Jeremiah : Being The Baird Lecture for 1922 Part 15

The next Oracle in metre is an elegy, probably prospective, on the fate of Jehoiachin and his mother Nehushta.(425)

Say to the King and Her Highness, 18 Low be ye seated!

For from your heads is come down The crown of your splendour.

The towns of the Southland are blocked 19 With none to open.

All Judah is gone into exile, Exile entire.(426)

_The flock of the Lord_, verse 17, comes again into the next poem, addressed to Jerusalem as appears from the singular form of the verbs and p.r.o.nouns preserved throughout by the Greek (but only in 20_b_ by the Hebrew) which to the disturbance of the metre adds the name of the city-probably a marginal note that by the hand of some copyist has been drawn into the text. In verse 21 the people, whom Judah has wooed to be her ally but who are about to become her tyrant, are, of course, the Babylonians.(427)

Lift up thine eyes and look, XIII. 20 They come from the North!

Where is the flock that was given thee, Thy beautiful flock?

What wilt thou say when they set 21 O'er thee as heads,(428) Those whom thyself wast training To be to thee friends?

Shall pangs not fasten upon thee, Like a woman's in travail?

And if thou say in thine heart, 22 Why fall on me these?

For the ma.s.s of thy guilt stripped are thy skirts, Ravished thy limbs!

Can the Ethiop change his skin, 23 Or the leopard his spots?

Then also may ye do good Who are wont to do evil.

As the pa.s.sing chaff I strew them 24 To the wind of the desert.

This is thy lot, the share I mete thee- 25 Rede of the Lord- Because Me thou hast wholly forgotten And trusted in fraud.

So thy skirts I draw over thy face, 26 Thy shame is exposed.

Thine adulteries, thy neighings, 27 Thy whorish intrigues; On the heights, in the field have I seen Thy detestable deeds.

Jerusalem! Woe unto thee!

Thou wilt not be clean- After how long yet?(429)

Ch. XIV. 1-10 is the fine poem on the Drought which was rendered in a previous lecture.(430) It is followed by a pa.s.sage in prose, 11-16, that implies a wilder "sea of troubles," not drought only but war, famine and pestilence. Forbidden to pray for the people Jeremiah pleads that they have been misled by the prophets who promised that there would be neither famine nor war; and the Lord condemns the prophets for uttering lies in His Name. Through war and famine prophets and people alike shall perish.

And thou shalt say this word to them: XIV. 17 Let your eyes run down with tears Day and night without ceasing, For broken, broken is the Daughter of my people, With the direst of strokes!

Fare I forth to the field, 18 Lo the slain of the sword!

Or come into the city Lo anguish of famine!

Yea, prophet and priest go a-begging In a land they know not.(431)

Some see reflected in these lines the situation after Megiddo, when Egyptian troops may have worked such evils on Judah; but more probably it is the still worse situation after the surrender of Jerusalem to Nebuchadrezzar. There follows, 19-22, another prayer of the people (akin to that following the drought, 7-9) which some take to be later than Jeremiah. The metre is unusual, if indeed it be metre and not rhythmical prose.

[Hast Thou utterly cast off Judah, 19 Loathes ?ion Thy soul?

Why hast Thou smitten us so That for us is no healing?

Hoped we for peace-no good!

For a season of healing-lo panic!

We acknowledge, O Lord, our wickedness, 20 The guilt of our fathers; to Thee have we sinned.

For the sake of Thy Name, do not spurn us, 21 Debase not the Throne of Thy Glory, Remember, break not Thy Covenant with us!

'Mongst the bubbles of the nations are makers of rain, 22 Or do the heavens give the showers?

Art Thou not He for whom we must wait?

Yea, Thou hast created all these.]

As the Book now runs this prayer receives from G.o.d a repulse, XV. 1-4, similar to that which was received by the people's prayer after the drought XIV. 10-12, and to that which Hosea heard to the prayer of his generation.(432) Intercession for such a people is useless, were it made even by Moses and Samuel; they are doomed to perish by the sword, famine and exile. This pa.s.sage is in prose and of doubtful origin. But the next lines are in Jeremiah's favourite metre and certainly his own. They either describe or (less probably) antic.i.p.ate the disaster of 598. G.o.d Himself again is the speaker as in XII. 7-11. His Patience which the Parable of the Potter ill.u.s.trated has its limits,(433) and these have now been reached. It is not G.o.d who is to blame, but Jerusalem and Judah who have failed Him.

Jerusalem, who shall pity, XV. 5 Who shall bemoan thee, Who will but turn him to ask After thy welfare?

'Tis thou that hast left Me-Rede of the Lord- 6 Still going backward.

So I stretched my hand(434) and destroyed thee Tired of relenting.

With a winnowing fork I winnowed them 7 In the gates of the land.

I bereaved and destroyed my people Because of their evil.(435) I saw their widows outnumber 8 The sand of the seas.

