
 He shall judge the world in righteousness, 
 
 And the peoples with His truth ! 
 
 The anger of the prophet Jeremiah had been 
 strongly moved by the attacks which some of 
 the border states made on the Judreans at the 
 instigation of Nebuchadrezzar, when in the 
 middle of Jehoiakim's reign that king first broke 
 with the Chaldasan overlord (see 2 Kings 24 1. 2 ; 
 and pp. 119, 146 above). So we read in ch. 12 14-17, 
 
246 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 " Thus saith Jehovah against all mine evil 
 neighbours, that touch the inheritance which 
 I have caused my people Israel to inherit : 
 Behold, I will pluck them up from off their 
 land, and will pluck up the house of Judah 
 from among them"— it seems as though the 
 Exile was to be a sort of delicerance for Judah 
 from the continual encroachments of bad neigh- 
 bours ! But after this general uprooting of the 
 Palestinian states, a restoration is foreshadowed, 
 in which the adjoining peoples will have part, 
 —provided, says Jehovah, " they learn the ways 
 of My people, to swear by My name, As Jehovah 
 liveth, 1 even as they have taught My people to 
 swear by Ba f al ; then shall they be built up in the 
 midst of My people : ' (vv. 15. J). This is entirely 
 in the spirit of Isaiah's delightful prediction 
 touching the relations of Israel with Egypt and 
 Asshur in the Messianic days (Isa. 19). Further 
 than this, Jeremiah foresees " the nations coming 
 from the ends of the earth " and " saying, Our 
 fathers have inherited nought but lies, even 
 vanity and things wherein there is no profit . . . 
 I [Jehovah] will cause them to know, this once 
 I will cause them to know Mine hand and My 
 
 1 In the light of this oracle, and under the condition here 
 specified, the promises made to Moab and Ammonin 48 47 and 
 49 6 should probably be understood. 
 
PROPHETS OF THE SEVENTH CENTURY 247 
 
 might ; and they shall know that My name is 
 Jehovah " (16 19-21). 1 
 
 Though the Gentiles are not expressly brought 
 into connexion with the New Covenant promise" 
 of 31 31-34, and though in one fierce passage 
 Jeremiah cries to Jehovah, " Pour out Thy fury 
 upon the heathen that know Thee not, and upon 
 the families that have not called on Thy name " 
 (10 25 : he imprecates as much elsewhere upon 
 his own kindred !), yet he cherishes the hope 
 that the common and searching calamity which 
 he sees impending on the neighbour peoples 
 along with Judah, will prove a salutary discipline 
 for all. Jeremiah anticipates that, just as Israel 
 had lowered herself by her apostasy to the level 
 of the Canaanites around her, learning " to swear 
 by Ba f al," so they will be lifted along with Israel 
 into the light of the new revelation and will 
 come to acknowledge her God for theirs also, 
 learning " to swear by Jehovah " ; they will 
 share in the better knowledge of Jehovah, to 
 which His people are surely to be brought in 
 the " days that are coming." 
 
 This prophet's conception of God's saving plan 
 
 1 The critics put down vv. 20. 21 to " the redactor." Ver. 19, 
 however, contains the essential thought, that in the Restoration 
 the surrounding heathen will share with Israel in the know- 
 ledge of Jehovah, abandoning their false gods. 
 
248 THE BOOKS OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 for the nations foreshadows that developed by 
 St Paul in chs. 9-11 of his epistle to the 
 Romans : " Israel's fall is the riches of the 
 world ! . . . God hath shut up all unto dis- 
 obedience, that He might have mercy upon all. 1 ' 
 
 O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and 
 
 knowledge of God : 
 How unsearchable are His judgements, and His ways 
 
 past tracing out ! 
 
 Printed hy Hazell, Watson <L- Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury. 
 
DATE DUE 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 GAYLORD 
 
 
 
 PRINTED IN U. S. A 
 
H 
 
 ■■• : ' ■ > 
 
 ■•■■■■■■'■'.■'•■■' 
 ■■•■■■ ■ ■ ■■ ' 
 . • ■■■' ■■ ■ / ■ 
 
 H ' Hi 
 
 : .-•'■'■'.. ■ 
 
 B 
 
 fiflRP 
 
 J I ' 
 
 ■ ■ w ' • ■ - ■' - 
 • ..." i 
 
 I 
 
. ■ • • 
 
 . 
 
 • 
 
 BS1505.4.F49v.3 
 
 The books of the prophets in their 
 
 Princeton Theological Semmary-Speer Library 
 
 1 1012 00053 3812 
 
 
 -