I brought on the mother of youths(?) Destruction at noonday, And let fall sudden upon them Anguish and terrors.(436) She that bare seven hath fainted, 9 Breathes out her life, Set is her sun in the daytime Shamed and abashed!

And their remnant I give to the sword In face of their foes!(437)

Through the rest of Ch. XV and through XVI and XVII are a number of those personal pa.s.sages, which I have postponed to a subsequent lecture upon Jeremiah's spiritual struggles,(438) and also several pa.s.sages which by outlook and phrasing belong to a later age. The impression left by this miscellany is that of a collection of sayings put together by an editor out of some Oracles by our Prophet himself and deliverances by other prophets on the same or similar themes. In pursuance of the plan I proposed I take now only those pa.s.sages in which Jeremiah deals with the character of his people and their deserved doom.

Thus saith the Lord- XVI. 5 Come not to the home of mourning, Nor go about to lament,(439) For my Peace I have swept away- Away from this people.(440) Nor enter the house of feasting, 8 To sit with them eating and drinking For thus saith the Lord, the G.o.d of Israel; 9 Lo, I make to cease from this place, To your eyes, in your days, The voices of joy and rejoicing, The voices of bridegroom and bride.

There follows a pa.s.sage in prose, 10-13, which in terms familiar to us, recites the nation's doom, their exile. Verses 14, 15 break the connection with 16 ff., and find their proper place in XXIII. 7-8, where they recur.

Verses 16-18 predict, under the figures of fishers and hunters, the arrival of bands of invaders, who shall sweep the country of its inhabitants, because of the idolatries with which these have polluted it.

There is no reason to deny these verses to Jeremiah. In 19, 20 we come to another metrical piece, singing of the conversion of the heathen from their idols-the only piece of its kind from Jeremiah-which we may more suitably consider later. Verse 21 seems more in place after 18.

The sin of Judah is writ XVII. 1 With pen of iron, With the point of a diamond graven On the plate of their heart- And eke on the horns of their altars,(441) And each spreading tree, Upon all the lofty heights 2 And hills of the wild Thy substance and all thy treasures 3 For spoil I give, Because of sin thy high places Throughout thy borders.

Thine heritage thou shalt surrender(442) 4 Which I have given thee, And thy foes I shall make thee to serve In a land thou knowest not.

Ye have kindled a fire in my wrath That for ever shall burn.(443)

These verses, characteristic of Jeremiah, are more so of his earliest period than of his work in the reign of Jehoiakim, and may have been among those which he added to his Second Roll. They are succeeded by the beautiful reflections on the man who does not trust the Lord and on the man who does, verses 5-8, quoted in a previous lecture.(444) The rest of the chapter consists of pa.s.sages personal to himself, to be considered later, and of an exhortation to keep the Sabbath, verses 19-27, which is probably post-exilic.(445)

In Ch. XVIII the Parable of the Potter is followed by a metrical Oracle which has all the marks of Jeremiah's style and repeats the finality of the doom, to which the nation's forgetfulness of G.o.d and idolatry have brought it. Once more the poet contrasts the constancy of nature with his people's inconstancy. Neither the metre nor the sense of the text is so mutilated as some have supposed.

Therefore thus saith the Lord: XVIII. 13 Ask ye now of the nations, Who heard of the like?

The horror she hath grossly wrought, Virgin of Israel.

Fails from the mountain rock 14 The snow of Lebanon?

Or the streams from the hills dry up, The cold flowing streams?(446) Yet Me have My people forgotten, 15 And burned(447) to vanity, Stumbling from off their ways, The tracks of yore, To straggle along the by-paths, An unwrought road; Turning their land to a waste, 16 A perpetual hissing.

All who pa.s.s by are appalled, And shake their heads.

With(448) an east wind strew them I shall, 17 In face of the foe.

My back not my face shall I show them In their day of disaster.

Personal pa.s.sages follow in verses 18-23, and in XIX-XX. 6, the Symbol of the Earthen Jar and the episode of the Prophet's arrest with its consequences, which we have already considered,(449) and then other personal pa.s.sages in XX. 7-18. Ch. XXI. 1-10 is from the reign of ?edekiah; 11, 12 are a warning to the royal house of unknown date, and 13, 14 a sentence upon a certain stronghold, which in this connection ought to be Jerusalem, but cannot be because of the epithets _Inhabitress of the Vale_ and _Rock of the Plain_, that are quite inappropriate to Jerusalem.

This is another proof of how the editors of the Book have swept into it a number of separate Oracles, whether relevant to each other or not, and whether Jeremiah's own or from some one else.

From Chs. XXII-XXIII. 8, a series of Oracles on the kings of Judah, we have had before us the elegy on Jehoahaz, XXII. 10 (with a prose note on 11, 12) and the denunciation of Jehoiakim, 13-19.(450) There remain the warning (in prose) to do judgment and justice with the threat on the king's house, XXII. 1-5, and the following Oracles:-

XXII. 6. For thus saith the Lord concerning the house of the king of Judah(451)-